Bottoming, literally and figuratively

March 25, 2026

(well, yes, deeply about sex between men, considered analytically but described in the most direct street language, so entirely inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest)

Today’s topic combines the interests of my two previous postings

— on 3/24, “Luke Adams and the power bottoms of the pre-pandemic days”

— on 3/25, “The power of the normative gender binary”

and introduces as a side theme one of the overarching ideas of my work in both gender & sexuality studies and linguistics, that of pervasive variety / variability.

— as slogans: There are a great many homosexualities | There are a great many masculinities

Along the way, we’ll engage with four great bottoms from gay porn: Tannor Reed, Johnny Rapid, Kevin Wiles, and Trent Atkins.

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Posted in Effeminacy, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Masculinity, Variation | Leave a Comment »

The power of the normative gender binary

March 25, 2026

From my 3/19/26 posting “Annals of derogation: homo”:

fairy-boy was the primary verbal abuse directed (inexplicably) at me in childhood, along with (equally inexplicable) accusations that I wanted to be a girl

The abuse was inexplicable to me when I was a kid, but though I was a canny child, there were ways of the world I did not yet appreciate, and among them was the power of the normative gender binary — whatever deviates from normative masculinity is necessarily feminine (and therefore unacceptable in a male person). Some material from this blog on the subject …

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Masculinity | Leave a Comment »

Luke Adams and the power bottoms of the pre-pandemic days

March 24, 2026

(about gay porn performers, their bodies, their presentations of themselves, and their role preferences in sex with other men, all discussed in street language — so, way too raunchy for kids or the sexually modest)

A TitanMen gay porn sale mailer from 3/23 features Luke Adams, the smiling, athletic gay porn performer and great power bottom of the time — he made porn from 2014-22 — just before the coronavirus raged (in 2020-23):


(#1) Jesse Jackman and Luke Adams (genitals fuzzed out for WordPress modesty) in Beef (originally released 1/11/18)

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Posted in Facial expression, Gay porn, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Masculinity | Leave a Comment »

Adventures in reading

March 24, 2026

Two reports on abilities and disabilities in reading. One from my own experience in reading Finnish (a language I don’t speak, though I have a fair amount of linguist’s knowledge about the language, its structure, and its writing system). The other from our overlord Grabpussy’s approach to reading English (his native language, indeed the only language he can speak). I’ll suggest that the two of us are more alike in our abilities and disabilities than you might have thought.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Language and politics, Language and thought, Morality, Reading | Leave a Comment »

The illegal trade in baby seals

March 24, 2026

Coming by me yesterday (3/23) on public radio, a feature on, as I heard it, the illegal trade in baby seals. (referring, apparently, to the seal hunt on Canada’s east coast, in which thousands of harp seal pups are clubbed to death for their fur) But the story was actually about baby eels (elvers). Mishearing strikes again.

Meanwhile, the actual story was alarming, but not as distressing as what I heard, since baby eels are astronomically less cute than baby seals.

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Posted in Errors, Language and animals, Language and food, Misreadings | 2 Comments »

On the sex toy watch

March 22, 2026

(a posting that clearly will not to be to everyone’s taste)

From the Titan Men Store (an adjunct to the gay porn studio), among a huge variety of silicone sex toys currently on sale, this cute little item:

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Posted in Homosexuality, Phallicity, Play, Toys | 1 Comment »

It’s raining men

March 21, 2026

Aric Olnes on Facebook on 3/15:

I just saw Martha Wash opening for Boy George & Culture Club in Sacramento on Friday night [3/13] and she closed her set with the entire Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus behind her singing “It’s Raining Men.“

The whole concert was a treat.

Boy George & Culture Club were amazing. They did all their big hits plus cover songs by Wham!, Rolling Stones, T-Rex, David Bowie and Prince.

Monumental queerness, and you want to, need to, get up and dance. I’ll get to almost all of this, starting (as AO does) with Martha Wash and “It’s Raining Men”

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Posted in Homosexuality, Music | 1 Comment »

Coconut X revisited

March 20, 2026

Briefly noted. From my 8/9/23 posting “The states of matter: coconut X”:

I discovered the melting point of coconut X several summers ago. My air-conditioning aims to cool things to 80 F, so when it gets hot outside, inside my condo the spreadable coconut fat ([a semi-solid cream] used for daily treatment of my feet, legs, hands, and arms) melts (at around 77 F) to to a free-flowing liquid that’s very hard to cope with.

So this morning I put the jar in the refrigerator (where it’s probably between 35 and 40 F) — and discovered another state of the substance, a very firm solid that is also almost impossible to deal with; I have to chip away chunks of the stuff with a pointed implement, chunks that alas, do not spread (though I can get small amounts of the liquid state by using the (roughly 97 F) body heat in my hands to melt a chunk).

That was on an early August day, in the dog days of summer. Today is March 20th, the first day of spring — the vernal equinox — here in the northern hemisphere. But also another day of record-breaking heat in the southern SF bay, set to soar once again to over 90F. When I went to oil my legs and feet at 6:30 am, it had already melted to a messy liquid. (I got up at 3:30 am to enjoy the cool and quiet of the night, and did in fact finish a posting then. After which I turned into a reptile stunned by the heat.) Tomorrow the temperature will drop by 20 degrees, and I’ll be able to walk in the neighborhood again. May it be so.

Posted in Chemistry, My life, Weather | 2 Comments »

A moment with my mates Baz and Hazza

March 20, 2026

As a Z-person, I was immediately pulled into Bert Vaux’s query to his “British and Antipodean friends” on Facebook this morning: Bert is collecting examples of -Z(ZA) nicknames (what I’ll call znicknames), like Baz for Barry and Hazza for Harry. The -Z(ZA) (phonetically -z / -zǝ) replaces an intervocalic r following what is, in the varieties in question, an accented short / lax / open vowel: ɪ ɛ æ a ʌ ɔ.  Some more conversions of model names to znicknames from Bert’s collection:

Carrie, Carol → Caz
Darren, Darryl → Daz, Dazza
Jerry, Jeremy → Jez, Jezza
Karen → Kazza
Larry → Laz, Lazza
Mary → Maz, Mazza

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Posted in Dialects, Language play, Names, Playful morphology | 1 Comment »

Annals of derogation: homo

March 19, 2026

An example on the hoof, complete with the libelous myth of gay recruitment:

“These homos are interested in recruiting new members,” Rev. Benjamin Bubar, leader of the fundamentalist Christian Civic League of Maine, told the Bangor Daily News. (“Remembering the Maine Gay Symposium”, link here)

with homo, an abbreviation of the medical-technical term homosexual, the short form derogating gay men — along with such terms as fairy, pansy, fruit, BrE poof(ter), and before some of us homos engaged in reclaiming it, fag(got). I’m comfortable, even proud and defiant, with faggot, but because fairy-boy was the primary verbal abuse directed (inexplicably) at me in childhood, along with (equally inexplicable) accusations that I wanted to be a girl, I’ll never get on good terms with fairy.

Your mileage probably varies. Most people recognize fairy — and homo — as usually intended to be insulting, but open for ironic and playful uses, even full reclamation, as in the Radical Faery movement (for queer liberation, community, and ecological awareness). So, on the homo front, we get a queer-studies colleague of mine, parting from a lunch together with the announcement that he had to get his homo ass back to work. How queer is that?

More to come in this vein.

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Posted in Abbreviation, Clothing, Etymology, Formulaic language, Homosexuality, Insults, Language play, Lexicography, Movies and tv, Proverbs, Puns | 3 Comments »

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