SpunqDaddy's Beard

2009 Best of the Bears

Got Fur’s fourth annual poll, the very best in all things ursine.

We will take nominations until 11/15. Send your nominations to info@thecompletebear.com

Voting will be from 11/16 -12/31.

• Bear of the Year -
• Best Bear Website –
• Best Bear Blog/Podcast –
• Best Bear Porn Site –
• Best Bear Video –
• Best Bear Porn Star –
• Best Bear Business –
• Best Bear Publication –
• Best Bear Club/Organization –
• Best Bear Run –
• Best Bear Bar –
• Best Bear Fundraiser –
• Best Bear Campsite/Accommodations –
• Best Bear Resource –
• Best Bear Artist –
• Best Bear Performer –

This issue (”Falling in Love” #17) of A Bear’s Life magazine noted the revised edition of Bears on Bears!

Bears on Bears

A revised and expanded edition of the “invaluable book” on Bears

Revealing, challenging, often humorous, Bears on Bears is a groundbreaking book that examines the homomasculine subculture called Bears.
In 30 wide-ranging interviews, 62 men reveal their experiences as gay, bi, and trans Bears and Bear-lovers who find their physical image and personal lifestyle at odds with stereotypically ephebic, effeminate, fashion-obsessed gay male culture. Finding intimate affirmation within the increasingly international Bear brotherhood, they discuss coming-out as and homomasculine Bears and trace the early history of Bear community and subculture.

Contributors include comedian Bruce Vilanch, “Survivor” Richard Hatch, model Jack Radcliffe, and authors David Bergman, Michael Bronski, Jack Fritscher, Wayne Hoffman, Arnie Kantrowitz, Richard Labonté, Dr. Lawrence Mass, Eric Rofes, Mark Thompson, and Les K. Wright.

The revised edition, which is the second title from the Bear Bones Books imprint of Lethe Press, features fresh interviews with filmmakers Kevin Bowe (A Bear’s Story) and Dan Hunt (Bear Run), Sirius OutQ radio personality Larry Flick, Bear Like Me author Jonathan Cohen, and Metropolitan Community Church founder Rev. Troy Perry.

Bears on Bears confronts conventional images of male beauty and contemporary concepts of masculinity in a moving and colorful portrait of a men’s community that makes for fascinating reading on many levels.
328 pages, softbound, $25. ISBN-10: 1590212444, ISBN-13: 978-1590212448

Bear Soup #52

Bear Soup podcast, episode #52, streams online, Monday, September 7th, at 10:00pm Eastern & Pacific on BearRadio.net. Repeats on Wednesday, same times. Bon appetit!

"Hello, my name is WOLF BEAR"

• My debut (”Hello! My Name Is Wolfbear”) as an extra for Bear City, the movie; meeting the director and writer Doug Langway; and bear-cinema aficionado / exec producer Lewis Tice. Look for Bear City out in 2010! More on this next show too!
• An interview with filmmaker Kevin Bowe (A Bear’s Story), one of five new interviews in BoB2
• A fine review of Bears on Bears, revised edition, by polarbear Wayne Courtois, in “Out in Print“
• Appearances: I AM Festival in New London Saturday, Sept. 12th; Celebrate Bisexuality Day in Boston Sept. 24th.
• Shoutouts!

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Bear Soup #51

Bear Soup podcast, episode #51, will stream online, Monday, August 24, at 10:00pm Eastern & Pacific on BearRadio.net.

• My interview with Dan Hunt, director/producer of the documentary film Bear Run, which ran on the Logo channel last year. The interview originally appeared in Bear magazine #66 and is featured in full in the new edition of Bears on Bears: Interviews and Discussions

• Casting call for bears in the NYC area for the new feature-length movie, Bear City. Lunch provided!

• My open letter to the President: Obama, Free the Gays!

• The end of the e-group, Bears Against Bush.  Bears Who Hate Bush is still cranking.

• Satire from Roman Hans and SD: Bu$h’s horrible terrible awful no-good BF. Original on YouTube here — 3,000+ views!

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Bear Soup #50a

The two-year hibernation is over! Bear Soup podcast, episode #50a, will stream online again tonight, Monday, August 17, at 10:00pm Eastern on BearRadio.net.

