On Penetration and Power

I've noticed in several gay communities online (nearly all of them also have a furry bent, for whatever reason) that sub/dom is becoming a synonym for top/bottom (in the queer sense of the penetrating or penetrated partner, not in the kinky sense). For example, this picture was posted in the "subs coming handsfree from being fucked" thread on fchan:


(click the picture for the gorgeous full resolution version)

The one getting penetrated sure doesn't look submissive to me!

In any case, it's true that being the penetrated partner has always had submissive implications for me. I recall once Socrates suggested that we try it, and I nixed it, arguing that it wasn't submissive enough (yeah, sexism, homophobia, and topping from the bottom all combining into one moment of ignorance. Not my finest hour.). Of course, at least part of my reluctance was because of ambient cultural memes about penetration: surely any guy that wanted that had to be submissive.

Yet it was also because of the simple mechanics of the acts as they had been presented to me by the culture: as far as I could tell, the penetrating partner controlled the action. He or she was generally in an upright, dominant position, with the penetrated partner in a vulnerable, inviting position, ass high in the air or on his or her back. While this is what the culture tells us what penetration should look like, it doesn't have to be so. When I gave Socrates that flippant answer, I'm not sure I could have even conceived of a picture like the one above. As Maymay said,

I like fucking. I like it when I’m getting fucked on my penis. Yes, that’s perfectly possible. When I’m talking about getting fucked, I’m not necessarily talking about getting penetrated. A man with an erect penis can actually get fucked—fucking or getting fucked does not have a one-to-one relationship with one’s anatomical genitalia. That said, I don’t see why men who top shouldn’t be able to get it up the ass if they want to. Again, topping or bottoming does not have a one-to-one correlation with whether you are the “active” or “receptive” partner in a sexual encounter. So, it follows, that I also like getting fucked in my asshole.

While I've still got a bit of weird and totally irrational pride about never having penetrated anyone else, I'm interested in starting to experiment with this.

All of this leads back to the fact that I have no idea what to make of the trend I've seen in the furry gay communities. If the change in terminology makes pictures and acts like the one above easier to imagine, I'm all for it. At the same time, I'm more than a smidge leery of dubbing all penetrators as doms and all penetrated people as subs. I suppose it depends on whether it retains more of its meaning from the kinky context or the vanilla context.

Now I've just got to figure out how to last more than two seconds while on an orgasm denial regimine.