Top/Bottom, Mpregs and Omegaverses are Harmful
In erotic and explicit fanfiction, and in hentai, there are some tropes that are very harmful.
If you've read erotic or explicit fanfiction you've probably met these tropes. If you've read or watched hentai you've probably met at least the top/bottom trope.
I'll explain what each of these tropes mean, and why and how they are harmful.
All of these tropes are about men who have sex with men, i.e. same-sex sexual relationships between men.
But first, let me say one thing: If you like these types of things I won't try to stop you to like them, but I want to make you think about how these tropes can be harmful.
The Top/Bottom Trope
The top/bottom trope, also called seme/uke (especially in hentai) or dom/sub (especially in fiction that's supposed to be about BDSM, but is actually about harmful sex about characters who don't know anything about BDSM), is a trope that says that in every sexual relationship between two men there have to be one person who is the top/seme/dom and one person who is the bottom/uke/sub.
"Dom" is short for "dominant", "sub" is short for "submissive".
"Seme" means "attacker" in Japanese, "uke" means "receiver" in Japanese.
The trope says that in any two-person relationship, no matter the actual sexes or genders of the couple, there has to be "a man" and "a woman". That means that if there are two men one of them must be "the vagina", and it also implies that the only type of sex that counts as sex is if a penis is inside a vagina, or, in the case of two men having sex, inside an anal.
This is heteronormative, homophobic, and sexist.
"Who's the woman in your relationship?", or with the case of two women being a couple, "Who's the man in your relationship?"
People think there has to be a man and a woman in a relationship, which is heteronormative.
The thing with same-sex relationships is exactly that, the partners have the same sex/gender. There's no woman in a relationship with two men, and there's no man in a relationship with two women. To think that there have to be a man and a woman to make it a relationship is homophobic.
Then we have this thing about one being "the woman" in a sexual relationship between two men, and calling "the man" by "top", "seme" or "dom", and calling "the woman" (which, to be clear, is actually a man in this case) by "bottom", "uke" or "sub" is sexist. This implies that in a two-sex relationship, i.e. a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, the man is "the attacker" ("seme") and "the dominant one" ("dom") and that he's always on top, he's the one in control, he's the one who decides, he's the one with the power, and the woman is "the reciever" ("uke") and "the submissive one" ("sub") and that she's always on the bottom, she's always controlled, she's the one who can't choose, she's the one without power.
And also, all this suggest that there have to be one who's penetrating and one who's penetrated. People have the notion that men who have sex with men only have anal-penile sex (penis in anal sex), that they always are doing the same thing when they have sex, that one is always in command and one is just going with what the other person wants to do, and, this is the weirdest part, that they know which one have which role from the first time having sex, without talking about it beforehand. And also, the first time they have sex, which is often just after the first time they kiss, or something like that, because it's a trope, they have anal-penile sex. Do you know how hard it can be to have anal-penile sex? And you should absolutely not have it if you haven't researched it beforehand. You have to know about how the anal muscles work. You have to know that you have to use condom and lube. You can't just go. The person being penetrated will, in the worst case, get anal incontinence. The first (and only) time I watched Brokeback Mountain I said, in the end of the movie, that it's no wonder they always seems like they need to poop (they are very stiff and macho all the time), since the first time they even touched each other they had anal-penile sex without any preparation or lube. My head almost exploded from how irritated I got over how they had anal-penile sex (I'm a sex ed teacher). You can't just force a penis, or any other thing, into an anal, you'll destroy your anal muscles and you'll get wounds. The anal has no lubrication, it's not like a vagina, it's much more sensitive, you have to use lube!!!
And all this, the top/bottom thing, is a trope. It comes up again and again in fanfiction, hentai, and other fictional media. It is harmful in so many ways.
I could rant about this all day. It makes me angry. So instead, let's go to the next trope.
The Mpreg Trope
"Mpreg" is short for "male pregnancy", and it doesn't have anything to do with trans men. It has to do with cis men who can get pregnant in one way or another, either via anal-penile sex, or via vaginal-penile sex where one of the men have both a penis and a vagina. So, to be more clear, one man has a penis, and the other man has a penis and a vagina, and the first man puts his penis in the other man's vagina.
Can you see where this is heading?
This trope has all the harmful elements as the top/bottom trope has.
It's heteronormative, because it suggest that there have to be a man and a woman in a relationship, or to be more precise in this situation, a penis who is to be inserted into a vagina.
It's homophobic, because it suggests that it's not a real relationship if... Well, I already said this in the paragraph above.