Joining us in the Bear Soup hot tub this week:

Jeff Heiskell

• Interview with singer/songwriter/musician, former Judybats lead man, now solo artist and all-around cool Knoxville dude, Jeff Heiskell.Check out Bearotic’s excellent article on Heiskell. Check out Heiskell’s MySpace page. Buy the Heiskell album Clip-On Nose Ring at Amazon.

• tribute to Northeast Ursamen, BCOTY 2008, and good wishes for Daddy Mike

• a Turkish bear joke from the collection of folktales I compiled this year

Disclaimer: Clothing and rubber duckies optional. No rubber duckies were harmed in the making of this audio. Some wrinkling, shrinkage, or discoloration may occur. Check with your doctor to see if you’re healthy enough to sit in the hot tub for a half-hour or longer.

I'll be presenting from Bi Perspectives on Kinsey at CBD Boston this year!

BRC Marks Celebrate Bisexuality Day (CBD) for 11th Year

On Thursday, September 24, 7-10 pm, at Club Cafe, 209 Columbus Ave., the Bisexual Resource Center of Boston (BRC) and the New England bi community will be celebrating bisexuality and honoring books about bisexuals. This is the 11th year that BRC will observe Celebrate Bisexuality Day (CBD). The listening party will include hors d'oeuvres, music, great bi community, bi-positive products, plus entertaining readings from the new second edition of Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World and Ron Suresha's anthology, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, Bisexual Perspectives on the Life and Work of Alfred C. Kinsey.

Fenway Health's Boundless program co-sponsors again.

Info: http://www.biresource.net

Map: http://www.clubcafe.com/map/

Gay/Bi Men Anal Cancer Survey

A men's health announcement from The National LGBT Cancer Network. Please participate!

The National LGBT Cancer Network wants to do something about the
increasing prevalence of anal cancer in our community.

First, we need to find out what people know about anal cancer. We are
asking gay and bisexual men to complete a brief (5-minute) anonymous
online survey to assess their knowledge of anal cancer. We are
particularly interested in hearing from men of color and hope that you
will publicize this request through your blog, listserves, website and
mailing lists. The more respondents we have, the more we learn.

In the general population, anal cancer is a rare disease, but among men
who have sex with men (MSM), the incidence of anal cancer is 40% higher
and increasing annually. However, the majority of gay men know little
about the disease, have ever been tested for it, or even know that
screening tests exit. Health care professionals, too, remain divided on
how and whether to screen for it. In fact, a standardized screening
protocol for anal cancer does not yet exist.

To participate, click here
<http://thenationallgbtcancernetwork.cmail1.com/t/r/l/jltkki/l/r> .

THANK YOU.

To learn more about cancer in the LGBT community and the work of the
National LGBT Cancer Network, please visit our website,
www.cancer-network.org <http://www.cancer-network.org/>

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

RJS on TaLL Show, 7/8/09: Note to Task Force

Thanks again to the TaLL gals for letting me talk on their show again Wednesday, July 8th to share my open letter to Rea Carey, executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Task Force. I sent two voicemails, email, and a posted letter, but Ms Carey did not respond.

On the TaLL Show, July 8, 2009

Local author, anthologist, and activist, Ron Suresha returns to our show to read on air the letter he wrote to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to address the national trend of bisexual erasure.  We also talk about the on-going disparity at the federal level for same sex marriages thanks to DOMA, even when your local state allows it (Federal Tax rates and benefits, healthcare access when you travel, social security benefits for your same sex spouse, etc) and how to appeal to the hearts and minds of the rest of the country.  http://ronsuresha.com

Ron on The TALL Group Show, 7/8/09
 

Query: Cult of the Wolf

The wolf / Is shaved / So neat and trim / Red Riding Hood / Is chasing him / Burma-Shave

This 1952 Burma-Shave slogan, one of hundreds of roadside advertising signs posted by a shaving cream company, seems to refer to the very popular fairy tale of a young girl by the name of Little Red Riding Hood, and an adult male wolf.

The “Wolf” the advertising refers to is a two-legged man, not a four-legged mammal, lupus. In trying to sell shaving cream to their primary market, the ad sign writers were making a cultural reference to an ostensibly heterosexual erotic male type known as the wolf.

