J: This podcast has explicitly adult themes and language. Listener discretion is advised.

[intro music]

J: So this is Kinky Queeries, a podcast where you send in questions and we work out the kinks. My name is James. My pronouns are he/him and I'm getting fish in a couple of weeks, so that'll be exciting. I haven't been the sole provider of a pet for over a decade, so it should be interesting.

I: Hey, everybody. My name's Iris. I use they/he pronouns, and I just got two new snakes in the past week and a half, and I'm really excited about it!

J: You got two? Oh my gosh! I'm so excited for you. What are the names? I know one of the names. I don't know what the other’s is.

I: So we have a Vag and Vag is the ball python. And then I have Epididymis, which is the Asian vine snake.

J: Oh, they do go together.

I: They really do. And they're really cute. They're in separate tanks. So I want to point that out to any snake aficionados who may or may not be listening, they are in separate thanks because they're wildly different climates.

J: Totally makes sense. I meant more, it goes together, name wise, thematically. But yes, I'm glad, I mean, not surprised, but I'm glad the snake care top tier.

I: I try my best and there is some incredibly exciting snake decor to come because I made a new artist friend in the area who does pottery work, and I'm really excited.

J: Hell yeah, oh my god, that's so great. What are you getting for their terrariums?

I: I met an artist this past weekend, and they had, like, little, like, drawn pictures in them in, like, little fields with, like, daisies and sunflowers and stuff.

J: That sounds so nice!

I: and little hearts on the outside. But they only had a bunch of cats and dogs. And I asked them, like, “Do you do reptiles?” And they're like, Yeah, why? And it's like, can you make one for each of my babes? Like, they're brand new and they need cute bowls.

J: That is so great. And then you get to like commissioned a local artist. Oh, we love it.

I: Yes. So that plus all the other like sex positive stuff that is in each of the tanks between like the dildos and like the vulva incent holders and stuff like that. It's just entertaining.

J: I would love to see it when you get the chance to send me pictures.

I: Yes.

J: Oh, what an exciting environment. Speaking of exciting things, I'm feral for today's question. It's something that is of my personal interest, because I love linguistics probably more than necessary for someone who doesn't really need to use linguistics for his day to day job. But it's also, this is something that has been a point of contention kind of across the Internet for a while. And I think it's just like a helpful baseline to have answered basically just what is the difference between Dom and top, as well as the difference between sub and bottom? Because sometimes people use them interchangeably and they probably shouldn't be doing that because they do in fact mean significantly different things.

I: Mhmm… Yeah. I actually just came across this, this past weekend when I tried doing a hook up with someone who said that they were dominant.

J: No…

I: They were not dominant at all, they were actually more of a submissive who just wanted to top people…which is fine!

J: And like subs who top are great like that is so valuable especially for doms that like getting it. I think the core here is that when this— Iris is a perfect example, why the difference here matters is because these words mean something and people have expectations for those meanings. So if you're not clear about what you're saying, you run into someone looking for a dominant and they get a submissive that just wants to be on top and that's awkward.

I: And that’s fine, that's super cool. The thing is, as someone who works in reproductive health right now, I kind of want a submissive state because I'm in charge of way too many things.

J: So fair. God.

I: And when someone was like, “Yeah, I'm a skilled dominant” on Bumble, which is like, Cool, it's going to be a shit show anyways, it's fucking Bumble and you're like, “I'm a skilled dominant,” but I was like, fucking fine. I need to de-stress.

J: Desperate times, desperate measures, yeah.

I: And it's really a submissive who needs to be told what to do but wants to be on top and do things technically to me, but only out of me telling them what to do.

J: Which frankly, you could just throw that person in my direction. I think that'd be great for me personally, but uh…

I: Okay, when you come to Pittsburgh….

J: No, I will not, I will not have time. But yeah. And again, there's nothing wrong with what this person wanted and there's nothing wrong with what you wanted. But because they—

I: There was a communication issue…

J: Yeah, it's a huge communication error. So I guess, TLDR For those of you listening in a hurry, dominant and submissive are power dynamics. They speak to the psychological component of kink and basically the roles that we put on for the sake of kink. Whereas top and bottom are, and I say this in air quotes, physical positions, though that's obviously not always the case. In practice it is really the aspect of giving and receiving during sexual acts. To be specific, in an example, if you're topping for, you know, penetrative sex, then you are the person with the thing going inside the other person. If you're bottoming, you're the person with something going inside you.

