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Although Bears are not venerated or listed as an identity that can be lusted after, they are aknowledged and known. The bear community did have an effect on outside culture though. The fights over this definition are well-documented and have settled down into the variations we all see, but it has in essence removed that sense of rebellion from the current bear ideology. But as it grew into a Bear community, it had to craft a "bear" identity and enforce that as ideology. In that sense the early bear community can be described as a "not-them" community as it enforced an ideology of difference. This is normal in any community that begins to define themselves not as what they are not, but as what they are. This has created an ideology, a bear beauty myth that is used to describe and locate bears in a social space. Bears are definitely likely to accept many different types into the community, but the early idealistic principles of "we are all hot and we are all exploring" has been changed to a more normative interaction where some bears are Hot and some are Not. Although it varies (different parts of the country seem to have variations of what the beautiful bear is), this has created a lack of complete open-ness. Over the course of time, this created what I call the bear beauty myth. (Not to mention an affection of male friendship that was a bit lacking in clone culture.)Īs with all ideologies, it is very difficult to define yourself solely as what you are not. The "clone culture" was also a reaction against this previous generation, but bear culture took it a step further by valuing heft and hair. The ideology was fiercely in opposition to the "failed men" representation lived by their older brothers in the generation before. It more than accepted them, it was all about them. The bear ideology of the early to mid-80s accepted Hells Angels and Hippies and all other types of outcasts from the mainstream. The bear community exists as long as there is grouping of men in a space set aside for them solely the rise of bear sites attests that the bear community will not dead.īut the ideology that it espouses has changed. There are the millions of artifacts that show commonality between men of the bearish persuasion. There are comics commenting on shared experiences. There are runs, bars, podcasts, and artwork by the thousands.
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Within these differences, we can explore what Bear culture truly means.The bear community is not dead. I think we need to describe the difference between the bear community and the bear community ideology.
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I started to reply, but it grew into something bigger than his comment box could handle. See also homosexual.Userid1999 was asking about Post-Bear and what it means. This argument is weakened by the fact that the sexual meaning has long been the dominant one, and thus permeates all usages of gay. It has been argued that gay in the sense “awkward, stupid, or bad” is independent of the sexual sense, and therefore not homophobic. How do gays feel about this? But usage as a singular noun is usually perceived as insulting. Today, the noun often designates only gay men and is usually used as a collective plural: gays and lesbians. After World War II, as social attitudes toward sexuality began to change, gay was applied openly by gay men to themselves, first as an adjective and later as a noun. This sexual world included gay men too, and gay as an adjective in the sexual meaning goes back at least to the late 1930s. A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer, a gay house a brothel. The word gay has had various senses dealing with sexual conduct since the 17th century. The sexual orientation meaning of the word gay has become so predominant that people hesitate to use the term in its original senses of “merry, lively” and “bright or showy.” But the word's association with sexuality is not new.