I’m An Avid Hiker. AND A Woman. Gimme The Man Over the Bear Any Day!

The judgment not discussed

Author’s photo between Breckenridge and Frisco, CO

I’m not an active participant on social media by any means. So when my cousin asked me if I’d rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man I don’t know, I immediately answered “a man,” not knowing this preference aroused defensiveness.

My reasoning went something like this:

1. I can most likely reason with or manipulate a man. I cannot possibly reason with or manipulate a bear.
2. If I shoot a man once with a hand gun, especially at point blank range, the man will probably die. I can’t say the same for the bear, depending on the type and size of the bear. It would take substantially more shots and a bigger gun to kill a bear than a man.
3. There’s a possibility I can fight off or outrun a man, despite my petite stature (5'1" and 115 lbs.). But there’s no way I can fight off or outrun a bear.
4. A man is more likely than is a bear to assist me if we are both stranded. I don’t know how to communicate with a bear to formulate a plan for overnight survival or to get out of the woods safely.
5. The thought of a massive animal ripping off my scalp, tearing apart my limbs, sinking it’s unrelenting teeth into my soft flesh, and yanking out my eyes induces more fear in me than does encountering a human being I don’t know. If I ended up dying from my bear attack injuries, I imagine I’d experience agonizing pain in the process. If I survived, I’d still experience horrific pain, months or years long recovery, expensive hospital bills, potentially permanent disfiguring scars, etc.
6. A bear has home field advantage in the woods. A man most likely does not. A bear is equipped with a sharper sense of smell than is a man. I can hide easier from a man than I can hide from a bear if I saw either one of them first, particularly if I have food on me, which I most likely would.

I did not seriously consider the possibility that a random man in the woods would try to harm me. My immediate thought went to the respect I have for large animals that are more naturally equipped to tear apart prey with their body parts than are humans.

Regardless, I was not surprised to see that most women said they’d take the bear over the man for fear of being sexually assaulted by a man.

What surprised me was the defensive responses from women to other women who said they prefer the man to the bear.

We are all products of our individual experiences

I’m a Colorado girl through and through. I have hiked many, many miles in the Colorado Rocky Mountains in elevations ranging from 6,000 feet up to more than 14,000 feet. I have been an avid hiker for decades now, and I have encountered countless men I don’t know in the woods. Fortunately, men have never posed a danger to me in the woods. However, some men have certainly posed a danger to me in other places I’ve been outside of nature.

This of course does not mean it’s impossible to encounter a man in the woods who would potentially harm me. It just means that’s not where my mind goes because that’s not the norm in my experience in the woods.

So I was surprised to read the comment section following a Medium article titled “So Many People are Missing the Point of the “Man or Bear” Thing”. One comment that particularly interested me was a response to a woman who said she was an outlier because she would prefer the man to the bear.

The commenter at first assured the woman her position was okay, but her bias against this position showed with the following comment, “You may have never experienced a #MeToo moment. It doesn’t mean that those moments didn’t happen. And it doesn’t mean that if your friend told you about one that you would tell her she just misunderstood or that it couldn’t have happened. These things can all be true.”

Screenshot of comment from Medium article mentioned above.

Even though this commenter was not speaking to me, my first thought was “So now I have to pull out my #MeToo card to justify my preference for a man over a bear?”

The assumption that if a woman says she would prefer to encounter a random man alone in the woods than a bear, she must have never experienced sexual assault, harassment, or violence bothered me. The assumption that this preference means a woman must not believe other women who have been assaulted also bothered me.

Because that completely diminishes my own experiences with sexual assault and harassment.

This was not the only comment against the woman’s preference for a man to a bear. Several comments followed replete with rape statistics. Which made me wonder, why is my preference considered an affront to women’s safety? Are my prior experiences, including encountering strange men in the woods invalid? Are my experiences with sexual assault also invalid?

Admittedly, the clash in perspectives inspired defensiveness of my own. Even though the bear/man scenario was posed hypothetically, I still found myself internally countering arguments brought up in the Medium article. Such as:

1. Not all men are rapists. But enough men are rapists to scare women.
   That’s how I feel about bears! A bear would likely leave me alone and ignore me in the woods (maybe already has), but enough bear attacks occur to scare the bejeezus out of me at the thought of encountering a bear. Or any other large 4-legged predator (such as a mountain lion) for that matter. Heck, even some no-legged predators (such as rattlesnakes).
2. Rapes happen more frequently than do bear attacks.
   Of course they do! There are more men on this planet than there are bears. Women encounter far more men in their lives than they do bears.
3. I’ve encountered bears before, and they have just run away and left me alone.
   The same is true for me about men! I have encountered MANY men before, in and out of the woods, and most of them leave me alone. The fact that some bear encounters have been harmless does not mean that bear attacks will never happen, just like harmless encounters with men does not mean that a man will never rape a woman.

Of course the fact that I did not instinctively assume a high likelihood of encountering a rapist in the woods when posed with this scenario does not minimize the valid fears women have of being raped, sexually assaulted, or the tragic possibility that they won’t be believed.

I am well aware of how it feels to be doubted, to have to keep quiet about my experiences with sexual harassment and assault. I have felt hopeless, helpless, frustrated, and pissed off as hell for either not being believed or not having enough proof to impose punishment on an offender.

Had the scenario been presented this way, I might have had a different response. Would you rather:

1. Encounter a man you don’t know alone in a dark alley?

OR

2. Encounter a bear alone in the woods?

In this scenario, I’d most likely take my chances alone with a bear in the woods because I think the likelihood of the bear leaving me alone (unless I had food or was too close to the mama bear’s cubs) is higher than a strange man leaving me alone in a dark alley. But who knows, I could be wrong.

Empathy for who?

I hope that in trying to inspire empathy in men for women through this thought experiment, the same level of empathy and non-judgment extends between women who don’t have the same reactions or perceptions.

Once I got over my own defensive reaction to what I viewed as attacks on my position, I also empathized with women whose first thought was man = more danger than bear. I empathized with women who consider the evil human beings are capable of far worse than non-human animal ferocity. I can understand why the fear of being kidnapped, tortured, raped etc. by a man outweighs the fear of a possible bear encounter or bear attack.

In one worst-case scenario, the predator does not recognize the woman’s humanity. In the other worst-case scenario, the predator recognizes the woman’s humanity all too well.

For some the thought of being dehumanized by a fellow human being evokes greater terror than does the thought of human frailty against a powerful, 400 lbs. inhuman animal.

If anything, the thought experiment certainly increased empathy in me for different reasoning and perspectives!

Update: Thank you for reading and for the thoughtful discussions! I wrote a follow-up to this article inspired by commentary I received on this piece. You can read the continued discussion here. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!