More than fat furry fellas
BY BRAD FISHER
Bears are more than fat furry fellas. Come to a Harbour City Bears Den Night, and you’d be hard-pressed finding any one trait that everyone holds in common. So it’s a tough job being dogmatic about what makes a bear.
Around twenty-five years ago, the prevailing gay stereotype was what today we’d call a twink — a white male, sun-tanned, with perfectly coiffed hair, with the most stylish clothing he could afford. These twinks were in great demand in gay circles, and like the American cake of the same name, without much substance and filled with cream.
If you had more hair in your ears than on your scalp or wore jeans with a three-digit size, you were an outcast from that gay world. Those guys banded together in packs for protection and solace, and found much in common, including the desire for sex. They gathered to share their common interests, and whether labelled in derision or self-applied, took on the term ‘Bear’. The earliest Bears communicated online and organised hook-ups even before the development of the internet.
Encouaged by no-nonsense pictures of hairy naked men in Bear Magazine, Bears celebrated all things perceived as masculine. Hairy bodies, bald heads, facial hair, pot bellies, leather, sweat, beer and recipes for the barbie — all were comfortably at home with the Bear counterculture.
This unpretentious unselfconscious group started to attract other oucasts too, and Bears welcomed them with open arms and strong hugs. The bikers and fetishists brought leather, tattoos and piercings. Hairless fat guys came over from the Chubby community, and we absorbed a Daddy presence with older guys who had the hair but no fat.
Also lacking body fat were the guys who worked out heavily, but who refused to wax like the bodybuilding world, and so we took on the Muscle Bears ’R’ Us, hairy or bearded and able to carry a keg to our parties. The more youthful among us we called Cubs, some of them barely even able to grow facial hair.
All these glorious men together in one place were a supermarket for guys shopping for that kind of man. And so into the Bear crowd were welcomed Chubby Chasers, Bear Admirers, Daddy’s Boiz and even the occasional LesBear and TransMan. You know, you’ll even see the occasional twink at a Den Night, though usually they’re cowering in the corner.
The Bear community is like The Borg from Star Trek, assimilating the distinctiveness from all these groups and making it our own.
Survey your local Den Night, and you’ll find it so. Just like ACON’s This Is Oz campaign which celebrates diversity in society, the Bears promote diversity among the gay community. Help celebrate it: buy a Bear a beer.
As a twink who likes bears, I wholeheartedly agree with the statements from JJ and identified individual, it’s frighteningly exclusive nowadays. Not that I haven’t found a bear of my own (1 year anniversary this month!) but bears generally aren’t very receptive of those who don’t look like them. It was sad and lonely trying to break into the scene, and the only bears that paid me any attention were just looking for the quick hookup with the inexperienced boy. My bear doesn’t even like bears, which kind of makes us both outcasts. It would seem the bears have become as bitchy and exclusive as the roving bands of twinks.
also sorry for commenting on an old post, but i was searching for some bear/twink relationship stuff to see if it even existed, and this is what i found
Secondly, who is Brad Fisher to accuse twinks of being without substance ? A love for fashion, being camp, being thin, being fat, being a cross dresser, being into leather, being a transsexual, being fit, being hairy, being blonde, intelligent or dumb has little to do with the “substance” of a person. I’ve personally found narcissistic, vacuous and shallow people everywhere and quite a few of them have been wearing jeans, blundstones and XXXL flannelette shirts.
Agreed. As someone who used to partake of many activities in the bear community, I gradually stopped going due to the increasing exclusiveness of the bear community. What used to be inclusive and focused on community turned into something quite exclusive and unfriendly.
The article is admirable for espousing inclusive ideals, but the reality can be sadly, less than that. Despite a positively varied membership, my last experience of my particular bear club was of a club that had become hypocritically just as exclusive as the twink stereotype they despised.
Let’s hope the new president and committee can bring back the community focus.
As someone who partakes of many activities within the bear community, I am constantly astounded by the comments that are made about “twinks”. It seems the use of that word has become a slanderous statement.
At some point, this bias against twinks has got to go. It’s a form of discrimination, you know.
If a Twink were “cowering in the corner”, is it not a responsibility to embrace and to make comfortable that person? Inclusiveness is key, as the article makes it understood.