The Limitations of Engaging in Only Top or Bottom Positions For instance, if your first boyfriend was a total top and you weren’t very experienced, you might find yourself taking on a bottom role-a role that’s likely to persist in future relationships because it has become part of your intimate identity. Roles are also influenced by our early intimate experiences and the partners we are with. Learn more about Future Method Cleansing Solution-today. For example, it can be influenced by cultural attitudes, such as the popular (but inaccurate) stereotype that topping is inherently “masculine,” whereas bottoming is inherently “feminine.” People who live in areas where there’s more pressure to be butch might allow these stereotypes to dictate what they do and how they identify. So how do you figure out your role in the first place? That depends on a number of factors. How Do Men Figure Out Whether They’re A Top vs Bottom? For example, you might not have the opportunity to explore other roles because people are already expecting something of you in ‘your’ role. In other words, a self-fulfilling prophecy kicks in. Once people are sorted into these narrow roles, they start treating each other in ways that are consistent with them. It’s also going to create pressure on you to determine what other people’s roles are as well. If everything comes down to this definition, this is necessarily going to create pressure on you to figure out what your role is going to be. To count as ‘doing it’ the butt needs to be involved. Perhaps the biggest reason for this is because men in the LGBT community, tend to define what they do in the bedroom. Let’s start with why most guys come to identify as either tops or bottoms. So why is that? How come most gay men self-segregate into a top-bottom binary? Also, what are the implications-if any-for what they do in the bedroom (or elsewhere)? I’m going to answer those questions for you in this article. Why Do Some Men Identify Only as a Bottom or Top? For example, one study found that 43% identified as bottoms while 26% identified as tops the remaining third said they were versatile.
Research suggests that the vast majority of men in this community define themselves in terms of one of these two labels. Others go as far as to wear them on t-shirts so that there’s no mistaking what they’re into. A lot of gay men identify with a specific position: “top” or “bottom.” These position labels are so self-defining that some guys put them in their profile headlines on hook-up apps.