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Paperback
Publisher: Haworth Press
Ray Kampf
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| So What's This About Bears? |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Kampf, Ray. "The Bear Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Those Who Are Husky, Hairy and Homosexual and Those Who Love `Em", Haworth Press, 2000.
So What's This About Bears?
Amos Lassen
"The Bear Handbook" is a wonderfully funny book. Those who are not bears find the "cubculture" to be mysterious. Aside from the laughs Ray Kampf gives us a great deal of information about bears such as how to understand their code, how to make sense of an online profile and how to know if someone is really a bear or not.
One thing that bears do is they destroy the stereotype of gay men and they have created a whole new community within the larger gay community.
One of the great things about bears is that they are able to laugh at themselves. Kampf has written a wonderful satire on bear culture and he shows how bears while destroying a stereotype have created yet another one. Yet, aside from the satire this a good look at the bear community but the book does not a serious updating as time has changed several of the resources listed here.
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| What 8 years will do. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I mentioned this book in the Pilot Episode of the Cubs Out Loud Podcast. Years ago I bought this book as I started learning about the Bear Community. I have to say that the Bear Handbook was a great representation of what Bears are all about. As Ray Kampf explains in his introduction, this book was not to be taken seriously. However there is truth in those lies. I had loaned my Bear Handbook to a friend of mine several years back and didn't get it back before he moved from the Twin Cities. I just recently bought the book again and am reading it. Knowing what I know about the Bear Community now, the book is out of date. When the author primary refers all his bear brethren to the BML, Resources for Bears, and talks about Bear Magazine and American Bear as the Bear Magazines, you know there needs to be a volume 2. Technology has grown to encompass more options for the bear community. This includes the many podcasts like mine, the "New" bear sites, bear runs, club mailing list, text messaging, chat clients. I may sound like I'm bashing The Bear Handbook, but I cannot give it anything lower than a 5. For the year 2000 for which this book was published, it was a wonderful representation of the time. Now if only Ray would write an updated version. If you're a bear, cubs, otter, chaser, et al, you should get this book and have it in your archive. [...]
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| A classic in the making |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Hey, hey, hey, Boo Boo! What is a bear? If you're husky, hairy, and homosexual or pine for someone who is, you've got to pick up "The Bear Handbook." Quick: what straight actor looks better to you: Sean Connery with a beard or Ben Affleck without? If you said Connery, you've got bear-hunting potential. "The Bear Handbook" serves a real need today, and if you think not, take a look at those sophisticated men's fashion magazines with their smooth-chested boys-boys-boys. If you consider chest-waxing a barbarity on a par with foot-binding, assert your beardom and embrace your genetic destiny with the assurance of "The Bear Handbook." Whether bruin, bruinlike or bruin hunter, your odds of bagging the perfect catch are much enhanced with the wit, information and life-enhancing, common-sense wisdom of "The Bear Handbook."
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| Everyhting you needed to know...and then some!! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This book, following in the footsteps of others, such as THE PREPPY HANDBOOK, not only provides really good information about the subculture of the Gay community but does it is a true bear style- with FUN! And after all, that's what is is all about isn't it? FUN??!?? From setting up your own "Bear's Den" to what to have on the bookshelves( this book being one of many) this handy book will inform and amuse you and your friends for a long time to come- why not check it out? I think you will find it GRRRreat!!!
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| Satire is always Dangerous |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Stereotypes are rampant in any society. Usually when we think of people being harmed by a stereotype we think of other, more powerful groups, picking on minorities. What do you do though if the minority you are part of (gay men) ignores you because you don't fit the stereotype (not athletic, young, expensively dressed with expensive tastes in clothes, etc)? Well you can establish communities and band together for your betterment as many bears have done. However, there is also a point in which a group must laugh at itself, and Kampf's "The Bear Handbook" is one of the signs of that time. I've talked to Bears I know and they remember the big uproar when this book came out -- seems that some folks did not understand that it was first and foremost a satire. As satire Kampf's book does its job very well -- it makes you laugh while pointing out how bear community may be repeating some of the stereotyping and social confinement it rose against.
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