I: Yes. Or even for like non-sexual acts, but just kink acts. If we're talking about impact play, the top is the person who is impacting somebody else and the bottom is the person who is receiving the impact.

J: Yeah.

I: But the dominant could literally be the person who's receiving, instructing the person, being like, Hit me harder. Like, You need to do this, you need to do that. I expect this from you. That all being negotiated ahead of time, of course.

J: Of course.

I: But, like that being the power dynamic, where then you also have this position based orientation of giving and receiving.

J: Exactly. Yeah. And they're really useful shorthand. It's, you know, on a dating app, it's really important to just quickly see like, okay, this is what I'm looking for, this is what this person is offering. And obviously better to go in depth when you're talking one on one. But like getting to that first stage of negotiations, you kind of want to have a general gist of what everyone's bringing to the table. So it gets super awkward when people aren't using these words correctly.

J: Fun little word history, by the way, because I am feral about linguistics and I love getting to learn this, by the way. There's a whole website that's literally just etymology online and it just like is the history of words. And I was having a lot of fun. So the word dominant actually comes from the Latin Dominus for Lord or Master. So you can think of that as like, you know, your classic like d-type person dressed in leather, the cute little leather hat doing the whole riding crop fit, you know, a lord, a master as you would, but it actually originates from a proto-indo-european word for household. So this kind of origin of the word is really from the idea of, you know, the master of the house sort of thing in terms of like, you know, your feudal Europe kind of concept. Obviously, not how it's used today, but it's a fascinating linguistic history there.

J: So a really old word, by the way, whereas submissive has a much shorter history, we see its original roots from the 1580s as sort of the “yielding to authority” adjective sense. It does have a Latin root for the concept of to sink or to lower down, specifically like the idea of submerging in water. And we only really see it as a noun in the 1980s. Before then, it was linked to sex in 1969, haha nice sex number, but it's definitely more modern as a term to describe sex acts as well as being a noun specifically, whereas dominant as a noun has been around for a much, much longer period of time, which I thought was really interesting.

I: Thank you for doing all this work, by the way. It is really interesting to, like, hear and learn about just the linguistic origins of these terms because that's… I know that's something that you geek out about on. It's not something that my brain is just like, what is the history of this word? It is not something that I tend to do.

J: Well, I appreciate that you're enjoying it just because it's something that's so meaningful for me, I guess because when I know the core of a word, the word takes on so much more meaning for me. You'll actually see in some online spaces or just written spaces in general, people will capitalize Dominant in, in sex contexts, in kink contexts, not just, you know, on your average encyclopedia. But people will capitalize Dominant but leave submissive lowercase, which is something I found myself doing. And I find it so weird every time I see someone writing Dominant specifically in the kink sex component with a lowercase d, I'm like the audacity, like, how dare you? This is, this is like where is your dignity?

I: But also I like to capitalize Submissive because they are the ones who are in true power within the dynamic. You know I'm right!

J: You are. And I'm like, all aflutter because it's like, so sweet and so thoughtful. But yeah, I love that. Oh my God, I love that. But yeah. And then conversely, top and bottom are very, very recent phenomena in terms of like sex, very much the 1950s leather scene. And at the time they were very frequently conflated with Dom and sub, which is kind of a pattern of behavior we still see today, because when you think about like, you know, the textbook cookie cutter gay sex cliche, you're thinking of like, you know, big masculine, hairy bear’s going to take charge of the scene and be the penetrating partner. And then you're, you know, the nerdy little twink that could break in half if someone looks at them the wrong way is going to be on the receiving end.

I: All of the twinks I know are tops.

J: which… thank god. Nothing like a hot twink top to really get me going. Good god. But yeah. So that’s, like the cliche. Also, Iris— viewers at home, you weren't able to see this, but Iris was like flexing their muscles as I was describing the top. And I was obsessed.

I: I've been doing upper body workouts, too, so they're a little bit bigger than normal.

J: Fuck yeah!

I: Not much, but I'm going to take it. I am stronger.

J: Sick gains, bro, Yes! He says, very masculinely. [Laughter] I'm like, what if I don't work out? And testosterone just, like, gives me muscles for free? I know that’s not how it works, I know that’s not how it works.

I: That is unlikely to happen. But like your metabolism is going to do some wonky stuff anyway. You might just as well see what happens without working out.

