Topping from the bottom

What is topping from the bottom?

Topping from the bottom is the accusation that someone agrees to the submissive side and then steers the scene anyway, against the agreed balance. It’s not an action with a name but a judgment of an action. Almost nobody says it about themselves; you hear it from the other person or from a third party.

How the accusation lands in practice

Rarely at a moment when something goes wrong. Usually at a moment when someone says something. An ordinary course of events: it’s agreed that he sets the pace of the evening, and halfway through she says she finds the pace too high. That can be a question within the agreement, and then there’s nothing wrong. It can also be that she steers the whole evening, that he didn’t want that, and that this is the fifth time. Only the second is topping from the bottom, and from the outside they look the same.

The encyclopedia draws the line at the agreement: it’s about “trying to control the scene in a way that goes against the negotiated power dynamic”. Not about steering, but about steering against something. The same entry describes the service top as someone who works precisely by the bottom’s instructions: not topping from the bottom, then, but the agreed form of it. The difference sits in what was said beforehand.

Where the phrase comes from

From the users, and the trail is thin and one-sided. Wiktionary lists it as the verb top from the bottom, described as “to make demands while supposedly in a submissive role”. Two things in that do the work. It says make demands, not “take charge”. And it says supposedly, which already puts the judgment in the description: the person it’s about isn’t really submissive.

The two citations the dictionary puts underneath both come from novels. In K. A. Mitchell’s Collision Course (2009) there’s “Aaron didn’t appreciate being topped from the bottom”, and in Cara Carnes’ Passion’s Training (2012) someone says it as a reprimand: “Topping from the bottom is a very bad habit to get into. Perhaps this will break you of it.” Both sources are fiction, and in the second the phrase is used to punish someone. Green’s Dictionary of Slang doesn’t know the expression.

In the academic literature the phrase surfaces exactly once, and then as a title. Jocelyn DeGroot, Heather Carmack, and Margaret Quinlan published in Sexuality & Culture an article called “Topping from the Bottom”, with the subtitle Relational Convergence of Meaning in Domestic Discipline Relationships. In that title, then, the phrase stands for something two people give meaning to together, not for a violation.

Why the accusation persists

Because there’s a real problem underneath, even though the word often lands at the wrong moment.

• For the person in charge it names something otherwise hard to name: that an agreement isn’t working in practice and that the conversation about it isn’t happening.
• For the person on the submissive side it can be a mirror. Someone who bends every scene toward the same three actions may have a wish list rather than surrender.
• For two people together it’s useful as a question, not a label: does our agreement still hold, or have we quietly changed it.

There’s a heavy side to it. The same phrase is used to silence someone who speaks up, and that’s exactly what the practice cannot afford. Cara Dunkley and Lori Brotto laid out in Sexual Abuse what the literature says about it: the use of a safeword is recommended for Tops and Bottoms alike, and every person involved can withdraw their consent at any moment, after which play stops immediately. Someone who uses that isn’t doing something that goes against the agreement. They’re doing the one thing the whole agreement rests on.

What it is not

“Asking for something is topping from the bottom.” No. Voicing wishes belongs in the negotiation and is what a sub list or a kinklist is there to collect. Only when the steering happens during the scene and goes against the agreed balance does the word fit.

“Using a safeword is topping from the bottom.” The opposite. Dunkley and Brotto describe the safeword as the provision that makes consent ongoing, recommended for both roles. A scene that runs on without that tool isn’t stricter, it’s less safe.

“Whoever steers isn’t really submissive.” That’s the assumption sitting in the word supposedly. Being submissive is a position in an agreement and not a character trait, and someone can give away control completely and still know exactly what she wants to feel. Those are two different things.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, gigolo and psychotherapist, and in twenty-five years I’ve heard this accusation land fairly once and unfairly very often.

Almost always it’s the reverse problem. Women who call themselves submissive say too little rather than too much, and they say it too late. When I ask why, the same sentence often comes out: they didn’t want to give the impression that they were taking over. The word does damage before it applies to anything.

My own measure has become simple. I don’t ask whether someone steers, but whether we’ve talked about it. If she steers and we agreed on that, it works. If she steers and we didn’t agree on it, that’s not a fault of hers but a conversation I skipped.

