ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines research on sexual identities, noting a pervasive framing of these as a matter of deep personal significance even from queer poststructural scholars. It proceeds to demonstrate that Bearspace participants did not see ‘Bear’ as a matter of deep personal significance to them, and instead shows that participants’ relationships with ‘being a Bear’ were highly ambivalent and primarily a matter of convenience. Similarly, participants’ interactions with Bear communities, scenes and spaces were ‘nebulous’ and significant only at particular places and times. This chapter consequently suggests that ‘identity’ is not the most useful way in which to conceptualise ‘Bear’. Instead it suggests that we view Bear as a loose category, and engages with an ‘appearance vs attitude’ framework common in the Bear literatures, to show that ‘appearance’ – and specifically bodies – is the instinctive first way in which this category is applied. ‘Attitude’ can function as a supplementary corrective. Finally, this chapter shows that the focus on bodies actually reveals the fluidity and instability of ‘Bear’ as a category, and synthesises participants’ new terminologies into the term ‘Bear/y’ to highlight this inherent fluidity.
