I'm Done Pretending The Bear World Isn't Political

Yes, hello, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’m sorry about that. I am currently working through my fear of speaking on social issues in public, so bear with me. ;) ;) ;)

Those of you that know me know that I’m loud and proud about being a bear. Currently, I’m writing a play about the bear community, and I’m having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around it. I realized that I’m holding onto a lot of resentment and frustration with the community, and I need to process it or else I can’t write from an honest place. Before I get into this, let’s unload some definitions from Urban Dictionary.

Bear: The most common definition of a "bear" is a man who is hairy, has facial hair, and a cuddly body. However, the word "bear" means many things to different people, even within the bear movement. Many men who do not have one or all of these characteristics define themselves as bears, making the term a very loose one.

Chaser: A guy who admires, seeks or dates husky large man with lots of body hair. The chaser is not necessarily a "bear" themselves.

Trade: A young hyper-masculine looking gay man, usually Black or Latino in urban contexts. Trade typically dresses in urban clothing and play to the thug stereotype. The term "trade" originated from the notion that these men were only gay for pay-- thus they would "trade" sex for money. In recent years, the term has come to refer to any gay men of color who dress in hip-hop inspired clothing and play into the masc fetish.

Needless to say, there are entire communities based around gay men who love fat bodies, and love being fat. I consider the bear community to be one of these spaces, although it would be naïve of me to presume that it’s an idyllic group of people who don’t have any flaws or biases. If you look up the definition I pulled from the site, you’ll notice I removed this part:

Suffice it to say, ‘bear’ is often defined as more of an attitude than anything else - a sense of comfort with our natural masculinity and bodies that is not slavish to the vogues of male attractiveness that is so common in gay circles and the culture at large.

There are parts of this I love, and parts of this I have questions about. I think there’s something radical and amazing about spaces for gay men who don’t cave into fatphobic beauty standards. Very often, we reject the idea of fitting in with the rest of the gay community as a whole, and I think there’s a special power in this attitude that I have a lot of respect for.  I’ve even felt this power myself. But of course, while I consider bear events and spaces to be body positive, there is still a hierarchy that exists in terms of which bodies receive the most attention, and why.

What was telling for me was a virtual bear party that featured a jockstrap contest. It was my first time going to a virtual party, and I was disappointed that not only did a bear not win the contest (in an event that was seemingly for them), but the winner was a white, masculine muscle twink with no real dance moves, who clearly coasted by on their looks. There were no fat people who even competed, as though there was an unspoken understanding that unless you were a muscle bear, you didn’t have any chance at all. 

Then, I start to have a lot of questions about the idea of “natural masculinity” being a key part of bear identity. Do I need to identify as male in order to be a bear? Do I need to be masculine in order to fit into this group? Is it wrong for burly, masculine gay men to have a space for themselves? Can I still be myself, and still hang out with these burly, masculine bears?

A secret that I keep from my non-bear friends is that when I go to a bear event, I’m actually crafting a performance. I know exactly what they want. They want me to be trade, and I’m happy to play that role…or so I think. My poses become “masculine”. Yes, I manspread, and slouch my body in a certain way just for attention. Perhaps my voice even gets a little deeper. There is a hidden compromise that happens every time I go to a bear event: in sacrificing my own gender identity, I receive affection, attention, and sex.

I am a non-binary person who wishes to be seen as something other than male. This is something that I’m often reluctant to talk about for a variety of reasons, especially in bear spaces. In many other spaces, I’m happy to share my pronouns (they/them, for the record), but I don’t share that side of myself to the bear community. And honesty? I’m not sure if this performance is one I can keep up anymore.

Something that has recently forced me to re-evaluate my choices is a book called Pleasure Activism, curated and edited by adrienne maree brown. There’s an essay written by an organizer and educator named Holiday Simmons, and I’m still sitting with a lot of the ideas he brings into his writing. One of the big themes that the book examines is the compromise of your personhood or values for the sake of sexual satisfaction.

