Disability, Queer Identity, and Caressing Bear Nipples

Society tends to undervalue sex workers and consider the artistic value of pornography to be inferior to other works. Long gone is the porno chic era where the likes of Johnny Carson admitted to seeing Deep Throat in theaters during a monologue on The Tonight Show and Roger Ebert called The Devil In Miss Jones “the best hard-core porno film I’ve seen” in one of his many reviews of films of that genre. If anything, adult works are the subject of ridicule, with things like the AVN Awards being the butt of jokes in everything from Family Guy to King of the Hill.

So, when the anime adaptation of Caressing the Nipples of My Hibernating Bear was announced, its admittedly quirky and unusual title became the subject of roasts across various social media sites. It caused such an uproar I personally even had a pitch approved to write about it, which led to me reading the series to better understand what I was covering.

Caressing the Nipples of My Hibernating Bear follows the story of a bear named Nowa and a puppy he finds alone and decides to raise named Airi. Nowa forgoes hibernation for many years to ensure Airi is kept safe, but is eventually unable to avoid sleeping any longer. When he awakens, he finds a fully grown Airi who wants their relationship to be far different than it was before. Then, as expected in an erotic boys love story, much enjoyment of horizontal refreshments ensue as the two explore their new romantic and sexual relationship.

It would be easy to just dismiss this problematic story as many tend to do with pornography in general, but there can be value found in messy relationships and queer representation. Fleeting glimpses at queer identity are sometimes only discovered within “anything goes” types of media. In fact, the tumultuous times that preceded me reading the series primed me for this erotic series to deliver some of the most meaningful emotional revelations of my life.

2020 – Turmoil and New Beginnings

2020 was its own period of hibernation for many. People emerged from the COVID-19 lockdowns with entirely new gender identities among other important revelations about themselves. Having gone through two surgical procedures that year, I was no different. The first was an amputation of my right foot to finally resolve an ankle injury that had refused to heal for over three years to at least give me a shot at walking again. The second was to have gender affirming bottom surgery after having been transitioned for nearly eight years.

These both had profound effects on my life that I could never have planned for. I ended up not being a good candidate for a prosthetic leg, but I lost little, as I had barely been able to walk for the previous three years of my life and this forced insurance to cover a proper wheelchair, which greatly improved my mobility. Legs use a surprisingly large amount of calories, and I quickly found myself gaining some weight post surgery, but I also couldn’t complain as it added even more curves to my body that felt more affirming than anything.

There was only one hitch: I suddenly lost my privilege of being a passing transgender woman the moment I started using a wheelchair full time. I couldn’t fathom why, as I hadn’t changed a thing about my presentation. I wore the same clothes, spoke the same way, acted the same way, and wore my hair the same way, but I couldn’t hear a “she” or a “her” unless I was talking to friends who already knew me.

While over half of transgender adults report having a disability — a significantly larger proportion than the rest of the population — the majority of those are cognitive, with only 19% reporting to have mobility issues. With this in mind, I, as a trans amputee post transition, was a statistically miniscule part of the population. The few people I could even find to ask for advice on the subject had none to give, as they lacked any similar experiences. It shook me emotionally to suddenly lose something I had taken for granted just because I was sitting down a lot more than I had previously. With no solutions to be found, I was alone with this struggle.

I tried to push this from my mind while navigating post-operative appointments amid this sudden rise in misgendering. I had a dangling carrot to keep me distracted. Being disabled and on a fixed income, I had assumed I would never be able to afford gender affirming surgeries of any kind. A successful lawsuit requiring the state of Wisconsin to cover these procedures under its Medicaid insurance suddenly gave me the opportunity to do something I had only ever dreamed of. A moment most trans people I knew had told me was one of the most affirming and magical things they had ever experienced was just around the corner for me. Surely I could hold out a bit longer and would be so inspired that I could tackle this issue with new vigor after.

Transgender people and disabled people both face disparities when attempting to receive healthcare. Medical outcomes are also statistically worse for those in both populations, especially for those both disabled and transgender at the same time. I was unable to beat the statistical spread with my own outcome, and I faced severe complications post surgery, mistreatment by nurses resulting in bed sores, and an extremely botched bottom surgery.

Post-Surgery Blues

My surgeon proceeded to gaslight me about my results, and with few to no options of recourse for trans patients failed by their surgeons, there was little I could do. I would either be facing down a surgery that refused to heal right and caused extreme bouts of chronic pain alone, or do so with at least some sort of medical supervision. I was forced to pick the latter for my safety. Things only got worse when I tried turning to the trans community and the found family I had built up for years in need of support.

The same people who had hyped up this dream coming true for me started to avoid speaking to me. When I brought up my issues in chat rooms I frequented, I was asked to stop talking about these things as I would “scare people,” and chatters proceeded to ignore me even in conversations about unrelated subjects. People who had known me for years accused me of being a TERF — trans exclusionary radical feminist — trying to pull a psyop against them.

