While the graph above shows that most MSM have tried both roles at least once, it is still possible that men tend to take only one role within any given relationship. In fact, this is true for 30% of men whose last relationship of at least 6 months in duration was with a man. But a large majority, 70%, played both roles with their partner sometime during the relationship \u2013 that is, they were both top and bottom at some point in that relationship.<\/p>\n Our most striking finding is shown in the next graph: often men are both top and bottom within a single event. In MSM events that involved anal sex, over 25% entailed both partners being top and bottom in that event. Men did both in about 20% of hookups and dates. They were even more likely to have been top and bottom the last time they had sex in their most recent relationship \u2014 41% of the time. Thus, combining the previous graph with this one, we see that 70% of MSM relationships involved the man doing both sometime across the duration of the relationship, and 41% of specific times they had sex with relationship partners involved doing both.<\/p>\n Among MSM\u00a0events involving anal sex, percent in which men <\/strong>both<\/strong><\/em> top and bottom, by type of event<\/strong><\/p>\n Everything we have shown above is limited to events involving anal sex, or men who have had anal sex with men. But how common is anal sex among college MSM? The graph below shows how often it occurred in specific events. Only about a fifth (19%) of events men labeled dates involved anal sex, compared to about a third (34%) of hookups (that difference is statistically significant). So most college MSM hookups and dates don\u2019t involve anal sex at all. They generally involve oral sex (results not shown). But a majority of times when men have sex with a male relationship-partner, they do have anal sex \u2014 in 63% of cases. These findings bear some similarity to what we find for heterosexual students \u2014 that students are more likely to have intercourse in hookups than dates, but most likely to do so in relationships.<\/p>\n Percent of MSM events that involve anal sex, in hookups, dates, and relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0 Methodological details included at Contexts<\/a>, where this post originally appeared.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Eliza Brown is a PhD student at NYU with interests in the sociologies of knowledge, health, and sexuality. Also at NYU, Paula England is\u00a0a professor of sociology, \u00a0the Director of Graduate Studies, and the principal investigator for the Online College Social Life Survey<\/a>.\u00a0If you are a researcher and would like to have the OCSLS data for analysis, contact Dr.\u00a0England<\/a><\/em>\u00a0for information.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Log onto any website where men who have sex with men (MSM) go to meet partners, and a key classification is whether a man is a \u201ctop,\u201d a \u201cbottom,\u201d or \u201cversatile.\u201d These terms to refer to whether, when having anal sex with men, a man prefers to penetrate, to be penetrated, or is open to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,15,387,34,120,54,37],"class_list":["post-68357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-culture","tag-dating","tag-education","tag-sex","tag-sexual-orientation","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/11\/25.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68378,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68357\/revisions\/68378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"3\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/11\/34.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong>In sum, the clear message of our analysis is that being versatile is common among college MSM \u2014 most men have been both tops and bottoms sometime, most relationships involve switching between roles, and a significant minority of single events involve both, especially when the event occurs within a relationship.<\/p>\n