wanted to get something out that's been rattling around in my brain for a while: why exactly top/bottom shit becoming such a meme has been so offputting to me and I think i finally nailed it down!

it becoming a meme kinda glosses over what it is-- (THREAD)

an explicit sexual term.

and there's nothing WRONG with joking about that kind of thing! but it should be treated the same way as *other explicit sexual terms*

the memeification of it not only allows people's boundaries to be stepped over on accident--

y'know, for example, you might make a joke about it without thinking, "is this other person okay with these Explicit Sexual Terms" ...

but it's also an Active thing that predators use. If we've memeified, say "Bottom energy" into a handful of not explicitly sexual things--

keysmashing... can't drive... pastel uwu aesthetic... predators can more easily use that to ease their victims INTO the explicit sexual context of the term. that one thread about "how predators talk"... that was one of the foremost examples used.

and that's not even getting into cishet people hopping on the bandwagon... and how when it's a straight person saying it... how's it any better than "which one of you is the girl?" ... Not Great.

and OBVIOUSLY i'm not saying no one's allowed to make those jokes--

or if you make them that you're BAD and Part of the problems i outlined. I think it's something we should be conscientious of, is all. navigating consent in online spaces doesn't HAVE to be made worse by the kind of rhetoric we normalize.

and the overarching point is this being a meme makes it really EASY to misstep even if you didn't mean to!