Man or Bear

Internationally 6 out of 7 women chose bear and a vocal minority of men scream misandry

On Saturday night I was invited on to Natasha Devon’s LBC show to discuss the Tiktok viral sensation asking women if they would rather be approached by a man or a bear in isolated woods.

Here is the segment:

One of the subsequent callers was discussing it with his family and thought it was ridiculous that women were saying bears are the obvious choice. And then he asked his 8 year old child. She shrugged and matter of factly said Bear.

Imagine if instead of arguing the toss and listening to the explanations of why women are overwhelmingly choosing bear— talk to the women in your life and ask them about their accumulated experiences with the threat of male violence as well as the times they have been flashed, assaulted or told they were being histrionic.

When I started campaigning, the thing that really jarred the men closest to me was telling them about the number of times i had been flashed in person- my number is 7- includes America, UK and Belgium.

They had never imagined it happened that much- given that is seen as something only actual sex offenders do. Every woman I know has been flashed multiple times. Most of us had it happen to us as children.

One thing age has really gifted me is that I no longer care if I am being over cautious or may offend a man who had no bad intentions, if my spidey sense tells me I am in danger, I react immediately.

When I was younger I sat through almost ninety minutes of a movie- Pollock- thinking the man next to be was playing with himself, but thinking I was imagining it. We were in a fancy full movie theater in Manhattan. There was no possible way? I was being nuts- finally I heard a noise that reassured me I wasn’t making it up and I said to my friend what he was doing- and he zipped up and left. That was 23 years ago and I still remember it vividly- my fear, my disgust and my doubting myself.

My fear of saying something and being wrong overruled the part of me that absolutely knew what he was doing and that I was in danger.

A man in First Class on a flight to Seattle sat on the aisle next to my 56 year old mother and masturbated. The flight attendants were all my age and my mother didn’t want to make them have to deal with his behaviour (because she wouldn’t want me to have to), so pretended to sleep for the whole flight and cried recounting it to me later.

All of us have so many stories. And they are about power and shame and how they are used to control and injure women. Men exert that power and shame. Bears are just hungry.

I would suggest that men should all choose bear as well, until society as a whole deals with male violence. Male violence against other men and against women. The common denominator is men committing the acts of violence.

Bears are a known entity and if you lose your life you won’t be blamed for it, they won’t take your phone and deny you were in danger or ask if you were clear enough that you did not want the interaction.

The thing is women spend so much time going the long way to avoid confrontation, to placate and get away- rather than engaging and challenging the aggressor. So many of our decisions are made to avoid any contact. To make our lives smaller, our bodies smaller, our presences smaller in order to avoid unwanted attention. If they don’t clock us, we won’t be in danger. Because if we acknowledge, and don’t say thank you or aren’t receptive, that’s when we are stuck up bitches or whores. That’s when they want to show us a lesson.

I don’t think men have any idea of the battlefield we face regularly. A battlefield that is choose your own adventure, but we cannot possibly win. We will never know when our pretending not to hear will agitate a man to violence. When our pretend thank you will incite fury in him. When our smile is asking for it. And then for a lot of women that battfield continues in their homes and they are adding to it by also trying to protect their children.

With a bear, we know that a bear is much more likely to leave us alone if you leave them alone— the bear won’t provoke, shoot their shot or humiliate you. I’d choose a bear every time.

Today I have posed a similar question on twitter. Currently civilian men are winning 3/1. I’m not sure celebrations are in order.