Emily Articulated: Bear vs. man

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

“If you were alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a bear or a man?” It was a prompt that started as a street interview on TikTok, but quickly permeated internet culture, as the answers from seven out of the original eight women asked were startling. 

They chose the bear. 

Now, since its inception in April, millions of people have sat with and responded to this question — a contemporary repurposing of the “Me Too” movement, spurring conversations around sexual assault and women’s perceived and actual safety around men.

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

Of course, I’m far from the first person to reflect on this movement, as reviving something that started two months ago on TikTok makes me a veritable necromancer. But after tuning in to the first wave of responses, and people’s — specifically men’s — reactions to them, the Bear vs. Man prompt has weighed on me long enough to precipitate sharpening my pencil. 

First, in case you’ve been on an internet sabbatical (and if so I’m happy for you), some of the most profound and heartbreaking lines of reasoning women shared when reflecting on the prompt showcased the pervasiveness and complexity of the threats they face. 

On one video that alone received more than 2 million likes, a woman explained, “The worst thing a bear could do to me is kill me,” and, “At least if I got attacked by a bear, people would believe me.” Another woman shared, “People won’t tell you you’re being paranoid for being afraid around bears,” and, “I won’t be told I’m ruining the bear’s future if I report the attack.”

Arguably more startling than what these women were sharing were the responses to their sentiments. Popping into any comment section on one of these videos is a minefield of men personifying the very reputation that causes women to be fearful of them in the first place: “You dumb b*tch, you must not know how dangerous bears are”; “You’re an irrational man-hater, you leftist hag”; and, “Have fun dying alone.”

I happen to be surrounded by stalwart men, who not only exude safety, but would be the very people I’d turn to if I needed protection that I couldn’t provide for myself. I understand and empathize with the discomfort inherent in men sitting with these cultural reprimands (similar to the knee-jerk defensiveness the Barbie movie instigated for many people). But it’s what men do with that discomfort that draws a clear line between “problematic men” and everyone else. 

“As a man who walks in the woods, often alone, what can I do to make you feel more safe?” one man asked earnestly in an Instagram Reel, prompting practical answers that highlighted the very un-hypothetical experiences women have while in the same places they’d encounter a bear: “Don’t ask my end destination or if I’m hiking alone,” and, “Don’t speed up or turn around to walk behind me.”

Another man shared a host of statistics debunking the notion that women are being irrational when “choosing a bear,” affirming that even after adjusting for bear populations, “Women are still 2.5 times more likely to be attacked by a man, not accounting for the fact that only one-fifth of attacks on women from men get reported.” 

Most poignantly, however, was his conclusion, that, “The most important answer to ‘why it’s bear’ is women are telling you it’s bear.’”

I think this Bear vs. Man thought experiment is representative of so many things permeating our current culture. As a society, especially when it comes to “hot-button” topics, we have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees (how’s that for on-the-nose metaphors?).

We get so caught up in the details, not to mention our own defensiveness, that we fail to comprehend the large-scale issues at play. We lash out with sentiments like, “It’s not all men,” “It’s not all police officers” or “It’s not all white people,” without stopping to reflect on the fact that there shouldn’t be any man or any [insert aggressor here]. We don’t examine the systems that perpetuate anyone’s need to feel unsafe, instead shaming or blaming the people who speak honestly about their lived experiences within the systems we’re upholding.

The Bear vs. Man prompt also reveals how hard it is to talk about these deep-seated issues — not only that we require a TikTok hypothetical to discuss women’s safety — but the paradoxical relationship between these hard discussions and our ability to reach the people who most need to participate in them.

In this case, the men who are actually able to hear what women are saying when they choose “the bear,” were never the men who women had a problem with in the first place. And the men (and women) too triggered by the question to absorb it in any meaningful way are the ones who need to hear it most.

Which begs the question, “How do we reach the unreachable, especially when it comes to hard, and necessary, conversations?”

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.