Vers

Short for versatile: a gay man who enjoys both roles in anal sex, sometimes topping and sometimes bottoming.

Vers, short for versatile, describes a gay man who enjoys both roles in anal sex: sometimes he fucks, sometimes he gets fucked. He is neither strictly a top nor strictly a bottom, and on a good night he might be both, with the same guy.

Being vers does not mean being indecisive, and it does not mean a fifty-fifty split. Most vers men lean one way, which is why the apps are full of "vers top" and "vers bottom": the first word says he can go either way, the second says where he usually ends up. And it does not mean he has no preferences on the night. Vers is a range, not a promise.

Where it comes from

"Versatile" in this sense goes back to American gay slang of the sixties. Green's Dictionary of Slang finds it in 1964, in the Lavender Lexicon, a glossary of gay words, for a man who enjoys both the insertive and the receptive role. For a while the same word was also a polite way of saying bisexual, a sense Green's dates to 1966. Today the short form "vers" is the one you meet everywhere, above all on the apps, where every character in a profile counts.

Vers in real life

Research suggests the label covers a lot of ground. In a 2011 study of men who have anal sex with men, David Moskowitz and Trevor Hart found that self-identified tops and bottoms mostly did what their label said, while only about half of the men who called themselves versatile actually switched between roles. A later study by Moskowitz and Roloff found that men settle on their label slowly, over years, and that the direct predictors were whether they enjoy bottoming and how much they value control in sex: the label, they concluded, cannot be reduced to penis size.

In other words, some vers men really do both. Others are bottoms who would like to try topping, tops who will bottom for the right man, or guys who simply do not want to close any doors in their profile. None of that is a problem: it is just useful to know before the clothes come off.

Variants and close relatives

• Vers top and vers bottom: versatile, with a lean.
• Flip-flop: both men take turns in the same session.
• Side: a man who does not do anal at all, neither giving nor receiving.
• Power bottom: not vers at all, but a bottom who runs the show.

Related terms