A version of the following essay appeared as “Bears: We’re Everywhere Now” in Bear Tracks 2006:3 (page 5):

In a mere twenty years, bears have evolved from small clusters of buddies, playmates, and guys recognizing a tacit bond of kindred spirit to the largest, and fastest-spreading, new expression of gay (queer, bi, lesbian, trans, and even straight) identity. Bears today come in all shapes and sizes, across the socioeconomic spectrum, and across the range of sexual self-expression.

While once poking fun at the “White Party circuit,” bears now have a global circuit. After AIDS decimated the leather community, and leather itself began transforming in some fundamental ways, the bear community has grown into many of the community roles of old-school leather social clubs, title contests, the role as community fund-raiser have either replaced or grown in tandem with leather brothers (and sisters).

Even the evolving popular bear press has grown much larger. Bears are ubiquitous on the Internet. And we have reached that odd place many seek, but not all attain – a particular kind of success. In the age of the citizen-consumer and niche-branding, bears are everywhere.

The rich diversity of the bear community has become telescoped into a narrow range of images, which nowadays is defining us. But it is misleading to mistake the beautiful icons for the rich diversity of our reality. As gay youth encounter an increasingly stratified and commercialized gay social hierarchy, more nowadays are coming out as bear. They still seek a home community where they can be themselves whoever, however they are.

As we continue to mature as a community, and a global one at that, maybe it’s time to give more thought to how we might create bear culture broadly, and revisit our roots of “inclusivity.” It’s just a thought.