Yeah, the topping/bottoming thing is really just a symptom of a larger problem in our culture - which really all boils down to misogyny, where being penetrated is seen as weakness. I saw it discussed elsewhere, where it was pointed out that even the description of it shows what our culture thinks about it. "Penetration" is something that happens TO something BY something else. There is automatically someone who is an active in the act and someone who is a passive. In the discussion I saw, someone questioned how our culture would be different if instead of heterosexual sex being seen as "the man penetrates the woman," it was seen as "the woman consumes the man."
It's something I'm actually quite passionate about, because (not to get too TMI here, but...) in my experience there's actually nothing that makes me feel MORE powerful than having someone caught between my legs doing their best to please me - the only thing that comes close is when I've had both a man AND a motocycle between my legs - and yet our culture calls THAT "riding bitch", which is again, language designed to DENY me the power that the position allows me to feel. In that position, I control both the man and (by extension) the motorcycle, and yet I'm denied that power by being compared to a female dog used for breeding.
I mean, not even going that far - the topping/bottoming thing ITSELF is coded language, because the person penetrating is ON TOP and the person being penetrated is ON BOTTOM... regardless of their actual positions.
Language is important, yo. :P
That being said, I completely understand having a bit of a fetish for seeing a particular character getting penetrated, or a particular character doing the penetrating, and requesting that on places like the kink_meme, where you're mostly just reading for the porn-factor. But if readers are avoiding romance-fic, where it's about plot and character and emotions and such, because specific heteronormative gender-roles aren't present in the couple, then I'd suggest they might be happier reading more mainstream stuff like harlequin.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-06-15 12:33 am (UTC)It's something I'm actually quite passionate about, because (not to get too TMI here, but...) in my experience there's actually nothing that makes me feel MORE powerful than having someone caught between my legs doing their best to please me - the only thing that comes close is when I've had both a man AND a motocycle between my legs - and yet our culture calls THAT "riding bitch", which is again, language designed to DENY me the power that the position allows me to feel. In that position, I control both the man and (by extension) the motorcycle, and yet I'm denied that power by being compared to a female dog used for breeding.
I mean, not even going that far - the topping/bottoming thing ITSELF is coded language, because the person penetrating is ON TOP and the person being penetrated is ON BOTTOM... regardless of their actual positions.
Language is important, yo. :P
That being said, I completely understand having a bit of a fetish for seeing a particular character getting penetrated, or a particular character doing the penetrating, and requesting that on places like the kink_meme, where you're mostly just reading for the porn-factor. But if readers are avoiding romance-fic, where it's about plot and character and emotions and such, because specific heteronormative gender-roles aren't present in the couple, then I'd suggest they might be happier reading more mainstream stuff like harlequin.
Thanks for the recs!