Amok With A MOC

January 1, 2007

From knowing an admittedly handful number of Indian gay men who are married to women or are seriously contemplating such a marriage of convenience (MOC), I have observed that the overwhelming majority are either tops or versatiles who prefer topness.

That tempts me to make a sweeping generalization: Indian gay men who marry women are almost exclusively tops rather than bottoms. Bottoms may well contemplate at length about getting into an MOC, but I think few, if any actually end up achieving that objective. On the other hand, a top probably has the confidence that he can pull it off (or more precisely, push it in) successfully!

There are numerous caveats: my sample size is small, so what’s true of the sample isn’t necessarily true in general, and the sampling is limited to Indian gay men. Besides, many people refuse to think of themselves and others as top or bottom or versatile, etc. And even if the top-MOC link is shown to be valid, there must be hundreds of thousands of gay bottoms in a country like India who are forced by circumstances into marrying women. Rules in sociology often harbor exceptions that are numerous enough to call into question the very validity of the rule.

When a gay Indian top marries a woman, I doubt if he sees his own ‘topness’ as a cause for the marriage. Instead he wants to marry so that he can fit better into mainstream society, advance in his career, build a family, save himself from loneliness and keep away from the challenge of forming gay relationships. But being tops, they might reckon that they can do the sexual thing with their wives just often enough to have kids and keep the wife satisfied.

Bottoms, on the other hand (or other foot if you prefer) probably have little confidence in being able to do the sexual thing even once – let alone multiple times – with any woman. So they may think and think and proclaim their intentions of getting into a MOC, but they ultimately don’t. If a gay bottom is also submissive (as many are), then being dominated by a woman or trying to dominate a woman would be last on the list of his fantasies! A gay top would prefer to dominate another gay man, but if dominating a woman is going to reap him dividends, he probably figures he can do it without too much of a hassle.

Of course, all the above might be completely wrong and utterly nonsensical! But having thought of this top-MOC link, I figured I’d post it here and see what your thoughts are. Happy New Year to you, and Bottoms Up!