Bears

This entry introduces ‘Bear’ as a category of gay, bisexual and queer (GBQ) men. Noting a dearth of queer scholarship on Bears, the entry outlines and critically explores key definitional debates and trends. This includes discussion of Bear bodies and masculinities, as well as the genders and sexualities of Bears. It then traces the intertwined historical and geographical origins of Bear from the USA in the 1980s, and its subsequent national and international expansion from the 1990s onward. Concurrent geographic and cultural variation is noted, resisting the idea of Bear as entirely a US phenomenon and highlighting development and hybridisation, both inter- and intra-nationally. The entry then notes contemporary community anxieties regarding commercialism and bodily hierarchies. It concludes by critically interrogating the idea that Bear has become diluted in an era of ‘Bearstreaming’, stressing the loosely bounded nature of Bear as a category via contemporary terms such as ‘Bear-y’.