(Trigger warning: Mention of sexual assault, violence)
When it comes to being stranded in a forest with someone, women are choosing a bear over a man. Let’s unpack that.
What is the debate and where did it come from?
A TikTok account Screenshot HQ posted a video asking several women the question, “Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear?" Seven out of the eight women in the video picked the bear.
Note: This wasn’t the origin of the question trend but is popularly considered to be the video where it blew up.
What does this mean?
The seemingly innocuous question is revealing disturbing details about women’s safety in the world, especially with respect to gendered violence. ‘Revealing’ would perhaps be the wrong word to use here because all of these statistics have been visible for a while. This hypothetical question led to women recounting cases of sexual assault, sexual misconduct, domestic abuse, and other forms of violence they’ve experienced with men.
One person commented, “‘Man or bear’ a bear because I was 4, 13, 15, 18 :/” with many others echoing the harrowing sentiment. Women have not only used this hypothetical scenario to highlight the misogynist abuse they face but also the way society dismisses it afterwards.
"No one’s gonna ask me if I led the bear on or give me a pamphlet on bear attack prevention tips,” one woman wrote, while another commented, “If I got attacked by a bear, at least people would believe me.”
Ironically, the responses to the trend have been very telling. One particular “meme” of a woman getting viciously attacked by a bear has been making the rounds on X (previously Twitter). “Memes” like these have only further highlighted why women are ‘choosing the bear’. Instead of introspecting and listening to why women’s threat perception is this way, people would rather create violent imagery involving women.
(Note: The screenshot has been cropped because of violent imagery)
The top comment under the original post summarises it well, “Help me understand the math. Women said they feel safer with a bear than a man. So in response you as a man decided to create imagery of them being violently dissected to prove that you’re not violent and are safe to be around?”
‘Do You Know how dangerous a bear is?’ Of course they do!
Another mind-boggling (but not surprising) reaction to the whole ‘man vs bear’ debate is that people are mansplaining the dangers of a bear to women. But the point has never been that. At no point has anyone said they would be 100% safe with a bear – they would just rather be stranded alone with one.
For decades, women have talked about how they carry their keys like weapons when they’re walking alone or how they always share their live locations with their friends when they go on dates just so someone knows where they are. For decades, young girls and women have been asked to ‘dress better’ or not go to certain ‘areas’ because they’re dangerous. And yet, when women are choosing to be stranded with literal bears instead of encountering a strange man, we would rather mansplain the dangers of a bear to them.
All of this aside, if we just look at initial reactions, there’s a lot to unpack. The questions to several people format is not new to TikTok or social media – it’s interesting as a format because it helps people find out people’s opinions outside of a controlled environment. That’s what this is – an opinion.
Not only that…it’s a harmless opinion based on the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of women. So, to put things in context – women are being trolled for expressing a personal opinion formed by everything they’ve seen around them.
TikTok user @/ryan_dwire puts it best, “If we are as men getting triggered and offended by the fact that women would rather be in the woods alone with a bear than us...if we're getting triggered by that, that means we're making it about ourselves.”
He adds, “The way I see it, women are literally picking the bear because they would rather be unalived (an alternative to the word ‘killed’ for the algorithm). This is just a trend to spread awareness; not to separate ‘man’ from ‘woman’. This is to get your attention.”
People have also posed more hypothetical questions instead of practicing some basic empathy or accountability. When presented with statistics about violence perpetrated by men, many started to bring up terms like ‘adjusting for population size’. This shouldn’t even be the debate.
How isn’t it absolutely terrifying that women live in a world where they’re choosing to encounter a bear (especially considering how people are bending over backwards to ‘teach’ them how dangerous they are) instead of encountering a man?
How does anyone take this reality and choose to belittle women instead of looking at the root cause?
How dangerous is a bear?
Who cares? This year there were multiple videos on TikTok where women were filming themselves while walking down a street in New York because men were punching them in the face, unprovoked. Recently, a video went viral on X (formerly Twitter) where a man poured milk on a woman because she refused to give him her number.
It doesn’t matter that women won’t run into bears as often as they meet a man. What matters is that we need to work towards a world where the choice between a man and an apex predator shouldn’t have to exist.
Some men, however, are actually listening and helping people put things into perspective.
One of them is the TikTok creator DadChats who tackles all the hypotheticals that are being used to derail the conversation (including the fact that ‘accuracy’ would also involve discussing male-on-male violence).
After talking about how statistics show that even with impossible hypotheticals coming true, women are still more in danger from men, he goes on to talk about how the chances of women facing sexual violence is zero on one side of the debate. Guess which side that is.
This is important to consider because of another disturbing rhetoric surrounding this debate. For some reason, there has been a rise of memes showing:
Women approaching bears
Women approaching bears as romantic or sexual interests
At the risk of sounding repetitive, this entire debate is about running into a man or a bear in a forest and the discussion has exposed the several ways women experience misogyny in the real world. The fact that ‘running into’ got so easily translated into a ‘date’ or a sexual encounter should bother us all.
DadChats makes this argument in one of his videos: “If you encounter a bear in the woods, your first thought is going to be, ‘I am a little scared but this makes sense because the woods is where bears live’. So if you really want to be accurate, what you would actually have to do is compare instances of violence by men against women in the homes of the different species we’re looking at.”
He adds, “So, how many instances of violent attacks by bears on women in the woods versus how many instances of violent attacks by men on women in their homes. I don’t think you’re going to want to do that.”
And the most chilling (and telling):
“Of course, you could flip it and you could say, ‘Would you rather wake up in the middle of the night and come downstairs and find a bear in your living room going through the fridge or a man that you don’t know sitting at the counter? Oh that wouldn’t work either, would it?”DadChats on TikTok
Where is the trend going now?
The most recent addition to this trend is women asking men the question with a twist. “If your daughter (or wife) was in the woods, would you rather she encounter a bear or a man?” Many men have been answering ‘bear’ because of the perceived threat level.
One particular video shows a man struggling to land on an answer till he does answer “man” but when his wife asks him to choose between a woman and a bear, he says “woman” without a second thought.
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