So what does It Mean to Be a “Top” or a “Dominant” in Lesbian Intercourse?

Hello and welcome to component two of our show about what the hell we suggest once we state “top, ” “bottom” or “switch”! Final we talked about bottoms and submissives, and this week we’re talking about tops and dominants week. Let’s go into it.

The Tops, Bottoms and Switches Intercourse Survey

Three weeks hence, we introduced you with a study about these words that are slippery and over 3.6k people turned up to generally share their tops and bottoms beside me. They are the demographics regarding the respondents:

Demographics of Intercourse Survey Respondents // Age: Under 18 (1.2%), 18-24 (25%), 25-34 (56%), 35-44 (14%), 44+ (4.5%) // Sexual Orientation: Lesbian (43.4%), Queer (30%), Bi or Pansexual (19%), Gay (6.2%), Other (1%) // Gender Identity: Cis woman (71.2%), Trans girl (3.4%), Non-Binary or Genderqueer girl (9.5%), Non-Binary or Genderqueer Individual (7.6%), Other (8.2%) // Relationship Status: Single or Dating, not sex that is having (30.6%), Single or Dating, Sex Frequently (8.7%), In A monogamous relationship (32.6%), In A non-monogamous relationship (9.3%), Married & Monogamous (15.5%), Married & Non-Monogamous (3.2%)

I’ll be dealing with the info gradually during the period of the month — next week we’ll explore switches and individuals whom don’t use these terms after all. We’ll also speak about sub-identities (bratty bottom, energy bottom, solution top, etc. ) and we’ll glance at the data in general and how it intersects with different identities and demographics. Each week’s data will build on last week’s and you will be extremely satisfying for nerds and fans of intercourse.

Just how many Tops Are on the market?

Despite all of the talk of tops and bottoms inside the community that is queer our study revealed that individuals whom identify especially as tops or bottoms come in the minority overall. Additionally, you can find slightly more bottoms out there than tops.

Tops: 12% // Bottoms: 14.3% // Switches: 51.6% // None of this Above: 13.4% // I’m Not Yes: 8.9%

What’s Topping?

Before queer women’s culture used top/bottom as terminology highly relevant to sex that is non-kinky the terms were mainly utilized by homosexual males, or in kink or BDSM contexts by both right and LGBTQ+ people. For the present time, some things are obvious from our studies: “top” is simpler to determine than “bottom, ” there’s more consensus on preferred functions among tops versus bottoms, and there is apparently an even more distinction that is clear-cut “top” and “dominant” than between “bottom” and “submissive. ”

Exactly What Do Tops love to Do During Intercourse?

We asked survey-takers to point their passion for offering and getting many different intimate acts, and in addition asked them to define what “top” methods to them. We’ve included several of the most popular tasks below. (observe that scissoring/dry-humping was not included from the study because it doesn’t have clear giving/receiving dynamics. )

WHAT TOPS WANT TO DO IN BED – Vaginal Penetration: Receiving (32%), Providing (95%) // Oral Sex (Genital): Getting (56%), Offering (90%) // Strap-On Penetration (Vaginal): Receiving (20%), Providing (72%) // Genital Fisting: Getting (8.5%), Offering (29%) // Fingering (External Genital Touch): Offering (97%), Getting (60%) // Nipple Enjoy: Getting (49%), Offering (86%) // Anal: Getting (12.4%), Offering (29%)

The chart above reveals which tasks inspired tops to declare “this is regarded as my things that are favorite give/receive” or “i enjoy give/receive this. ” They are able to additionally express neutral emotions about an offered work, state they didn’t want to do it, say they’d never done it or choose “N/A. ” But “I give this and don’t like it” ended up being selected very seldom — precisely zero tops explicitly don’t like giving genital penetration, as an example, in addition to only sex acts that motivated significantly more than five tops to select “I give this and don’t like it” had been anal oral sex (six respondents don’t like it) and anal penetration (seven respondents don’t like it).

There clearly was a higher opinion among tops versus bottoms with regards to preferred functions. As an example, 95% of tops prefer to penetrate vaginally; 80% of bottoms choose to reddit group sex receive said penetration. Needless to say, it is worth noting that not all the individuals who took this study have actually vaginas to enter, but eliminating the team least prone to have a vagina (trans women) from our base data failed to create a statistically appropriate affect that portion. Ab muscles definitions of “giving” and “receiving” lend by themselves to greater top opinion for, since it ended up being written Pat Califia’s 1988 lesbian sex guide Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian sex: “the top’s power is obviously restricted to the requirements and abilities of this base. ” Similarly, you can find a lot more bottoms enthusiastic about finger-fucking (68.6%) than you will find tops who wish to get finger-fucked (32%).