elprupneerg

my favorite colors backwards

  • xe/xer, per/per, it/its, they/them

hi! my only other social media is tumblr so my gf says i'll fit in fine here. i'm in my 20s and live in the united states, if you want more info than that then you can read my posts cuz i'm not putting it here (put in some fucking effort to dox me lmao) <3


estrogen-and-spite
@estrogen-and-spite

(really quickly: Top-Vers-Bottom and Dominant-Switch-Submissive are separate concepts with their own history but the phrases have become conflated in popular discourse. When specifically talking about this particular phenomenon, the terms do get used interchangeably, and I will be using them as such for this one post.)

There was a tiktok I saw a couple days ago that my partner also saw and we had a nice discussion about. I can't find it again, but fundamentally it boiled down to how a lot of cishet men don't see a relationship as one between a man and a woman, but a man and an object, and much of their homophobia comes from a lens of "How can you have a relationship without an object" and "how can you have a relationship between only objects?"1 (See the violent fear mlm men will harass them being rooted in "How can they treat men like objects?" and sapphic love is treated as lesser because cishet men see it as "you can't have a real relationship just two objects.")

Trans and nonbinary folk also get hit with this in different ways,2 as much of the hatred cishet men show towards us can be rooted in "Is this a man or an object?" because we don't fit neatly into their internal classifications - after all, if someone can change from being a man or an object, that implies that it's not about objects, but about people, and that could risk making them think about how they treat women.

Then, falling asleep last night and thinking over the conversation, I realize queer people often repeat this thought process. We just treat bottoms like objects instead.

I'm sure you've seen the memes. The "Look at you, you're just a bottom" with a dismissive photo attached, or the conflation of bottom with being submissive and therefore weaker, or hell the conflation of submission with weakness.3 These also get conflated with femininity in a negative way, with people assuming the smaller member of a gay couple is the bottom or in a relationship between a butch and a femme assume the femme is submissive and in relationships between enbies people often assume power dynamic based on perception of masculinity/femininity (see also in general "Who wears the pants in the relationship?" type quests that are always gross.)

And just...why?

After trying so hard to reject so much of cishet normative society, why do so many of us turn around and recreate a microcosm of it by talking about bottoms as if they're lesser? Like, of course when the speaker and the listener have both discussed this and the bottom has consented to being treated that way, feel free to degrade the bottom until they're all worked up, but that's the kind of thing that happens with negotiation and discussion. But when it gets put onto other people without consent, it just replicates the same harmful mentalities. Not to mention that we keep forcing it to be a binary, ignoring switches and verses.

Don't believe me?

Stop me if you've heard this one before. "You're not a switch, you're a bottom that will top to make your partner happy."4

Yeah. And I know people who that is true for. One of my exes proudly used that phrase to describe its own switch side, and I know a lot of switches who happily lean into that. And that's fine for them. But I'm a switch, by which I mean I will domme happily 95% of the time and am a full on slut who will domme anyone who I find attractive and consents to it...but 5% of the time it's nice to experience the other side of things. It also takes an incredible amount of trust for me to even consider switching, something I'll only do in the context of a committed relationship or incredibly deep friendship and even then it'll take months before I'm comfortable enough to do it.

Do I have a point or call to action with this?

Not really. Just wanted to vent about a trend that's always made me feel a bit icky.


  1. I know this is not the sole cause of homophobia/transphobia, but it had enough of a ring of truth to warrant a discussion imo.

  2. Of course we do.

  3. I'm a sadist. If I ever, ever were to assume my masochistic play partners were weak, I can look at their backside for solid proof they have incredible strength to endure that.

  4. You were supposed to stop me.


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in reply to @estrogen-and-spite's post:

I really like this post. I also look at those kinds of posts that state that shy (anxious), considerate people are feminine and bottoms, which bothers me as I relate to the first part, lol, except I’m a masc top. “Haha people who think about other people are bottoms.” One queer person (whose opinion I cared about) said that to me about me in person as well, like, “haha you’re definitely a bottom.” It’s definitely limiting, inaccurate, and mean-spirited.

Oh shit, that reminds me of a whole separate post I need to make at some point because of how needlessly gendering those roles impacts trans people because it can make a sexual position preference into a source of dysphoria for us, because yeah it's a huge issue.

Also fuck that person for saying that to you like that. 🫂

Hi its me the trans girl with a huge pile wtf because of the way sexual roles are implicitly gendered even in supposedly homosexual relationships and somehow even moreso in trans circles. It's a real pile of laughs and my therapist is gonna get so rich off me.