“Wolf” was not just parlance but likely an adult code for men as a sexual type, regardless of sexual orientation. This might have been a primarily heterosexist term that included heteros, bis, and gay men, possibly even a term of self-identification.

G. Legman’s epic book on humor, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (New York: Grove Press, 1968) refers to a “male wolf” type several times heterosexually (boldface added):

Legman identifies similarly hetero-oriented wolves in the companion volume, No Laughing Matter (New York: Grove Press, 1975, p. 35)  discusses a anti-patriarchical reversal in which playboys are told an offensive necrophiliac sex joke by a woman:

Yet Legman names a distinct wolf type, which he typifies here as deeply repressed homosexuals with flat-tops who wear aviator jackets. Also from Rationale, p. 526:

… The hair problem is, in fact, very old: at least as old as the Nazarite sect of Samson and Jesus. It the Levant it particularly centers around the beard, and the respect due it, naturally involving also insults to the beard. (Motif P672.) The breaking of the spirit of the Russian boyars by Peter the Great by forcing them to cut their beards in insulting fashion is a most significant and historic instance. This is sometimes entirely reversed, especially among unconscious or unavowed homosexuals of the aggressive and athletic ‘wolf’ type, who cut their hair as short as possible (‘hairbrush’ or German aviator style) and reject all outward softness of clothing and body-stance, or femininity of manner: the ‘James Bond’ or body-as-phallus type.

I’m querying modern literary, cultural, or folkloric references to wolves as human male sexual type, especially before Legman early 20th Century. This would include folks now in their 50s and older. Did you encounter a male sexual type “Wolf,” when and where, and in what context? Wolf Blitzer and other correspondents are welcome to confidentially send a message here. Permalink here.

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Query: Muscle Men

Canadian Überbear Richard Labonté is circulating another CLS for a Cleis anthology, forwarded by Lawrence Schimel, and which I encourage all my writerly friends to consider.

Call for submissions:
MUSCLE MEN, edited by Richard Labonte for Cleis Press
Were you the kind of scrawny queer kid who ogled Steve Reeves and never missed a TV wrestling match, or the buff young man who fantasized about entering strongman contests and cherished his first weight bench?  I’m looking for original, erotic stories or web-only reprints of up to 7,500 words for an anthology of fiction and memoir based on muscle and desire. Consider: built Daddies, burly bears, body worship, bodybuilding, wrestling from backyard and collegiate to motel and TV pro, mixed martial arts, weightlifting, arm wrestling, colt model porn fantasies, muscle voyeurism, big guys attracted to the twinklike … “muscle” in all its forms, big and beefy or lean and wiry, as a starting point for *authentic*, well-crafted stories by, for or about men and muscle – writing with a solid narrative arc in which characters connect emotionally as much as physically. Deadline is Oct. 1, 2009; publication date is Spring, 2010; payment is $50-$75, depending on length, plus two copies; submissions in .doc or .rtf format to <cleismuscles@gmail.com>.

New edition of Getting Bi shines with diversity

At Boston Pride this year, I acquired one of the first copies available of the new edition of Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals around the World. I knew that the editor, Robyn Ochs, would have copies and asked her to sign mine. Her sweet inscription: "For Ron, my co-conspirator in changing the world with words."

This groundbreaking book, an anthology of short real-life stories of diverse bi persons around the world, was enlightening, poignant, and valuable the first time around.

Still, editor-activists Robyn Ochs and Sara Rowley have outdone themselves in updating the work, making it even more inclusive and expansive, with more fascinating voices of international bi activists.

Readers with limited contact with bisexual persons will encounter many different kinds of actual bi people who tell their own stories, discovering themselves and struggling for acceptance as bisexuals, and considering the many facets of bisexuality as expressed around the world.

For bisexuals and the people who love them, bi-curious and questioning, bi-trans genderqueers, and GLBTIQ activists of all stripes, solids, and variegated patterns, this new edition of Getting Bi is a must-read.

It's not on Amazon yet, but you can order it directly from the Bisexual Resource Center.

This new edition has a sharp new cover and interior design, and 36 new pieces. 10 new countries (including Iceland, Iraq, Kenya, Pakistan, Portugal, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe) are represented, bringing the total to 42.

All proceeds from this book support the work of the BRC, which is planning a listening party with Robyn, myself, and another bi author for September 24th in Boston.