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The Bear Handbook: a comprehensive guide for those who are husky, hairy, and homosexual and those who love ‘em by Ray Kampf
Reviewed by TammyJo Eckhart
Bears. No, The Bear Handbook is not a guide to the kind of bear that you see on the Discover Nature Channel, but the kind of bear that you find in the gay community. In fact, for Ray Kampf being gay is one of the defining conditions of being a “bear” (pp. 2-3). Nor is The Bear Handbook a sociological study of this segment of the gay community. What it is, is satire.
Satire is usually written for two audiences. The first is the group that is being satirized in hopes of creating an awareness of problems or conflicts within the group so that these tensions will be lessened. The second audience is those who really don’t know much about the first group but who probably deal with that group in some way. I keep thinking of Swift when I think of poignant satire. Kampf is not Swift, nor does he claim to be. Yet, The Bear Handbook seems geared toward these two audiences.
The book is divided into five chapters. Each chapter ends with a brief quiz to test your knowledge about bears or to see if you may qualify as a bear. Also there are inserted advice columns from “Miss Ursa Kitt” in each chapter as well as more drawings than I could reasonably count. The drawings are grayscale and add a great deal to each topic.
Chapter One tackles the basics of the bear definition. Next Kampf looks at famous bears and the idea of “bear” in history and entertainment. The first two sections on the evolution of “Winnie the Pooh” also appear in this chapter. While you may find many of the celebrities familiar, some may also surprise you.
Chapter Two tackles the stereotype of “bear” head on. In all, Kampf categorizes ten basic types of bears. Then he looks at his two of his basic components of bear identity — largeness and hairiness — by looking at clothing, jewelry, and the body itself.
Chapter Three has two sections on where you can find bears and how they live. The first examines the cyber woods in which many bears first find others and create communities. The second part looks at an “average” bear home complete with diagrams of the important rooms. There is a list of familiar corporate logo T-shirts that can be used to “flag” your bearness.
Chapter Four looks at the bars and events where you can find bears. Not only are the expected locales discussed, but Kampf also does a good job of discussing how the bear lifestyle may mean finding your match just around the corner. Bears, it seems, are everywhere.
Anything else you can imagine but which did not neatly fit into the first four chapters appears in Chapter Five. Bears are not the only “animals” in the gay community, so Kampf gives us a brief list of others. He also touches on subcultures which may seem similar but which may not truly be, such as the furry community. Finally we get a brief dictionary and a quiz to help you determine whether or not you are a bear.
There is always a danger with satire that someone somewhere will just not understand what satire is supposed to do. With that fear in mind, Kampf’s introduction tries to clarify his goals for this book: to poke fun at and reveal the truth about the bear stereotype. However, a friend of mine who identifies as a bear has informed me that soon after The Bear Handbook came out in 2000, a lot of bears took great offense. So if you are a bear, can you handle some intense satire? If you aren’t a bear, can you set aside the idea that what you are reading is some “how-to manual of bearness?” If you say “yes” to either of these, then you should enjoy this book.
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