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I hate this heteronormative bullshit that topping is the same as domming
It doesn’t bother me one bit if people want to use a word to mean something different to them. It changes nothing in my relationships what they do or say.
What I do hate is your complaining about a group of people based on their sexuality. Seems so bitter.
"heteronormative" doesn’t mean "it’s the fault of straight people" are you serious
if you don’t know a word, you can just look it up yknow
You're the only person here saying that.
and it’s only you who’s saying that ryedaft was "complaining about a group of people based on sexuality"
Oh please, it's clearly obvious there is nothing heteronormative about hetero people using topping to mean something else. Peoples having a different meaning is not the same as enforcing themselves as the default, it's not even tangentially related.
Fwiw, I'm hetero and having a girl on top feels like they have more, if not all, control.
I never subscribed to homosexual dichotomy of tops and bottoms. Long ago, I learnt that there were "active" and "passive" roles.
I guess it's generational. Like "old" terms that sound antique or even "wrong".
"heteronormative" doesn’t mean "it’s the fault of straight people" are you serious
But does "heteronormative bullshit" imply that?
What if they'd said "I'm tired of this homosexual bullshit that glitter goes everywhere?"
That definitely reads as "I believe it's the fault of the queer people" to me, do you believe otherwise?
Heteronormative != heterosexual
I fail to see any issue with the post (like fucking everyone associates topping with dom that doesn't mean it has to be, and the image works), but it's decidedly a complaint about social norms rather than a group. Even if I think it's not a valid complaint because wtf does it have to do with heteronormativity.
I understand heteronormative to be about social norms centered around heterosexuality, and how that is the dominant cultural factor.
With that understanding, viewing things through a heteronormative lens is to exclude or diminish the views of non-heterosexual folks.
Then "heteronormative bullshit" is comparable to "heterosexual bullshit".
I might've missed some nuance - this is not my forte. However my naive understanding is that saying this was commentary on "cultural norms" is similar to saying to civil war was about "states rights". States rights to do what? (Slavery) Cultural norms centered around what? (Heterosexuality)
I definitely agree with you re: comment being confusing - it seems to largely be a complaint about folks being vanilla and not knowing the nuances of vocabulary describing relationships, which affects folks regardless of sexual orientation.
Hmm, as someone relatively deep into lgbtq issues (though particularly trans issues), I'd say the term itself is perhaps a bit misleading. The way I understand it and see it used is that it's about heterosexuality and also gender norms within that traditional heterosexual relationship (so some people think that even in a homosexual relationship there's always "a man" (dominant) and "a woman" (submissive)).
In that sense (to directly relate to the post) a dominant woman in a relationship with a submissive man would actually go against heteronormativity a bit.
On second thought I guess I can see the relation though, in the sense that the traditional "man is dominant in a hetero relationship" combined with the fact that by default most men probably mostly top could make someone see "topping is considered dominant" as reinforcing those traditional relationship norms. Still feels very overreactive by the original commenter but eh.
Thanks for taking the time to walk through your thoughts - I appreciate the conversation.
I think the particularly egregious problem with interpreting the comment as referring to the association of man=top=dom is that the meme has a gal as the dom, as you've pointed out, which does go against heteronormativity.
Your second thought was my first thought tbh
It's heteronormative if you equate topping with being dominant.
Dancing is typically heteronormative because there's a standard (that's enforced for competitive dancing) that the man leads and the woman follows. And you can absolutely follow this as a same sex couple by assigning femme and butch roles and having the femme follow and the butch lead. But you can also switch it up, even while dancing.
When someone talks about heteronorms it's not about straight people. Of course toxic masculinity and ditto femininity is sad but the goal is not to reproduce that for queers, not too change what the straights are up to.
It's not heteronormative oh person with a hammer. You simply lack perspective, as yours seems entirely based on sex and literally none from kink.
Doming and Topping are two different things in the kink world, and imply similar yet drastically different things and are very deliminaited in play.
And even to the comic, it's BDSM/kink coded more than anything.
Wait, can you not be a hetero top or a hetero dom?
