Lately there has been a Tik Tok-born trend called “Man or Bear?”, the initial video for which was viewed over 16 million times last month, making it some of the app’s most viral content. The dilemma is this: Is it better for a woman walking alone in the forest to run into a bear or a man? On first glance the question may seem far-fetched and obvious, but it has become quite a hot topic debate, and the overwhelming majority of women respond that they’d prefer to come face to face with a bear.
What does it say about our society, experiences and fears that we trust a wild animal to cause less harm to us than one of our own species?
I wasn’t sure of my own response to the dilemma until my time spent in a small town in Costa Rica last month. I was staying in a house off of a local city street that was nestled in a rural area at the bottom of a volcano and slept in a room directly facing a ravine that led down to a jungly river bed. I was accompanied by a local and his dog named Sam. One night, about a week into my stay, I was started awake by Sam’s panicked barking. He was running around outside of my room, loud with a sense of urgency I’d never heard from him before. I immediately threw on clothes and armed myself with my pepper spray and put 911 on speed dial. I pictured a man wandering off the street, holding a gun (or more likely a machete, the local version of pepper spray) and kicking through my flimsy locked door. My mind was filled with the horrors of what could be done to me, how long he would give me to cry for help, the devastation of my family when they would find out. When I got a text from my housemate that Sam was barking at two large coyotes in the ravine, I was flooded with relief. The local guy was confused – this was certainly not good news to him, but it immediately quieted my panic, and I was able to fall peacefully back to sleep. Why was I so much more alarmed of the possibility of a strange man on the property than a wild animal?
Among the responses of women across the world who answered “bear” over “man” on social media were:
“The bear can only kill me or leave me alone, whereas facing a man, there are an infinite number of possibilities.”
“If I tell people that a bear attacked me, they’ll believe me.”
“No one’s gonna ask me if I led the bear on or give me a pamphlet on bear attack prevention tips.”
“If I survive, I’m not likely to run into him again in town.”
“No one will tell me that the bear attacked me because of the way I dress.”
“If a bear kills me, at least they’ll shoot him afterward.”
“I know a bear’s intentions — I don’t know a man’s intentions, no matter how nice they are.”
“The bear wouldn’t apologize after and promise to never do it again.”
As people all over the world respond to this trending question, it becomes clear that the answer is unified among women across the globe, but leaves many men and women at odds. Some, irritated by the majority of women choosing to take their chances with a bear have called the question “misandrist,” claiming that it’s an excuse to freely hate on men. Others have taken the trend as an opportunity to mock and belittle women in response.
Many people are missing the point entirely, and seem to misunderstand the definition of a hypothetical question. The reality is, for the women responding “bear,” it’s really not about the bear at all. We could go into the tragic statistics of gender-based violence around the world, but the overwhelmingly consistent response is simply a way of calling out the sad reality that many women will never know what it’s like to feel entirely safe around other people.