Abstract

This article examines the cultural politics of “Bear” subculture and its relationship to homonormativity. It argues that Bears perform homonormativity first, because their politics are learned about and enacted through individual acts of consumption and second, because they allow Bears to pass as heterosexual and thereby, to participate in the reproduction of heteronormativity. However, because their goals are to pluralize the bodily norms of gay male culture and to build acceptance for non-normatively embodied gay men, these are also a politics of difference. This complicates our conception of homonormativity, which is often reduced to a politics that aims to achieve assimilation by emphasizing the fundamental similarities between gays and lesbians and heterosexuals