‘Sides’ Are Redefining How People Identify Sex
In May of this year, Grindr, the popular hook-up app for men who have sex with men (MSM), announced that it will be adding ‘sides’ as an option on user profiles. It generated headlines for becoming the first, and still the only app, to do so, representing a significant population that has long been ignored. As a regular sex columnist for Grindr myself it made me proud that the platform was allowing a population of people to come together and help alter the way we identify sex in 2022.
Sides, for the unfamiliar, represent folks who don’t typically enjoy penetration, favoring less invasive acts like oral, mutual masturbation, dry humping (frottage), making out, and things of that nature. The term was introduced in 2013 courtesy of a Huffington Post article written by sex and relationship therapist, Dr. Joe Kort.
Kort created the term as a way to describe his own sexual proclivities. It came to him spontaneously when, over libations, friends inquired about his vocal disinterest in penetration. He thought of sexual terminology among queer men like a box: you have your “tops” (the insertive partner), your “bottoms” (the receptive partner) and your “vers” folks (who are up for either). He then examined how he would fit into the visual metaphor and settled on “sides.”
While the term was introduced as a way of describing the sexual behaviors of gay men (Wikipedia even added “sides” to its “terminology of homosexuality” entry), people of all gender identities and sexual orientations have since embraced the term and, as a result, are helping it evolve.
“My initial definition was only people who never have nor enjoy penetration or intercourse,” Kort tells The Daily Beast. “However, over time, some reported they were ‘side vers’ and were topping and bottoming occasionally, but preferred to side. Some told me they side while single but will top or bottom in a relationship, whereas others would only side with men but will penetrate women.”
This evolution is a sign of more sexually progressive times, and speaks to the larger idea that many people may not enjoy or prefer penetration, yet it is the singular way we generally define sex—something we can thank the nation’s sex ed curriculum for. One of the many things we tend to brush over is the fact that penetration is not accessible, enjoyable, or desired by everyone.
For Andrew Gurza, a powerchair user with cerebral palsy, penetration is an incredibly difficult feat. “I’m able to top if someone rides me, but because I’m unable to thrust my hips, my partner has to do most of the work themselves and, honestly, that's not really enjoyable for me,” he says, sharing this inability once made him feel like a “failure.”
For this reason, Gurza says that penetration is ableist when regarded as the definitive sexual act because it assumes that people must be able to penetrate or be penetrated in order to have ‘real sex.’ “Penetration is not the ‘ultimate sex act’ in my opinion,” he shares. “Intimacy and vulnerability is.”
Andrew Gurza is one of a growing number of people who identify as a side.
Gurza discovered sides as a sexual identity through a previous article I’d written on the subject. “It was really affirming,” he remembers. “I never really fit into what a queer penis-haver was expected to be, and having another label that I could imbue with my own meaning was incredibly helpful in me fitting my disability into my queerness and vice versa.”
In advocating for sides, Kort is vocal about acts such as foreplay and masturbation still constituting sex. “I’ve heard many queer and straight men say they aren’t having sex if penetration isn’t involved,” he says. “And that’s incorrect.”
Penetration may also be similarly undesirable, or even traumatic, for trans and non-binary people. “While some transgender folks find penetration pleasurable, others may find it unpleasurable, deeply upsetting and emotionally, even physically, damaging,” Clark W Hamil, gender and sexuality educator, told The Daily Beast.
A major reason being that penetration can cause “gender dysphoria”, or feelings of distress about their assigned sex and their actual gender, in transgender, non-binary and other gender expansive people. And since penetration relies heavily on gender roles and genitalia, the act can feel incredibly dysphoric or dissociative.
“People who are on Testosterone for a long time may experience vaginal atrophy (thinning, drying of the vaginal walls), making vaginal penetration painful or difficult, and thus potentially undesired,” Hamil explains. “Conversely, for people who are on Estrogen for a long time, they may not be able to use their phallus to penetrate others due to change in size and possible inability to achieve an erection.”
There is also the fetish-driven misconception that transgender men desire penetrative sex in their vagina. Not only do not all folks want that, Hamil explains, it may not even be possible, as some might have undergone vaginectomy, a procedure to close the vagina, and/or metoidioplasty, which uses the tissue from a clitoris to create a neophallus. While this phallus is functional in many ways, a person may not want to use it for penetrative sex, or may not feel able to.
While prevalent, this indifferent attitude toward penetration is not only shared by those in the LGBTQ+ community. The very concept of “outercourse” was originally introduced in 1986, but popularized around 2017 as a means of closing the “orgasm gap” after a study of 50,000 people found 95 percent of heterosexual men “usually” or “always” orgasm during sex, whereas only 65 percent of heterosexual women do.
It brought to light that penetration doesn’t get most heterosexual women off. In fact, research has found that only 25 percent of women are consistently orgasmic during vaginal intercourse, and that 75 percent of women require clitoral stimulation to orgasm. Given that penetrative sex lasts 5.4 minutes on average and it takes women roughly 13.4 minutes to orgasm it is safe to say many are not reaching climax.
No matter your gender identity or sexual orientation, there are a number of legitimate factors and reasons why people don’t enjoy or can’t engage in penetration, whether it’s erectile difficulties, health issues, body image issues, performance anxiety, pain, vaginismus, fear of STIs, past trauma, pregnancy, vaginal dryness—the list goes on. For these reasons, penetration becomes a restrictive, harmful and illogical way of regarding such a nuanced subject like sex.
Penetration being the defining sexual act is nothing more than a religious response to reproduction, which, paired with a lack of pleasure-based sex education, then became part of the secular culture. By challenging these norms, sides open our minds to other sexual opportunities and mindsets where we create a larger, more inclusive space to play in. They’ve more or less become trailblazers for outercourse, challenging the way we think of and have sex.
Kort says Grindr adding sides as a sexual position has helped enormously in terms of visibility, but admits fear of judgement among the community still exists. To keep the momentum going, the challenge now is to further normalize it by being vocal, present and having autonomy over our bodies—having sex the way we want and that feels good for us.
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