Ask a Queer Therapist: Am I a Top or Bottom?

Dear Top or Bottom,

This is such an interesting situation that you’re facing; thank you for writing to me about it! I’m sorry that you’re feeling confused, but I really appreciate how honest, insightful and vulnerable you are in sharing what’s coming up for you here.

I’ll skip to the conclusion and then circle back to dig in more: being a top or bottom is about more than who is literally on top (or bottom) during sex, and it’s about more than which body parts are entering into which other body parts. I imagine that for you, being a top means embodying a certain energy/attitude/demeanor, during sex, or perhaps also in other areas of your relationship(s). This dynamic, this interplay between you and your partner(s), can exist regardless of what physical positions you’re in while having sex (but of course, you already know this).

Given this, I’m curious what it meant for you to identify as a top while dating cis women.  Were you physically always “on top” during sex? If not, did you still feel like a top, even if she was physically on top of you? My guess is that the answer is “no” to the first and “yes,” to the second, in which case I’ll ask, what made you feel like a top when you were actually on the bottom? Was it about taking control? Feeling in control? Was it about initiating? Both topping and bottoming are active roles one can play during sex, and the interplay between those roles is also an important part of that dynamic. Sometimes this interplay is about how one feels desirable, or expresses their own desire. There isn’t any right way to feel in these roles, but understanding how you feel, and what embodying these roles means and feels like toyou, is important. 

Another path I’d love to explore is to know more about what masculinity means to you? I’m curious about this sexually, but also as a general social construct, and specifically how you embody masculinity for yourself. How does this play out in your relationships, romantic and platonic? Does your sense of your own masculinity change when you’re with a cis woman vs a cis man vs a trans woman? How do your partners’ gender identities and presentations impact your own? Where did these ideas about masculinity come from (social construct, familial modeling, popular culture)?  Developing a deeper understanding of these questions can help illuminate what’s coming up for you sexually.

I’ll add this – I’ve known many trans men (personally and professionally) who exclusively dated cis women before their transition, and who, eventually, started dating “people with penises,” as you say. Often, but not always, this attraction came as a surprise to them, and involved grappling with forming a new understanding of their sexuality. If you haven’t yet, I would encourage you to explore that avenue as well. It might be that your identity as a top and your sense of your own masculinity is also connected to however you had “defined” your sexuality until this point, or however it was defined for, or projected onto you. But if you allow yourself the space to reconsider that, perhaps expanding your understanding of your sexuality, you might find that your concepts of masculine and feminine, top and bottom, expand as well.

Finally, I encourage you to go easy on yourself. At 40 it can be tempting to feel like you should have this all figured out by now, but how boring would that be?! Continuing to grow, to change, to get to know yourself in new ways, is a gift and privilege, if you allow it to be. Remember that even though you’re technically middle-age (sorry!), you likely have twice as much adulthood ahead of you as behind you, so continue to explore, to experiment, and to have some fun. 

Warmly,

A Queer Therapist

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