Why are there more gay bottoms than tops

Similar anecdotes aboundwhich prompts the question: How are gay men getting any D in the B if everyone throws their ankles up in the air as soon as they get within three feet of the nearest mattress? Are there really more bottoms than tops in the world? And just how many bottoms and tops are out there, really?

Since then, 6 percent of daily users have identified themselves as tops and only four percent as bottoms, according to a representative; 28 percent of remaining men identify as versatile. Similarly, on Scruff, a dating app for the more hirsute gay men among us, more users identify as versatile than anything else.

According to chief product officer Jason Marchant, 35 percent of US users identify as versatile, while 21 percent identify as bottoms and 19 percent as tops. It would why are there more gay bottoms than tops then that more guys want to present themselves as liking it both ways than exclusively preferring one position over another.

But only 40 percent of Grindr users and 44 percent of Scruff users list any preference at all—many prefer not to broadcast their bedroom preferences in the first place. That means a whole host of human behavior and social stigma comes into play—guys will fib in order to get laid, or because of what others might assume about them based on their preferences.

And that might be driving the anecdotal perception that the queer world is rife with bottoms. Lots of guys claim to be tops or versatile, but at least some of them are faking it. They found a similar breakdown as Grindr and Scruff—about half of those surveyed identified as versatile, and a quarter each as tops or bottoms.

However, they also followed up to see what kinds of behavior guys reported engaging in during sex, and discovered that while those who self-reported as tops or bottoms actually consistently topped and bottomed in bed, only about half of versatile guys actually switched things up.

So, all things being equal—which these statistics would seem to bear out; gay guys, all told, fall pretty evenly on the divide between top and bottom—why do we love to accuse each other and the rest of the world of being rife with bottoms? As it turns out, it may be a way for gay men to encourage each other to butch it up.

And so you have it—by lending tops a position of privilege in our gay hierarchies by remarking upon their supposed rarity, or by accusing each other of being bottoms, we reinforce the same misogynist and patriarchal tendencies of our straight brethren.

Why are Gay Guys Convinced the World is Full of Bottoms?

All too often, we accuse each other of being bottoms by way of criticizing perceived feminine traits within other gay men. Sure, we do it as a joke, but one with a nasty undertone. Interestingly enough, bottom shaming may have its provenance in the AIDS crisis, when, during the 80s, bottoms began to hide out.

Those attitudes are still prevalent today. And because bottoms are maligned within our community, we may never get a truly accurate picture of just how many there are. Bottom shame is real, and less innocuous than an innocent-seeming joke might suggest. Besides, bottoms should man up and embrace who they are—after all, tops would be mighty lonely without them.

Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter. By Matt Jancer. By Shaun Cichacki. By Haley Miller. Videos by VICE.