Men vs Bear
Why Most Women Choose the Bear: Delving into the Viral “Man vs. Bear” Safety Question
And why some men are surprised
The Bear Went Over the Mountain…
We all know the nursery rhyme — that silly, singsong tale of an anthropomorphized bear lumbering over the hills in search of Castleton jams.
It’s a childhood classic, ripe with absurdity yet cozy familiarity. The furry beast rendered an almost comic, teddy bear-esque character constantly outwitted by stream and rock.
Many parents have recited those whimsically repetitive verses to their own kids a thousand times. Chuckling at each “What a great panic!” and letting them mimic the bear’s huffing grunts with cherubic glee. It’s all so innocuous on its surface — an amusing bit of rhythmic nonsense to lull little ones off to dreamland.
Yet lately, revisiting that old rhyme through a more jaundiced adult lens, I can’t help reimagining the tale’s ending.
What if, at the climax instead of fruitless hoping “he’ll return no more,” our ursine hero did meander back into the flesh? Metaphorical snout finally poked over that last misty rise, standing in furry totality before those unsuspecting children.
Would they greet him with cheerful whoops of recognition? Or more likely recoil in instinctual, bloodcurdling terror at having that half-ton of fangs and muscle suddenly materialize from their cozy bedtime story?
Because for all the whimsy we may anthropomorphize onto Winnie the Pooh types, at the end of the day, bears remain wild, unpredictable animals. Driven by baser hungers and territorial aggression that belie their cuddly media portrayals.
You get too close, crowd their space, or appear a threat to their offspring — and suddenly that storybook grizzly morphs from jovial to sheer nightmare fodder.
And yet … as I mull over the virality of that social media phenomenon asking women whether they’d rather encounter a bear or man alone in the woods, I suspect many women would still choose the rampaging ursine over the human alternative.
Not out of any particular animus toward the male population en masse, but simply unsettling psychological calculus born of harsh experience.
Larry Nassar
To illustrate the grim thought process — let’s revisit one particularly infamous human predator.
A seemingly upstanding doctor entrusted with our daughters’ well-being, kneaded into the fabric of elite athletics and even Team USA’s Olympic apparatus.
A man who could have been the subject of any number of sanitized heroic biopics and motivational tomes. But who ultimately turned out to be a monster incarnate, spinning an entire parallel universe of sexual abuse around his position of trust and authority?
Yes, I’m referring to Larry Nassar. Once the renowned osteopathic physician to athletes including several past Olympians, now more accurately referred to as a “serial child molester” after hundreds of survivors came forward about his pattern of harassment and assault under the guise of medical treatment.
It was a breathtaking, perfectly engineered gaslight.
Nassar leveraged his credentials as a professional healer to manipulate generations of starry-eyed young gymnasts into forced sexual exploitation. All while the very parents and institutions that should have been hyper-vigilant enablers looked the other way for decades.
Even once reports began trickling up the chain of command at USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, and other stakeholder entities — they sat on the horrifying information. Prioritizing optics, liability, and that gold-plated Nassar reputation over either accountability or the safety of victims as young as six years old.
Enablers privileging human conflicts of interest over shielding the innocents in their charge from an insidious predator.
Nassar’s systematic abuse finally came to light in 2016 after an incredibly courageous first public accusation galvanized other survivors to follow. Even throughout the ensuing high-profile trials and ever-mounting victim tally now exceeding 300 girls and women, the remorseless doctor continued attempting to slough off culpability.
Bizarrely claiming his heinous acts were simply “medical procedures” while serving a 175-year federal prison sentence.
The median age of his victims? Just 14 years old. Far too many still prepubescents entrusted to his care and betrayed in such shattering fashion. These were young, dreamy-eyed athletes looking up to a trusted authority figure and program icon.
Heroes to millions of girls jonesing over their first leotards and eye-planted on Olympic grandeur. Instead of empowerment, so many found life-distorting trauma at the hands of a confirmed sociopath expertly selling snake oil.
