Twelve-year-old Lorenzo Rodriguez’s cursor hung over a link labeled “Gay Bear Porn.” He had no idea that what he was about to see would end up defining part of his identity.

One click, and everything changed.

Though earlier Internet adventures had helped Rodriguez accept his attraction to men, he had never seen a gay image he could relate to until he discovered bear porn. “I was 12, chubby as hell,” he said, “I never knew any gay people, so all I had to go by was the skinny, hairless twinks in the porn I was watching early on,” he said. “I always thought that being gay meant being effeminate…my biggest fear was that if I told my parents I was gay, they’d make me wear a dress.”

Growing up in the Dominican Republic, Rodriguez, now 20, felt that since he didn’t fit the image of gay men he saw in the media, he would never be able to have a relationship with a man. “I thought I was the last person in the world anyone would want to have sex with. The bear thing completely changed my life,” he said.

So, what is a bear?

Defining the bear image is simple. The apocryphal bear is a large, hairy, bearded man, and often sports a belly and “blue-collar” accessories like flannel and work boots. He’s the ultimate representation of traditional masculinity and the ultimate foil to the ubiquitous mainstream image of the gay man as a young, thin, effeminate party boy, the so-called “twink.”

But such a general definition misses the point. In his introduction to The Bear Book, the first academic study of the bear phenomenon, sociologist Les Wright explained why it’s so difficult to define bears. “For some, [bears are defined by] an attitude. For some it’s an image, and for some it is parts of both, for some the absolute refusal to submit to categorization is the essence of being a bear,” he wrote.

Though they disagree on a strict definition of the term “bear”, experts and self-identified bears alike point to two essential elements that constitute bear culture: the bear image and the bear attitude. In the last decade, the growth of bear media on the Internet and the advent of online social networking is helping a new generation of young, net-savvy men find comfortable sexual identities.

Ray Kampf, author of The Bear Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Those Who Are Husky, Hairy, and Homosexual and Those Who Love ‘Em, describes the development of the bear attitude in the 1980s, as small social groups of generally larger, hairier, and older gay men formed in gay enclaves across the country. According to Kampf, these men simply wanted to be comfortable with their bodies and enjoy their sexuality. “It was just a group of men who enjoyed trivial pursuits and having sex together,” he wrote. “They were open to anyone who wanted to have a good time, regardless of what they looked like.”

In a 2008 study on bear masculinity, researchers Eric Manley, Heidi Levitt, and Chad Mosher explained the appeal of the bear concept. “[the bear community is] a safe haven for gay men who may have felt forced to remain on the margins of gay and heterosexual cultures,” they wrote.

The bear image was born in the mid 1980s out of collective frustration with a rigid and oppressive mainstream gay culture that only accepted depictions of gay men as “twinks,” wrote Peter Hennen, author of Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine

With the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, the bear community expanded across the nation and around the world. “[The Internet] increased the visibility and cohesiveness of [the bear] community,” wrote Manley, Levitt, and Mosher. In The Bear Book II, Wright called bears “the first Internet-generated global community.”

Increasingly, the gay men of the Internet generation are embracing the self-accepting bear attitude, even if they don’t fit the bear image. In Netporn: DIY Web Culture and Sexual Politics, media professor Katrien Jacobs argued that the birth of online social networking has given them unprecedented abundance and variety of imagery on the web has “revolutioniz[ed] ” the way young would-be bears develop their sexual identities.

The bears’ more inclusive attitude towards masculinity gave Rodriguez the courage to explore his sexuality on the Internet. “The first thing I did at midnight, the day I turned 18, was join [gay social networking site] ManHunt,” he said.

As it turns out, exploration and experimentation can pay off. “I started hooking up with bears and I felt like God. For the first time, I felt ok being big, gay, and masculine – being myself.”

In the end, it seems that the bear community offers young gay men like Rodriguez the validation of knowing that no matter who you are or what you look like, someone, somewhere will find you attractive.

Now, thanks to the Internet, that someone is just one click away.