From roles to repertoires: positional identity and self-understanding among gay and bisexual men

Gay and bisexual men describe their sexual positioning through an expanding vocabulary: 'top' and 'bottom' now sit alongside 'versatile', the hybrid categories 'vers-top' and 'vers-bottom', and 'side'. Whether this reflects changed sexual behaviour, changed labelling, or changed meanings attached to the labels themselves is unresolved. This paper asks why a shift towards positional flexibility would be theoretically expected. Drawing on sexual script theory, gender performativity and queer theory, it distinguishes positional roles that are fixed and identity-constitutive, from positional repertoires that are more flexible and context-dependent, and argues that the destabilisation of binary gender norms has made repertoire orientations more culturally legible without necessarily changing what men do. This distinction is analytic rather than historical, since any positional category can be inhabited either way. This paper sets out a series of hypotheses through which the argument might be tested.