It's sexist, because the top/bottom trope is a part of this trope.
The reason for this trope is that people think it's cute that men can have children with each other, or, to be more precise, that men can have a "love-child", i.e. a child which was conceived by a sexual act, with each other.
People in general don't like the idea of adopting children, because the children aren't their biological children. This is stupid. Adopted children are as much the adopting parents' children, as biological children are their biological parents' children. The only difference is that adopted children have more than two parents, and they may never meet their biological parents ever again after being adopted.
The Omegaverse Trope
An omegaverse is a universe with at least three biological sexes. There are alphas, betas and omegas, and there may be variations of these.
Maybe you think it's refreshing with a universe with three sexes instead of two. But hear me out; the omegaverse trope is a harmful trope.
In an omegaverse there is a hierarchy, with alphas being on the top and omegas being on the bottom. The gender norms are very rigid. In omegaverses with six sexes there are male alphas, female alphas, male betas, and so on, and in these omegaverses it's often male alphas on the top, and female or male omegas on the bottom.
Since omegas are on the bottom they often disguise themselves as alphas or betas.
Male omegas often have a penis and a vagina, or they have a penis and a womb inside the anus. Female omegas are often just as cis-gender females in our universe, i.e. women with vaginas. Male alphas are as cis-gendered men in our universe. Female alphas often have a vagina, in which there is a clitoris which can grow to be a penis when they get aroused. These are just generalisations; there are other types of omegaverses as well.
So, what are the problems?
First of all, it's sexist. Second, it has a lot of the elements of the top/bottom trope, and it has especially the elements of the mpreg trope, and you already know that those tropes are harmful.
And the thing is that this trope is used quite often in fanfiction, i.e. it's used with characters which in their canon universe are male or female (or something else, but that's rare and still often not the same as in the omegaverse). The fictional characters are changed to fit into these rigid omegaverse norms. Their personalities are changed, to fit the norms. They are not the same characters anymore. It would be one thing if a person writes the completely own story, with their own characters, and put them in an omegaverse. But to put already existing characters in an omegaverse is problematic, since you have to change the characters to fit such rigid norms, which have heteronormative elements in them.
If you like these tropes, go on and like them, I'm not trying to make you dislike them. But please, take a moment and think about the harmful elements of the tropes.
If you've read erotic or explicit fanfiction you've probably met these tropes. If you've read or watched hentai you've probably met at least the top/bottom trope.
I'll explain what each of these tropes mean, and why and how they are harmful.
All of these tropes are about men who have sex with men, i.e. same-sex sexual relationships between men.
But first, let me say one thing: If you like these types of things I won't try to stop you to like them, but I want to make you think about how these tropes can be harmful.
The Top/Bottom Trope
The top/bottom trope, also called seme/uke (especially in hentai) or dom/sub (especially in fiction that's supposed to be about BDSM, but is actually about harmful sex about characters who don't know anything about BDSM), is a trope that says that in every sexual relationship between two men there have to be one person who is the top/seme/dom and one person who is the bottom/uke/sub.
"Dom" is short for "dominant", "sub" is short for "submissive".
"Seme" means "attacker" in Japanese, "uke" means "receiver" in Japanese.
The trope says that in any two-person relationship, no matter the actual sexes or genders of the couple, there has to be "a man" and "a woman". That means that if there are two men one of them must be "the vagina", and it also implies that the only type of sex that counts as sex is if a penis is inside a vagina, or, in the case of two men having sex, inside an anal.
This is heteronormative, homophobic, and sexist.
"Who's the woman in your relationship?", or with the case of two women being a couple, "Who's the man in your relationship?"
People think there has to be a man and a woman in a relationship, which is heteronormative.
The thing with same-sex relationships is exactly that, the partners have the same sex/gender. There's no woman in a relationship with two men, and there's no man in a relationship with two women. To think that there have to be a man and a woman to make it a relationship is homophobic.
Then we have this thing about one being "the woman" in a sexual relationship between two men, and calling "the man" by "top", "seme" or "dom", and calling "the woman" (which, to be clear, is actually a man in this case) by "bottom", "uke" or "sub" is sexist. This implies that in a two-sex relationship, i.e. a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, the man is "the attacker" ("seme") and "the dominant one" ("dom") and that he's always on top, he's the one in control, he's the one who decides, he's the one with the power, and the woman is "the reciever" ("uke") and "the submissive one" ("sub") and that she's always on the bottom, she's always controlled, she's the one who can't choose, she's the one without power.
