Chappell Roan’s long-awaited single “The Giver” dropped last week, but it’s been playing in my home for months thanks to my girlfriend, who has been walking around singing it on a loop ever since Chappell’s Saturday Night Live appearance last November. And who can blame her? It’s not every day that a country song about lesbian sex gets released, and it feels especially special when coupled with a rise of sapphic line-dance parties like Stud Country and Buckwild, and artists like Chappell herself are topping the charts. But “The Giver” didn’t just get stuck in people’s heads; it ignited this quarter’s full-on lesbian discourse firestorm on TikTok. The song — and its promotional rollout — sparked a discussion on sexual identities within the lesbian community, with some claiming ownership of the lyrics to “The Giver” based on who should be singing them.

Lesbians, it seems, were quick to crown “The Giver” as a stone top anthem. Now, I’m not sure what led to this conclusion, since there’s specific criteria that needs to be met to call someone a stone top: the refusal or rejection of receiving. The song itself doesn’t exactly scream “touch-me-not.” Chappell sings about giving, sure — but nowhere in the lyrics does she suggest giving is her one and only jam or that she never wants to receive. No, “The Giver” is a song about a service top (or maybe even a service switch) who loves to give, and I’d argue it could just as easily be about anyone who enjoys the act of giving, regardless of how they identify. It’s about loving the game. It’s about being a giver, plain and simple.

If a stone top likes the song and it resonates with them, I think that’s beautiful. But to call Chappell a stone top and the song a stone top anthem? A reach! I try to avoid these online conversations like the plague. Unfortunately, my algorithm — much like a lesbian ex — keeps bringing them back into my feed. This is what I get for working in queer media. Hold space for me.

Now, my disdain for lesbian online discourse is rivaled only by my absolute loathing for poor media literacy. So, imagine my surprise when I see lesbians arguing about whether Pillow Princesses can even participate in a TikTok lip-sync trend for “The Giver.” And then, as if that wasn’t absurd enough, they began debating whether straight women can call themselves Pillow Princesses. Pretty soon, it became a full blown “see something, say something” of clocking bottoms based on appearances in a thirty second video. So now we’re equating femininity with bottoming and masculinity with topping. Great work, everyone!

The thing is, you can be a bottom 90% of the time and still love topping that 10%. And I know this for a fact because, a) I am a sexually active queer adult who’s well aware of life’s nuanced experiences, and b) I’m living proof of this. Sure, I top 90% of the time, but you bet your ass that if I had pipes and a pen like Chappell, I’d write a song about how much I love bottoming for a femme. Does that make me a Pillow Princess? Hardly.

Also, can we talk about how seriously people are taking carabiner signaling now? I know there’s cultural significance there but I’m genuinely asking — who has time for this? There are actual lesbians out there on TikTok policing whether someone’s carabiner is on the left or the right, and frankly, I’m confused. Do we not have more important things to do? News to catch up on? Families to raise? Rooms to clean? It’s a country pop song by a mega-famous, thin, white cis woman — stop making it your political cause of the week. Use all that energy to go top someone fuck’s sake!

I don’t mean to sound like a brat, but I think we could all benefit from a little more thoughtfulness when it comes to how we engage with media, especially queer media. A lot of Chappell’s fanbase has slapped the label of “stone top” on her without even a hint of subtext in the song’s chorus to back it up. It’s a mistake to take the sensuality that queer artists offer us in their art and twist it into something more or something different than it is. That’s a quick way to get them to stop giving us sensuality altogether.

But that’s not really what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to tell you the tale of how I realized I was not a stone top and how I learned to love to receive. Before I do, one last quick discourse-related note that I swear is relevant here…you can top with long nails! My girlfriend wears long nails permanently and I have never, not once, felt them inside of me.

Here’s how I learned to love to receive.

I stopped operating in the binary

When I first came out as a lesbian, I was around 21 years old and very femme-presenting. I naturally gravitated towards masculine presenting lesbians on dating apps and at bars when I was first exploring. At no fault of the masc lesbian community at large, I had a few unfavorable experiences with some mascs who made me absolutely hate bottoming. But ultimately, this helped me realize I had some more exploring to do about my own identity (i.e. I was not a femme nor a bottom). Once I did some more digging and realized I was nonbinary, I allowed myself to shed the expectations of certain presentations and how they’d show up in the bedroom.

I healed from previous sexual traumas

A big reason I didn’t enjoy bottoming was because of sexual trauma in my past. It was easier for me to identify as a stone top than it was to work through what I needed to and allow myself to be touched in that way again. I wouldn’t dare say I’m all the way healed, but by going to therapy, having open conversations, and relearning pleasure, I was able to dissociate bottoming/receiving penetration from trauma.

I set my ego aside

While identifying as a stone top, I got a bit addicted to the pleasure that I was able to make other people feel. I took great pride in being able to make sexual partners feel good, and that was more than enough for me to also be satisfied. But then this grew into hubris and I began to assume no one could ever take care of me the way I would want them to, so why let them try? I would insist to partners that I was fine and didn’t need anything and would slowly but surely put myself in a position where I actually wasn’t satisfied just from topping but had already set such a standard for myself. It was either set my ego aside and admit I needed something or continue to go (partially) unsatisfied. I took the road less traveled.

I learned to articulate what I wanted

Now, my stubborn assertion that no one could satisfy me was not completely unfounded. I have had many experiences where I truly did not enjoy the way I was being topped, but I would feel too bad to correct someone or request something different. I think this one truly just came with getting older and realizing life’s too short to be having mediocre sex. ALSO I realized that not everyone is a sensitive little baby like I am. More often than not, people want to be doing a good job, even if that means taking a note. This one was really paired with overcoming my overall tendency to stay silent in order to people-please.

I explored more with myself

A lot of what I’ve spoken about so far is about my experience with other people, but I think a lot of sexual intimacy and preference begins with ourselves. I started to experiment with myself to see how different toys, styles, positions, etc. felt in a controlled and trusted environment. I was then able to take what I learned with myself and introduce that to partners.

I reframed my language and thinking around receiving

This one is pretty specific to me being trans, but I hope cis folks can relate to it. I think subconsciously, I didn’t love the language around “getting fingered” or “eaten out” because they felt assigned to women. So when I started identifying as non-binary and trans, there was a bit of dysphoria happening when that language was used, and therefore, when the actions took place. But then I just started referring to it as “getting head” which felt a lot more neutral and comfortable to me. My partner does a really great job of using neutral language and instead of saying “I want to finger you,” she’ll say “I want to feel you” or “can I feel you?” She does the same for oral, too, where it’s “I want to taste you” instead of “I want to eat you out.”

None of this is to say I think all stone tops are just waiting to be convinced otherwise or need to work on themselves, because I do know there are true stone tops out there. I just wasn’t one of them. Sexual preferences and identities come in all shapes and sizes, they fluctuate by the day or by the partner, and they just shouldn’t be the topic of in-fighting.

I hope that we can all enjoy “The Giver” and any subsequent, similar song without turning into cops about it because a country song about lesbian sex is a giant step forward, but fighting about who can sing it on TikTok is two embarrassing steps backward.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!