Oh, brother!

From Joe.My.God. Paul Angelos, a "gay matchmaker" who obviously doesn't know anything about gay men:

"If you were to put all gay men together in a big warehouse and place the 'bottoms' on the left and the 'tops' on the right, you'd start seeing negative consequences of the anal sex play out in real life for the bottoms such as: disrespect for their general health, failure at work, failure in love and relationships. I am not saying that every gay man should stop anal intercourse today. What I recommend is that gay men re-think the 'Gay-Lifestyle' strategy and stop for one second to question the validity of all that is gay."

This is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start. Obviously the man has never heard of "bossy bottoms" -- someone in the comments came up with the term "power bottom" -- and doesn't seem to have encountered one in person. (And let's not get into the breathtaking misogyny here.) And the assumption that a man must be either a "bottom" or a "top" is -- well, there's this whole thing known as an "egalitarian relationship," which, given history and social expectations, is much more likely between two men than between a man and a woman. (And thinking back, most of the men I've known in my life have classed themselves as "versatile.") The last sentence -- well, I can't make any sense out of it -- it just keeps coming out as gibberish. What is a "'Gay-Lifestyle' strategy"? And the "validity of all that is gay"? Hah?

There are potentially some fascinating facets of human, particularly male psychology involved in one's choice of roles during intercourse, but it appears that the possibilities here have escaped Angelo. They have nothing to do with stereotypical sex roles, and a great deal to do with relationships -- the protectiveness of holding someone you're fucking, the reassurance of being held, the sense of welcoming your partner into your body, the closeness, the sharing, the feeling that you are as close as anyone can be to becoming one person -- and, from my own experience at least, it doesn't really matter who's on top. This assumes, of course, that you care about your partner. (If you don't, why bother?) (The idea that when it comes right down to it we are all more or less androgynous keeps tickling the back of my mind, but I can't quite pin it down.)

(There are, as of this morning, 238 comments on Joe's post, none of them sympathetic -- except the one he left himself.)