Electoral Politics in a Bear Bar (Cody)

Last Friday evening, back home in Columbus, OH, my partner and I visited a local, downtown bear bar during their weekly-themed Leather Daddy/BDSM night.  However, this Friday evening, being only four days from the presidential election, the bar’s theme included a special appendix to its title: Leather Daddies and Bears for Obama (bring your own whips and chains). 

(For clarification, I do not classify myself as a member of Columbus’s bear community; nonetheless, I have well acquainted myself with many of its habitué, both at this bar and others as well as at other group meetings and organizations.  Thus, I define myself as both an outsider and an insider to this community insofar as I am equally an active member of other Columbus queer communities.  The ethnography I have conducted does not wish to generalize Columbus’s bear community or any notion of a national bear community.  My analysis hitherto is strictly localized to this particular bar.)

Of the bear bars in Columbus, Exile (the bar’s name) is perhaps my favorite since it is easily the most diverse/progressive (as per my experience) in terms of class, race, somatotype, gender, and sexuality.  The majority of the male patronage seems to be working class, which perhaps explains why their monthly Construction Party is their most popular night, as many gay construction workers will show up in their daily work attire and hard hats.  While the plurality of the patronage is white, there is also a large attendance of Afro-, Latino-, East Asian-, and Near Eastern-American men.  Little need be said about somatotype since the bear community promotes fat positivity, and Exile prides itself on presenting male performers of all body shapes.  Gender diversity seems to be the one area where this bar is slightly lacking, with most of the patrons being male; nevertheless, there is always a female presence at the bar and, usually, on the BDSM nights, the main performers are dominatrices (both female and transgendered).  Finally, in terms of sexuality, while the vast majority of the habitué is homosexual (though, I have met the occasional guy who is drunk enough to admit that he is married with children!), there is much sexual diversity within the gay social structure of the habitué—the second-story sex shop will attest to this claim as the shop’s layout is uniquely categorized according to nearly thirty fetishes, most of which have their own themed night at the bar.

What I would attempt to curate . . .

1) Context of Exile

As already mentioned, that Friday evening (2 November), Exile advertised itself as hosting an explicitly political event.  Usually, the bar’s space does not preoccupy itself with mainstream politics, though, as the bar’s name suggests, there is always something political or sociopolitical about its operation and its patronage’s attendance.  Topographically, the bar is “in exile” as it sits on the periphery of Columbus’s downtown area—most other gay/queer bars and social spaces are situated in the heart of downtown—stretching up and down High Street (north to south), while Exile is situated several streets removed to the west.

2) The Bear Flag

Since this event was advertised as being politically pertinent to the election, my primary expectation/dread was being bombarded with American flags and patriotic paraphernalia.  This dread was almost immediately abated when, upon entry, I saw not a single American flag, only a ubiquitous Bear pride flag (pictured below).  

On the one hand, within this particular space, the bear flag becomes a supplement or double-signifier for both the "more proper" American flag—the bear flag's design easily recalls the design of the nation's flag—and the bear community, its specific signification phantasmatically becoming synecdochically connected to the national referent of the American flag.  On the other hand, the replacement of the American flag with the bear flag equally signals a rupture between these two signifiers, between nation and marginalized community, suggesting that the American flag lacks sufficient meaning within Exile's electoral politics, a signification that is more effectively embodied by the bear flag. The prevalence of the flag not only interpellates this space as bear-orientated and its patronage as bears/ bear-lovers but also classifies a certain exigency of voting for Obama as being bear-specific.  Thus, the evening's events were less about American politics than they were about the politics of bear-ness and queerness.  

3) Photos 

Another significant feature of the evening included a large number of men getting the phrases “Four more years” and “Mitt sucks dick” painted on their bared asses.  In terms of semiotics and discursive reappropriation, I am more interested in the latter phrase, which seemed to be the popular choice of the evening.  First, this phrase, painted on gay men’s posteriors, highlights the sexual nature of this past election’s politics—as well as of politics, in general. Second, the double entendre of “sucks dick” is quite significant.  On the one hand, the phrase relates to the colloquial, heterosexist and homophobic usage of “sucks dick” to mean annoying or contemptible—Romney is exasperating, his politics, execrable.  On the other hand, there is a bit of reverse discourse at play here, as if the off-rhymed association of “Mitt” and “dick” becomes a manner of outing the presidential candidate (and, perhaps, the entire Republican party), highlighting the repressed nature of Conservative politics.  Finally, the phrase also sexually objectifies Romney, rendering him susceptible to the gay male gaze and neutering the masculinist, phallocentric subjectivity of Republican politics.

4) Video Footage

One of the more explicit performances of the evening—and, in my opinion, the most politically and theatrically provocative—featured a man wearing only a jock strap and a Mitt Romney mask, chained to a wall, and being whipped by a dominatrix. 

The symbolic and performative significance of this spectacle is vast and complex.  First, the act itself represents a sort of symbolic punishment and, given the election’s outcome and voter statistics, is certainly emblematic of women voters psephologically punishing Romney and the Republican party for their reactionary politics against women’s sexual rights.  Second, when considering the homosexual patronage’s spectation of this performance, the spectacle equally becomes a form of pleasure at the sight of a symbolic Romney being punished, though it is hard to tell if this pleasure is politically or sexually derived. I imagine it is both since the theme of the evening seemed to be the sexualization of electoral politics.   

All of the above, I feel, would make for an intriguing exhibit (given the right museum) for documenting the 2012 election since, in the course of a single evening and within a single space, many of the sociopolitical discourses and sentiments of this past electoral season were symbolically conjured and simultaneously critiqued in a ludic, sexual fashion by a marginalized and diverse community that stood to lose much if the voting count had listed in the other direction.