Best, Bottoms, Switches: One Last Glance At All Study Data | Autostraddle

Hey and thanks for visiting all of our last trip inside annals of data gathered by myself, from you, about your emotions regarding the intimate terms top / bottom part / change. We have already talked about:

Now we’re going to go through the review responses as one, and how some other identities, practices, lifestyle situations and relationships intersect making use of identities I made the decision to actually truly demolish within the last couple of months.

Just a Reminder

One last time with feeling, this is one way the numbers shook :

Evaluating All Of The Information

Sex Acts

We have broken-down interest in different gender functions by sexual identity in earlier articles. This is what the complete party is into:

Notably, despite there being slightly even more soles than clothes inside our group, y’all would like to offer situations a lot more than enjoy them virtually across the board — unless it requires putting the mouth area or little finger in someone’s anus, where point you’d like to have somebody do it for your requirements than exercise to someone! Interesting.

Sexual Frequency

Survey-takers were expected “Within the previous 6 months, how frequently maybe you’ve, normally, had sex?” This is why that turned out:

Your “Other/Complicated” alternative, survey-takers had been needed to describe their situation. I experienced those and pulled all the people that were about long-distance interactions making that into its class, and also pulled responses that did consist of a definite way of measuring intimate frequency and included those with their respective categories. Just before doing this, around 10% of participants picked Other/Complicated, normally since they felt simply choosing the supplied solutions failed to tell the whole tale. Regardless of cross country folks describing intervals of everyday gender alternating by times of no gender, the most widespread circumstances discussed right here happened to be folks in uncharacteristic dry spells as a result of surgery, infection, despair or using anti-depressants.

There clearly wasno significant correlation between top/bottom/switch identification as well as how often you’ve got sex. In fact, apart from in a relationship or otherwise not, maybe not a great deal affected how often you reported sex in a statistically considerable means. Although
many studies have shown opposite-sex partners have intercourse more frequently than same-sex female lovers
, the queers on all of our study who were matchmaking males were making love at almost identical rates as those matchmaking females.

In addition maintaining even rate together? Those in monogamous and non-monogamous interactions, lined up
aided by the outcomes of our very own 2015 Lesbian gender study
. We can’t really compare the two studies simply because they were two individual self-selected trials, however it was interesting the 2018 class seemed to be desiring

and

having way significantly less gender overall compared to the 2015 party. Probably due to existential fear!

Intimate Experience and Positioning

Tops tended to experienced a lot more lifetime sexual lovers versus some other groups. 19per cent of surfaces have ridden the hobby-horse with over ten females and 8percent with more than 20, versus 9percent and 3percent for soles and 16% and 5per cent for changes.

Best had been additionally the least likely to have obtained gender with a guy — 43percent have not, compared to 37per cent of soles and 33per cent of switches.

Sexual Orientation

Here’s the essential break down of the team by intimate direction:

Some noted correlations:

• 65per cent of Pansexuals determine as switches, compared to 51% regarding the whole group and 50per cent of lesbians and bisexuals.
• 51.5percent of surfaces identify as lesbians, when compared to 44per cent of soles and 42% of changes.
• 19% of bisexuals determine as bottoms, when compared to 14% in the whole team.
• 15per cent of lesbians and 18% of gay individuals identified as clothes, in comparison to 8.6percent of bisexuals, 7percent of pansexuals, 11% of queers and 12percent regarding the entire class.

Gender Personality and Presentation

Discover exactly how y’all experience your own gender these days:

As
mentioned within our article on tops
, all of our study shared your “masculine lover = top” and “feminine companion = bottom” stereotype (that was, back in the day, an absolute directive) has a lot of reality to it, but it positively cannot be used across the board.

Around 8% of these who defined as high femme or tough femme recognized as tops, in comparison to 12percent from the entire team. Around 8% of gentle butches and masculine-of-center folks identified as bottoms, when compared to 14% of most survey-takers.

“Switch” had been, without a doubt, the most famous identity for many groups, with between 50 and sixty percent aligning themselves with switchiness — the sole gender speech with significantly less than 50 % being switch-aligned was butches, whom just skipped the tag at 49per cent. Tomboy femmes nearly tipped the level during the other direction not quite — 59percent are inclined to switching it up. But, as talked about on tops blog post, its never ever safe to assume what someone’s into predicated on their sex speech.

Lots of butches and femmes quoted for the clothes article indicated disappointment that they had been thought are a high or bottom because of the gender presentation.

We in addition discovered some variances within gender identity and trans standing also — such as that trans women had been the most likely to identify as bottoms. Non-binary/genderqueer guys had been likely to identify as tops, but our very own sample dimensions for the group (16) had been too small to-draw any considerable results.

Moreover it looks that non-binary/genderqueer females had been most likely to recognize as changes, and agender folks had been more than likely to “not therefore certain.” Possibly there can be a standard relationship between getting switches and pinpointing with language that some might think about oxymoronic, like “tomboy femme” and “non-binary girl.”

