Bears

Robert Caputi

Bears refers to a subculture of the gay men's community that celebrates being large and hairy, though many of its members suggest that bearness is more a state of mind characterized by friendliness, a down-to-earth attitude, and sex positivity. The idea of a bear as a certain type of gay man was influenced by “chubs” and “chaser” groups, such as Girth and Mirth, and homo-masculine working-class gay icons, such as leather-men, bikers, and cowboys, but also the radical “faerie” subculture that advocated gender ambiguity and a resistance to commodified notions of sex and masculinity. What began to congeal from these eclectic influences was that a bear man was all or some of the following: bulky, bearded, hirsute, and usually middle-aged. Thus, the more of those qualities any one man had, the more likely it would be that he would be called a bear, but the relationship to masculinity has always ...

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