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The Top/Bottom Fallacy

The Top/Bottom Fallacy

Oct 14, 2023 | ,

First a bit of an update! The blog site is undergoing an overhaul with my new web designer. We had our second meeting yesterday and I noticed just how detailed he is. We’ve made many fundamental design decisions already, and he’s working on all the finer details now. We even spent like 20 mins reducing 10 font options down to 3, which was something I’d never thought about before in my life haha. I’m excited. Thanks so much to my patreon subscribers for making this possible – your contribution is paying for this overhaul so that everyone can enjoy this hub of fisting information!

And now for the meat!

The Top/Bottom Fallacy

I find it questionable and tbh childish when people identify as tops or bottoms. Being top or bottom is a state, not an identity, and if we all accepted that outlook then we would all increase pleasure opportunities for ourselves and others.

When we were young…

I think I get it: it’s that we naturally gravitated to one of the two when first we started having sex, because it felt more natural, comfortable, easier, less vulnerable, less pressuring, or a partner decided that because they more comfortable with one role, you needed to be the other, and you liked them so you did it and became good at it.

But regardless of which role we choose, we feel like it chose us. We talk about bottoming and topping like it’s a superpower, something sacred, and we tend to shame the other role, probably to make ourselves feel superior, while also hankering desperately after the corresponding yang to our yin.

But hold on… You chose to be a pitcher or catcher, based on your circumstances, your partner at the time, or an early discovered skill, right? And you have the choice to expand your sexual palette as you like. It’s your life, your sexuality. I felt like I didn’t have the choice, but actually looking a bit closer, I did. I liked bottoming, I was damn good at bottoming, and still am good at bottoming- so much so that I became a fisting bottom, like many of you. Though it appears to go even one level deeper. A lot of us bang on all the time about heteronormativity invading our queer lives, and yet when it comes to the actual bedroom and our sexual identity, some of us fall life-long into this trap of being pitcher or catcher, sticking to a – possibly subconsciously steadfast – traditionally heteronormative male-female bedroom dynamic, when in most cases nobody made us do it except ourselves. Society doesn’t give a fuck about whether we top or bottom in the bedroom, and yet we continue to line up in two straight lines, like primary schoolers outside the classroom before school begins? Fuck that shit, man. Hell, we even know by now that not even heteros always follow these societal “norms”, and for the most part I think it’s us who showed them that that is ok, that they can live a life where they say fuck the man in their bedrooms. (Side note, it’s funny writing this, because I realise now what the author of the words “sex is political” means. Maybe we can’t block out the socio-political from sex. Ok now I’m thinking of a number of former Australian prime ministers standing in the corner watching me while I get my brains fucked out. Backpedaling straight out of this one.)

Here she comes to save the day!

And then come the versatiles, those anarchistic chaotic vers fuck boys that will take any pleasure they can get. How dare they fuck up the natural order of things! They’re just here to fuck up all the holes, including theirs. It’s me, hey 🙂 I’m one of them. And I’m here to tell you that this is the future of gay sex.

This boy is a bttm
A young friend of mine when we first met even used the term “the bottom community”, which made me snort-laugh so hard I peed my pants. I explained to him that no such community of trembling bottoms-in-waiting exists. He’s made leaps and bounds since then and we look back at that conversation and laugh.  I also explained that it is silly to block out one half of your pleasure potential, and in denying yourself you also deny others their pleasure. You know what I mean? Eg. if all you do is bottom, any versatile guy is not getting his ass opened up by you. Most of us have experienced or heard stories of some bottom who is unwilling to budge from his position as Crown Princess of Bottom Country, and it is annoying as fuck to anyone that isn’t a 100% top. Pleasure denial! It could be a kink if it weren’t so fucking sad.

Dear Tops
If you’re a 100% top, don’t think I’m not coming for you too. An older friend of mine back in Australia, a big tall burly redhead with a big cock, was adamant he can’t bottom. Because he tried it once, and it hurt. And he never tried it again. Waaaah, it hurt! Poor little top got a booboo. As you can see I’m not above shaming others, but you see how ridiculous that sounds, right? It’s like saying “I tried cupcakes once, and I didn’t like them.” Maybe a little analysis is due? Was the cake mix too dry? What flavour was the icing? You did remember to put icing on, right? Who were you eating cupcakes with, was the company good? You could go on: what time of day did you eat the cupcakes, what had you eaten beforehand, did you take your time or rush into the cupcake eating? Was the cupcake too big? Were you way too in your head about the cupcake eating, or were you truly present to just accept the cupcake experience without all these damn questions floating around in your silly himbo top mind? Did you try some poppers with the cupcake? Hm…

