As an elaboration of the notion that “gay cultures” are a better model for the social organization of the homo identified than “the gay community”, I present three basic homo cultures.
The central defining feature of each culture I’m presenting is their erotic aesthetic. Each of these crowds tend toward different meeting places (separate bars, frequently), and different attitudes. I’ll be getting into my perceptions of each, including likes and dislikes.
Bear culture eroticizes large, hairy (facial, body, anywhere you can grow it) men, tending at least as much towards fat as it does towards muscle. Another major feature of this group is the “come as you are” mentality. A very egalitarian attitude towards sexual attraction, if not appearance in general, more descriptive than prescriptive. Beyond that it gets harder to say, there are subgroups that tend towards public displays of sexuality, leather (as a fetish unto itself, as well as shorthand for s&m), blue-collar-ness, and a more casual, laid back attitude. Attitudes towards food are similarly casual and open. I like the calmness, the casualness, and the openness of this value system. The leather (in both regards) is a gripe. In general, the anything-goes-ness of the culture makes it hard for me to get riled up by it, though I would say that I’m uncertain a haven of unconditional acceptance is always positive.
Gym culture uses the gym as many religiously oriented people use churches. A social center as well as a guide towards appropriate values and behavior. The major aesthetic is muscle. More of it, and less fat hiding it. Often, hair is removed to better display definition. This is an elitist/hierarchical/meritocratic aesthetic, prescriptive, more than descriptive, and very body focused. Food and behavior are carefully analyzed and chosen in attempts to improve one’s valuation in terms of the aesthetic pecking order. (Ask any gym-goer about their routine and, if you’re not a gym-goer, you may be surprised by the detail).
Fashionista culture, as I somewhat abusively call it, focuses a great deal on appearances, particularly, clothing and hair. Namebrands are prized. Hair bleaching or dying, plucking, careful coordination of outfits, etc. The focus is artistic, working creatively within a medium (the casually visible parts of a person), though whether the result is creative or not varies rather alot (or perhaps not so much, depending on your perspective). This is probably the one of the three mentioned that I have the most difficulty understanding, as I have an automatic mental rejection due to associating it with exclusion and contempt based on financial means, social class, involuntary aspects of appearance, and other such criteria.
Nobody polices these cultures to make sure that people aren’t walking across multiple boundaries, and people do. Gymbears, gymfashionistas, even fashionistabears (gotta be one out there somewhere) exist.
Though, it occurs to me, having written this, that these cultural divisions are far from unique to the gay community, but perhaps some food for thought.
I would say that the Leather culture is NOT a subculture of bear culture, although in most cities you may find them co-mingling.
And then there are people like me who float from group to group, never really identifying with one as a whole. 🙂
I know several distinctly non-bear leatherfolk and nonleather bears. However, I point you to the eagle, and the patronage of the folsom street fair and dore alley.
I don’t really identify strongly with any of those three groups either. More geek and intellectual here. =)
I did say subgroup, though, which was sloppy of me. I suspect the leather culture is larger than the bear culture, but disproportionately overlapping.
Yes you’re quite the fashionista. 🙂 Of course, how you are viewed is another matter; I doubt bear see you as a “floater”
Though, it occurs to me, having written this, that these cultural divisions are far from unique to the gay community, but perhaps some food for thought.
rather true..
i want to make a brilliant connection between what you say here, and the content of the first essay summary here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gmonger/19267.html?nc=2…
(quote)
In this essay, the author asks, “How should a man look at a woman?” His own answer seems to link the act of looking with the feeling behind it. When speaking of art, he writes, “The naked women in Rembrandt, emerging from the bath or rising from the bed, are so private, so cherished in the painter’s gaze, that we as viewers see them not as sexual playthings but as loved persons. A man would do well to emulate that gaze.” He feels that the greatest danger of looking at women, in Art or in person, is that a man, driven out of both curiosity and fear, may make, in his eyes, an object out of the woman. “Make her into an object: all the hurtful ways for men to look at women are variations of this betrayal,” he goes on to say. Sander also talks of why this objectification occurs, of the choices made by both men and women that lead us to this end result. The concept of the “Other” is the key to this, the detachment and de-humanization of the commonly accepted view of the “Other” is what we must overcome, to him.