I... don't see how it is heteronormative to use an image that evokes sexual acts... to... imply a sexual interpretation of a typo.
Its... just a way to use a more SFW, recognizable meme.
Like, they could have used ... whats her name, Anhka, from that Animal Crossing porn anim that went viral a few years back, very obviously topping someone... but that would have been a lot more explicit.
Lois is also like, in the act of suiting up, with a non plussed, unenthusiastic expression, implying that ... there is a job-like aspect to this, yet another dumb charade/performance demanded by society to keep participating in it.
Give her a strap on and it's fine
So your stance actually is that a woman in a dominatrix suit is always propogating heteronormativity... unless she's wearing a strapon... while could be construed as being used for penetrating either a man or a woman or anyone else.
So in your mind, BDSM is heteronormative unless it explicity is made clear that it is not.
That would mean that in your mind, pegging is not heteronormative, even if it is going on between a heterosexual couple.... even though a man being pegged very, very much goes against the general social view of how sex between a man and a woman works or should work.
... You have a very different understanding of what heteromormativity is and means than I do.
EDIT:
Like, I get the idea that pegging is not heteronormative... but you also seem to think that BDSM... is heteronormative, unless its made very explicitly clear that it is even farther outside the 'normal' realm, with specificity.
BDSM, to the point of owning a dominatrix suit, is absolutely not the standard norm.
It thus is not heteronormative.
We're at about 1 in 5 adults in the US that have tried BDSM once in their lifetimes. It is becoming more popular, but 1 in 5 is still not 'the norm', that'd be at least half.
I can't actually find stats on... how regularly people engage in BDSM as a recurring part of their sex lives, vs people who have just experimented with it... but it is definitionally less than 1 out of 5, likely considerably less.
But then you've also got all the stats on how people who do engage in BDSM are actually much more likely than the general population to actually identify as LGBTQ+ or engage in non-hetero sex... so yeah, thats just another way that BDSM in general just is not heteronormative.
I think the heteronormativity comes from the idea that men are always the ones both doing the penetrating and taking charge in the bedroom lol
I agree except for the heteronormative part. What does the confusion of these terms have to do with heteronormativity?
Education would be more effective than complaining.
As a straight, isn't all this is missing for "topping" a strap-on? As in the "top" is usually doing the penetrating?
Its actually somewhat confusing.
Sometimes, to some people... topping just means you are literally, physically on top of them.
Sometimes, it means you are doing the physical penetrating.
Sometimes, top/bottom are the same as dom/sub... to mean authoritative vs submissive...
But you have terms like power bottom, and service top.
A power bottom is physically underneath the partner, but doing almost all the work, and is often also in the authority position.
A service top is physically on top, and/or doing most of the strenuous/penetrative physical work... but they are actually submissive, subervient to the other partner, who is authoritatively directing all their actions.
The vocab for all this is still quite varied and usually only standardizes fully amongst geographically constrained areas, as you would expect with what is basically a set of slang terms.
Excellent answer.
I'd argue that the outfit in the meme is generally considered a Dom outfit which is what triggers the start of this thread.
Although inaccurate it makes the point for the joke. A TOP image would be much more vulgar and hard to find a clean image for.
Exactly.
You can get away with a ... relatively low nudity depiction of a person in a bondage suit.
This also just generally conveys 'sexually curious / active.'
Whereas an actual, more literal depiction of topping someone would essentially by definition be so explicit as to be so blunt that ... it isn't as humorous, because your brain doesn't have to do any work to 'get' the joke.
Not to mention it would probably be censored, and thus far less people would see it.
I dunno, maybe someone can, or has come up with a ... 'help me step-bro, I'm stuck in the washing machine!' ... type of image.
Maybe a cowboy or cowgirl riding a bucking horse ... would be sufficiently understandable visual metaphor?
Then, there's most of the rest of the world where neither of those words mean anything, heteronormative or otherwise. I guess have heard of topping pot plants, though...
I literally heard about some cheerleader being a top today and it made me chuckle.
Synonyms are so hetero
lol wtf
Topping is the act of being the one penetrating their partner, dominating is taking control. They aren't necessarily the same thing