OK OK, I am being an asshole.
SO of course in the FF community the majority of people have reached a point where they are happily versatile. I have had this discussion with so many people in the FF community, namely about total bottoms, and in recent times when it comes up I take the side of the 100% bottoms, and here’s why: sometimes all I want to do is top, and I want to top someone who wants to just bottom. Because it’s nice, and we understand each other, and nobody is missing out. It’s all about nobody missing out. Sometimes I have a connection with someone that is specifically about us fitting into one role only, and I can’t really imagine swapping for them. Maybe you have it too. So actually if that is a thing in my head, it’s not that far of a leap to imagine a person who might never want to top someone, or bottom for someone. But to that I say, you might just not have found that person yet, or not trusted the possibility enough to take a leap of faith and give it a try.

So yeah, I can’t relate to not enjoying both roles, because for me it’s just so fucking nice to do both. If this isn’t you, fine, and I probably won’t convince you otherwise. But if nothing else, consider that Annette and Horst, the sweet, poor hetero neighbours downstairs, are missing out. She doesn’t know what a strap-on is, and he doesn’t give a second thought to why taking a dump every morning is the most pleasurable 5-20 mins of his day. We got the gift of not having to be like them, to be able to use our bodies’ pleasure potential to the fullest, and to thump away both ways from the room above, and ignore the letter of complaint written in the sweetest old lady handwriting the next day. Because we’re faggots, Harry, and fuck you.

Porgy and Bess

My husband and I started off as a bottom-and-top pair. I was the bottom, he was the top, and we thought we were going to live happily ever after like that. As we grew into our 30s, our high sex drive, open relationship and curiosity led to discovering ourselves in the opposite roles, and we grew up to be happily versatile adults. Mature. Versatile. Adults. If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, it is most likely overdue. And if you try it and don’t like it, change something about it and try again. Change your partner, the setting, the time of day. Change something. Experiment. Stop denying yourself and your partners the other side of pleasure.

Thou shalt fist top
Fisting was actually my gateway to becoming versatile. Before then I wasn’t very confident as a cock top, though I did like the feeling. Keeping my dick up in front of others made me feel under pressure, and that made it go soft. Fist topping made me much more aware of the pleasure I can give others and receive myself at the same time, in a less high pressure situation. Through it I experienced the vast cloud of experiences I can have as the top partner, without the pressure of keeping my dick hard. It took a lot of practice, but these days (without wanting to sound like a wanker) I have come to relate to my arms as sex organs when I’m fisting. My brain has become wired that way after lots of practice, experiencing pleasure and enabling pleasure in others. The bonus is that through fisting I have now gained confidence in cock topping as well – I don’t get nervous about it anymore because I don’t need to use my dick. I use my hands, and if my dick gets hard, I use that too. I’ve even discovered in my 30s that I’m a multi cummer. Haha. So thank you fisting.

 

…Because it’s good for you!!

I also love the creativity of fist topping. I have my successful techniques, a palette from which to work, but mostly it is impulsive creativity, an Improvisation on a Hole and the guy I am fisting, because everyone is different, from the physical to the communication. I’m a musician so I identify it withimprovisation and composition, which is simply low pressure improvisation in slow motion. If you are a musician, writer, or a dancer, or an architect, or a painter, sculptor, designer or cook, a programmer, or if you do these and similar things or do things involving problem solving or imagination, your brain is operating all the time in a similar way to when you fist top: having an idea, running with it, and finding the pleasure in the process and the result. Being in flow. And here’s a little golden nugget for you: if you don’t think you’re creative, think again. Humans are creative. Humans are problem solvers. And even if the only time you feel like you’re being creative is while you fist, well enjoy that, and get as much practice as you can, because creative thinking is the highest form of exercise for your brain. See Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Doing the work on myself
I used to be 60-40 bottom for fisting, because while I really liked to top, I looooooved to bottom and that drove my lust to meet people and fist, and to endure the preparation process beforehand. Then recently after lots of water under the bridge I started to identify as 40-60 top. But is that really the truth? I noticed that identifying with this makes me unhappy, because I know I love to bottom, and I miss it. I stopped bottoming so much when life got hard, and I stopped trusting people so easily and have been reluctant to make myself vulnerable to people. But in the rare moments when I do bottom, I still have a great time, and nothing is wrong with my butt. This identifying with being top or bottom is something I fundamentally disagree with, so why have I been calling myself first 60-40 and now 40-60? Isn’t that the same damn thing as people who say they are bottom only or top only? It’s like I’ve had one standard for everyone else and another for myself.

