After receiving dozens of calls from ashamed and upset gay clients, many who used the term “broken” to describe their sexual proclivities, Kort (who also identifies as a side) would talk them off the ledge. “I wanted people to understand that it’s okay if you don’t like anal intercourse,” Kort tells me, adding that when people say “sex,” they usually think of “penile penetration,” especially gay guys. He explained that sides enjoy practically every sexual practice aside from anal penetration and choose to be sexually peripheral, so to speak, rather than on the top or the bottom. In a HuffPo article, Kort presented an alternative to the binary classification employed by most gay men to note their preferred sexual position - i.e., “ top ,” the penetrat or in bed, or “ bottom ,” the penetrat ee - by introducing the term “sides” to indicate one’s affinity for neither - and maybe more importantly, disdain for both. They call themselves “ sides ,” a term coined in 2013 by Joe Kort, a Detroit-based clinical therapist who’s been counseling such men for nearly 30 years. with a handful of gay men who have sworn off anal sex for good. I’m nibbling on a grocery-store cheese plate in a spacious home in East L.A.
