'I find explaining that I'm not really one or the other, or strictly vers either, a lot of effort to make straight away. 'On Grindr, I find it exhausting that ‘top or bottom?’ is the first question you're asked if you haven't specified a role on your profile,' 31-year-old London resident Jon says. But the desire to categorize guys based on what they might do in bed isn’t just part of stan culture it’s a reductive part of gay culture-especially on dating apps. Some fans are so keen to pigeonhole male idols as tops and bottoms that even cishet celebrities, such as Shawn Mendes, Timothée Chalamet, and the members of One Direction, have these sexual roles (which are most readily associated with gay men) applied to them. Say what you want among friends, but I’m a bit bored of the online discourse being, like, ‘bottom energy!’ or ‘top me daddy!’ or ‘that’s not gonna work-two bottoms don’t make a top.’ It’s super-reductive.' Our notion of who’s a bottom and who’s a top is rooted in notions of gender and masculinity and femininity that are really outdated as fuck. 'It’s an obsession with a sexual dynamic that feels pointless,” the singer told me. When I interviewed Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander last year for NME, we bonded over bottoming jokes-specifically, how tedious they’ve become.
