The Man or the Mother Fucking Bear

To preface for those who have been living under a rock, the man or the bear question is a viral meme that spread like wildfire over social media in the late spring. The question was, if a woman had to encounter a strange man or a bear while alone in the woods, which would they choose? And the overwhelming majority of women chose the bear. The original video had men being asked if they would prefer their daughters meet a strange man or a bear, and they too chose the bear. It became an incredibly poignant and concise illustration of how deeply unsafe many women feel in the world, and in the presence of men in general. The importance of the knee jerk reaction: “oh bear, definitely!” has layers of importance; that a woman does not want to risk her body being alone with a strange man hardly needs explaining. Stats for sexual and physical violence toward women are still shamefully high, and is a problem that will most likely never go away. More prevalent even than physical violence, is the level of mental and emotional violence women suffer at the hands of men, who for all intents and purposes, have been trusted to protect them. The profound sense of distrust doesn’t come out of nowhere; it’s deep rooted in a woman’s DNA, from eons of being prey animals to predatory men. The man and bear conversation pointed to this truth that matters deeply and must be considered deeply. But as with many online conversations, an important discussion began to veer into braindead man-bashing pretty quickly.

Now, I love me a good meme. If a meme is genuinely funny, I’ll laugh at it even if I don’t agree with its content. Case in point, I’ll laugh at a joke about women being bad drivers, even though I myself and am good driver, and know that statistically men cause more car accidents by a ratio of nearly 2/1. But who cares? It’s a silly trope. It’s funny, and  I think it’s healthy for men and women to be able to tease one another about inconsequential things. This was the case with many of the man v. bear memes. They were good for a giggle, and meant to be fun. But the tone inevitably took the turn that too much of feminist discourse does these days, which treats men as the most contemptible of creatures. Women began doubling down on choosing the bear, trying to use faulty stats – claiming women are 167 times more likely to be attacked by a man than a bear, without factoring in population or proximity to bears. Claiming that bears are “predictable” while men are not. A bear’s wild nature could be trusted while a man’s could not. That there are worse things than death, and a strange man would inflict on whichever woman they encountered in the woods, any and all of those terrible things.

I admit that my knee-jerk reaction had also been “a bear!”, but upon roughly two seconds of reflection, I realized, um, no, of course I would choose a man, for all the logical reasons. I am much more likely to be able to fight or run from a the attacks of a man than from the attacks of a bear. Reality affirms that, while most men will never rape or murder in their lives, bears are GUARANTEED to regularly shred other creatures limb from limb and eat their innards. In fact, the majority of women cross paths with dozens of strange men each day without issue; that seems like pretty predictable behaviour to me. And if I were to encounter both a strange man and a strange bear in the woods at the same time, who would be more likely to protect me? I thought my reasoning had led me to a sound conclusion: that women's initial reactions to the analogy had illustrated an important point, but of course in reality I would choose the man. But I quickly found out that I was very, very wrong for thinking so.

You see, I have this problem: I loathe misandry as much as I loathe misogyny. I had thought this made me balanced, but I’ve recently learned that this in fact makes me a bad person and a bad feminist. As penance I have enrolled myself in a re-education camp, fully run by bears. I look forward to their gentle reformation of this wayward female who has committed the sin of wrong-think. I’m sure they will guide me, and definitely not eat me.

According to contemporary (lack of) wisdom, if you state why you would choose the man, you are actively harming the women who chose the bear. If you have an idea that deviates from the expected, you are making excuses for the bad behaviour of men, and ensuring that they continue to not take responsibility for themselves. If you make a joke about choosing the man then you have become an apologist for all woman-haters everywhere, and you are most certainly and cruelly making fun of all women who have been harmed by men; never mind the fact that women were giggling for two whole weeks about choosing the bear – that sort of laughter is acceptable and encouraged. But no one would answer my question: who is allowed to joke about the bear? It seemed that if you chose it, you could laugh as much as you wanted, but if you chose the man – my God, what is wrong with you? How could you be so cold and callous to make a joke about something so serious? How incredibly heartless!

This was the point at which I lost all respect for the conversation, because I saw that it was being distorted from a valuable symbol into a perverse power play. It became yet another boring, tired power struggle between the sexes, where men couldn’t hear the important point through the vitriol,  either clapping back with immature insults or shutting down all together. Only the men who whole-heartedly agreed “yes, of course you should choose the bear, and here is why!” were allowed to speak, only to confirm what they heard, not to add their own thoughts to the equation. The bear was no longer a poignant reminder of women’s vulnerability in the world, but had become a bad faith argument, an unserious assertion of one dominant extreme over another. It had become a Dom/Sub role play that existed outside of reality, reaffirming the rivalry between men and women and insisting that one submit to a single, acceptable viewpoint lest they be dubbed a “bad person”.

