Bears: We’re Everywhere Now

by Les Wright © 2006

In a mere twenty years, bears have evolved from small clusters of buddies, playmates, and guys recognizing a tacit bond of kindred spirit to the largest, and fastest-spreading, new expression of gay (queer, bi, lesbian, trans, and even straight) identity. Bears today come in all shapes and sizes, across the socioeconomic spectrum, and across the range of sexual self-expression.

While once poking fun at the "White Party circuit," bears now have a global circuit. After AIDS decimated the leather community, and leather itself began transforming in some fundamental ways, the bear community has grown into many of the community roles of old-school leather social clubs, title contests, the role as community fund-raiser have either replaced or grown in tandem with leather brothers (and sisters).

Even the evolving popular bear press has grown much larger. Bears are ubiquitous on the Internet. And we have reached that odd place many seek, but not all attain - a particular kind of success. In the age of the citizen-consumer and niche-branding, bears are everywhere.

The rich diversity of the bear community has become telescoped into a narrow range of images, which nowadays is defining us. But it is misleading to mistake the beautiful icons for the rich diversity of our reality. As gay youth encounter an increasingly stratified and commercialized gay social hierarchy, more nowadays are coming out as bear. They still seek a home community where they can be themselves whoever, however they are.

As we continue to mature as a community, and a global one at that, maybe it's time to give more thought to how we might create bear culture broadly, and revisit our roots of "inclusivity."

It's just a thought.

------------------------------

Les Wright founded the Bear History Project in 1994. From that came The Bear Book (1997), Bear Book II (2000), four Bear Icons art exhibitions in the Northeast (1999-2002), the Nashoba Institute (501©3 nonprofit), and the online cultural journal of “non-hegemonic masculinities” Verisimilitude. Cornell University provides permanent repository for the BHP archives.

A founding member of the SFBA GLBT Historical Society, he taught humanities for 12 years at Boston-area College. In the 1970s he was involved with gay left activism in Germany, lived through the AIDS epidemic in the Castro during the 1980s and 1990s. He left Boston to return to San Francisco in 2005.

Currently he is a freelance writer, photographer, and independent scholar. Current goals include: re-launching the BHP (http://www.bearhistory.com), Verisimilitude, re-instating the Homo Macho art series, and curating the “History of Homo-Masculinities.” He is training to become a grant writer.

Contact: leskwright@thinkingbear.com.