dyke teddy bear

reflection - april 1 '23

i recently decided to start calling myself a bear. i'm not super big, or super hairy, or super masculine. what i am is chubby, fuzzy, and extremely queer in every sense. i'm butch, so bears are already my brothers, in a sense.

a lot of my decision is based on having a transfem fagdyke bear in my life that i already look up to--punk's far more bear-y than me in age, expression, and body, while also being much more feminine.

i don't consider my presentation or identity to be very feminine, but eye-catching and aesthetically "sexy" clothes are often considered inherently fem, so that's still how i get read. with most bears i've heard of and seen being hyper[queer]masculine, almost always men, being a hyperqueer genderfuck dykey bear didn't cross my mind for a while. actually knowing a genderfuck dykey bear was a massive push.

i don't consider myself masculine except in the eyes of others and in the context of androgyny, but my body has masculine features. these features that come with existing in a body with a very on-and-off relationship with androgens are rarely celebrated in the queer communities.

transmasculine spaces often allow and sometimes encourage treating testosterone's effects on the body with open disgust; transfeminine spaces are, a little ironically, better, but not full of people happy to be in high-T bodies. nonbinary spaces often view androgyny as genderlessness, and only celebrate true androgyny (where someone is both notably masculine & feminine) when it shows up in bearded drag artists. that's not even to mention gay and lesbian spaces, or bi and other mspec spaces that often treat men as a last choice. fat, body hair, facial hair, large stomachs, and masculinity is "undesirable."

but those traits are the core of bearhood. where a cis lesbian would often be secretly repulsed by my fuzzy and round belly, considering my strong arms and large chest my only desirable features, a bear might be jealous, attracted or not. bears say to stop giving into transphobic "misandrist" rhetoric in the queer community that says anything masculine, anything that isn't cisfeminine or fetishizable by lesbians, is repulsive. bears provide a space and framework to allow others (and yourself) to enjoy masculinity, including hypermasculinity and queer cismasculinity.

the only other community i've felt that energy from was butch dykes--and actual butch dykes, not cisfeminine lesbians with short hair and a TERF streak. butch dykes who embraced, loved, welcomed, and encouraged the queer masculinity inherent to the identity and subculture.

i was already and still am a butch dyke to my core. the combination of being a part of butch dyke culture, seeing a fagdyke i admired embrace bearhood, already identifying as a butch teddy bear to my girlfriend, and the work i was putting in to love my androgynous body was bringing me pretty close.

then, on world bear day 2023 (march 23), there was the final push: i found an article by tanya gulliver called beary feminine on dyke bears. if i was listing everything that stuck out to me, i'd just be copying and pasting the whole article, but i'll stick with two:

“Being a bear means being big and cuddly, and big and growly. Being a bear means being comfy in jeans and my boots, and being comfy with my big bear body.” - rob sweeney, a grrrl bear

“My mother [who was also a bear] would put out an attitude that said, ‘Go ahead and fuck with me but don’t fuck with my family or my children,’ and people didn’t.” - donna fortney, a fat, butch, leather dyke & bear

and that was pretty much it. i decided on being a bear more or less instantly. i made a flag proposal for ursulas (dyke bears) since none existed, and i finally made the teddy bear flag ive been considering.

for me, my bearness is being a soft, cuddly, chubby, fuzzy dyke. that's why i identify as a teddy bear [or teddy butch, and maybe ursie bear or teddy ursa (like the pokemon?)]. i consider a teddy bear to be more soft than tough, more fuzzy than hairy, and smaller than a usual bear, somewhat similar to a cub.

i love being a bear girl/boy/?friend, a dyke bear, and a chubby cub. best of all, it's built around everything that makes me a great hugger!

stamps

stamps for my bear identities!! if you use them, please credit me, i made them :3 all link to flags

bear flags & terms

i really love pride flags & flag/term archival. this is going to be in chronological order, to the best of my ability.

international bear brotherhood flag

the international bear brotherhood flag originated in the DC bear scene (which, sidenote, is also my local bear scene) in 1995.

the original concept for the bear flag was proposed by craig byrnes, a psychology undergraduate, whose senior project was about bear culture. graphic designer paul witzkoske was asked to create digital prototypes of the flag to be voted on, and from there, the story gets a little conflicted.

witzkoske has claimed that the design for the bear flag today was his design, while byrnes has claimed full credit for the design and only credited him for the graphic. (as far as attribution drama goes, this is pretty lukewarm, but i still find it interesting!)

(CRW flags has the rejected designs, if you're interested in them--you can also see some less popular alternative designs there.)

ursula & lesbian bear flags

the earliest ursula flag i've found is the design pictured left by tumblr user imoga-pride, uploaded on december 2nd 2018. the flag is a merging of the bear flag and the lipstick/pink lesbian flag, which at the time was the most popular lesbian flag design. (sidenote: this post does misdefine goldilocks as a synonym for ursula, when it's actually a term for a woman with an affinity for bears. not a huge deal, just wanted to say it.)

a bear lesbian flag was posted to r/QueerVexillology by u/snas-is-ness on june 6th 2021. this flag was simply the two spliced together, with no mention of the term ursula.

the most recent ursula flag i know of is my own design, first uploaded to this website on march 31st 2023. this one's based on the bear flag, sunset flag, and a few variants of butch flags (namely the sunshine butch flag, the blue butch flag, and oh g-d i wasn't even going to include it but i just learned my old butch flag is on the first page of google images, oops).

bear cub flags

the first specific cub flag i've found was uploaded on january 1st 2020 by tumblr user gummysnom. this flag, as you can see, is made with the first 5 stripes of the bear flag and a bear cub paw-print.

(i have a bit of a bone to pick with just removing the grey and black stripes for that, given that the point of the range of colors on the original flag was to reflect the diversity of colors & kinds of bears, but alright--it's not like that was intentional.)

a second cub flag was posted by bangtansboyfie on july 3rd 2022, which was made by blending the bear flag with the rainbow flag and then replacing the bear paw with a cub paw.

sugar bear (and cub) flags

in the same januarty 1st post mentioned above, gummysnom also coined both a sugar bear flag (left) and a sugar cub flag (below).

the flags are a combination of the bear flag and hir cub flag, respectively, as well as the color pink/magenta and possibly the twink pride flag.

effeminancyboy also coined their own sugar bear flag a few months later on november 13th 2020, explicitly stating that it included "transmasc bears, nonbinary bears and transfem bears" (which isn't super important to point out but still nice).

in the same post, they also posted a trans sugar bear flag, which has largely the same design except for brighter middle stripes and some lighter colors.

teddy bear flag

the [as far as i know] only teddy bear flag was also uploaded to this website on march 31st 2023, alongside my ursula design. it's a softer version of the bear flag. i just think it's neat.