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My Sub Hits Me

  • Writer: Dan Apus Monoceros
    Dan Apus Monoceros
  • Jul 25
  • 6 min read

Top/Bottom, Dominant/devot, Active/Passive, Switch & Co.

Words matter, because only when we can name something can we talk about it, draw distinctions, reflect on ourselves within it, define ourselves more clearly, and tell our partners what actually helps us. And words shift their meaning – over time, depending on where they're used, and of course on a personal level. As a result, certain terms keep getting confused with one another, wrongly treated as identical, or people simply aren't aware that the meanings differ. You think you're talking about the same thing, and you actually mean something completely different.


This section is especially useful for beginners and can work like an eye-opener. More experienced readers will come to see why things are the way they are, where the differences come from, and how others use the same words – so they grow more alert to where misunderstandings start.


About the author – Dan Apus Monoceros

I move through many worlds myself. My kink socialization, though, happened mostly in the gay BDSM world. These days I work as a coach and event organizer across a wide range of groups, so I can report from different scenes and perspectives. Even so, I keep running into stark differences and sometimes contradictory approaches. Some words get used very differently: what seems logical to one person strikes another as odd – and the other way around.


Passive-dominant top seeks service fucker

The words submissive, bottom, devot, passive, and masochistic tend to get lumped together and mixed up – as do, on the other side, dominant, active, top, and sadistic. The first group gets sweepingly and wrongly pinned to the role of the slave, the second to that of the master/domina.


That not everything is the same, where the differences lie, and how best to handle them – that's what we'll look at in this article.


Even though I'm attempting a clean set of definitions here, they are primarily relevant to me and my work. A great many people use their own, differing definitions, and even in academic work and specialist literature the terms are sometimes used differently. When you're talking with someone else, better to ask what exactly they mean by which term.

But so that we start somewhere, I'll first take the definitions as they are predominantly used in kink literature and are widespread in the heterosexual context.


Top vs. Bottom

Top and bottom denote who carries out an action versus who receives one. It's about the activity in the session – the active doing, and who does what with whom. The rigger (top) ties the rope around the model (bottom). The top swings the flogger; the bottom takes the blows. Someone who enjoys and does both would be a switch (in hetero BDSM) or versatile (in the gay world).


The terms come from the gay leather subculture of the 1950s, picked up shortly afterward by the emerging BDSM scene of the 1960s. At first they meant both the sexual position and an accompanying power differential – top the penetrating, active part, bottom the penetrated, submissive one. The Oxford English Dictionary first records "bottom" in a sexual sense in the 1970s, in a gay BDSM context, as the passive, receiving part.


The hanky-code culture of those same years was far more differentiated and knew much more than just anal sex. For many practices you had to work out whether to wear the handkerchief on the right or the left. The terms spread and, in the process, gradually split into the two meanings that had originally been fused: acting and deciding.


This axis describes the direction of a concrete action in a concrete session – not who commands or decides on that action.


Dominant vs. Submissive

Dominant and submissive describe the power axis: which person calls the shots in the scene. The sub transfers decision-making power to the dom. So the dominant person decides (within a set frame) what happens in that particular scene, without necessarily having to do it themselves – by giving orders, for instance.


Unlike top and bottom, which come from the sexual position, dom and sub never had an anatomical core; they simply meant who decides and who has to follow. "Dominant" comes from the Latin dominus, "master of the house"; "submissive" from submittere, "to place oneself beneath." Both are centuries-old words that express a power differential. The erotic sense only arrived in the 20th century (domination 1961, dominatrix in the BDSM sense 1970, submissive 1969). The short forms dom, sub, and D/s arose in personal ads, where editors demanded euphemisms to get around censorship laws. Like the hanky code, they are a kind of scene language. D/s also appears as one of the meanings within the word BDSM.


Because of the limits set during pre-scene negotiation, some people hold the view that the sub, through those very limits, is the actually dominant one. My personal reflection on dominance as the capacity to shape things can be found in another article.


Devot vs. Submissive

"Devot" and "submissive" often mean the same thing in everyday scene use, but they carry different origins. Devot is a German word (from devotus, "devoted to God") describing a person's basic disposition. The Digital Dictionary of the German Language marks it as pejorative; synonyms floating around include servile or bootlicking. "Submissive" came in through English with the D/s vocabulary and hangs on the concrete power dynamic.


The scene uses the terms differently. Some see "devot" as merely a translation from English and therefore a synonym for "submissive." Others dislike the negative connotation it carries in everyday language and so wouldn't call themselves "devot." Still others see "devot" as a person's fundamental disposition (an identity role), even without a counterpart, and "submissive" as behavior within a particular relationship or setting (a relational role).


For practice, this means: the label alone says little. Ask what the person specifically means – a disposition they carry through the day, or a behavior they show toward a particular dominant person.


Action axis vs. power axis

We've now met two independent axes: that of action and that of decision (or power). From them arise four possible combinations.


[Figure: the two axes and their four quadrants]


Zones and typical roles

If the person who decides is also the one who does, we're in the top right – and the counterpart (the one who receives and doesn't decide) in the bottom left. These combinations match the original meaning of the words, from the time before top/bottom had been separated from dom/sub, and are therefore seen as typical. Accordingly, hardly any new specialized terms have formed here. So the familiar ones get used: master, mistress, or domina for a person who decides and acts at the same time, and slave for the other side.


This usage is actually imprecise, since master/mistress and slave describe only the D/s dimension, not the action level. A domina, for example, can have her slave serve her – whereby, on the action level, the slave becomes the top and the domina the bottom. The domina still remains dominant, though: she receives the action but doesn't hand over decision-making power. Let's wait and see whether more precise terms form here, or whether this fuzzy blend sticks around.


[Figure: the four zones with typical roles]


For the "atypical" combinations, by contrast, clear formulations have developed. There's the service top: a devot person who nonetheless treats the submissive person – flogging them at their request, for example. For the submissive person in this setting I don't yet know an officially established name, but "topping from the bottom" describes it quite well, and a "script sub" – a sub who lays down a lot of stipulations, like a screenplay – would fit nicely.


But there's also a role that is dominant yet does little or nothing itself: the lazy dom, the goddess, or the god. These roles give instructions and have themselves served; often they just sit or lie there. The "conductor" is a dom who directs switches or other (service) doms in how they are to work on a sub-bottom, while only watching and giving instructions.


Roles aren't two-dimensional

There are, of course, many more typical and atypical roles, which can be placed on one or both axes. But "typically" always implies exceptions, too. Especially with such loaded terms as master, domina, or slave, there are countless individual expressions that often don't fit the idealized textbook picture or someone else's expectations. Many people have their own ideas and definitions; some aren't clear on the differences, others lack the vocabulary for them. So better to ask what exactly is meant before you make assumptions.


Know someone this would help? Feel free to pass it on, and reflect on it together.


Limitations

So now I've explained the whole thing so neatly and simply that it sounds easy. But was that already all of it? Are there no terms for hierarchy? What about active and passive? And how do gay men actually do it?


As you can already tell, I'm working on a sequel.


Until then: enjoy reflecting.


Sources

 
 
 

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