A compelling argument will make both an emotional and an intellectual impact. Any good idea should be able to withstand the scrutiny of oppositional ideas, and facts should only help prove your point. If reason, logic and statistics take away from your argument, then your argument isn’t a sound one. If you're quoting statistics and then crying foul when those statistics are proven wrong, then maybe don't use statistics to make your point. Keep it in the realm of analogy and argue from there. Neither are you doing any justice to your stance if your only tactics are ad hominem and straw-manning. You may succeed in getting the other person to shut-up, but you haven’t proven anything. You’ve effectively damaged any worthwhile message you may have been trying to send.

Thus goes much of social media, and sadly, much of social discourse in this polarized age. Nuance is treated like a dirty word. Having complex thoughts on any one topic is a sign that you have betrayed your “tribe”, whatever that tribe may be. This doesn’t only apply to conversations surrounding feminism, but essentially every topic on earth. Our very existence has been politicized, and in politics it is always Us against Them, never Us and Them together. But the (maybe not so) harsh reality is, it will always be Women and Men together; always. There is no way around it; we are bound together in body and soul; there is no escaping this truth because there is no Life beyond this truth. It doesn’t matter your sexual orientation or ideas around gender roles, the fact remains; I am in Him, and He is in Me. I cannot escape Him, and He cannot escape Me. We are the complimentary halves of reality, and through Us all existence springs. So forgive me if I must speak up when I see yet another toxic message become popularized that ultimately debases us all.

My 12 year old son came home and asked me if I had heard about the bear. He told me the girls in his class had told him they would choose the bear, and he was confused. While I highly doubted those young girls had made that choice independent of the influence of older females, I explained to him clearly why they were saying they would make that choice. “But not all men are rapists” he told me emphatically. “You’re right,” I replied, “they’re not.” He couldn’t figure it out: “they would choose a bear over ME?” Yes love, apparently so. Is that an acceptable line for me to not want crossed? Could it now be deemed appropriate and acceptable for my “mama bear” to come out? To teach my son that, yes girls bodies are at risk in the world (and boys for that matter, but we’re not talking about that here), and yes boys need to understand that, and no most men are not rapists or murderers, and yes men are charged with protecting women even if it means their own demise? Because what I expect my son to internalize and carry into manhood is his importance and value, both in the world and in the lives of women; not that he is a potential predator because of what is swinging between his legs. It’s not lost on me that a lot of women who doubled down on why choosing the bear is a better choice, are also mothers to boys and wives to men. Your boys and your husbands ARE the strange men to other women. Are they to be taught that they are not to be trusted because of what they were born as? Because like it or not, that HAS become the message. That IS what young boys are internalizing from this conversation; and that message is DEEPLY unhelpful and unhealthy.

I want my boys to know that the innate instinct they have to nurture and protect creatures weaker than them is the right impulse, and one of the highest virtues of a man; I see it in how they treat their pets and how they treat children smaller than them. I see it in my eldest son’s high school friends, who have “adopted” his younger brother as their own; like on the day when his big brother left school early and he had to travel home alone, I got a phone call from a gang of boys saying “don’t worry ma’am, we’ll make sure he gets home safe!” These boys will be the “strange men” in a few short years. The strange men are our fathers, husbands, lovers, brothers, our intellectual counterparts and dearest soul-friends. They are all the men who have loved me without expecting anything in return. They are the people I know that I could call anytime, from anywhere in the world and say “I need you” and they would do their damn best to help me out. They are the dear friends who platonically loved and nurtured my heart when I couldn’t love myself, the ones who told me that they saw the strength and beauty of my spirit, even when I couldn’t see it. All the laughter they brought to my heart, the different perspectives on life that I needed to hear, the big, all consuming hugs that lifted me off the ground and spun me around, the unsolicited admiration that they gave; all of these precious hearts are someone else’s “strange man”. THAT is who I want my boys to look in the mirror and see; that is who I want them to believe that they are. But sadly much of society is reflecting back to them just the opposite.

It DOES have a negative psychological impact on boys to be told by a broader society that they can’t be trusted by women; that they are weak, predatory and have no control over their baser impulses. This attitude harms women as much as it does men, and does nothing to address the genuine dangers women face. This may not have been the intent of the man v. bear conversation, but it’s what it degenerated into at lightning speed. I am raising my boys with an understanding that females have a fundamentally different experience of the world than they do because of the bodies we inhabit, and that they must be cognizant and respectful of that. But I am also raising them to know that I would choose the man a million times over, because I believe in their innate goodness, in their capacity for nobler instincts, and because women need men in order to survive this wild world, just as much and as deeply as men need women.