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So in the gay dating world, would it be fair to say that there is an element of—is coercion the right word?—when it comes to sex? Like in the ideal world, you’d wrestle and then the loser would have to pleasure the winner, rather like the loser when two boys wrestle might be forced to eat grass? If so, that is… rather different than what I would have expected. It sounds rather like the dynamic feminists imagine when they say that all sex/rape is just about power.
Also, though I’ve never considered it before, I think I see the cause of the problem right away. Presumably most gay men are gay because they enjoy being the receptive partner, leaving a dearth of men who enjoy being the active partner (possibly more of whom are bi than gay?). Is that a fair assessment?
No, it's not coercion. Ideally in the situation in your first paragraph, the boy who loses at wrestling is not being forced to pleasure the winner, he is pleasuring the winner because the winner deserves it. I do not want to pleasure a man who would coerce me into having sex, but I would respectfully pleasure him if I felt he deserved it.
In a way sex/rape IS just about power, but between two men you have the chance to respect the power or lack thereof between the two of you.
No no no, well personally I don't find pleasure in being a receptive partner. (Granted, I particularly don't like being an anal bottom because it hurts me physically and feels degrading.) In romantic relationships I've had in the past where I've been the top, the bottom usually isn't that pleased with being a bottom either. He'll go along with it for a while if he really respects the top enough or disrespects himself too much. (This is where the age gap relationships comes into play, most adult men are ready to drop being a bottom in a relationship more quickly than younger men.) Most of my friends I've grown up with who were in long term gay relationships where both partners were in their 20s seem to break up when the bottom gets older and stops wanting to be the bottom.
Besides that, being a top is really more dangerous to the ego than being a bottom. The bottom gets to play a discriminatory role generally, and performing as a top is harder. Porn makes it look really easy but I'd say that topping anally is one of the most difficult things to do in sex- you have to stay hard for a long time, you have to find the hole, you have to do all these things, it's stressful and can be embarrassing. It takes a lot of confidence to feel like you deserve to top another guy. The problem is that today most men never achieve the confidence to top, even in oral sex.
Based on what you've said, it sounds like you imagine that even in the ideal situation, a long-term gay relationship with partners in stable sex act roles isn't possible, or couldn't continue to be mutually beneficial?
Why is it that you (and apparently your past sexual partners) think someone has to "deserve" particular sex roles? How much of that is just contingent on you and them happening to physically not enjoy being the passive partner?
That seems like a very bold claim; I'd be interested to see you expand more specifically on why you think that is true.
I am sort of agnostic on this point, if I had to tell you exactly what I believe, it is that it is possible to have a long term mutually respectful relationship between two men that is mutually beneficial, but it is very very rare and requires huge amounts of respect and humility from both partners who also understand the true dynamic of the relationship. And that this is not exclusive to homosexuality but really to all long term relationships.
Because when you are doing sex acts with a partner, as two men, unless you are kissing or 69ing, there is fundamentally an alpha and a beta position. Because you have to, usually subconsciously and even unknowingly between the two of you, work out how the act is going to go, and to violate the order can hurt both of you if you don't understand that it's happening as a violation of the order between you two.
As I've pointed at before I don't really "not enjoy being the passive partner" (aside from anal sex which I do not enjoy bottoming,) indeed I don't mind being a passive partner orally for either a man who is my top who I respect, or a bottom who I also respect and wants me to blow him.
In seventh grade, I went on a trip with other seventh graders. There was this girl, let's call her Brooke. We were all like 13, Brooke was a skinny, hot, popular girl. But she went around all the time complaining about how fat and ugly she was. It drove the rest of us kids all crazy because we all thought she was hot and skinny, and if she was fat and ugly then that made us all obese and hideous. Dating today in the US is like meeting a million men who act like they're Brooke who thinks she's fat and ugly when really they're hot and nice and need to see themselves as hot and nice in order to share their hotness and niceness with the people around them who want to enjoy it as well, and this can't happen when they're stuck feeling badly about themselves. (And before someone accuses me of acting entitled to someone else's hotness or niceness or whatever, I try to practice what I preach and share my good traits with those around me too.) It's so elementary, read The Rainbow Fish if you don't believe me.
