I had an interesting exchange with my roomie this morning. We were joking around about my weight (bad chips habit, me) and he asked, since I said I was “too svelt for the Bear Community”, what constituted being IN that community.<\/p>\n

“Does being fat and hairy mean you’re in? Do you have to go line up with two pieces of ID for a card?”<\/p>\n

I explained Bears, Cubs and Otters and even the fringe Goats, Beavers and Wolves.<\/p>\n

He said that he found many Bears to be arrogant. I argued that they were shy and felt exclusive from the gay community. That the Toolbox was a perfect example of this… the old bar was physically apart from the “community” and had a rougher clientele that did not shave bodily or succumb to the Botox ads at Church and Wellesley. He sited that many Bear groups in Toronto are tight knit and clique-ish. I couldn’t argue that point. I tried to join BBT a couple years back – two emails and no reply. And I’ve heard countless other similar complaints.<\/p>\n

I said that Bears were taught all their life that 1) they were gay and that 2) their bodies were disgusting so when they did find their niche, they had a tendency not to be able to shuck their quiet shy demeanours, but there were some cases that were totally opposite.<\/p>\n

“Like drag queens?” my roomie offers.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t disagree. They’re quite similar in many respects. Subcultured and proud, both have their uniform (Bears=Ubermasculine flannel, Drag=Fabulous Frock), both have their music (Bear=alternative, hardly ever disco, Drag=Diva) and both usually have to go through a double coming out process that has that person overcompensating in some way: Bears=Walking around shirtless at their first Bear Social; Drag=First time out in public in said Frock. It can be a beautiful thing or a total mess, depending on their self image, training and execution.<\/p>\n

I assume that this is common when cultures sub-divide into infinity and gay men, who have had no mentor or education in their sexuality, are left to discover the “community” they belong to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had an interesting exchange with my roomie this morning. We were joking around about my weight (bad chips habit, me) and he asked, since I said I was “too svelt for the Bear Community”, what constituted being IN that community. “Does being fat and hairy mean you’re in? Do you have to go line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WjY-w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}