![the different types of gay men the different types of gay men](https://static.stacker.com/s3fs-public/styles/slide_desktop/s3/35andrewscott060W.png)
Though fascinating, this study (like any study) has its limitations, including the fact that the sample wasn't representative (among other things, the vast majority of participants were white). The data were consistent with the idea that bottom/versatile guys are more gender non-conforming than tops because they're less likely to be right-handed. In other words, although tops and bottoms both have the same sexual orientation, they may arrive at that orientation via very different biological pathways.įurther, the results also suggested that this difference in handedness between tops and bottoms partially explains why they differed in gender non-conformity. This suggests that gay men's anal sex role preferences are rooted, to some degree, in their biology. This is where things get really interesting: Gay men with a bottom/versatile preference were less likely to be right-handed than tops-but tops and straight men did not differ when it came to which hand was dominant. Tops were still more gender non-conforming on average than straight men, though. The findings were also consistent with earlier research reporting personality differences between tops and bottoms in that bottom/versatile men were more gender non-conforming than tops. The results replicated previous studies in that gay men demonstrated more non-right handedness and reported higher levels of childhood gender non-conformity than straight men. The bottom and versatile men were grouped together for analyses because it turned out they were extremely similar to one another in handedness and gender non-conformity.
![the different types of gay men the different types of gay men](https://static.stacker.com/s3fs-public/2022-04/jim-parsons.jpg)
Overall, 43 percent of these gay men said they preferred bottoming, 31 percent reported being versatile, and 26 percent preferred topping. As such, scientists have concluded that whatever it is that's affecting handedness is also affecting sexual orientation. This has been taken as evidence in favor of a biological basis for homosexuality, given that handedness is something that is determined in the womb by biological factors. Study after study has found that homosexuality-as well as gender non-conformity-are linked to being non-right handed. What the researchers leading this study wanted to look at was how preferred anal sex role and gender non-conformity are linked to one specific biological factor previously shown to be associated with elevated rates of homosexuality in general: being non-right handed. The point here is simply that there's a correlation between preferred sexual role and gender non-conformity. This is by no means a universal difference-there are certainly feminine tops and masculine bottoms in the world. Preferred anal sex role has been linked to gay men's degree of gender non-conformity: research has found that tops tend to score higher in masculine personality traits, whereas bottoms tend to score higher in feminine personality traits. Whereas most research in this area has treated gay men as a homogeneous group, the researchers leading this study instead looked at subgroups of gay men who differed based on their preferred anal sex role: "tops" (the insertive partner), "bottoms" (the receptive partner), and "versatile" (those who are open to switching roles). This study focused specifically on exploring the potential origins of male homosexuality, but did so in a way that was very different from almost all previous studies on this topic. A fascinating new study supporting this idea was recently published in the journal PLoS ONE.