The Cheetah and the Gazelle

TNG is taking a much needed break from Dec 19-Jan 4. TNG will return with new content on Jan 5. Until then, please enjoy this post from the past year. Original publish date: 4/10/08.

We all know about the different "tones" that color an individual's sexual identity: top/vers/bottom, dom/sub, aggressive/passive, butch/masc/femme. The cool part is that we queers can (and have to!) throw away the heteronormative package (or "chord") of tones that is proscribed to our gender and instead mix-and-match between the tones that best describe us as sexually liberated beings. Imagine if you will the butch passive top lesbian, or the femme dominant bottom boy

However, these tones describe personality characteristics or preferred sexual acts. What I'm most interested in here is the courtship. I've come to realize that there are two primary tones that can be applied to all courtship. I refer to them as the cheetah and the gazelle.

The cheetah is a hunter. Fast, strong, powerful, dominant: she sets her sights on a target and hurls herself at it until it's in her grasp, using every ounce of energy she can muster. Out there in the straight dating world, men are usually the cheetahs.

The gazelle is the prey. Fast and strong also, but more passive. Gazelles put themselves out there, making their presence known, hoping to be chased. In the straight scene, the women are usually gazelles.

I have historically been a gazelle. Perhaps it was my domineering older brother or my lack of agility on the ball field and subsequent locker room teasing that knocked down my sexual self esteem. Or perhaps I was just made that way. Regardless, when I went out, if I was looking for dick I was looking for someone to come and give it to me. It never even crossed my mind to go out and actively seek it. Classic gazelle. I was such a gazelle that I didn't even realize that these tones existed. I thought we were just a bunch of horny yet relatively passive people who went out to bars and bumped into each other randomly until someone's dick slipped into someone else's ass. I was such a gazelle that even the cheetahs didn't want me. I wasn't any fun to chase.

My boyfriend, he's a cheetah. He's always been the pursuer. So much so that he never realized that gazelles existed. He assumed that guys just went out there pursuing one another until two of them pursued one's dick into the other's ass. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Of course now that I've realized this, I want to be a cheetah. I want to feel the excitement of the chase. I want to set my sights on a gazelle and take him down. Of course, being in a committed long-term relationship limits how much pursuing I can do. But I still want to know what it's like. The crazy thing is that my boyfriend wants me to feel like a cheetah, too. He thinks it's hot.

There's no judgment here. Without gazelles, cheetahs would grow bored and hungry. Without cheetahs, gazelles would rarely get laid. We need each other, just like tops need bottoms and doms need subs. But just because you find yourself colored by one of these tones doesn't mean you can't play outside your comfort zone every once in a while, and experience the hunt from the other perspective.