Why do gay men prefer bottom to top

While this explanation is intuitively appealing, the reality is that things are far more complex. This study focused specifically on exploring the potential origins of male homosexuality, but did so in a way that was very different from almost all previous studies on this topic.

This is by no means a universal difference—there are certainly feminine tops and masculine bottoms in the world. What the researchers leading this study wanted to look at was how preferred anal sex role and gender non-conformity are linked to one specific biological factor previously shown to be associated with elevated rates of homosexuality in general: being non-right handed.

Study after study has found that homosexuality—as well as gender non-conformity—are linked to being non-right handed. This has been taken as evidence in favor of a biological basis for homosexuality, given that handedness is something that is determined in the womb by biological factors.

In this study, men some gay, some straight were recruited online and at a Canadian Pride festival to complete a survey. They were asked about their sexual orientation, their recalled degree of gender non-conformity in childhood, the extent to which their right vs. Overall, 43 percent of these gay men said they preferred bottoming, 31 percent reported being versatile, and 26 percent preferred topping.

The bottom and versatile men were grouped together for analyses because it turned out they were extremely similar to one another in handedness and gender non-conformity. The results replicated previous studies in that gay men demonstrated more non-right handedness and reported higher levels of childhood gender non-conformity than straight men.

Tops were still more gender non-conforming on average than straight men, though.

Male tops, bottoms, promiscuity and the fear of loving | Eliseu Neto

In other words, although tops and bottoms both have the same sexual orientation, they may arrive at that orientation via very different biological pathways. Further, the results also suggested that this difference in handedness between tops and bottoms partially explains why they differed in gender non-conformity.

You can be gay and a bottom, but still be right-handed and extremely masculine. Remember that this research is still very preliminary and that the handedness part may be just one small piece of the puzzle. What all of this tells us is that understanding the origin of sexual orientation is a very complicated matter.

J ustin Lehmiller is the director of the social psychology program at Ball State University, a faculty affiliate of the Kinsey Institute, and author of the blog Sex and Psychology. Follow him on Twitter JustinLehmiller. By Sammi Caramela. By Ashley Fike.

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