What you can do yourself

• Say beforehand who may adjust course during the scene and over what. “You can always set the pace, I decide the rest” is an agreement; “I’m a dominant” is not.
• Report what you feel instead of asking what happens. “This is going too fast” doesn’t steer, it informs; “do that other thing now” does.
• Use the word as a question, not a label. “Does our agreement still hold?” produces a conversation, “you’re topping from the bottom” produces a defense.
• Agree on a safeword for both sides, because the literature recommends that for Tops and Bottoms and it takes the discussion about steering away entirely.
• If you notice you bend every scene toward the same thing, say so out loud, and put it on the wish list instead of into the scene.

Further reading on topping from the bottom

Within this glossary, the agreed variant sits at service, the roles themselves at top and bottom, and the conversation where this whole subject belongs at negotiation. If you see it as a form of play rather than conflict, read bratting.

Beyond it, the review article by Dunkley and Brotto is free to read and the best starting point for what’s been written about consent within BDSM.

Where this fits on this site

If you’re afraid that saying what you want comes across as taking charge, that’s exactly the conversation that comes first with me. The page about the BDSM date covers how we set down who decides what, so that word never has to come up.

Sources

• top from the bottom. Wiktionary, consulted August 9, 2026. Gives the verb form and the description “(BDSM) To make demands while supposedly in a submissive role”, plus the two dated citations: K. A. Mitchell, Collision Course (2009), p. 97, “Aaron didn’t appreciate being topped from the bottom, but Joey’s voice was so rough Aaron didn’t care who was running the show”, and Cara Carnes, Passion’s Training (2012), p. 71, “Topping from the bottom is a very bad habit to get into. Perhaps this will break you of it.” Both sources are fiction. As a negative control: Green’s Dictionary of Slang returns zero hits on this expression.
• The Role of Consent in the Context of BDSM. Cara R. Dunkley & Lori A. Brotto, Sexual Abuse 32(6), 657–678, 2020 (DOI 10.1177/1079063219842847). Review of the scientific literature; full PDF read via the second author’s university page. This page uses from it only two things that don’t appear on the other consent pages in this glossary: the statement “The use of safewords is encouraged for both Tops and Bottoms”, and the finding from two qualitative studies that every person involved can withdraw their consent at any moment and that this withdrawal must stop play immediately. The three levels of consent from this same review sit at /en/term/consent and are deliberately not repeated here.
• Top, bottom, switch. Wikipedia. Gives the description of topping from the bottom as “a person agreeing to submit, but trying to control the scene in a way that goes against the negotiated power dynamic”, and the contrast with the service top, “a person who applies sensation or control to a bottom, but does so at the bottom’s explicit instructions”. Written by volunteers; used here only for the definitional boundary, as on the other role pages in this glossary.
• “Topping from the Bottom”: Relational Convergence of Meaning in Domestic Discipline Relationships. Jocelyn M. DeGroot, Heather J. Carmack & Margaret M. Quinlan, Sexuality & Culture 19(1), 85–102, 2015 (DOI 10.1007/s12119-014-9247-0; title, authors, volume, issue, and pagination checked against Crossref). Used here only for the fact that this phrase exists as the title of a peer-reviewed article and is tied there to a process of shared meaning-making. The text itself could not be read during this run: Springer forwards the article to a login page, and Crossref and OpenAlex carry no abstract for it. What is known from the abstract sits at /en/term/maintenance-spanking, where it was read in an earlier round.

Related terms

Topping from the bottom is a judgment about steering, and it stands or falls with the question of whether that steering was agreed.

• Service. The agreed version of exactly the same thing: steering from the receiving side, with consent.
• Bottom. The role the accusation targets, and what that role really involves.
• Top. The side that usually voices the accusation.
• Bratting. Pushing back that is agreed, and therefore something else.
• Negotiation. The conversation in which this subject belongs to be resolved.
• Safeword. The tool that makes the discussion about steering largely unnecessary.
• Topping. The action this phrase refers to, and which on its own has nothing to do with the accusation.