Sexual identity

Regarding bungee jumping and the woeful inadequacy of words

One of the interesting things about the sex-positive community is the extent to which it embraces very fluid and non-traditional roles and identities. In the vanilla world, and indeed in many parts of the "traditional" kink world, there's an expectation that sexual identity should fit into certain prescribed roles. You're either "straight" or "gay", "top" or "bottom". It turns out that a lot of us have trouble fitting into those roles.

I usually tell people that I'm a queer switch, or, if pressed, that I'm bi (80% straight / 20% gay) and switch (80% top / 20% bottom). The reality, though, is a little more complicated. For example, about 4 times out of 5 when I have kinky sex, I end up topping. However, there are a number of activities that I generally only do as a top (mock non-consensuality, d/s), and some that I generally only do as a bottom (fairly heavy pain play).

Beyond that, topping and bottoming mean very different things to me. Topping's a pretty important part of my sexual identity, and it's something that I'd miss tremendously if I didn't get to do it regularly. I often compare bottoming to bungee jumping: I enjoy it a lot every time I do it, and I'm always happy to go for another ride. However, I could easily go without it for months without noticing or missing it.

I've found that gender attraction is equally complicated for me. To over-simplify horrendously, I tend to be attracted to women in much the way that straight men traditionally are, and to men in much the way that straight women traditionally are. I'm frequently sexually attracted to women that I've never met before, purely based on their appearance. That never happens with men-- I'm only ever sexually attracted to men who I know well and am close to.

Even then, however, there's an element of bungee jumping. For example, Silver and Tom and I have played together non-sexually a few times. If Tom weren't straight (which he is), and if my poly agreement with Rabbit allowed me to have sex with people other than Silver (which it doesn't), I imagine that at some point, I'd want to have sex with Tom as part of one of those scenes. I'm not really sexually attracted to Tom in the conventional sense: having sex with him would instead be about riding the energy of the scene, and having fun together.

One interesting way of looking at these issues is the "Who are you when you jerk off?" question. Personally, my fantasies are always about topping with women. (I had one dream, once, about bottoming to a man, but since a Mac II running very custom software featured prominently in that dream, it's far too embarassing to talk about in public).

Obviously, labels have their uses: telling someone that I'm a queer poly switch gives them useful and accurate information about me. However, for many of us, reality is far more complicated than the usual labels would suggest.