Category: gay authenticity

Tops and Bottoms, Huh? Secret Millionaire Dies

Tops and Bottoms, Huh?

There’s an amusing article at Huff Po today, with an even more amusing video, that makes a few valid points but in the end fails to get right into the reality of the matter at hand: tops and bottoms.

One guy said this:

“I think a lot of guys are versatile or do both [positions], but I think there some people who just want to get f**ked or just want to f**ck! And so I don’t think we should take that away from them either,” said Michelson. “I agree with you that there’s probably too much of a concentration on these roles and what comes with them, but I don’t want to deny a total top the right to just top his little heart out!”

I think if he’d said the same thing about bottoms just wanting to bottom their little hearts out the entire set, including camera men, would have fallen down laughing, because I’d bet money he’s a bottom. Actually, it’s a group of bottoms talking about tops and bottoms, without top representation.

How do I know this? I have ten years on all of them and I’ve done and seen it all. I’m also past the point of PC in some cases and this is one of them. Very few bottoms will ever admit, openly, they are bottoms. But it’s not that hard to figure out. And there’s really nothing wrong with it.

I do, however, think they make some very valid points, especially when one mentioned not all gay men have anal sex. That’s very true in some cases and it’s not all that unusual for some gay men to abstain from anal sex altogether.

There is one point they missed in the quest to figure out tops and bottoms. If it weren’t such a big thing with gay men social media web sites where millions of gay men from all over the world meet wouldn’t be classifying gay men as tops or bottoms. This needs to be discussed if you’re looking to meet someone, especially for a long term relationship. Are there some who are versatile? I think there are. But not the majority. It’s been my experience the majority of versatiles are all bottoms, most are unwilling to admit it aloud because there’s a social stigma attached to being a bottom because it makes them less masculine, and most of those who claim to be versatile are using code for bottom. Trust me on this. You might not read it anywhere else. But I’ve known more than a few who claim to be versatile and when they get into bed the legs go up higher than any bottom you’ve ever seen.

And there’s nothing sadder than two bottoms trying to figure out what to do, so these things should be made clear up front so no one is disappointed. (Younger gay men who don’t know much need to know this so they don’t find out the hard way, so to speak.)

If you don’t know what a top or bottom is, you can google it. If you don’t believe anything I just wrote, you’re living in a PC dream world. But more important, this has nothing to do with gender politics…in most cases.

The comment thread is why I write these posts.

Secret Millionaire Dies

I love pieces like this next one because they come so few and far between. You have to wonder what motivates a person to make choices like this when there’s no need, and what kind of self-actuated mind set they have…or had. In this case a multi-millionaire, Jack MacDonald, lived a humble life and wore old worn clothes. The people who knew him best didn’t have a clue he was worth that much money. He guarded his privacy and a few family members knew the truth.

After the 98-year-old MacDonald died in September, however, much of that nest egg was donated to charity, with MacDonald leaving a combined total of $187.6 million to the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, the University of Washington School of Law and the Salvation Army.
 
You can read more here. It’s very inspiring.
 
 

Pop Culture: People Faking to be Gay

I find this fascinating. When people fake being gay, for whatever reason, I can’t seem to get enough information about what motivates this kind of behavior.

Very few gay people can get a movie deal…or book deal for that matter…into the mainstream, and yet stupid movies like I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, sail through without a problem. I see wonderful gay books being either turned down or shunned, and garbage with no real gay authenticity makes headlines and gains tons of praise. The irony of all this, the fact that people who aren’t gay can exploit and capitalize on gay people, absolutely amazes me. You would be amazed at how many times I’ve had to fight straight women editors for trying to change something that is gay and authentic in one of my books because the editor thought she knew better than I did about being gay.

I’ve even read where younger people fake being gay in order to be accepted or be cool in certain social circles. Personally, I think the gay community at large needs to pull together and find one good strong spokesperson. Someone who is there to speak up whenever something offensive happens. Because when you are a gay person, there is absolutely nothing more offensive or insulting or hurtful, than having a straight person tell you what you are suppose to be like or what you are supposed to be.

I read about this in the recent article below in Think Progress. So I can’t be the only one who feels this way. I’m copying and pasting, verbatim, so you can see what I’m talking about in case you can’t click or don’t feel like clicking the link.

You can read the entire piece here if you choose to do so.

I find this quote particularly interesting, and true:

And they push actual gay people out of the frame.

Dear Pop Culture, Enough With the Faux-Gays
By Alyssa Rosenberg on Dec 6, 2011 at 1:37 pm

The CW, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that its next comedy will be about a young woman who marries her best friend to get around rules about roommates that would forbid said friend from moving into the main character’s “swanky New York co-op.” And I’ve had enough of fake pop culture gay people.

It as one thing to give us I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which managed to be about the unfairness of two sets of laws, one that made it difficult for widowers to preserve pension benefits and another that denied gay couples the same rights available to straight ones, while also putting its two somewhat boorish male characters in a position that forced them to sympathize more deeply with gay people and to understand their own gender roles better. This, by contrast, is about maintaining access to a nice apartment, a kind of fraud that doesn’t exactly help the cause of law-abiding real gay people. The characters get a domestic partnership even though New York is a marriage equality state. And it’s a fake lesbian fantasy, written and acted, in this case, by Sarah Rue, who is in real life married to a man.

It’s a lot worse than that still not-great storyline on Community where Britta fancies herself sophisticated for having a lesbian friend without ever actually ascertaining if said friend is gay (which says volumes about how deep that friendship actually is)—only to find out said friend is doing the exact same thing. But they have some things in common. They’re stories that treat gay people and gay rights struggles like commodities, cool and credibility to be appropriated when necessary for wacky storytelling. Fake gay people let straight people try on tolerance without ever actually having it tested. And they push actual gay people out of the frame. Networks and studios can do better. It’s easy to engage with real gay people than to make up eccentric fake ones.