NBCS 1.0 does a good job of reminding that "Bear" was initially about facial hair back in 1989. That's the primary scale of "Bear-ness". Already recognized as secondary characteristics, however, were other undesirable traits (by gay male standards of the time) like weight, general hairiness, peculiarity, and stereotypical effeminacy. Since then, we do seem to have lost the initial hairy face focus. Maybe everybody got bored with it after the years that all of America spent fixating on Wolverine in the X-Men movies?
It makes me sad when guys show up at Bear functions and feel actively excluded. A year or two ago as a Bear coffee night was winding down, an old guy in his late 60s stopped me and thanked me for being so willing to chat with everyone. I prefer treating everyone the same so it really was nothing unusual that I did, but it made me realize that some people there felt excluded because they weren't popular enough to rate as "desirable company" by others. :(((
Yeah, I feel like I've earned a few bear brownie points over the years too.
1) I just did a scan for my old RELAY and IRC intro text file, but I wasn't able to find it. I hope I haven't lost it forever. I'm pretty sure I included my NBCS classification in it. Where did NBCS first show up, was it on Usenet maybe? Or did it even come from FidoNet initially?
2) I still have my "Just say Woof!" t-shirt from the mid 1990s, but it's looking rather thin and worn these days.
3) I've attended Bear coffee locally for over a decade, with a few breaks here and there.
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Date: 2011-Jul-10, Sunday 12:03 am (UTC)It makes me sad when guys show up at Bear functions and feel actively excluded. A year or two ago as a Bear coffee night was winding down, an old guy in his late 60s stopped me and thanked me for being so willing to chat with everyone. I prefer treating everyone the same so it really was nothing unusual that I did, but it made me realize that some people there felt excluded because they weren't popular enough to rate as "desirable company" by others. :(((
Yeah, I feel like I've earned a few bear brownie points over the years too.
1) I just did a scan for my old RELAY and IRC intro text file, but I wasn't able to find it. I hope I haven't lost it forever. I'm pretty sure I included my NBCS classification in it. Where did NBCS first show up, was it on Usenet maybe? Or did it even come from FidoNet initially?
2) I still have my "Just say Woof!" t-shirt from the mid 1990s, but it's looking rather thin and worn these days.
3) I've attended Bear coffee locally for over a decade, with a few breaks here and there.