J: I am just not good at working out regularly. It's not a skill set that I have.

I: I’m trying to get into it.

J: Yeah! Go off! Do you have like a gym you go to?

I: Uh, the one that my university provides for me?

J: Fuck yeah!

I: Or it's like, Oh, there's all the basic shit I need to do and one day— they have one of those pull up stations where you can like put weight on so that it's not as hard. And I can do six with the assistance and I'm feeling really good about it, but one day I won't need any assistance and that is my goal.

J: Hell yeah. I would love that for you. And having like goals is so exciting, like. Ahh.

I: And that feels like a simple goal. It's not like I want to go this fast, I want to bulk up this big, I want to lift X amount. I want to do one pull up unassisted.

J: I think that's a reasonable goal. I just, I live in this delightful fantasy world where going on testosterone is the exact same except in reverse for a trans woman going on estrogen. Because my future sister in law used to be able to do like the pull ups and like all of that with no effort, like didn't have

to work for it. She just could do it. And then she started estrogen and almost immediately she was like, Oh, I can't do this anymore. What happened? And I'm just hoping it'll work in reverse for me. I would love to just magically be able to do a pull up one day. I know it doesn't work like that, but I’ll live in the fantasy.

I: I will do extra workouts for the sake of you and gaining that power in case that is helpful.

J: [laughter] Thank you, thank you. Just, just like, transfer your gains onto me.

I: Sounds dandy.

J: Speaking of dandies, historically speaking, while the words we use today for top and bottom are, again, fairly new, 1950s ish is when we're seeing those words take on their sexual connotations. Most cultures where there was a prominent, you know, same sex sexual norm, I guess is the word I want to use? Also had words for penetrating partner and receiving partner. The Greeks, we see this. We also see this in ancient Japan as well as in Rome. And there seem to have been at the time, pretty much in most of these cultures, a cultural stigma for the receiving partner, which is something we still see today. But yeah, so there's obviously again, the Greek history as well as these other cultures have. Age is a prominent factor, but we see in situations where partners are of same or similar ages as adults, there is a significant cultural stigma to being that receiving partner we actually see this with… Oh God, I'm going to say his name wrong because I'm really bad at pronouncing Greek names, but Achilles lover?

I: Greek history was not my as a Latin student.

J: Awkward. I'm going to say this wrong. And then the song of Achilles fans are going to come for my ass. And that's fine. But Patroclus [James says it as pet-tro-co-lus] I think, is his name. Anyway, he and Achilles in Greek history were lovers, and because Achilles famously was on the bottom, at least from the research I was seeing, he did suffer some like stigma for that because it's like, Hey, you're a grown ass man. Why are you receiving this?

I: Because it's fun!

J: Cause it's fun. Exactly. It's fascinating to see how that history still manifests itself. Not so much in the modern queer scene that I've seen, but like, you know, looking at the early 2000s, the concept of like a gay bottom is like this kind of lesser thing, which is sad, frankly. Obviously, the words in their modern context come from the very literal physical positioning during missionary sex, where you have the penetrating partner on top and the receiving partner on bottom. I suppose you could say the same for like doggy style and a couple other sexual positions, but obviously in other sexual positions, the physical space, doesn’t really matter? Like if you're doing cowgirl, the penetrator is on the bottom and the receiver is on the top. So these words again, helpful shorthand, but the key is obviously active communication before engaging in sex.

J: Also fun fact. None of these words have anything to do with sadism or masochism, which are two other completely different words which, fun fact that I learned doing research today, which I don't know if anyone else cares, but I'm a little bit obsessed with the Marquis de Sade, who famously was not a Marquis, but the Marquis de Sade who is actually Count de Sade, is the person who sadism is named after and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch [James also doesn’t know how to say this name] is the person who masochism is named after they were not alive at the same time whatsoever.

I: What?

J: they were alive in— yeah! De Sade was mid 1700s died in 1815. Mass— [sigh] Leopold. we're just going to first name this gent. Leopold was born in 1836. There is like a solid 20 year gap between their lifespans. It's fascinating to me.

I: Huh!

J: Yeah. Which actually kind of echoes a little bit the linguistic origins of dominant and submissive, where we see dominant has a much longer linguistic history than submissive does, which again, obviously submissives can be sadists and dominance can be masochists. Those words don't go hand in hand. But if we're looking just at the cliches, I do think it's interesting that the words kind of parallel linguistic origin, if that makes sense.