So here’s my new approach.

Identity: versatile.

Status: in flux.

How I feel today: kinda bottomy.

How I felt yesterday: kinda bottomy too (I even wanted to play with some toys but didn’t get around to it. I’m so busy these months and don’t make time for attending to my own ass.)

How I felt last week: super toppy. Had a great time fisting to my heart’s content, sucking on prolapse and giving some solid elbowing to various ffriends.

How I felt last month: Toppy with the occasional bottom pangs.

How I felt last year: super fucking confused, following a lot of doubt about my bottoming.

How I feel this year: curious. I notice my lust for bottoming quite often now. And for topping. And just for doing the big old FF. Versatile. So very versatile.

You see how it is in flux! Are you the same? Or would you like to be? Honestly, in these months/years where I’ve become apprehensive to bottom, I don’t want to beat myself up or be sad about the state I’m in. It simply is so, and it comes and goes, like clouds in the sky. And I quite enjoy when that feeling of wanting to bottom comes back, like it did yesterday. I didn’t act on it, didn’t make space in my day for it, but it was simply enough to observe that the lust was there, and is there today too. It makes me so curious about the future, when I know I will be bottoming more, and trusting more, and will be willing to make myself vulnerable to people again. The time will come when I get to enjoy my bottoming again just as much as I am enjoying my topping in the present.

 

The bottom line 😉

Your identity is just a view you have about yourself. You get to decide whether you fence yourself in or not. And evidence for what you like or what you trust yourself to do is based solely on past experiences and how much you let them influence you in the present. As I’ve shown above, things change. That’s the one constant we can count on in our lives.

Knowing one role can make you better at the other
In a phone call with one of my subscribers recently, a beginner fister, he told me that he identifies as a bottom but all he gets is guys wanting him to top them. I asked him to consider that he could be in the perfect place to learn the joy of topping, and also through topping he could learn things about bottoming. It takes two to tango, and if you know one side of the practice, you can enhance your skills in the other. It’s a ping-pong situation. When I top I find myself imagining the feeling of bottoming, and I coach the bottom as though I am him, because I know what it feels like to take an arm inside me. I was doing this just the other day with a friend, while others looked on, and it felt like the words were coming out my mouth without me even filtering them, it was such a direct and natural coaching experience. Because I’ve been the one taking that forearm in the sling, going through all the feelings, the breathing, the agonising ecstasy. Of course there are differences in individual preferences and capabilities, but overall we are all humans with similar bodies, thoughts and feelings (and thoughts and feelings about our thoughts and feelings), and that accounts for the connection we are capable of sharing, and the journey we are able to take each other on towards orgasm, ecstasy, paradise.

Knowledge is power. If you identify as one thing and not the other, I suggest you stop being so sure of what you think is true about yourself. Try something out, be creative and do with your body all the things you can, while you can. And to my second point: if you notice a general movement from bottom to top, or indeed top to bottom, embrace it, enjoy it, and know that these things are in flux. It’s only for today, sweetheart. Let’s not go making things bigger than they are.

 

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A Few Truths About the Fisting Community

A Few Truths About the Fisting Community

Oct 14, 2023 | ,

Some of you will know by now that I’ve been dividing my blog up a bit differently since launching patreon.com/mlfb, exploring bigger themes in more depth. My first big theme within this new format was prolapses, and if you go to my homepage you’ll get practically slapped across the face by one. And now, for my next theme! Community.

It’s one we do seem to struggle with indeed, myself included. Exploring the idea of community has involved a lot of discussion with ffriends, some new reading of bits of books and drawing on some of my prior knowledge, and a lot of mulling over, to come to some conclusions that I hope you find helpful for your understanding of the fisting community and your place in it.

I want you remember that this is based on my own experience, meaning I haven’t had to face discrimination in the community based on my skin colour, size, age (yet) or gender. To people for whom this is a struggle, you will find my explanation here eye-rollingly naive I suspect. Some People of Colour have recommended I amend this with an acknowledgement of the struggles of minorities within the fisting community, and that’s what this is. I am also in discussion with a supporter who is a POC about an article he might write in future discussing the issue.

 I’ve distilled this community article into three observations. See if these sound familiar to you:

1. The community is so loose.

2. You’re standing at the window, looking in.

3. Micro-communities are the real essence of community.

Let’s unpack.