“I don’t feel good about appreciating the attention from guys who applaud my masculinity but also state ‘no fats, no femmes’ in their profile. Often I feel like I’m battling between my cock and my politics. The randiness that [testosterone] instills does not always help me make a respectable decision,” writes Simmons. “Then I whine about wanting a moment to just be affirmed as male by other males and especially in one of the most mammalian ways that can happen, without having to think critically about the contexts in which that human-ing is happening.”

Growlr, a dating app for bears, released a streaming feature at the start of the pandemic. Over the past four months, I’ve been livestreaming to a crowd of apolitical gay men all around the world. The longer I stream, the more I wonder if I can continue to pretend that I’m excited or celebratory about the bear community, much less the gay community as a whole.

Repeatedly, I’ve named the power dynamics that exist between bears and chasers, only to be met with comments that I’m being divisive, usually by chasers. In fact, it’s usually chasers who complain about feeling marginalized by the bear community – which is odd, considering that it’s very obvious that these events are never about them to begin with. Why enter these spaces in the first place? You could go to any other gay bar, and your body would be celebrated.

I think the lack of self-awareness speaks for itself, but lol @ “muscle-phobic”.

But you’ll notice that this rhetoric sounds very familiar, and builds off of the foundation that Black and Indigenous organizers have been using for decades – the rhetoric of who’s visible and invisible. These tensions are just one piece of the puzzle. When I first started visiting bear events, I felt so sexually empowered. Desirable, even. But it didn’t take very long for me to notice the whiteness of these spaces, and how so much of my own desirability came from the fact that I passed for white.

When white gays see me, they see themselves, and they let their guard down. Perhaps they let a few racist jokes slip out. Or in some cases, they’ll wonder why the black and brown stripes in the gay pride flag are necessary.  

“I don’t see myself in that flag,” one of them said to me. This baffled me. You can see yourself centered in every other piece of gay media, so I’m not really sure what you’re complaining about?

Another time, some friends of mine were confronting my white gay friend over his racist friend’s comments over dinner. At first, he refused to believe that his friend was racist. He became super uncomfortable, looked at me and said, “This is getting weird, let’s grab a cigarette.”

Actually, this is a point in itself: many white gay men are willing to ignore or even forgive the blatant racism of their peers as long as they’re attractive, and fit into a masculine, white, cookie-cutter aesthetic. That racist friend certainly checked all those boxes, and it seemed as if my friend was invested in pretending that they weren’t racist in the hopes that they could get laid.

On a few occasions, a few people have suggested that I find QBIPOC (yes, I know some of us hate the term BIPOC, but as long as others use it, I’ll keep using it) spaces that reflect the values that I’m looking for, but this still gives me pause. I know that there is a contingent of people at these events who consider me to be white, rather than “white-passing” or “mixed-race” and I’m not interested in engaging in the debate of who I am to other people. Not to mention, even a QBIPOC space can perpetuate fatphobia and shitty beauty standards that make others feel undesirable.

So I’m left feeling as though every space is an imperfect space. I love going to bear events and feeling affirmed in my own sex appeal, but I despise the sexual politics of which bodies, gender presentations, skin tones are celebrated at these events. I yearn to go to an inclusive bear space where we see a variety of folks representing different cultures, backgrounds, and ideas.

I am repeatedly told “it gets better”, to which I respond: “…only for some people.” Yes, I live in a city with a vibrant gay scene where I experience very little homophobia, and I’m very grateful for that. But I am constantly reminded that on many occasions, most gay men want nothing to do with people who aren’t a carbon copy of themselves, and the best emotional support I’ve received has always been from my female friends. Where do I go when I want to feel affirmed by gay men, in an inclusive, multicultural environment?

I don’t know where to find this space, but I’m reminded of another quote from Pleasure Activism, from Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; poet, educator, and activist:

“Research play parties and be aware that many of them can be very white, abled, etc. If you don’t like the sexual spaces out there, make your own! People always have, from the kind of queer male public sex Samuel Delany writes about to when queer women into BDSM started going to The Catacombs, a queer male sex club focused on fisting in San Francisco in the eighties and created a pansexual queer fisting paradise.”

I’m tired of feeling dissatisfied and frustrated by this community, and I want to begin to carve out new spaces that do things differently. If you’re a member of the bear community, and any of this resonates with you, reach out to me.