I recently got into an online tiff with a fellow gay man who proclaimed that tops don’t get rimmed. “Only bottoms get rimmed.” Baffled, I replied, “That’s not a rule! Plenty of tops (in porn) get rimmed.” But this guy was having none of it. That, somehow, tops aren’t into any form of assplay.
Queer isn’t a religion. Nor is it scientific. But we treat it as such. This is how we think. This is what we wear. This where we go. This is who we rim.
I created Str8 No Chaser because our conversations about male sexuality are stuck between two extremes: shame and performance. We’ve made progress in celebrating queer identity, but we’ve also built arbitrary rules about how a man should experience, name, and explain his sexuality.
We love labels because they make life feel ordered. We read the headlines but care little about nuance. But in our rush to categorize, we’ve flattened the messiness of human experience into a set of rigid boxes. “Straight,” “gay,” “bi,” “queer” aren’t GPS coordinates; they’re social constructs that have shifted over time and will shift again. They’ve saved lives. They’ve also trapped people.
This week, I re-listened to Joan Tollifson’s Exploring Identity on Sam Harris’ Waking Up app. Her words hit me all over again:
“No one is seeing exactly the same movie of waking life, because we’re all seeing from different perspectives, through different filters created by nature and nurture. But is the awareness itself actually divided up? Or, is it more like space? Are we all in separate bubbles? Or is there a bigger or more subtle context?” (Tollifson, Joan: “Exploring Identity” (Session 7), Explorations of Being, Waking Up app.)
When Alfred Kinsey and his team introduced the Kinsey Scale in the late 1940s, they didn’t intend it as a rigid taxonomy. It was a snapshot or measure of sexual behavior, thoughts and feelings over a finite stretch of time, not a blueprint for an entire lifetime. And yet, we’ve repurposed it into a weapon and a silo, conveniently forgetting the scale’s “X” category for those who experienced no sexual attraction at all. That erasure is telling. We expect, assume, and pressure men to be voracious seekers of sex, and when they aren’t, we pathologize or dismiss them.
In the decades since, researchers have shown us what Kinsey’s findings hinted at all along: sexual fluidity is not rare, not anomalous, and not limited to any one gender. But as long as we keep bending these tools to serve our prejudices, we’ll keep missing the point Kinsey’s work made so plain: that human sexuality cannot be captured in a single number, box, or label.
Some queer readers may bristle at how often I write about men who never identified (nor currently identify) as gay, queer, or bisexual. Identity finds its richest meaning when it dares to step beyond the lines. Men have been having sex with men long before the term homosexual was coined.
To that end, identity labels didn’t emerge from thin air. They were survival tools. They were shields. They were passports into spaces where we might be safe from being beaten, exiled, killed, disowned, or disregarded. They hold power: safety, community, opportunity, political leverage, pride, and history.
But labels also have a sell-by date, especially when 11-year-old boys kill themselves for being bullied about who they are or perceived to be, and when we’re running someone like Jojo Siwa out of town because she “guessed wrong” about her own identity. When that happens, we’ve become the very bullies we fought centuries to escape.
Sometimes, being Black and gay…my life feels like claustrophobic cosplay. With no end or escape. A young, gay guy once chided me for watching college football. “Gays don’t watch sports!” I’m not making this shit up.
This is how we think. This is what we wear. This where we go...
Str8 No Chaser isn’t here to erase identity. It’s here to make room for the outliers, the square pegs in a world obsessed with round holes. Not to either-or people, force them to choose. As if there’s only two choices—gay or straight—with keyboard warriors waiting to castigate us for making the wrong choice. Only bottoms get rimmed.
I don't intend my writing to be titillating or performatively suggestive. Still, sex is the subject on the table. Which, last time I checked, feels pretty damn good. It can also be delicious to watch. A close friend recently called my work “erotic” after reading my two-part history of “gay-for-pay.” You do you, boo!
In Str8 No Chaser, I dig into the messy overlap of sexual behavior, identity, culture, and history. I bring in the overlooked parts: how religion and patriarchy warp our views of masculinity, how race and class shape sexual narratives, and how nonbinary and trans people carry the burden of our binary worship. And, at the epicenter, how misogyny stifles every form of human expression.
The terrain I cover is often hidden in plain view: sex among men in homosocial environments, the eroticization of military culture, male hustlers, the roughest trade, bodybuilders bankrolled by queer men – and visionaries who turned such identity-bending fantasies into reality. But these aren’t “gotcha” stories or intended to paint with a broad stroke.
So if you’re looking for stigmatization, SNC may not be for you. The people I write about, unless they self-identified as such, won’t be assigned sexual identities, especially if those labels didn’t exist at the time they lived. No guessing games or witch-hunts. I will honor those who self-identified as bi, queer, pan, ace—and those who don’t.
I write Str8 No Chaser to explore the cracks in the shelter walls. Not to tear them down, but to see what light comes in when we stop guarding the door so fiercely. As Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Identity, like sexuality, thrives when it’s allowed to evolve … to morph, to breathe, to break free.
Referenced Str8 No Chaser essays:
More from Str8 No Chaser
Thumbnail photo by Norbert Buduczki on Unsplash
Also ridiculous about the assertion that only bottoms get rimmed is that the rimmers must therefore all be tops. Which makes me want to ask that guy if he's ever met a top.
Thanks for a wonderful essay on identity.
Another great essay! I always assumed that we, ourselves, ultimately decide who we are. The labels may be helpful for others to identify, the "rules" are nothing more than an attempt to control. Wisely, you have called out that desire for control. Love you Sunshine!!!