Top (BDSM)

A top is not necessarily dominant, and vice versa. A service top is a person who applies sensation or control to a bottom, but does not adopt a superior persona, and does so to the bottom's explicit instruction. Likewise, a pure dominant would give orders to a submissive, but not employ any physical or psychological techniques of control.

It should be noted that the top is most often the partner who is following instructions - he or she typically tops when, and in the manner, requested by the bottom.

In order to explore BDSM sex, it is essential for a top to be very responsive to the needs, feelings, and limits of his or her bottom. Otherwise the scene can be ruined, being simply painful rather than erotic.

Note that in BDSM sex, it is commonplace for two partners to switch roles from one encounter to the other, depending on mood and preference. See switch.

The term "dominant" or "dom" is more precise than "top", since the term "top" is also used in vanilla, especially gay, sex to refer to an insertive partner, or as a transitive verb meaning to have insertive sex with. As above, it is very commonplace for partners to change roles from one encounter to the next or to have both insertive and receptive sex.

Tops sometimes identify themselves by wearing a set of keys on the left side of the belt or a color-coded handkerchief in their left rear pocket. This practice, called flagging, began in the gay male subculture but appears to be dying out.

In Japanese bondage and sexually-themed anime and manga (especially yaoi), a top is referred to as seme, a term from kabuki.