Bear (Bear Brotherhood)

Bear refers to a subculture and community, mainly within gay, bisexual and queer men's spaces, organised around an appreciation of larger body types, body and facial hair, and an easygoing, masculine but affectionate presentation. It is as much about belonging and body positivity as about looks.

Related terms describe different builds and roles, such as cub, otter, chub and daddy. Bear describes a community and aesthetic, not a sexual orientation or a gender identity.

The bear community took shape in the United States in the 1980s as an alternative to mainstream gay culture's focus on youthful, lean bodies.

Craig Byrnes made the International Bear Brotherhood flag in 1995, as part of a senior project on the bear community for the psychology degree he was studying for through Mary Baldwin College's Adult Degree Program, a part-time course for adult learners that he had entered in 1989. He had gone looking for a definition and not found one: "No one could tell me what it meant to be a bear." So he surveyed bear men about what bearhood meant to them, and sketched his first design in crayon. He never completed the degree. He lost his job and his housing after the April 1993 March on Washington.

The flag was a group effort. The GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, which holds one of the four originals, records that Byrnes created the design, Paul Witzkoske was the graphic designer, Bob Nicholson was the production manufacturer and sewed the prototypes, and Byrnes's father Walter financed the project. The four 3ft by 5ft prototypes were flown and voted on at the Chesapeake Bay Bears' "Bears of Summer" event in July 1995, and the winner became the flag. Byrnes donated one of those originals to the archive in February 2022. How much of the credit belongs to Witzkoske has been argued over in the bear community since the 1990s. Byrnes originated and led the project and Witzkoske drew the graphics, so this guide names them both.

Byrnes's own account of the colours, recorded from his company's website in 2001, was that they "represent the fur colors and nationalities of bears throughout the world and was designed with inclusivity in mind." A bear of any coat, or any country, is on the flag.