The key, Sanders claims, is that the “Other” need not be de-humanized to exist as a concept. He claims that we can do this by changing our very perceptions of the other gender, escaping the culturally imposed separation. “In our mutual strangeness, men and women can be doorways one for another, opening to the creative mystery that we share by virtue of our existence in the flesh.” He believes that, with the proper attitude and willingness, it is this concept of the “Other”, and the realization that we are all “Other”, that will bring about a situation where we can expect a man to, at the very least, try to see a woman as Rembrandt saw his models. Sanders ends the essay with his own pledge to try just that, to “prepare a gaze that is worthy of their splendor”
something that says that really all these boundaries we draw – gay, hetero, man, woman, etc … aren’t quite as meaningful as everyone thinks they are…
i think maybe they’re more modifiers than paradigms (is that the right word?)
bears, bunnys, and bitches
I love a good deconstruction of social subcultures in the morning!
Fashonistabears? Well I guess Christopher Lowell? No acyually I have met a few. Of course it’s usually different brands but if you’re drooling over CAT workboots and you work as an attorney, your are a fashionista.
I would say that leather as fetish rather than a subculture (although it is both) overlaps with the bear culture, but like, that it isn’t a subset. Leather is an imported taste, but bearishness, if not identity (the identity has been constructed in my view, even if it may exist organically but probably wouldn’t then have a name, or be a subculture), exists with our without that particular sexual proclivity.
There is some policing, but it’s not as direct as in other subcultures (may also depend on geography, at least in my mind).
The gym culture is quite interesting to study, and the amazing things that upend its hierarchy. My friend Jason once whined: “Having a great body is always good, unless you’re in the steam room and the guy over there isn’t as built but has a big dick. Then he absorbs all the attention!” There’s no merit in that, just chance.
Re: bears, bunnys, and bitches
yeah, subset was a very poor choice of words. Disproportionate overlap among two large minority cultures would be more what I meant.
But, as for the big dick factor and the absence of merit in that, I’d point out that genetic endowments play a major role in muscular development. I’m never going to have a body like, and vice versa. Depending on one’s tastes, that may leave him or myself higher in one’s aesthetic regard. Our body types aren’t entirely merit-based either.
Re: bears, bunnys, and bitches
Nor will I ever be mr musclebunny, not that it’s a concern. Body types are pretty subjective, w/o merit really being much of a factor (not sure how one would determine merit either).
Yes, very disproportionate overlap.
Re: bears, bunnys, and bitches
Well, there is a _perceived_ merit factor with the gym. Disdain for couch potatoes, whether defined by frequency of gym visits, intensity of workout, or visible results.
I’d say that our bodies are influenced as much by nurture as by nature. I point you to Tom’s current appearance as well as the pic he posted not so long ago. There is something to be said for the “if you’re not happy with the way you look, then do something about it,” school of thought.
As an elaboration of the notion that “gay cultures” are a better model for the social organization of the homo identified than “the gay community”, I present three basic homo cultures.
The central defining feature of each culture I’m presenting is their erotic aesthetic.
The entire point of a model of “the gay community” is that the connections that being gay and being lesbian encourage are not based solely on what makes your dick hard. The cultures you describe would collapse if they weren’t built on a foundation of sex seeking (even the fashionistas, although I can see how that one gets complex). That’s what brings people to the meeting places you note in the first place, directly or otherwise. When you have a model of “the gay community”, then the sexual alignments develop from the community, not the other way around. Which seems, on the surface, to be senseless, since being gay is defined in the first place by the desire for sexual alignments. But that’s the wonder of it all, that this community of people who are not necessarily seeking sex with each other yet define their community by their sexual orientation shows all the manifestations of existence.
The cultures you describe get bogged down, or perhaps obsessed, or ok maybe inspired, with fascistic iconographic notions of sexual attractiveness. (I’m not sure where you got the idea that the bear culture shows an egalitarian ideal of sexual attractiveness, at least at its core where it has replaced one idealized prototype with another). And you know, this can be great fun. A hard dick is a hard dick and there’s no arguing with that, politically or sexually (although I myself don’t think that a discussion of why certain people develop certain attractions is completely off-limits, as I’ve heard others claim). But you won’t find (or find useful) a model of community there (my bear friends claim otherwise, but I remain skeptical). In fact, you hear a lot of general complaints from people who don’t find the community they thought they were looking for in those cultures. For the very reason you note, both here and elsewhere: that culture is not community.
“I’m post-bear” is just another side of the “the gay community is so shallow” whine.
