Shane is a sub bottom to me because it's his canonical preference, but also because - as a queer person whose attempts at heteronormativity resulted in me having Extremely Unenjoyable Sex™ - I think topping for him is not merely unpleasant conceptually, it is also deeply upsetting because it is a reminder of his own past Deeply Unenjoyable sexual encounters.
Sex with women was always incredibly humiliating to Shane - his incapacity to 'perform' was not just a painful reflection of his sexual preferences which he was not ready to grapple with yet, it was also a disparagement of his masculinity and therefore his sense of self - "I'm this super rich and talented and good looking hockey player, why can't I do This Thing™ that 'should' reaffirm my sense of masculinity?"
And while I suppose you could argue that by removing women from the equation, surely topping would then become a reasonable possibility? But I disagree: Shane wants to be the hole, not the peg -> there is still an expectation on some level for him to fulfill a certain kind of role when topping (at least within the preestablished dynamic of hollanovs sexual relationship), and it is not one that makes Shane feel confident or comfortable. He literally froze up in panic when he thought Ilya was asking him to top.
Let me be clear: it is not penetration that's the problem (we see that he is happy to finger fuck Ilya), it is SPECIFICALLY topping that he vehemently rejects, because of a combination of his past experiences and his personal preferences. And I think being made to 'perform' the 'role' of top, even with Ilya, the love of his life, would be incredibly Unenjoyable for him, potentially even more so than his failure to 'perform' with women, because with Ilya he actually has a baseline for what enjoyable sex IS, so he'd have that comparison in his mind at all times making his failure to meet their usual standard that much more embarrassing for him.
And this would be Unenjoyable for Ilya as well!!! No one wants to bottom for someone who has long teeth at the mere prospect of topping, especially when Ilya has been noncommittal about receiving in general, but PASSIONATELY enthusiastic about being Shane's Dom top.
In short: gay people do not NEED to switch it up, especially if they have hard preferences!! Some people treat gay sex, and bottoming specifically, as a dynamic that requires two people to 'take turns'. Now whether that's because people subconsciously associate being on the receiving end of penetrative sex as "the more pleasurable" position, so the top "deserves" to experience it every so often, or because people's assumptions about gender roles equates bottoming (the "woman's" role) with an increased position of vulnerability, so the bottom "deserves" to experience the "power" of topping, I don't know, but both assumptions are widely incorrect and deserve to be challenged.