There have been multiple studies that show transgender and gender diverse people face higher rates of loneliness than cisgender people. It has been reported as many as 38–52% of that same population report feeling socially isolated and lacking in companionship. Now, I was completely isolated from what little community I had come to cherish, abandoned by those who claimed to care about me when I needed it most. Most medical providers are inadequately trained to meet the needs of trans patients, so I couldn’t even find solace by turning to a therapist. The few I could find had little to offer other than shrugs, as they had never seen anyone with a botched bottom surgery before and had no education on how to tackle the issue.

I no longer felt motivated to keep up a feminine appearance, and it wasn’t just due to the severe bouts of depression I was forced to grapple with. If no one was going to gender me correctly, see me for the person I am, or recognize my struggles in any capacity, then what was the point of exhausting my disabled self with all that maintenance? I started to present masculinely again, not even bothering to correct pronoun use by strangers or doctors. My body and presentation lead to some people ironically thinking I was trans, but assuming I was a transgender man instead. I honestly didn’t know what gender I was anymore and had no label to give myself — just a shattered reality of all I used to know about myself scattered at my feet.

Lessons from a Surprising Teacher

One of the hardest parts of being gender nonconforming is there aren’t people telling you how to do it, no tutorials to follow, and barely an article online with suggestions regarding the specific struggles you might face. I had to put myself back together piece by piece, and stumbling onto the existence of Caressing the Nipples of My Hibernating Bear in 2022 became my surprising first step in doing so.

I hadn’t seen another piece of media presented for mass consumption that showed a masculine character with breasts presented as an object of desire to an audience before. Yes, I said breasts, not pectorals — the title focuses on nipples for a reason, after all. Nowa’s breasts are often shown in scintillating shots as soft and round, much like my own, and not just as solid muscle. They even grow a bit bigger and rounder as the story goes on, mirroring some of the changes I had seen in my own body post amputation.

This was groundbreaking for me, someone who couldn’t even fathom being desired sexually after being socially and romantically ostracized. This was my first glimpse of someone who had features like I did being so desired that an entire series about them could become popular enough to receive an official English dub.

The series had more lessons to teach, as well. Is the pseudo-incestual relationship with a severe gap in age and life experience between its two main characters extremely problematic? Absolutely. Still, Nowa and Airi navigating the issues this presented contained valuable lessons in being able to love and accept yourself for the things you want and desire, even if they are imperfect and messy at times.

Bluntly, this also showed me how I might focus on my own pleasure again, as well. I was recovering from a botched bottom surgery where the genitals most people would focus on hurt too much and caused far too much dysphoria to be enjoyable. All of this talk and show of caressing bear nipples gave me ideas to fantasize about again and literally illustrated tutorials on ways I might pleasure myself that I had struggled to find elsewhere.

A New Label for a New Me

As Nowa was a bear, I made an offhand joke to myself, wondering about if there was such a thing as bears but for ladies instead of gay men. Describing myself as butch kept resulting in more confusion, as I didn’t fit what people imagined as butch in their heads despite fitting the literal definition. These issues lead to the joke becoming a serious search for a label that properly described who I was. I was able to find information on ursula lesbians, named after the most famous feminine bear in the night sky, Ursa Major.

I had found a label for myself once more, and I had found others with experiences and presentations like my own to learn from. I was able to start finding and building a community that loved and understood me again. All because I took a manga titled Caressing the Nipples of My Hibernating Bear seriously and decided I wasn’t too conceited to take the kinds of lessons only an erotic boys love manga could lead me to learning.

Sure, it’s easier to laugh at stories like Caressing the Nipples of My Hibernating Bear, make some memes, revel in their ridicule, and watch them trend on social media before promptly forgetting about their existence. It’s much harder to admit that pornography is no less a vehicle for societal commentary and valuable moral and philosophical discussions than any other kind of entertainment.

We lost something of value when reviews for pornographic films no longer graced the pages of Variety magazine. We continue to be deprived of artistic merit when the kind of money, time, and production values these stories deserve aren’t given to adaptations with excuses about how their sexual nature makes them less valuable. Would things be different if Supreme Court decisions and the era of VHS tapes hadn’t ended the Golden Age of Porn so quickly? Only someone in an alternate timeline may ever know.

I just know this series with such a memorable title taught me about myself in ways no other piece of media could or ever will. I can only hope reading this encourages people to treasure the stories that hold meaning to them and to not discredit pieces of art simply because of an element used within it. Caressing the Nipples of My Hibernating Bear unironically changed my life. Who knows what story could do the same for you.

Credits

Manga drawn and written by Haruchika
Published by WWWave (Coolmic)
Anime Directed by Kazuomi Koga