BMX-NY (10|29|2010): Film Screening > Crips And Bloods: Made In America

How, if at all, do notions of 'Top' and 'Bottom' influence our behavior in sexual and/or romantic relationships?

"As opposed to gender roles, [I think what happens] is a kind of sex-typing...People do tend to sex-type themselves...They choose a type [of sexual characteristic, and stay there]...It's a distortion where people type themselves and get stuck...I look for relationships where people can play out emotional, romantic [more fully expressive] relationships...[People take on] fetishes...frocking (grinding)...[They] take on a 'Top' and 'Bottom' thing..."

"People do or want what they want, and they shouldn't be condemned for it..."

"I don't believe people are born hetero or homosexual...I was born a Top...For as long as I can remember, I've always liked a man who was slightly effeminate...Just like women fake orgasms, if I was to let a man top me, I would have to fake the funk...My older brother is gay...As a boy he was very effeminate...He suffered a lot of abuse for it...There are people who've made me feel less than a part of the SGL community [because of my staunch Top orientation]"

{Facilitator says: "A century ago, Freud proposed that, when we are born, people are polymorphously perverse, meaning babies have no sexual object...Anything can arouse them...The gender of the source of the stimulation makes no difference...It's the touch, in an of itself that it sexually stimulating...But, a few years ago, there was a report that scientists had finally discovered a homosexual gene...And, [as it happens] homosexuality runs through all living species, which might seem to indicate that some of us are homosexually wired at birth..."}

"'Tops' are devoid of emotion...'Bottoms' tend to be emotionally expressive...There seems to be a power-play issue with 'Tops' and 'Bottoms'...'Tops' are supposed to be aggressive and 'Bottoms' submissive...I don't have to have anal penetration to have satisfaction with another person..."

Does calling each other "Girl," "Miss Thing," "Miss Honey," etc., secure or obscure our sexuality?

"I have permitted myself to be f_ _ked sometimes...and I know another brother from Ghana who [because he liked to get fucked] wanted me to identify [our friendship] as sisters...I told him, no...I'm a man whether I get f_ _ked or not...It's not about sisters or wives or whatever you want to call it..."

Do 'alpha' brothers naturally tend to attempt to dominate their partners?
"I was in the service...And this was before Don't Ask, Don't Tell...There were all different kinds of ways that people were being discharged for being homosexual...It was dangerous...and [for me] there was shame, and there was pain, and there was pleasure [with the first man I had sex with]...Next was a boxer, and he used to punch me a lot, and then [he] f _ _k me, and I liked it...He would always say, he was going to protect me...But, I didn't need him to protect me..."

"A nineteen year old turned me out...[when] I was twenty-eight...He had been [sexually] abused...Men had 'bitched him out'...I had just started participating in BMX [in California] and learning about being same gender loving...I have always dealt with a man as a man...respected a man as a man... And I turned him [the nineteen-year-old] around, and made him start respecting himself...[teaching him to] not let older men manipulate him...I have been with men who ran the relationship... People thought he was the 'Top'...There is a certain fundamental respect I treat a man with...There are certain men who allow themselves to be debased in a relationship..."

{Facilitator asks: "And does that tendency to allow themselves to be debased in a relationship make them like women in your mind?"} "No." {Facilitator asks: "If a man likes to be debased sexually, does that make him less of a man?"} "No, not necessarily... A little S&M in a relationship is its own thing."

In your relationships with men, do you tend to behave as either, 'the man,' or, 'the woman?' If so, how does that play out?
"When I came out at sixteen, those roles ['Top' & 'Bottom'] didn't exist...I played those ['man,' and 'woman'] roles and the roles affected me adversely...I became more connected to the roles than to the person(s)...I wasn't connected to the person or to myself, [instead] I was connected to the assigned role..."

"I worked in a sexual dysfunction clinic...There was a gay couple, and they were trying to decide if they were going to split because one of them was a confirmed 'Top,' and the other, who had been content to be the 'Bottom,' had decided that he wanted to 'Top' sometimes...And the other one said, 'My masculinity won't tolerate being 'topped'..."

"I always [just] wanted to be loved...[It didn't matter how...]"

