tops and bottoms

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 12/19/05 11:46:21 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:


> 
> Besides Ron's observations, there's the issue of whether pigeonholing
> individuals according to the sex of the partners they considered
> desirable or acceptable was really a valid scheme of classification
> for the pre-"homosexual" era; instead, if you were a male who
> confined your activities to those of a penetrator rather than a
> penetratee, your tastes were normal, regardless of whether you sought
> your targets among females, males, or presumably pigeonholes.  And if
> you were a female and were interested in same-sex relations, big deal.
> 
The fundamental division into tops and bottoms rather than [+penis] versus 
[-penis] still persists in American prison, and was long held to be an important 
factor in Latin American view of sexuality. What I have read of hobo 
literature suggests that was the essential folk view well into the 20th century.

I haven't seem the cowboy movie that seems to have created so much 
controversy (it is called something like "Bareback Mountain") but it will be interesting 
to see what sort of view of psychology is projected onto those cowboys.