Geography – Global

69percent of review participants originated in the U.S. and 31percent had been away from U.S.. There are somewhat even more Europeans distinguishing as “none on the above” (17.6percent, when compared with 13percent men and women inside U.S. and 11% of Canadians). “My home is Europe, function in French (and Dutch), and also for some explanation “top”, “bottom” and “switch” here are largely placed on sexual activities between two male-identified folks,” penned one European, although are reasonable, lots of Us citizens had the exact same impression.

“I really don’t want to use classes,” penned another. “i believe the tense and excludes possibility to encounter without creating an entire big deal from the jawhorse and panders to stockbuilding (as takes place with categories of identification). But i realize this seems to be very a thing into the US.”

We only had 109 survey-takers in Australia, but if that group is consultant I quickly would wish to offer a tip from the cap to your area right here and all of my friends and household just who reside truth be told there, you really have evaded the alleged leading lack plaguing this nation with an extraordinary 16.5per cent covers / 5.5percent bottoms proportion.

Asia and Canada had comparable amounts of men and women identifying using these terms while the U.S., and then we did not have sufficient respondents in south usa, Africa or Mexico to attract considerable results.

Geography – U.S.

83% of survey participants lived-in an urban area or major metro location and 17.25% in rural locations. We offered U.S. residents a choice of indicating should they lived-in nine specific cities/metro locations, or else they are able to say “i actually do not inhabit any of these metropolitan areas or metro places, but i really do are now living in a city/major metro location” or “i really do maybe not are now living in a city or metro location.”

Plenty of commenters chimed directly into mention the nine locations we incorporated were NOT the biggest towns and cities within nation or perhaps the the majority of LGBT-populated places. This really is absolutely correct. Into the interest of full disclosure: we have an author carrying out a piece about those types of nine places and as a consequence wished to gather data about this urban area particularly, nonetheless it seemed odd to simply inquire about one city, so we threw in eight other people pretty much off the surfaces your heads: nyc, San Francisco/Bay region, L. A., Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis/St.Paul, Portland and Seattle.

Just 21 respondents happened to be from Atlanta, an example size too small for analysis. Therefore we’re looking at those eight locations as well as other unlabeled city-dwellers (that I included Atlanta people to) and non-city individuals. So you can arrange your grains of sodium appropriately, here you will find the number of reactions I’d from each city: Portland, otherwise – 63, Los Angeles – 96, New York – 212, Chicago – 85, Seattle – 91, San Francisco/Bay Neighborhood – 124, Minneapolis/St.Paul – 53, Boston – 101.

This data turned out to be rather fascinating and then If only we might asked about more cities! When it comes to purposes of this analysis,

I cut fully out the “I’m not sure” group

, because SurveyMonkey said we didn’t have adequate folks selecting that choice for statistically considerable results.

To be able to evaluate city-specific data with the overall information, then, the general figures for the entire team together with the “I don’t know”s eliminated tend to be: leading (14%), Bottom (15percent), change (56.6per cent), None regarding the Above (14.5%)

• 
  Finest percentage of surfaces:
  
  L. a. (22%), nyc (17.4per cent), non-city/metro-areas (16.2%).
• 
  Lowest portion of covers:
  
  San Francisco/Bay Region (7%), Boston (9.7percent), Portland (10.2per cent)

Regarding the tops in the non-city/metro areas, a “leading scarcity” theory we published straight down in my own notebook ended up being “ALL THE TOPS HAVE BEEN IN THE WOODS / ON FARM?” But you understand in which otherwise the tops are? About 405 or looking to get a seat regarding L train at the Bedford stop during rush hour.

• 
  Finest percentage of soles:
  
  Minneapolis/St.Paul (24per cent), Boston (19per cent), L . A . (17.4%)
• 
  Best portion of soles:
  
  San Francisco/Bay Area (12.4%), New York (13.3percent), Portland (13.6%)

It appears the soles are on 405 and several are being useful service-oriented next-door neighbors for their guy Midwesterners.

• 
  Finest percentage of changes:
  
  Portland (66per cent), San Francisco/Bay Neighborhood (60%), Seattle (55.6%)

Portland is actually DTF, y’all, and thrilled to change it up being meet your needs!

• 
  Highest portion of “nothing of Above”:
  
  San Francisco/Bay Region (19.3%), Minneapolis/St.Paul (19.15%), Chicago (17per cent)

The folks of bay area want to blaze their particular damn tracks.

How about kink?

• 
  Cities with kink-identified folks:
  
  San Francisco/Bay Neighborhood (29.5per cent), Minneapolis (25.5%), L . A . (25.5percent)
• 
  Cities with folks who are often kinky
  
  or
  
  down for kinky casual sex seattle
  
  Seattle (87per cent), Minneapolis (83percent), Portland (80%)

If there’s something certain you were curious about according to the information I gathered or even the open-answer concerns we requested, let me know from inside the comments incase possible, i will address them in a future post!