Grindr adds a new sexual preference beyond the top, the bottom and the ver

Grindr, the world’s largest dating app for gay men, has now added the option to be “side” next to top, bottom or versatile.

For queer people who enjoy sex but, for various reasons, don’t enjoy anal sex, there is a fourth option: the side. Reasons can range from preference to anal sex being too physically painful to be an option.

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The term was popularized by the American psychotherapist Joe Kort, clinical director and founder of the Center for Relationships and Sexual Health in Royal Oak (Michigan).

In a 2013 HuffPost, he popularized the label as a way to counter the idea that anal sex is the default way for men to connect sexually.

For Kort, adding the side as an option on dating app websites and smartphone apps is a “breakthrough” for the side community, which has long felt “invisible” and “misunderstood.”

Starting this week, the almost four million daily users of the application can include their position as a side.

Last week, Kort shared a screenshot of an email from Grindr administrators confirming that the dating app was preparing to add “side” to a list of options in Grindr bios.

“We wanted to let you know of some of the good news!” a representative emailed.

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Men like a lot of things, Kort said. Kisses, hugs, rimming, oral sex and much more, but not penetrative anal sex. Anal sex is not the best of sex between men.

Some sides out of necessity, he added. Men who have had prostate surgery and have had nerve damage to the penis, or other problems, such as hemorrhoids, can make anal sex uncomfortable or even impossible.

From the ancient Greeks to the followers of Charli XCX, the queer world has long been marked by the concepts of “topping” and “bottoming,” says Kort. But historians and scholars stress that these polarizing identities can come with baggage.

For example, being “bottom” has been tied for centuries to the misogynistic idea that to be penetrated is to be weak. This idea is so ingrained that a study revealed that gay men judge whether someone is a top or a bottom based on their masculine appearance.

Kort said that men who receive anal sex often struggle with feelings of shame because of it — the sides do, too. Not being a top, bottom, or all-around can make some sides feel like they’re not “authentic” or having “real” sex.

“A lot of tops and bottoms call the sides boring, virgins, trauma survivors, ‘you haven’t met the right guy’, give me 10 minutes inside you and you’ll talk another way, etc,” he said, adding that some sides are feel “pressured” into having anal sex.

Loneliness, he added, can be a major problem for sides: “Like you’ll never find a partner because it seems, to them, that the whole world is into anal sex,” Kort said.

But the fact that Grindr is adding side as an option in the company with typical tops and bottoms could change this: “It’s giving sides a sense of belonging as if they don’t have to feel excluded from the gay male community sexually,” he said. Kort.