As Bear Féile makes its annual return to the Dublin scene, Nigel Connor looks at bear culture and the paradoxes that come together to make up a bear.

Photos of Bear Lee There Bearlesque by Mike Bors.

Many moons ago, when I was a baby gay (to use Panti’s terminology) I was introduced to a very handsome young chap (HYC) in the Bernard Shaw pub in Dublin. This HYC was a Mayo man (like myself), a fan of Murder She Wrote (seemingly important to 21 year-old me, as it has stuck in my mind to this day), funny, smart and most important – seemingly interested in me.

After a few (probably many) drinks in the basement of some trendy spot on Wicklow Street, I looked to see how interested my HYC was. Turns out – not at all! I’m not sure what I said but his response remains crystal clear in my memory – “You’re a cub and I’m more into bears, older guys – big guys”. I was floored; I wasn’t even sure what a cub was. Having already mentally picked out curtains for our future home, this was not the response I was looking for.

My HYC, possibly to soften the blow, informed me that maybe in a few years I would be his type. For a considerably long time this encounter cemented for me the notion that being a bear boiled down to nothing more than sexual preference or a body shape. Similarly being ‘boxed off’ into categories such as bear and cub crystallised for younger, more impressionable me, what I perceived to be a lack of solidarity and cohesion within the queer community.

In the intervening years, having engaged with the queer community in a more meaningful way and learned to understand it better, my somewhat simplistic view has evolved. The bear community, as many of the smaller communities under the rainbow flag, offers acceptance, companionship and a social outlet for its members, particularly for those who do not feel readily accepted in the ‘mainstream’ gay scene. Yet, as with many of the queer subcultures that make up the broader queer community, bears are complex and full of contradictions.