"Bear" Culture & White Gay Hegemony

As I have grow older, I developed more of a body type that is a defining factor for the 'bear' subculture of mainstream Western (American) gay society. I have some issues with this label, especially because I do not identify as a 'bear' nor do I identify with many of the aspects & interests within this gay subculture.

Bear culture may have originally formed as an answer to the vibrant femme presence that most people thought of as "gay". Bears tend to perfer to present as hypermasculine by growing beards, cultivating more muscular or fat heavy bodies, not shaving their body hair (popular in mainstream gay culture), & dressing more "straight" among other things.

The irony of the bear image is that it is very specific, which seems contrary to it's first incarnation as a down-to-earth answer to starving twink bodies and gilded drag queen fabulous. Men are judged as non-bear based on body weight (even too much fat can be non-bear), their facial hair and body hair, among other identifiers.

Another issue with the image of what is "bear" is that generally bears are seen almost exclusively as White men. There have been many incidents of people of color who find bear body types attractive or who identify as bears who were unable to gain access to a certain online community. There is also a large reflection of the "no Blacks, no Asians" trend on profile sites. This echoes the implicit racism in mainstream gay culture as well.

While bears may have originally presented as your average man who happens to desire other men, who is "working class" and "just another one of the guys", this has shifted greatly. Bear culture tends to side with mainstream gay culture which has a backbone in upper middle class capitalism (classism), racism, economic marriage equality (heteronormativity) and body image issues (who gets to define a bear?)

I take issue with this, especially the issues in presenting another White face of the gay community. I also take issue because I do not identify as gay, whereas bear culture is disproportionally full of gay men. Bisexuals, transpeople and people who idenitfy as queer or otherwise may not be as accepted in bear communities.

Even though now I reflect more of a bear-type body, I remember when I tried gaining access to bear culture and community as a thinner man and was denied many times by men I found desirable.

This is why I do not identify as a bear.

Suffering from "-isms" in the classroom?

I've been very busy with starting college again for the first time in two years. It's very challenging, but I have been running into roadblocks I didn't expect to find in academia. As it turns out, my new department is very prescriptivist, which as a linguist, I find very troubling. However, there are even more things making me uncomfortable.

In my speech and language development class, we've been reading a textbook by a professor of speech language pathology (and a PhD) that I have found very troubling. He uses a lot of stereotyped examples when talking about cultural differences in language development (such as, "Asians are more reticent that Americans in speech") and without providing any evidence other than anecdotal items. That is not hard data! Also he uses "middle-class Americans" as a standard, while omitting race from the information unless he want's to differentiate between what he calls "middle-class Americans" and "middle-class African-Americans". I think he needs to incorporate White in his statements and so-called observations, otherwise his categorizations make no sense.

On top of this, I don't feel like my professor really respects my unease or disagreement with the way this author is presenting his information. I don't really know what to do, and I'm a bit tired of being the only dissenter in the class.

Furthermore my professor recently corrected my writing in a paper as not being "people first language", I had written 'deaf infants' where I should have written 'infants who are deaf'...meanwhile the professor allows a sociology major (!) in class use the term homosexual...which is very clinical and not people-first at all! (In case you are wondering, same-sex or gay/lesbian is more appropriate and "people first").

My last point, we were watching different videos of babies practicing a concept called joint attention with various caregivers. All of my classmates ooh-ed and aw-ed over all of the white babies but during a video of a very cute black girl, no one said anything or made any noises at all. I didn't think about this at first, but I was feeling odd and then it was all bit chilling to me upon further reminiscing. What are the implications of this? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure what to do, I feel like a black sheep in my department. This is all new to me, I've never encountered this in academia before. My undergraduate degree program was in a linguistics department that was very forward thinking, pro-feminist, anti-racist and anti-homophobic, very social justice oriented and active in our community. From what I have seen in this department, things are a bit different. I am not sure how to proceed.