Bottom

What is a bottom?

Bottom (Dutch: de ontvangende partij, the receiving party) is the person who undergoes the action in a session: the one who gets tied up, struck, touched, or directed. Bottom says something about what you do, not about what you feel. You can be a bottom without being submissive, and be submissive without ever bottoming.

What being a bottom looks like in practice

Being a bottom is a position in a scene, and you can choose that position from one night to the next. Someone who bottoms tonight can take the other role next week; someone who does both is called a switch.

A typical run of things: two people agree that one will use a whip and the other will take it. Together they decide how hard, how long, and where yes and where no. During the play the bottom says regularly how it is going, and at the end they sit together for a while afterward. That last part is called aftercare and belongs to it just as much as the rest.

There is also a variant in which the bottom is the one giving direction. The encyclopedia calls that a service top: someone who applies sensation or control, but does so on the explicit instructions of the bottom. The action then runs one way, the direction the other.

What is the difference between a bottom and a sub?

The difference is in what gets handed over. A bottom receives an action; a sub hands over power. The same encyclopedia puts it this way: the main difference between a submissive and a bottom is that a submissive gives up power within a power exchange, while a bottom receives stimulation from someone who may be dominant but does not have to be.

In practice the two often coincide, which is why the words get used interchangeably. But not always. Someone who likes to feel pain and wants nothing to do with obeying is a bottom and not a sub. Someone who does the housekeeping for a partner and is never touched in a session is a sub and not a bottom.

That distinction is more than linguistics. It decides what you agree on. Someone who signs up as a bottom but gets treated as a sub ends up with orders they never asked for.

Why do people bottom?

The appeal usually lies in handing over the steering. For an hour nobody needs a decision from you. You only have to feel what happens and say whether it fits.

What it gives back differs from person to person.

• For the one who bottoms, the payoff is often a break from the thinking that never stops. In their interview study of nine dominants and twelve submissives, Hébert and Weaver name exactly that: freedom from the roles of daily life, mental release, and being able to be yourself.
• For the one who takes the other side, the gain is that there is something to do with all the attention they have. The same researchers describe dominants as empathetic, caring, and attentive.
• For two people together, something measurable can happen. Sagarin and colleagues measured saliva in fifty-eight participants before and after a session and found that participants for whom it had gone well showed less physiological stress and felt closer to each other.

Bottoming is not therapy. Wismeijer and Van Assen compared 902 BDSM practitioners with 434 others and concluded that BDSM is recreational leisure rather than an expression of psychopathology. That is reassuring about the group, but it says nothing about what one evening does to you.

Misconceptions about bottom

“Bottom means submissive.” No. Bottom is the receiving role in an action; being submissive is a position in a power dynamic. They often occur together, and that is where the confusion comes from.

“The bottom has no say.” Exactly the opposite. The bottom sets the limits within which the play happens and holds the safeword. With a service top the bottom even gives the instructions.

“Bottom is a fixed type you are.” For some, yes; for many, no. Someone who does both the giving and the receiving side is called a switch, and that is not a way station but a preference of its own.

What I see myself

I am Victor, gigolo, over twenty-five years into BDSM and with a background as a psychotherapist. Most people who come to me for a BDSM date want to bottom, and almost none of them use that word.

Many people think bottoming means lying still and having no say. The best sessions run the other way around. The bottom who says “harder” or “wait a second” partway through gets the evening she wanted, and the other person does not have to guess.

The mistake I see most often is that people only speak up when it is already too much. The session is not a failure then, but it is shorter than it could have been.

What you can do yourself

• Say beforehand which actions you want to undergo, not which role you are. “Spanking on the backside yes, in the face no” is more useful than “I am a bottom.”
• Agree on a safeword and practice it once in the first ten minutes, so it does not stay theory.
• Report during the play how it is going, even when it is going well. A short “this is nice” steers just as well as a “stop.”
• Watch for tingling, cold hands, or numbness with anything that is tied, and say so right away. That is not a mood-killer but a safety signal.
• Plan time for afterward. The dip that can come hours later is easier to catch if you counted on it.

More reading about bottom

On this site, the article on BDSM for beginners explains how a first session is built up, and why aftercare is crucial covers what is needed afterward.

Off this site, the research by Hébert and Weaver is the most readable starting point if you want to know what people themselves say about their role, because it consists almost entirely of their own words.

Sources

• Perks, problems, and the people who play: A qualitative exploration of dominant and submissive BDSM roles. Ali Hébert & Angela Weaver, The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 24(1), 49–62, 2015. Interviews with nine dominants and twelve submissives; provides the motives of the receiving role and the description of dominants as empathetic, caring, and attentive.
• Hormonal Changes and Couple Bonding in Consensual Sadomasochistic Activity. Sagarin, Cutler, Cutler, Lawler-Sagarin & Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38(2), 186–200, 2009. Saliva measurements in fifty-eight participants; provides the drop in cortisol and the increase in closeness in sessions that went well.
• Psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners. Wismeijer & Van Assen, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 10(8), 1943–1952, 2013. Comparison of 902 BDSM practitioners with 434 others; provides the conclusion that BDSM is recreation rather than psychopathology.
• Top, bottom, switch. Wikipedia. Provides the definition of bottom, the distinction from submissive, and the description of the service top.

Related terms

• Submissive. The English word bottom is most often set against in the research.
• Bottoming. The act itself: what you do when you fill the bottom role.
• Bunny. The bottom who mostly ends up in rope.
• Aftercare. What happens afterward, and why it matters most for the receiving role.
• BDSM test. The questionnaire where bottom, top, and switch come back as separate scores.
• Submissive role. The role about who has the say rather than the action, and the one bottom gets confused with most.
• Rope bottom. The same role but specifically in rope, where she is the only one who feels whether a wrap sits on a nerve.
• Service. What a service top does, and why the bottom gives the instructions there.
• Sub. The label for the other side of the line, and why that is something other than bottom.
• Switch. The third term from this trio, with the dating of the word.
• Top. The counter-role, and why it does not coincide with the dominant.
• Topspace. Where the performing side ends up while the bottom sinks the other way.
• Topping from the bottom. The accusation laid on this role from the top side, and when it holds.