This is a question that seems to come up time and time again, with varying degrees of animosity.

Tops and bottoms say that switches are dilettantes who don't take BDSM seriously; if they did, they'd decide what they wanted to do instead of sitting on the fence.

Switches say that tops and bottoms are boring and have less fun because they are not experiencing one-half of the BDSM spectrum.

So who is right?

Personally, I think they're all wrong.

This page, I'm afraid, is going to have a certain amount of 'once more with feeling' about it. I've been on the receiving end of having a switch - who was, to make it worse, someone I cared about - imply that I was somehow less valid a BDSMer than he was simply because I do not switch. He is one of those who peddle the 'switches have more fun' argument.

My answer to him was that I do not enjoy switching. I have tried it, and it simply makes me angry. So if I were to switch, I would not be experiencing more enjoyment, but less, as I would be spending time on activities that I did not like. And if I did like switching, I would be a different person - I would no longer be me.

Look at it like this.

A day has twenty four hours in it. You can pick 24 activities, and do each of them for an hour. Each activity gets graded for enjoyment on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being complete lack of enjoyment, and 10 being ecstasy.

This gives you a maximum of 240 enjoyment-points in each day.

As long as you can think of 24 activities you enjoy to the level of ecstasy, you can get your 240 points.

Unless we posit that a switch is capable of greater enjoyment of a particular activity than someone who does not switch, then their capacity for enjoyment is the same as anyone else's. They may have more activities that they enjoy, but that's irrelevant - they still only have the same amount of time in which to do them. And besides, the local skydiving club doesn't come around to my house and imply that I have a sad and boring life because I don't enjoy the same things as they do (jump out of a perfectly functional aeroplane half an hour before it's due to land anyway? You've got to be joking). Why should switches imply that I am a lesser human being because I don't like bottoming?

There you are - the non-superiority of switches proved by mathematics. What else did you expect from someone called Hypatia?

So, having established that switches are not to be hailed as the new Master Race, what about the claims of tops and bottoms to the effect that switches are dilettantes who need to decide what they want out of life?

To them, I would put the question, where does it say that it's only OK to enjoy one end of the spectrum? I haven't read it anywhere, and I'll tell you now, I'm a voracious reader. Where is it written, on tablets of stone, THOU SHALT NOT SWITCH? Or is it, perhaps, that some people find it difficult to cope with the concept of BDSMers who don't fit neatly into the traditional two categories?

Or is it - on both sides - that some people have just got to have somebody to look down on?

That's my theory. As BDSMers, we're on the edges of mainstream society - we're a minority group, although unfortunately not one of the fashionable ones (although definitely one of the most interesting to look at), which puts us pretty low down the societal pecking order. And one thing about human beings is the desperate need not to be at the bottom of the pile. So if BDSMers in general are near the bottom of the pecking order, the reaction is to try to prove that you, personally, are not right at the bottom of the pile because, hey, there are people who are even less worthwhile than you! After all, the easiest way to keep your end up is to keep someone else's end down.

So what's the short answer? Who is better?

They are all equal. Comparing tops and bottoms and switches is like comparing apples, oranges and bananas. They're all nice - just different. And in my opinion, anyone who wants to know 'which is better' shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what BDSM actually is.