Luther is an outdoorsy man, and that much is obvious by his description of the various types and weight categories of bears. I have a different qualification to bring to the table when discussing the bear-man social-media trend: I am a woman.
For those who have yet to read Luther’s post, here’s the gist: A new TikTok trend asks young women whether they’d rather be alone in a forest with a bear or man. Turns out many women would choose a bear. As Luther points out, this is the wrong choice. Bears kill and maul and are also huge, and also could not offer you any companionship or help should you be stuck in the wilderness. Yet the general threat of “man” still seems worse to women than the threat of a hulking animal that can outrun, crush, and dismember a human.
But I say the discussion has been “surprisingly” popular because many of my girlfriends have really had to think about which option they’d rather choose. Gut instinct says “bear,” they tell me. Then they ask questions. Is it a black bear? A polar bear? If it’s a koala bear, then the answer is a no-brainer: Shack me up with one of those cuddly suckers in a forest any day. Is the man a “forest man” who has been living in the wilderness for a while, or is he your average male, picked straight out of the Boston phonebook? Are you secluded or near a populated hiking trail?
Still, after all the questions, the girls seem to land on the option of “bear” — seven out of eight of them on TikTok, Luther writes. I’m not sure that’s crazy; women, after all, have little experience with bears. We’ve heard worse stories about encountering men in the proverbial wild. Given the horror stories women have either experienced or read about on social media, it makes sense that they’re afraid of strange men. Not because most men pose a real threat, but because we’ve been taught to stay far, far away from ones who might. Women know that bears are more dangerous. But if we’re thinking “worst-case scenario” (which is how the question is phrased), women would rather be mauled by a bear than, say, be raped to death by a man.
“Bear or man” is a popular discussion because men are upset that women think they’re dangerous, and women are mad that men don’t understand why. Both sexes feel, and are, misunderstood. The online nature of the debate doesn’t help — it’s a conversation devoid of real connection or community, which might be where the aforementioned feeling that each sex has of being misunderstood by the other stems from.
My dad used to quote Captain Ron (an asinine movie but nonetheless) on road trips: “If we get lost, we can always pull in somewheres and ask directions!” I just read Jon Haidt’s Anxious Generation (which anyone with a device should read). He makes a small note that people don’t ask each other for directions anymore. We’re too scared to interact with strangers, and we have directions on our phones anyway. But little interactions used to make strangers less scary and friendliness more common.
Women and men might remedy the bear v. man debate by taking it offline. I assume that societal protections make women feel more safe, so while we’re here, not in the forest, we should all be casually friendly with strangers. Most people at random won’t rape or maim another human (though I’ve been called an optimist before).
Men, since you’re the ones being stereotyped, you might appreciate this joke a friend made when asked if he’d rather be stuck in a forest with a woman or a bear: “Girl is scarier than bear. At least the bear knows what it wants to eat.”