When you (or I or anyone, I don’t mean to personalize this) were first coming to terms with your own sexual orientation, what did you envision? What did you hope or imagine or wish you could find? What sort of world, different than the one you were born to, did you wish for, as regards being gay? Was it only about finding sexual partners? Was the notion of connections with others, along this axis, part of the hope? To not feel alone? I think that’s the case for a lot of people, even some who don’t put it in those terms.
I don’t think cultures based entirely on sex-seeking can, ultimately, address that desire (but in my head I hear the hurt and offended huffs of many close friends when I say that).
Those aren’t intended as an exclusive list of cultures. I’d mentioned geek (thinking more the gaming side), and academics/intellectuals as further cultures to. Those are examples of non-sex-based subcultures. They both have very different notions of what’s important, distinct from other subcultures, as well as at least partially distinct memberships.
I’m not intending this as a description of what ought to be so much as a description of what is. I think that the expectation that there will be some unity, some community between people of similar sexual identities and orientations results in disappointed expectations.
I think that the expectation that there will be some unity, some community between people of similar sexual identities and orientations results in disappointed expectations.
Absolutely, and that common disappointment is what I’m responding to when I talk about what it means to me to consider “the community”. The problem here lies in what those expectations are. If the expectations are political unity, or social acceptance, or perhaps most especially a sense of belonging-at-last then orientation alone (without the additional cultural or smaller-community components) is not going to fulfill those expectations. Believe me, I know that situation from a couple of sides. But social connection — which is how you defined community elsewhere — is nonetheless something I believe that you can point to, as something that exists among gay men and lesbians, as something that “is”.
At the USENIX conferences there is always a significant group of gay men and lesbians who meet up at the beginning of the week — mostly to find each other, to provide a basis of social connection for the remainder of the week. This connection, for many, lasts well beyond the conferences and creates social connections that are not so transitory (and that include straight people, interestingly enough). So this is a gl(&bt) geek community, by my understanding of what you’ve said about different communities, one of many overlapping gay communities and not indicative of “the” gay community. But what significance could the glbt descriptor have in the context of a larger geekfest such as USENIX? Why do we seek each other out like this? The connection here is not that we are geeks — everybody within eyesight and earshot at the conference is a Geek’s Geek. What is it that connects us in particular?
What I’m saying is that there is something we share, within the larger UNIX geek context, that we can attribute to our orientation alone. That is “my” gay community.
To put this on an emotional plane and bring it back to the gay bands, it was through my involvement in the national gay and lesbian band organization that I first came to apprehend, quite deeply, that being gay was something that connected me to other people (rather than separating me from them, which was where I started out, as I believe most gay people do). To conceive of that as community was very important to me, and not in the sense of “the gay band community” as a distinct aggregate from other gay and lesbian communities. It was the mechanism that enabled me to see the connection, not the limit of the connection.
Which was a hard thing to do in the face of the gay-bar culture, which was most of what I had been able to see until that point and what I still think people refer to when they speak of how $NEGATIVE_ATTRIBUTE “the gay community” is.
Maybe it’s just the nature of categorization and the need to belong, but I’ve observed that membership in these groups is often based on anxiety. A guy becomes a gym bunny because he feels that’s the only way he’ll get any sort of recognition, acceptance, etc. Likewise with the fashionistas. Less so with the bears.
I’m not sure I agree with that entirely. I think some people adopt the cultural norms because they are surrounded by people who value fitness alot or people who value snappy dress or like video games and admire good players. It’s a vicious cycle there. We tend to adopt the values of those that surround us, and we tend to surround ourselves with people of similar values.
I guess I’m judging from 18-year-olds I used to see at the QSCC. Beginning of the year, they are timid, clearly lonely and in search of community (based on common sexual desires, sure), but they are genuine and unique individuals. Weeks go by and they adopt fashionista traits and/or musclebunny traits, but the gestures are forced. It’s less “oh thank god I’ve found my long lost label whore tribe where I belong” and more “well if I’m going to have any gay friends I guess I have to play along”.
The desire to belong is a powerful one. Particularly when it has been thwarted by years of perceived isolation. It’s a phase, some take longer than others, but most leave it eventually. It’s rare to leapfrog it entirely, though. =)
I don’t know, I’ve found the bears more like the other groups than most would ever admit. If your genes gave me the right hair configuration, you’re in, if not, you’re not. It’s perhaps not as overtly snobbish as, say, fashionistas, but there definitely a heirarchy there.
I’ve been more welcomed by the bear groups I’ve dropped in on than the fashionista groups. But that brings us back to the notion that the plural of anecdote is not evidence. =)