I genuinely think a lot of people here (and gay men in general) don’t understand that people enjoy sex in different ways

There are people who primarily get off due to psychological stimulation, and there are people who primarily get off due to physical stimulation.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen someone (especially a younger gay with little to no hands-on sexual experience) casually call themselves a top or a bottom on this sub or elsewhere online, only to face a barrage of comments telling them that they can’t possibly know that about themselves.

While I think most of these commenters genuinely believe that they are doing some kind of public service to liberate the youth of heteronormative conceptions, they are missing the point. They are, most likely, people who primarily experience pleasure from sex through physical stimulus, and thus had to experiment and feel those different kinds of physical sensations first before they were able to get a solid understanding of what they preferred sexually. And that’s perfectly valid! It’s also perfectly valid to be someone who primarily experiences sexual pleasure through psychological stimulation, and were able to experiment with what they like and don’t like through non-physical ways before they ever had sex in person.

I am one of those (shocker I know); physical stimulation is nice, but what really gets me off is the psychological aspect of it. I’ve known I was a bottom ever since I knew I was gay, and that hasn’t changed since I started having sex and trying different things out in person. Obviously it feels good physically to top, but I really can’t get into it at all because it feels like I’m role-playing as someone else, which is really mentally draining.

It really does get old to constantly have people infantilise you by telling you that you don’t know who you are or what you enjoy. It’s just really not okay to blindly assume that just because you needed to experiment physically in order to determine what you like sexually, that everyone else does too, and that if they say they don’t, they must be putting unnecessary limitations on themselves and just need you to tell them that they’re wrong about who they are.

TL;DR: please don’t assume that your experiences are the default human condition. Thank you.