Now ask yourself — had those same wide-eyed girls been trudging alone through the woods and encountered a flesh-and-blood Grizzly charging over that far ridge instead, jaws agape and fierce … would the odds really have been worse?
At least with the wild bear, its brutality while hellish would be primal, impersonal.
The direct deliverance of fang and claw upholds the natural order as it has for millennia. A terrifying encounter, but quickly over either way. With the merciful promise of a relatively swift resolution, one way or the other.
But with a human predator like Nassar, the torment is neither primal nor merciful. It’s a calculated, meticulous desecration of innocence and personal autonomy.
An abuse not just of body, but of mind and spirit in systematically stripping away the bedrock of human trust and dignity.
Those young gymnasts and countless other victims had their bodies not just mutilated but conscripted to serve the ego and urges of a supposed authority figure. Someone they were conditioned to obey blindly under the threat that any objection would derail their dreams.
Someone granted special cultural impunity to invade the most sacrosanct personal boundaries in the name of bogus “treatment.”
And that flagrant betrayal of power leaves scars beyond the purely physical.
A spiritual evisceration compounded by the victimizers’ confidence that no one will believe the victims anyway. That society’s default will be to demand youngsters “prove” the innocence stolen from them, even when the criminality springs from hallowed institutions and authority itself.
So whether contemplating Nassar or countless other uncovered predators like him — from clergy and teachers to camp counselors and family patriarchs — is it any wonder that so many women might legitimately feel less existential dread from a rampaging bear?
At least that incarnation of terror follows the ruddy laws of wilderness and mandibles. We understand the bear’s singular promptings and where we stand accordingly as hunted or hunter.
But human cruelty remains a pernicious virus subverting our most cherished spaces and societal pillars from the inside. One soaked in the vagaries of unchecked lust, jealousy, spiritual depravity, and human convenience over accountability.
The statistics paint a grim portrait of just how ubiquitous these viralities of male predation seep into daily life.
According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), data culled from the U.S. Department of Justice — a staggering 1 in 6 American women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.
With that figure only accounting for rapes involving penetration and almost certainly undercounting the true toll.
A staggering 1 in 6 American women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. — RAINN
Extrapolated further, over 60% of female murder victims are killed by someone they know.
Often a current or former intimate partner, per the DoJ’s Homicide Trends tracked between 1976 and 2005.
And while anyone can fall victim to these horrendous statistics — disproportionate burdens fall on Native American, Black, and transgender women. Marginalized populations too often suffer these violations unseen or disregarded by authorities meant to serve us all.
Final words
So yes, even as the “silly” bear rhyme lilts through another household singalong, I’ll confess to still harboring more atavistic nerves around human threats.
Around those beings whose motives and rationalizations for terror tap into shades of gray far murkier than the binary tooth/claw proposition.
Because while the archetypal monstrous grizzly bullying its way through nursery tales may make fine fleeting bogeymen, the real monsters so often wear smiles and suits.
Camouflaged in offices, pulpits, locker rooms, and the very homes where we should feel safest. Lulling us into leaving our existential guards down until their grotesqueries are fully revealed.
So in weighing which apex predator to hazard in humanity’s ostensible dominion over the wild — I’ll personally take my calculated chances with the ursine variety every time. Not because I distrust men as a whole, but because at least nature’s ferocious jaws make their carnage obvious from the onset.
The human hunters are far more adept at squirreling into our blindspots and bankrupting vulnerabilities first — those are the ones who warrant vigilance and dread. The lurkers whose rapacious appetites we too often only apprehend once it’s far, far too late.
No matter how silly the rhyme or cuddled the character, the bear retains a kind of primordial honesty we could all stand to appreciate more.
The simple feral truth that it intends to harm and will express such with the crudity of tooth and talon. Cutting through all pretexts and denial of its true intent to hunt.
Whereas far too many humans — especially male-identifying ones socialized to feel entitlement over others’ spaces and consent — cloak that same rapacity behind shades of euphemism and rank deceit.
And in doing so, propagate far more insidious and lasting brands of damage before their ravenous motives are finally dragged squirming into the light…if they ever are at all.
Thank you for reading.
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