So Many People are Missing the Point of the “Man or Bear” Thing
It was never about the bear.
Content warning: talk of sexual assault and rape.
A lot of digital ink has been spilled over the “man or bear” argument in the past few weeks. I am not an exception to this, having written about it not even a week ago.
For those who have not noticed this debate, the question posed is as follows: as a woman, which would you rather meet in the woods: a man you don’t know, or a bear?
When you ask most women this, the answer is generally “the bear.” There are many varied reasons for this, of course. For one, bears don’t typically attack people unless provoked — depending on the species of bear and the circumstance, of course, but a prepared hiker will know how to deal with and survive a bear encounter.
Another reason I’ve seen is that, while many men, even the majority of men, won’t do anything to a woman they meet in the woods, the things that some men can and will do are far, far worse than what a bear will do. The worst a bear will do is kill you. The worst a man can do is not fit to print here.
One of the more common (and sad) ones is that if a woman stumbles out of the woods with claw injuries and says she was attacked by a bear, people will actually believe her…
