If you thought the two same-sex couples featured in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign announcement video were gay, another pro-Clinton effort launched without her formal support might be more than you can handle. “I’d Bottom for Hillary” allows supporters to show just how willing they are to support her for president by – gasp – allowing her inside their butts. “With bottoming, there’s a lot that goes into it,” its pseudonymous creator Ryan said in a phone interview late Sunday with Fusion. “A lot of homosexuals understand the concept. Bottoming for someone takes a lot of trust and understanding.”
But Ryan doesn’t understand that his campaign simply perpetuates bottom-shaming – the cultural tendency to see the receptive (bottom) sex partner as less than to the penetrative one – or that bottom-shaming stems from ingrained sexism if not outright misogyny. It’s directly connected to the ways in which we view heterosexual sex (men as conquerors and women as submitters) and thus perpetuates two dumb ideas: that there are inherently masculine and feminine acts; and that by engaging in them, you take on the supposed gender identity of the act in some way.
That is why, too often in the gay community, effeminate gay men are thought to always be bottoms, and more stereotypically masculine gay men are seen as tops – which is not the case. (Trust me.)
In gay male communities, bottom shaming is a common as a vodka soda: every day I hear at least one “bottom” joke about someone, which is meant either to actively degrade them or to indicate that they’re inherently lesser because they allow themselves to be anally penetrated. (Enjoying anal penetration isn’t reserved for gay dudes, by the way; straight men love it too.)
An “I’d bottom for Hillary” t-shirt doesn’t just communicate that its wearer is superior because he doesn’t usually bottom, which is, we are to understand, a shameful thing “only girls” would do. It also suggests that Hillary Clinton is more masculine than the wearer – a man, even. And Clinton’s had quite enough of the stereotypes that she’s “too masculine” – a way of shaming her for hewing insufficiently to gendered expectations of women.
Clinton has been bombarded with sexist and misogynistic comments her entire public life, and has been forced – often simultaneously – to prove that she’s manly enough to lead and feminine enough to not make men uncomfortable. Her own advisers in 2008 told her that she had to work to make people forget her gender in order to win. (She announced to an Iowa audience in 2007, “I’m not running as a woman. I’m running because I think I’m the best qualified and experienced person for president.”)
Sexism hasn’t disappeared in the ensuing years, though it seems Clinton no longer believes she needs to belie her womanhood. Her supporters should be naming and shaming the sexists, not perpetuating gendered expectations and calling it “support”. Gay men should be allies against the misogyny that women face every day, not printing t-shirts celebrating it.
Besides, if you truly want to bottom – for Hillary, or anyone else – just do it because you want to, not just to prove how much you like somebody. There’s not that much that “goes into it”, and doesn’t actually take a lot of trust.
However, it does take a lot of lube – and you should definitely avoid Chipotle beforehand.