1. The community is sooooo loose.
Lol. Yes, it is! Most of the fisters in the world are people you will never even speak to, let alone have sex with. The fisters you know are the ones in your area, and beyond that the ones who have slid into your DMs or are generally very vocal online, and the people you meet during your or others’ travels. Everyone else doesn’t mean anything to you and you don’t mean anything to them.

On the Such FFun podcast we’ve said before that being a fister puts you in a special club – and it does! – but don’t go mistaking that club for any reason to feel like it has a center, or that it is in any way supportive or necessarily has your best interests at heart. Being part of the fist club simply means a mutual understanding. It means you’ve got a big hole, so do I, therefore I don’t judge you for having a big hole and I want you to experience all the pleasure you want with that big hole of yours, ya big old holey hole. What the fist club doesn’t offer is intimacy or familiarity. When people say they don’t feel part of the fisting community, these are the things they are unfulfilled about. Though like in any worldwide community, this is unrealistic to expect. Just as any Christian might have some shared values with another Christian, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will get along, or find intimacy or familiarity. We are loose, as that is our nature. Let’s not go pretending that we should be any tighter; the Christians aren’t.

Here’s an exception: of course it is lovely and holesome when you gather some fisters together socially and have a great time. That is no longer the fisting community as a whole, but rather already a micro-community. More on that in a moment. The first and most important point is to not be disappointed that the worldwide fisting community isn’t closer or somehow more welcoming. It can’t possibly be. Indeed, it’s only in recent decades that we’ve come together through the internet, and made fisting wildly more visible and accepted, and therefore popular. Celebrate that, but be realistic with the knowledge that that is not what makes a supportive community. We simply share a lot more of our porn with each other, commend each other on the size of our holes, and maybe that’s as far as the connection usually goes.

Of course if you travel, the wider FF community is helpful as you can meet people easily from where you are visiting. Make use of this network gratefully, but don’t expect it full-time. I know a lot of fisters around the world, and mostly we get in contact if we are travelling and have the option to meet; if not, the contact will drop off. We all have busy lives to lead, partners to feed, ladders to climb, and of course a handful of local fisters to meet to fulfill our immediate needs. Don’t confuse this for people not wanting you, even when it comes to locals. You are wanted, you are enough. And sometimes when you bump into fellow fisters by chance, you’re reminded of how you do have friends in all sorts of places, some of whom will come to your aid when you might need, be it for a good fisting, recommendations for new playmates, or even a referral to a good lawyer who can help you in your pending twitter porn case (see my twitter).

2. You’re standing at the window, looking in.
Do you get that feeling? Maybe you’re new to fisting, and find it difficult to penetrate the community. Or maybe you’ve been fisting for years but you tend to notice people hooking up without you and don’t understand why you’re being left out. Your fisting friends seem to know more fisters than you do, or you can’t remember how long it’s been since you last fisted, and it seems like everyone else is having more fun than you, ignoring you, not wanting you, because you’re different, other, an outsider. I think you know what I’m gonna say: we all feel it. This is each of us, and one potential source for it I’ve been considering is a childhood of gay shame.

Gay kids are pushed away, often before they even know what gay is. It starts as an interest in different things to other boys (or girls if you want me to be PC, though for ease I’m gonna stick to boys); we get bullied at school for preferring to sing or read over playing sports or punching each other (hah!),, and when the first crushes happen it’s simultaneously the best and the worst thing. We feel like weirdos, like we have a horrible secret, and are in many situations treated nastily by our idiot child peers. At some point we have to acknowledge that what the kids have been teasing us about is true, and we can’t wish it away no matter how hard we might try. Then the time comes when we need to come out, because we feel we are about to explode, and alone the prospect of it is immensely stressful, and makes our feeling of being other and rejected go through the roof even before we utter the words. Now, every human being is met with with some kind of trauma and shame in childhood that leads to their need to stand out, or be good, or be nice, or be aggressive or whatever way they develop into adulthood. But for us gays it’s more sinister, because our gay shame was born of an existential threat: of our parents kicking us out, or of us being bashed to death, or even the dread of dying of AIDS. Regardless of how our parents and friends react to the actual coming out, it’s the dread, the catastrophising, that has already consumed our imaginations and played a film in our heads a thousand times of the ostracising and the bullying at school, the family breakdown at home, and the ultimate loneliness we are surely destined to feel, if we indeed do survive the ordeal. And while we look back now and don’t believe it still haunts us (after all, we have friends, we have community, we love and are loved, we are safe and the coming out is for most of us so far in the past now), the trauma happened. It exists, because it happened in our minds, no matter how easily the coming out turned out to be. It plays itself out in our lives in various ways. One of the ways is here, in the fisting community, where we all feel like we might be missing out: that there is a center to the fisting community and we are definitely not it.