And also, all this suggest that there have to be one who's penetrating and one who's penetrated. People have the notion that men who have sex with men only have anal-penile sex (penis in anal sex), that they always are doing the same thing when they have sex, that one is always in command and one is just going with what the other person wants to do, and, this is the weirdest part, that they know which one have which role from the first time having sex, without talking about it beforehand. And also, the first time they have sex, which is often just after the first time they kiss, or something like that, because it's a trope, they have anal-penile sex. Do you know how hard it can be to have anal-penile sex? And you should absolutely not have it if you haven't researched it beforehand. You have to know about how the anal muscles work. You have to know that you have to use condom and lube. You can't just go. The person being penetrated will, in the worst case, get anal incontinence. The first (and only) time I watched Brokeback Mountain I said, in the end of the movie, that it's no wonder they always seems like they need to poop (they are very stiff and macho all the time), since the first time they even touched each other they had anal-penile sex without any preparation or lube. My head almost exploded from how irritated I got over how they had anal-penile sex (I'm a sex ed teacher). You can't just force a penis, or any other thing, into an anal, you'll destroy your anal muscles and you'll get wounds. The anal has no lubrication, it's not like a vagina, it's much more sensitive, you have to use lube!!!
And all this, the top/bottom thing, is a trope. It comes up again and again in fanfiction, hentai, and other fictional media. It is harmful in so many ways.
I could rant about this all day. It makes me angry. So instead, let's go to the next trope.
The Mpreg Trope
"Mpreg" is short for "male pregnancy", and it doesn't have anything to do with trans men. It has to do with cis men who can get pregnant in one way or another, either via anal-penile sex, or via vaginal-penile sex where one of the men have both a penis and a vagina. So, to be more clear, one man has a penis, and the other man has a penis and a vagina, and the first man puts his penis in the other man's vagina.
Can you see where this is heading?
This trope has all the harmful elements as the top/bottom trope has.
It's heteronormative, because it suggest that there have to be a man and a woman in a relationship, or to be more precise in this situation, a penis who is to be inserted into a vagina.
It's homophobic, because it suggests that it's not a real relationship if... Well, I already said this in the paragraph above.
It's sexist, because the top/bottom trope is a part of this trope.
The reason for this trope is that people think it's cute that men can have children with each other, or, to be more precise, that men can have a "love-child", i.e. a child which was conceived by a sexual act, with each other.
People in general don't like the idea of adopting children, because the children aren't their biological children. This is stupid. Adopted children are as much the adopting parents' children, as biological children are their biological parents' children. The only difference is that adopted children have more than two parents, and they may never meet their biological parents ever again after being adopted.
The Omegaverse Trope
An omegaverse is a universe with at least three biological sexes. There are alphas, betas and omegas, and there may be variations of these.
Maybe you think it's refreshing with a universe with three sexes instead of two. But hear me out; the omegaverse trope is a harmful trope.
In an omegaverse there is a hierarchy, with alphas being on the top and omegas being on the bottom. The gender norms are very rigid. In omegaverses with six sexes there are male alphas, female alphas, male betas, and so on, and in these omegaverses it's often male alphas on the top, and female or male omegas on the bottom.
Since omegas are on the bottom they often disguise themselves as alphas or betas.
Male omegas often have a penis and a vagina, or they have a penis and a womb inside the anus. Female omegas are often just as cis-gender females in our universe, i.e. women with vaginas. Male alphas are as cis-gendered men in our universe. Female alphas often have a vagina, in which there is a clitoris which can grow to be a penis when they get aroused. These are just generalisations; there are other types of omegaverses as well.
So, what are the problems?
First of all, it's sexist. Second, it has a lot of the elements of the top/bottom trope, and it has especially the elements of the mpreg trope, and you already know that those tropes are harmful.
And the thing is that this trope is used quite often in fanfiction, i.e. it's used with characters which in their canon universe are male or female (or something else, but that's rare and still often not the same as in the omegaverse). The fictional characters are changed to fit into these rigid omegaverse norms. Their personalities are changed, to fit the norms. They are not the same characters anymore. It would be one thing if a person writes the completely own story, with their own characters, and put them in an omegaverse. But to put already existing characters in an omegaverse is problematic, since you have to change the characters to fit such rigid norms, which have heteronormative elements in them.
If you like these tropes, go on and like them, I'm not trying to make you dislike them. But please, take a moment and think about the harmful elements of the tropes.
