This began as a comment on Bitchy Jones’s recent and wonderful post (in typical “rock-the-boat” fashion) on how awesome getting fucked is, but it spiraled into a bit of a longer remark. It expresses a sentiment so frustratingly common in me that I’d rather keep it here. You know, for posterity or something.

Bitchy’s a self-described “dominant slut.” That is great (really); I’m all in favor of pulling stagnant gender binaries out of the penetrative experience of sexual power play. (Penetration being equated to power was first discussed when strap-ons made their debut in my corner of the blogosphere.) Bitchy basically made the oft-but-never-oft-enough-made argument that any sexual act is not inherently dominant or submissive, kind of like this:

it wasn’t being penetrated itself that was submissive. It was just that all femininity was equated with submission – that everything a woman did in sex had been made to look as if it was a priori submissive.

But there is no way that such simple basics – being the hole or the plug – are on their own submissive or dominant. It only has further meaning in context.

Then she talked a lot about how awesome getting fucked is, kind of like this:

You know what I fucking love? I fucking love to get fucked. […] I like fucking for the same reason I like hitting men, looking at bondage porn or eating steak and chips. I like pleasure.

So I suppose I’m a submissive slut, and I’m happy to say so. I like fucking, too. Catch is, (and I hate that I have to qualify it) even though I’m a guy, my dick just gets harder for the getting fucked part way more than the doing the fucking part. Kind of like Bitchy. In fact, except for all the dominant context, exactly like Bitchy.

Sometimes I have to wonder where men like me fit into the picture. Here’s a hint: It’s not here.

A guy who prefers to get fucked instead of preferring to do the fucking. Well, that’s hardly a mystery: “Must be (a) gay (bottom).” Or, “must be a sissy.” Or, “must not be an alpha (aka. best kind of) male.” I can’t even begin to imagine how I might defend myself against these things because that would imply that these things are bad to be (they’re not) or that they aren’t true (parts are, though they’re not universally true).

I’m not gay, I’m bisexual. I’m not a sissy, but I’m clearly not the hegemonic masculine man, either. I’m not what sociologists would describe as an “alpha” personality, but I can piss on the alphas with the best of them (and I’ve had to in the past). Often I feel that nobody bothers to look at this nuance. Robert Heasley, a gender theorist, began exploring some aspects of this in Chapter 5 of Thinking Straight as what he calls straight-queer men. While some of what he writes about strike very close to home for me, I am not straight because there’s that whole quibbling eroticism of homosexual encounters thing.

So I’ve never known what language to use while doing any soul-searching, or how to present myself so others know what to make of me sexually. I never felt like I had a place in either mainstream kink or femdom kink, so I keep trying to make something up.

I might naively say “I’m just me,” but I refuse to accept that I’m just that unique. I’m not that special (no matter what my father keeps trying to tell me). There are other men like me—and if you’re willing to put some money down on it, I’d bet there are lots of them. But, let’s get back to the having sex part.

I like fucking. I like it when I’m getting fucked on my penis. Yes, that’s perfectly possible. When I’m talking about getting fucked, I’m not necessarily talking about getting penetrated. A man with an erect penis can actually get fucked—fucking or getting fucked does not have a one-to-one relationship with one’s anatomical genitalia. That said, I don’t see why men who top shouldn’t be able to get it up the ass if they want to. Again, topping or bottoming does not have a one-to-one correlation with whether you are the “active” or “receptive” partner in a sexual encounter. So, it follows, that I also like getting fucked in my asshole.

Hell, if it weren’t for all the “must be gay (or a sissy)” crap which not-gay and not-sissy submissive guys (i.e., that’s me, in case you lost track) are pelted with all the time I might have even felt like I got the best deal of all: I have a plug and a hole to use while getting fucked. Actually, I have two holes if you count my mouth, and I do. It sounds like the perfect recipe for a foursome to me, and I bet you can figure out how I’d put the puzzle pieces together. (I always liked Tetris.)

Only, frustratingly, very few other people seem to be putting the puzzle pieces together the same way I am. This leads to some very upsetting experiences, like trying to jerk off to stuff that instead of turning you on increasingly makes you bitter. Yeah, I thought that was pretty fucked up, too, but I’m going to save that rant for another entry.