"A fear of intimacy and vulnerability keeps coming up in being a 'Bottom'...It's an emotional thing...If I'm going to share that [my anus,] there's an emotional attachment..."

{Facilitator says: "That's powerful...You just reminded of a time when I made the decision not to be penetrated anymore...As a youth, I'd been wonderfully sexually ambidextrous...But, there came a point when, following having been penetrated, it occurred to me that I felt wounded as I moved through the world ...And, I sort of was, I mean my anus was tender, raw even...And, not because of rough sex...Even when I was steeped in self-loathing about my sexuality, I didn't permit anyone to be abusive during sex...But, I remember for a day after, and sometimes for several days after [being penetrated,] feeling this woundedness, and feeling vulnerable and deciding, 'I'm not going to put myself in a position to feel this [vulnerability] any more'...And it was decades before I did it again..."}

"What other 'Bottom' or 'Top' behaviors did you do beyond the sex [is the question]?"

"I was just imitating what I thought people did...what my parents did...I was just playing [at] what I thought a man did..."

{Facilitator says: "Thank you for [sharing] that...That's the point of this dialogue...Because most of us never had same gender loving relationship roles modeled for us before we attempted to mate with each other, to court each other, the only examples we had were our parents and/or other heterosexuals, and the fact of the matter is that, because heterosexual relationships in a patriarchy are frequently grounded in misogyny, those relationship models aren't even healthy for heterosexuals...I remember a recurring dream I had as a small boy in which I dreamed I was a woman...In one dream I remember vividly, I was a woman standing on a windy hilltop, and a handsome man was holding me and kissing me, and I was blissfully happy...I was an adult for many years before I understood that the reason I dreamed I was a woman was not because I wanted to be a woman, but because I knew that I was attracted to men, and had already learned that the only acceptable way of having a man's love was by being a woman..."}

"Everything we do, we put a construct around it [and that's limiting...]"

"'Top' and 'Bottom' is a white gay construct..."

"If we're going to relate to the idea of gender roles on a spiritual level...[Take] Yoruba [for example]...gender roles involve energies...for you [the brother who always knew he was a Top], Shango or Ogun might well be your godheads...for someone else, Oshun might be...and the energies are not fixed...[a man can have a female godhead and visa versa]..."

{Facilitator says: "Yes, this is vital. 'Top' and 'Bottom' are linear, dichotomous, Western constructs...Like black and white; either, or; Top & Bottom...[in particular,] implies a status relationship, a power dynamic wherein one part is below, is less than the other...And because that power dynamic is based on a patriarchal, misogynist heterosexual model...the relationship is wanting fluidity...As African [descended] men we have the potential to be all manner of things to and with each other...To be, both-and [as opposed to one, or the other]...That is part of what gives us the capacity to be Gatekeeprs, [shamans, and the like...]"}

"I've pretty much avoided men because of this [very] conversation...Last week I had a dream about a woman, and she was naked and she said, 'Let's have sex,' and I said, 'Okay'...I've always thought of myself as omni-sexual...I've had sex with every gender...and it's all been joyous...If we're constantly constructing each other into a box...Men, women, bisexuals, trisexuals, parks, baths...and then, we want to opt out of the box...[it's crazy-making]...[Sex] It's a joyous thing [that shouldn't be strictly circumscribed...]"

What might 'healthy' same gender loving relationship roles look like?

"More affirmation."

"More love."

""Equality."

"Removal of the word, roles."

"Passion."

"Consensual and mutual respect."

"Acceptance of all his and your sides."

"Whatever floats our boats."

"Being real in the role you play."

"Conscientious listening."

"Vulnerability."

"Nurturing."

"Communication."

"You have to make the baby, so to speak...You have to do something [together] that consummates the relationship...You have to create something together that gives you a reason to stay together and grow together."

"Avoid assumptions."

"Patience."

"Support, encourage and champion each other."

"Fortitude."

"Create an SGL manual."

Jonathan W. Jones - Author of Get By Book For Black SGL Youth

23 Year Old SGL Author Jonathan W. Jones

Jonathan W. Jones Reference Link

Amazon.com Book Link