I: Yeah, that's super interesting. But also what the fuck.

J: Yeah, they never knew each other. I— yeah. We're going to do an episode on the “Marquis” de Sade because he's fucked up and I'm obsessed with him.

I: Okay, I'm excited. Good to know that this is coming up.

J: Yeah, this is a time before safe, sane, consensual was a thing. So I'm not saying he's a role model because he's not. But as someone who loves linguistics and loves kink, he's like the intersection of those two things. And I'm obsessed. Also I mean, who doesn't love the idea of like nobility being a little bit sadistic and like, Oh, no, what are you going to do with me?

I: Oops.

J: I’m normal about it.

I: Sure. It seems super normal. Totally not a fetish.

J: Thank you. Thank you. I'm very normal. But yeah. So there's, like, a reason why we have the words we do. Because they communicate different things, right? But like Iris was saying, it is very possible to be a submissive top and it's totally possible to be a dominant bottom. All of these words, because they mean different things can be stacked on top of each other in different and creative ways. So when you conflate dominant and top with each other, you're muddling both of their meetings,

I: Mhm.

J: And then you get the situation you're talking about words that's like a mess.

I: Yeah, it was a little bit of a mess. Still a fun time. Just not what I anticipated. And I continue to be on the hunt. So if anybody knows of a good dating app to find a fucking dominant, I am taking requests right now.

J: Rumor has it OkCupid has a good kink scene. I haven't been lucky with it, but…

I: I have never been lucky with OkCupid. I can go back on Lex and see if that's better, but I will not step foot onto Tinder ever again. And Hinge has been boring.

J: That's fair. Yeah. So the problem for Lex with me is that everyone on there is either not looking for sex, they just want someone to, like, hang out with or they are polyamorous and dating three other people and would like to also date you as well, which are great for two different types of people, neither of which I am.

I: I am normally both of those two people being like, Oh, I need a crafting buddy.

J: Yes! Oh my god. Yeah. Lex is for you, my dude.

I: I know, but like trying to find— I've actually never had good luck with sex on Lex.

J: Mmm, okay.

I: Which has been interesting, but I have learned about a lot of different community events on Lex.

J: We do love that.

I: And fun parties to go to, and I've gone to like knitting circles and stuff like that, but I have yet to get any fucks out of Lex.

J: Would it be a breach of privacy to just read anonymous Lex articles on this podcast? Probably. But like godm what a fun segment.

I: Gosh, I mean, they're all anonymous.

J: Right? I'm going to scroll and find an example of using top and dom. It's for research. Hold on. All of this is about local theater and making friends. Oh, got it. Okay. “Los Angeles Doms, question mark. Experienced sub looking for an older, wiser Dom. afab, 5’10, thin, and androgynous. If you fit the bill, I'll send more pics.” Damn straight forward.

I: Sounds great.

J: To the point. We love it. I love this for them. I can not apply. From that one Lex post, you can see very clearly what this person is looking for if we're all using the same definitions of dominant and submissive, this would be someone who is looking for instruction from someone who is giving instruction in a pre-negotiated scene. Obviously.

I: From the area that I'm currently in, we have the post “Craving affectionate Dom or Dom-ish energy in my life. Grab my hair and pull me close. Let me sit at your feet with my head in your lap or reverently kiss your thighs, tie me up and make me beg. Sub with experience open to lots of things have been told I make the best noises. Kink is greater than smashing genitals to be honest, but not off the table.”

J: [laughter] Oh, I love that.

I: I love it, too.

J: That's another clear example of like, hey, here's what I'm looking for. If you can do this thing, let's meet up. And that's,

I: Heck yeah.

J: At the end of the day, what all of this is about. You could have so much fun too, with the mixing of these two terms, right? Like if you're talking about like and this doesn't super apply to me, but if you're saying like I'm a dominant bottom, I'm looking for a submissive who's really going to like give it to me like,

I: mhm.

J: That paints a really clear picture of what a person is looking for. With very few characters, which yeah, shorthand is kind of the name of the game, both on Lex and historically speaking.

I: Yeah. Maybe I'll try. Maybe I'll find a lovely Dom who just, like, wants to fuck me up and put me into subspace.

J: I hope that happens for you. I was going to say I'm putting like the vibes out in the universe, but I'm not quite at that level of like hippie. But I believe in you. You can make that happen.

