Power Bottom

In gay male sexual culture, a power bottom is a receptive partner who takes an active and often dominant role in guiding the encounter, cutting against the stereotype that being a bottom means being passive. The term keeps the receptive position while flipping the assumed script of top over bottom, foregrounding the bottom's desire, control, and agency. Sex educators describe it as staying assertive and in charge of one's own pleasure while still receiving. Beyond the bedroom, "power bottom" has also become a camp and humorous shorthand in wider queer culture for someone whose seemingly submissive role comes packaged with a commanding personality. It is a role and attitude, not a fixed identity.