Watch | Skinny straight guy strips off to learn about Bear culture
By Ben Kelly
Ever wondered what would happen if a skinny straight guy went to Bear Week? Well wonder no more.
Vice sent reporter Thomas Morton to Provincetown, Massachusetts to mingle with the best of the bears, and find out about the various sub-cultures within their community. It’s part of his ‘Balls Deep’ series, in which he infiltrates a new group in each episode.
Morton explains how bears were originally, “too hairy for the Chelsea boy scene queen, too hefty for the Tom of Finland-esque Castro clones,” and didn’t emerge proudly into the mainstream gay scene until the mid 1990s.
Morton is seen discovering, and explaining, the various types which fall underneath the big bear umbrella; including cubs, pocket bears, otters, polar bears, panda bears and black bears.
He also speaks to Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin who says: “The thing I love so much about gay life in general is that we are not as exclusionary as the rest of the world in terms of what we expect in a sexual partner.”
He adds: “Gay men have learned to eroticise almost everything.”
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