Thank you! This overlaps with some other messed up dynamics, especially when it combines with other bigotries like tranamisogyny that queer communities do a generally not good job of tackling. E.g. the assumption that transfems are automatically bottoms/subs and somehow "faking" if they're not, which often pairs with the assumption that trans women that do top/dom are somehow suspect or even dangerous. I've literally been told I was "inherently masculine/aggressive" simply for being a dom-leaning switch. Sadly I ain't the only one.

Okay so I have a whole separate post about this phenomena I need to write as a fellow dom leaning switch because for like, months I acted like I was a sub even though it made me uncomfortable because I literally was dysphoric about it and...yeah. Absolutely there's a whole thing there that uniquely sucks when it mixes with transphobia and transmisogyny (and I've heard from some trans men there's a related phenomena for when they're subby/are assumed to be subs)

Why do people have to make my desire to cause consensual physical harm on a willingly restrained partner gendered?

Yes! Why can't they just let people create/embody hot stories together as they wish?

Omg I would read the hell out of that post.

I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. I encountered really similar stuff especially earlier in my transition (though occasionally it comes back for a rematch). I think it draws from/combines with transfeminized debt, where we're always assumed to owe deference/labor to others. On this front it means that transfem subs are often objectified in some ugly ways, transfem switches viewed as faking and transfem doms viewed as threatening or not-really-women because "trans woman with backbone = bad." It also combines with the toxic assumption, as you point out, that bottoms/subs are automatically less assertive.

Right? Just let people smash whatever parts of themselves or toys they want to smash into any adult who consents to it, there's no need to be weird about it.

And I gotta finish work writing but I think I'm gonna come back to that later today if time and wrists permit.

I'm also sorry you had to deal with that, because it's absolutely true that we get these things put on us. I haven't thought about the transfeminine debt thing but...that absolutely tracks, and explains a whole lot of some things I've encountered. And yeah, the idea of the "threatening" transfemme domme...that's gonna be a whole-ass thing for the post.

TW: sexual discussion with body terms, mention of rape, and explicit remarks --

God, yes. This is exhausting. There's also this weird cis man thing of like, immediately loathing people who enjoy cock (I'm talking in cis men terms here, so simplifying to cock, will get further into this in a moment).

Like women get turned into objects, but also men seem disgusted by sexuality in women. Whores are mocked, sexually active women are judged: any indication you actually like sex with a penis is invitation to degrade and abuse. And this gets extended to gay men. Cis men are desperate to be wanted, but will instantly be nearly repulsed by the concept anyone actually does, unless they're getting sex in that exact moment, and then there's the concept of 'post-nut clarity' where you realize you actually had sex with someone who was eager to gargle your balls, and then instant repulsion again. [1]

This gets twisted by the gay community against bottoms. How dare you actually want to be penetrated, want to suck cock, you pathetic cocksucker? And then when we get to lesbian, bi, and trans communities, suddenly the lines blur for cis men: who is repulsive and who isn't? Who can you use as a sexual object and who should be respected?

And a lot of people respond by making bottoming degrading, like you said. But I think it also leads to a massive amount of weird dysphoria, sexually and physically, for most people who like to top or have a cock.

If you have a cock and don't want to use it for penetration, you're giving up dignity, according to their paradigm of how sex works. And if you want cock, that's even worse. But if you're having sex taking cocks completely out of the picture, that's not real sex, and if you're using dildos that's a fake cock and you're even more pathetic than those who want the real thing.

I don't know. I think cis men's self-loathing when it comes to hating themselves and then demeaning anyone who actually likes what they've got has spread into the bottoming discourse. I will never really be able to put into words the phenomenon I'm trying to describe, the "Please suck me oh my god I need a blowjob I need sex right now I'm going to die oh my god look at that pathetic cocksucker" dichotomy, but it's really hitting the idea of 'topping' and 'bottoming' and contributing to the phenomenon I think you're describing.

[1] I do think this leads to a significant amount of rape culture/mentality as well. If you're repulsed by people having sexual attraction to you, but you still want sex, the obvious solution is having sex with someone who doesn't have sexual attraction to you. Which leads to rape. There's rape for power, and then there's rape because you can't handle someone consenting to you, and then there's a mix of both where it starts as rape but you're hoping you can get them to enjoy it halfway through (mind-break fantasies) which is this weird idea that you can respect your partner until they fall apart due to the power play of your penis. I'm not saying all rape/mind-break fantasies have this dynamic, and I'm not saying fantasizing leads to rape. But I am saying that the self-loathing inherent in the dynamic of disgust toward those who are attracted to you is absolutely a factor in sexual violence. (Think about how many serial killers/rapists had ultraconservative parents who made out that sex was inherently filthy. I 100% think that can lead to "I want sex with someone who's pure (doesn't want sex with me) but once we've had sex they're now filth, so they have to die". Rant for another time.)