Some researchers do research about bears. Some researchers do research about Bears. This new study is about Bears:
“Physical, Behavioral, and Psychological Traits of Gay Men Identifying as Bears,” David A. Moskowitz [pictured here], Jonathan Turrubiates, Hector Lozano, Christopher Hajek, Archives of Sexual Behavior, epub April 2013. The authors, at The New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York and the University of Texas at San Antonio, explain:
“The Bear community exists as a subculture in reaction to the larger gay community. It rejects the normative idealized male beauty revered by mainstream gay men. While qualitative data document such self-identifiers as masculine-acting gay men who weigh more and have more body hair, there has to date been no quantitative analysis of this group’s characteristics. In response, we conducted two large-scale studies of gay men identifying as Bears (n = 469) to survey their self-reported physical, behavioral, and psychological traits. Our studies indicated that Bears were more likely to be hairier, heavier, and shorter than mainstream gay men…. [Our research] may explain how the Bear culture developed to ensure that even the heaviest, hairiest, and/or shortest individual can partner.”
(Thanks to investigator Neil Martin for bringing this to our attention.)
Researchers who study bears, rather than Bears, all take a back seat, one way or another, to Troy Hurtubise. Troy was awarded the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for safety engineering, for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears. We have written about some of his subsequent adventures, too. Much of Troy’s original work is documented in the film “Project Grizzly“. This video shows a bit of that:
Other researchers invented an alternative to Troy’s inventions.