I: Thank you. I appreciate it.

J: Here is the problem I've noticed on Lex as well as other dating apps. And I'm curious— It'd be hard to, like, get accurate statistics for this, but I'd be curious about it because just from firsthand experience, there seem to be so many submissive people on dating apps. There are so many thirsty thirsty subs in the world. Where are all the good doms? Where have they gone? I say as a thirsty submissive.

I: As a femme dominant who just want to femme dominant events recently,

J: ooh.

I: We exist, but there was definitely more submissives who attended the event than the number of femme dominance who attended the event and we were all swarmed.

J: jeez, first of all, wild. But also, yeah, not surprising just from like colloquial experience I feel like on Lex, at least, like doms don't have to post. They can just find a sub pretty quickly, which at the end of the day it's 2022. We should all be switches, but obviously not the case for everyone.

I: Fair. Should we go over verse and switch just because that's terminology we didn't cover?

J: Yeah, that's a very good point because these are basically the middle term for the terms we've been talking about. I didn't do any research on these two

I: I didn’t do any research either on these two. I just thought it might be helpful for individuals to look it over, but it is really just that like middle ground of being able to switch back and forth between dominance, submissive, top versus bottom, or even in some cases sadist versus masochist. And being in that middle ground, usually it's not like rapidfire back and forth. People can definitely do that. But a lot of the time it's like negotiated dynamics ahead of time where it's like, I'm going to be in this role, I'm going to be the submissive. But you can go back and forth and like have that struggle between individuals who are participating in the scene where it's like, Oh, I'm going to like be submissive, be dominant and like kind of fight potentially for dominance. That's definitely more in like the animalistic sense of sceneing, and that's something that I'm personally really into, which is why like that comes to mind when I think about like verse and switching.

J: I do love that for you. Are you– are you a primal, like would primal play be in your wheelhouse of things?

I: I think, yeah. The more I play with people, the more primal-esque tendencies I seem to have.

J: I love that for you.

I: Thank you! Is there anything that you wanted to expand upon? Like the short description I just gave there.

J: Yeah. I mean, I think you covered it really well. I think outside of that, in scene back and forth, it can also just be someone who is comfortable in both roles, someone who's like, Hey, I feel like today's a good day for me to dom, tomorrow might be a good day for me to sub. It also depends on the partner they're with. And interestingly enough, part of my whole like it's 2022 everyone should be a switch joke is that in individual acts different people are going to have different roles or different positions that they prefer. Like when it comes to bondage, I would consider myself fairly, Oh god, I totally forgot if versatile goes with dom sub or top bottom. Hold on, I'm going to Google it real quick. It would appear that verse is for position, which would be bottom top and switch is for dom sub.

I: Okay.

J: The idea that like, when it comes to bondage I am like so genuinely a switch. Like I love tying people up just as much as I love being tied. But when it comes to other things, like I am very much submissive in some categories and… trying to think of any category where I’m a dom, and it's not coming to mind, but I definitely can… I do enjoy topping sometimes more than I enjoy bottoming, but I very much enjoy submitting more than I enjoy dominating. So again, it varies by act. And so that's why everyone should be kind of versatile. Everyone should be kind of switchy because, you know, limiting yourself to just one side of the coin– If that's all that you like, that's fine. But like, there's a whole range of expression and enjoyment in things.

I: Mhm. This was a fun episode.

J: Yeah. I thank you so much for letting me just, like, chatter about linguistic history.

I: No problem. I liked it. It was fun to learn.

J: Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's... They're just useful tools. Words... Words are just tools that we use to make the weird electricity in my brain work with the weird electricity in your brain, you know.

I: Exactly. Thanks so much for listening as we talk about our favorite things. Got a kinky question? Send us your queries, kinkyqueeries@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @kinkyqueeries. That's k i n k y q u e e r i e s. We'll have our next episode ready for your eager years in two weeks, and that will be hopefully in two weeks.

J: [laughter] Yeah, I'm hoping we're going to have a slightly more regular posting schedule now that we've gotten a bit ahead of the curve.

I: Yes.

J: We really appreciate all your patience with our… You know, the world had a lot going on. It wasn't even like our personal lives got wild. The world got slightly more wild than usual.

I: Oh, yeah.

J: So we appreciate your patience. But, yeah, it's exciting to get back into things.