What “hurt” can come from “violat[ing] the order”?
You opened your original post up claiming that you only meant “alpha” and “beta” as referring to who'd win in a fight, saying that you didn't want to import the “connotations in the meme world”[sic] of those “loaded terms”, but that claim — that “hurt” can come if the “[physical superiority] order” is “violated” (whatever that means) — is not at all self-evident unless you're importing prison rape power dynamics, even if I grant* that there are certain pleasures available from physical and behavioral asymmetries in a same-sex relationship.
*And even this, I don't understand your position on so I'm not even sure if I'm granting exactly what you meant to communicate. If you think somehow acting in accord with the “order” of a same-sex relationship — which you define in relation to physical power / force — is so desirable, then why does your highest-ranked relationship prototype involving any serious power asymmetry between the partners have one leg ranked as not even “positive”?
I appreciate your bold desire to express your perspective from a clean slate, but that means that you need to specify your axioms. I see that you clarified in a later post that you think any kind of physical penetration is “essentially a degrading act that you must accept or reject”[sic], but why do you claim this? Do you claim it by analogy from the assumption that heterosexual penetration is “degrading”, or from some other line?
What exactly is wrong with a “beta” contributing a shy, smouldering consent & an “alpha” contributing a bright, doting energy into a bridal chamber of ecstasy, affection, non-judgement, and mutual trust that happens to include sex acts that violate your prescribed “order”?
If it's just not your cup of tea, and you would simply prefer to homoerotically wrestle out your unresolved parental conflicts with a self-confident middle-easterner who's approximately the same strength as you despite a sizeable age gap, then I'm glad you found something you like, but that doesn't seem to be any kind of “motte”.
This complaint is completely comprehensible and I have no objections to it, but it seems almost totally orthogonal to your power dynamics model.
I could grant that the U.S. is full of neurotic bottoms who are refusing to accept themselves as sexually worthwhile, and grant that that's hamstringing them in their ability to “be happy and have healthy relationships with themselves and the people around them”[sic], without granting your much more specific claim that the cure for this is for them to “see themselves as tops”[sic].
If you're struggling with finding enjoyment and fulfillment while viewing gay relationships through this weird power dynamics lens and seeing recurrent “clap back” at your ideas whenever you verbalize them, the obvious implication (which might or might not be correct) is that the “difficult aspects” are actually with your perspective.
For what it's worth, I don't know that I “like” the limited preview of your model you've shared so far, but I do “wish” to see it explained in enough detail to be able to actually evaluate it.
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I was responding to the “make him/me” in your previous comment. I think I sort of get where you’re coming from now, though it still seems like a much more power-focused dynamic than I’d have expected.
Doesn’t this contradict your initial post (“Gay dating today in America is pretty frustrating because the vast majority of men do not see themselves as alpha”) and even the end of this last post (“The problem is that today most men never achieve the confidence to top”)? Or was I misreading you? I thought you were using “alpha” and “beta” as synonyms for “top/active” and “bottom/passive.”
Incidentally, I’d like to second doglatine. This isn’t a subject I would have guessed I’d have found interesting, but it turns out that I do. Kudos.
Err, no I don't think this contradicts it. Basically I think men who see themselves as bottoms need to see themselves as tops to be happy and have healthy relationships with themselves and the people around them.
Sorry the terminology is kind of convoluted. Broadly, alpha = top = active while beta = bottom = passive. I used alpha and beta because it's more relevant to straight people and carries less of a specific meaning than the other two sets of terms which might make people think top/bottom = anal sex only whereas I am trying to describe the relationships more broadly.
I'm glad you found my post interesting, thanks for engaging.
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