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In the book Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician: The Essential Guide (WW Norton 2009), it is stated on p. 180 that

Some men go both ways--calling themselves "versatile"--but this is not as common. Being the bottom is seen as inferior to being the top among gay men--to the point that gay porn stars never identify as a bottom, only as versatile.

(Emphasis mine.) Is that last sentence the absolute truth as written there or is it an approximation/exaggeration?


After a bit more searching, it turned out that the first part of the statement is in even more serious doubt, from "The influence of physical body traits and masculinity on anal sex roles in gay and bisexual men" (which has summary for laymen in a Vice article), about half of the sample (N=429) identified as versatile, and approximately one quarter as top and respectively bottom, however the self-identification wasn't always concordant with penetrative behavior:

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Anyway, the question about gay pornstars' projected image remains.

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This is demonstrably untrue. At least one gay porn star identifies as a bottom.

Obviously, NSFW things follow.

Armond Rizzo is a gay porn star of some repute (254k Twitter followers), and the top page or two of results I got for a Google search for ~gay porn star self-identified bottom.

According to an interview with "Gay Demon" (explicit images present on site, in addition to explicit sexual language):

You're quite clearly more bottom. In most scenes you're 100% bottom and I've seen you flip fuck maybe a couple of times. What is the draw for bottoming for you?

Bottoming for me comes so easy. I enjoy it and love it so much and I am 100% committed to taking what ever challenge I get. So it really does not take much for me to bottom. But to top, well I guess those times I was forced to do it, although I didn't mind. I love being pushed to try new things and I love to try to embody a new character. So to flip the switch and be top is pretty exciting too!

[...]

Time to help me out here. I admire that hole of yours so much. It's super stretchy and you can get really wide. How did you prepare your hole for such big dicks like Noah Donovan's?

I honestly do not know how how I do it lol. I guess being and athlete and a true bottom that loves getting fucked. I just control my breathing and relax my hole and be a good bottom that just takes it. Like I always say, "Don't call yourself a power bottom if you're going to bitch and complain about how much it hurts, if you're going to do that than you should've became a top so shut up and take it!" lol

And there's also a video interview (I haven't watched) titled "Armond Rizzo Interview on being Porn's Famous Bottom" that can be viewed on Pornhub (among other places). So, it seems that he identifies as a bottom, and that identification is played up in the industry.

Being a heterosexual man myself, I can't provide any insight on how well-known this particular gay porn star is, or the prevalence of gay porn stars who identify as bottoms, but there is at least one gay porn star who publicly identifies as a bottom, and uses that identification as a (the?) major component in his projected image. So at the very least, that disproves the absolute statement "gay porn stars never identify as a bottom" with a refutation by counter-example.

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    The book making the claim was from 2009, so it could have been true
    – DavePhD
    Feb 6, 2019 at 1:38
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    @DavePhD I suppose it could have been true in 2009, but I doubt it. And even if so, it's not true anymore. If you visit the Wikipedia page for Male Performers in Gay Porn You'll see "best bottom" awards going back into the 90's, at least... not proof, but indicative that being a good "bottom" has been a valued quality well before this book's publication date. If something is valued, there's almost always someone happy to provide it for a price, so it's implausible that no one was willing to fill that niche before 2009. Feb 6, 2019 at 1:51

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