There is a particular pornographic photo that I adore—in it a pile of large, bearded men, are cuddling, stroking cocks, and generally lost in bliss. The tint of the photo suggests it was taken in the 1970s, but the classic “bear” look sported by all the men appears crafted, intentional, and contemporary.

When people describe bear culture as dumpy and uncrafted, caught up in conforming to “masculinity,” I think about this photo, imagine the perfume of musk, cigar smoke, sweat, and ass filling the room, the camaraderie experienced in a pile of bears, the pride in body, desire, and that particular hairy look and also the neatly shaved bald heads and magnificent beards, the taut, well-played nipples, the abounding fur, the glorious deep rich laughs and titillating giggles, and the diversity of gender expression represented in a bear pile.

While many folks read fat, hairy bodies as “manly,” “natural” and “unkempt,” I prefer to think of them as wild-crafted, excavated from the elements, unbound to singular notions of gender, disobedient to the capitalist commoditization of the body.

I think of my femme friends with gloriously hairly legs and armpits and wonder how voluptuous bodies and quaffs of body hair can be pigeonholed into “masculinity.” I think of my own sissy spirit, the lovely laughter, tears, and hugs of my bear friends, our effeminate voices, and our delicate smiles. I think the entire notion of bear culture as a site of masculinity is a farce.

As I struggle to understand my own complex relationship to bodies, gender, and desire, I resist the notion that I am fixated on “manly men” and am appalled by the idea of being attracted to “straight-acting men.” I like people transgressing expectations while residing on the extremes of gender or ambiguously residing in the in-between spaces.

I hereby declare my love of the hairy femme, the sissy bear, the androgynous, the flaming biker (yeah, like motorcycles), and the rugged queen. I situate my desire and attraction not within the conventional notions of sexual preference but rather gender expression and I find myself attracted to those whose expressions  simultaneously defy my own expectations and thereby relate to my own experience of gender.

In thinking about sexuality as a psychological approach towards the self and the other, I am most attracted to those who openly express gender ambivalence and reside across rigid poles of “the masculine” and “the feminine” and instead of crafting themselves with cologne, smell and look like people and fuck and love with confidence in their own self-expression and wild desire.