In gay culture, a bear is a man who is fat, hairy, or both.
Leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities that involve leather garments, such as leather jackets, vests, boots, chaps, harnesses, or other items. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures. Many participants associate leather culture with BDSM practices and its many subcultures. For some, black leather clothing is an erotic fashion that expresses heightened masculinity or the appropriation of sexual power; love of motorcycles, motorcycle clubs and independence; and/or engagement in sexual kink or leather fetishism.
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Robert Opel was an American photographer and art gallery owner most famous for streaking during the 46th Academy Awards in 1974.
Edmund Christian Nelson was an American photographer and co-founder of Bear Magazine in the 1980s, was the photographic pioneer in the gay-oriented erotic photography of mature men with hairy bodies and facial hair. His work directly led to the legitimizing of the bear community as a social group.
William Ward (1927–1996) was a British erotic artist. He is best known for his strips featuring bear-like men and in particular his Adventures of Drum series for Drummer magazine.
Larry Townsend was the American author of dozens of books including Run, Little Leather Boy (1970) and The Leatherman's Handbook (1972), published by pioneer erotic presses such as Greenleaf Classics and the Other Traveler imprint of Olympia Press. Leatherman's Handbook, with illustrations by Sean, was among the first books to popularize BDSM and kink among the general public.
Charles "Chuck" Arnett was an American artist and dancer who was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana and died in San Francisco. His best-known work is the Tool Box mural (1962).
Timothy Patrick Barrus, also known as Tim Barrus, is an American author and social worker who is best known for having published three "memoirs" between 2000 and 2004 under the pseudonym Nasdijj, by which he presented himself as a Navajo. The books were critically acclaimed, and Nasdijj received several literary awards and recognition from major institutions. His "memoirs" dealt in part with issues of two adopted children who suffered from severe problems.
The Rainbow Motorcycle Club is a gay men's motorcycle club based in San Francisco, California. The club was founded in San Francisco in 1971 by Ron Johnson, Mario Pirami and Paul Denino. Some commentators have credited the RMC as being instrumental in the creation of the bear subculture among gay men during the 1980s and 1990s.
The National Socialist League (NSL) was a neo-Nazi organization of gay men in the United States that existed from 1974 until 1984. It was originally founded by Jim Cherry, but was quickly taken over by Russell Veh, a neo-Nazi and transplant to Los Angeles, California, from Ohio. Veh financed the party using the profits from his printing business. He also financed the league with a film distribution unit that specialized in Nazi propaganda films, including Triumph of the Will. The National Socialist League had chapters in various parts of California, and implied in their mass mailing on July 4, 1978, that they had established an offshoot organization in Manhattan.
Drummer is an American magazine which focuses on "leathersex, leatherwear, leather and rubber gear, S&M, bondage and discipline, erotic styles and techniques." The magazine was launched in 1975 and ceased publication in April 1999 with issue 214, but was relaunched 20 years later by new publisher Jack MacCullum with editor Mike Miksche.
David Randolph Hurles was an American gay pornographer, whose one-man company, run from a private mailbox, was called Old Reliable Tape and Picture Company. His work, produced primarily in the 1970s and 1980s, falls into three categories: photographs, audio tapes, and videotapes. Hurles' models were typically ex-convicts, hustlers, drifters, and ne'er do wells. Hurles died on April 12, 2023, at the age of 78.
The Mineshaft was a members-only BDSM leather bar and sex club for gay men located at 835 Washington Street, at Little West 12th Street, in Manhattan, New York City, in the Meatpacking District, West Village, and Greenwich Village sections.
REX was an American visual artist and illustrator closely associated with gay fetish art of 1970s and 1980s New York and San Francisco. He avoided photographs and did not discuss his personal life. His drawings influenced gay culture through graphics made for nightclubs including the Mineshaft and his influence on artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe. Much censored, he remained a shadowy figure, saying that his drawings "defined who I became" and that there are "no other 'truths' out there". REX died in Amsterdam in late March 2024.
Allen J. Shapiro, better known as Al Shapiro and by his pen name A. Jay, was a gay Jewish American artist active from the 1960s through 1980s. He is credited with the creation of the first-ever gay comic strip, The Adventures of Harry Chess: The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E.
Bill Schmeling, better known by his pen name The Hun, was an American artist active in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, known for his explicit, homoerotic fetish illustrations and comics.
Domingo Francisco Juan Esteban "Dom" Orejudos, Secundo, also widely known by the pen names Etienne and Stephen, was an openly gay artist, ballet dancer, and choreographer, best known for his ground-breaking gay male erotica beginning in the 1950s. Along with artists George Quaintance and Touko Laaksonen —with whom he became friends—Orejudos' leather-themed art promoted an image of gay men as strong and masculine, as an alternative to the then-dominant stereotype as weak and effeminate. With his first lover and business partner Chuck Renslow, Orejudos established many landmarks of late-20th-century gay male culture, including the Gold Coast bar, Man's Country bathhouse, the International Mr. Leather competition, Chicago's August White Party, and the magazines Triumph, Rawhide, and Mars. He was also active and influential in the Chicago ballet community.
Tony DeBlase (1942–2000), also known as Anthony DeBlase, was part of the BDSM and leather subcultures. He was the designer of the leather pride flag.
Cynthia Slater was an American sex educator, HIV/AIDS activist, and dominatrix. She was the co-founder of the second BDSM organization founded in the United States, a San Francisco, California based BDSM education and support group known as the Society of Janus, which she founded with Larry Olsen in August 1974.