You might not think that gay trauma applies to you; I didn’t. I’ve read about it a number of times, and forgotten about it as many times, but just this week I’ve been reading a book about it again with the specific intention of understanding more about the idea of the fisting community within the broader gay community. I am realising now that my gay trauma is real. As I said, the results of gay trauma seem to play out differently: my husband has aggression when things don’t work out perfectly (which is always); I push people away as a way to protect myself before they have the opportunity to reject me. For me it can be traced all the way back to one of my earliest memories, when my parents read me a children’s book where a penguin had no friends at the playground.. By the end of the book I was bawling my eyes out. My parents asked why I was crying, and I said because the penguin didn’t have any friends. Despite them explaining that the penguin found a friend in the end, I fixated on not having any friends, and had worked out that that penguin was me. I must have been three years old. I didn’t know anything, but I had it in my head that I was different and nobody would want me. Thinking about it still makes me cry. And still now as a reflex I push people away and don’t maintain contact with my friends, so I can reject them before they have the chance to reject me. (Of course, all I really want is to love and be loved, and for us all to be happy, which is why I do things like write this blog, and talk on Such FFun, and make music for a living.)

And so you stand at the window of the fisting mansion, looking in at all the guys having a blast, living their best fisting life, posting it all over the internet. Theirs surely is 100% magical-orgasmical, and their intimacy is better than yours; they’re laughing their way through life, are taking much more in their butts than you ever will, and there is no sign of gay trauma or struggle of any kind. They’re more muscular and lean than you, have a full head of hair, have the right skin colour, are young and beautiful and attract all the guys, are not at all shy, are friends with everyone and fist a few times a week. They’re the most popular girls in school, and you’re not.

Except there’s nobody in that house. We are all weirdos with gay shame. We are all standing at the window, looking into an empty room. And we are terrified of anyone finding out. And there is only one solution I’ve found to stop this pattern: find your people. Create your own community, no matter how small.

3. Micro-communities are the real essence of the fisting community.
(I say this while currently having not many local fisting friends in Berlin, because I put some explosives under my intimate relationships last year that were well overdue, and am building back better, slowly but surely.) I remember when I was fisting a hell of a lot about 2 years ago, a frequent fisting friend of mine would talk about his feeling of missing out: why weren’t we invited to so-and-so’s party, what about all the fun they were having without us? And I said to him fuck it! Look at us and the fun we’re having. While I’m fisting, nobody else out there beyond these walls exists. In here is where my fisting community is, and nowhere else. It doesn’t matter if you are two people or twenty: your fisting community is the people with whom you are playing right now, or at your next session. You are accepted, you are loved, you are enough, no matter how much you take in your butt, or how much hair you have on your head, no matter the colour of your skin or how old you are, how you express yourself or how often you fist. Your community is the fisters who like to fist with you, or even just like to hang out with you over coffee. And that too can be fleeting. Community is most often a moment in time. But the moments are golden, and they belong to you. The memories of them stay with you, and they get to mean more to you than your gay trauma.

Building a lasting community is tricky. I hear of its success in places like Chicago and Melbourne, and have had the pleasure of experiencing the former, with the latter on my list for the end of this year. These places foster action, with organisation and effort from multiple people to have bigger events, social as well as sexual. And they are made up of smaller micro-communities that meet more often. And the reputation that these groups have attract more people to the city, and the community grows, almost organically. But then they are cared for, by people who want to give themselves for the cause. That needs you as well, so consider helping to organise an event in future in your area. After all, you are the community, it exists within your walls.

It doesn’t matter where you are or who you are. Build yourself a community of between 2 and x number of people, and don’t focus on what is happening out there without you, for that is giving in to the picture of the ffisty mansion where you are standing at the window looking in, and that is just a fairy tale of gay shame.

A further recommendation: delete twitter periodically
Social media is the thing that causes us to compare our lives with others the most. I delete twitter as well as hookup apps periodically and find I enjoy myself much more unplugged. I’ve found doing this very helpful in stabilising myself and becoming comfortable with my fisting how I like to do it, which could lately be best described as infrequent, cathartic, and more on the private side. I guess my porno criminal charge came at a good time 😀

If you appreciate this and want to support me and my writing please join me at patreon.com/mlfb.

Reading list:

Matthew Todd: Straight Jacket. Overcoming Society’s Legacy of Gay Shame. Penguin Books, 2018.

Alan Downs: The Velvet Rage. Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World. Hachette Books, 2012.

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