Many of you have probably heard about, and maybe have participated in, the Man vs Bear debate on social media. If you’re unfamiliar, last month, someone on TikTok posed the question to women: If you were alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a man or a bear?
Not surprisingly, many women chose the bear.
Also not surprisingly, many men chimed in with their mansplainations about why women were wrong.
(Read more here: “Man or bear? Hypothetical question sparks conversation about women’s safety.”)
I’m solidly on Team Bear, despite the many times I’ve posted here about bear encounters in my yard (and almost in my house).
I wasn’t afraid of much growing up in a small town. I walked alone to school, to piano lessons, and to my dad’s grocery store. I fished at the creek alone, climbed trees by the shore alone, and sat on the fence of a nearby stable and petted horses alone. I had no reason to fear the world until an encounter with a man in a tan sedan when I was 11.
I was on my knees building a snow fort when a car drove around the corner and stopped. The driver motioned for me, his index finger curling and uncurling slowly. Nothing in that moment said I was safe, and when he leaned over the bench seat and reached for the door handle, I stood up and started running home. I struggled against the weight of my snowmobile boots, parka, and snow pants; my breath was smothered, like I was drowning. Our house was just fifty yards away, yet it seemed like a mile. I was screaming for help, but no words came out of my mouth.
We were not to use the front door in the winter, and it was always locked, but I rang the doorbell anyway, over and over. When my mom opened the door, I fell inside, crying.
“What happened?” she exclaimed.
“A man wanted me to get in his car!” I was coughing and gulping air.
“What man?”
I looked out the window and saw the man park his car and walk toward our house.
“Him!” I screamed, certain he was going to hurt my mother and take me.
Mom, mad as hell, told me to go to the living room, and she confronted the man on the front stoop. I heard him say he was from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and was recruiting kids for local paper routes.
“You recruit them by scaring them?” She slammed the door in his face.
My dad reported him to the newspaper. They’d agreed that their “recruiter” shouldn’t have used that tactic and assured my dad that they’d talk to him, which made me even more fearful. What if he lost his job and blamed me? What if he came back?
I was afraid to walk anywhere alone, and when I did, and I heard a car or saw a stranger walking near me, I would hide behind a tree or walk through the backyard of the nearest house until it passed. I didn’t go fishing alone or climb trees alone or visit the horses alone again.
The worst part is that I didn’t talk to anyone about it for years. I know now that I’d been traumatized and that my response was normal, but at age 11, I was afraid no one would take my fear seriously. After all, nothing happened, right? And yet it taught me that men in tan sedans can be anywhere. As a teenager I was raped by a guy I trusted, and as an adult, I’ve been touched by and spoken to inappropriately by male employers and colleagues; lied to, hit by, threatened by, and harassed by men countless times in both my private life and career.
But never—not once—by a bear.
Yes, I realize that if I were to actually encounter a bear in the woods, it could maul me and I could die. But sadly, that’s the point from which many men argue. If they really listened to the concerns women have regarding their safety, maybe they’d understand that women aren’t choosing the bear because they’re not smart enough to know that a bear could harm them, but that they’re all too aware that it’s more likely that a man would.
Lynn Haraldson, Author and Writing Mentor 
Your points are well taken. At least bears are straight forward in their pursuit, whereas man is more complicated and thus, more terrifying. I would choose the bear, too.
That’s so true. Bears (like many of us) just want to be left alone to live our lives.
I’m definitely with the bear. Lynn, I think you’re a few years younger than I, but still grew up in the same relative era. Back then, people/adults were much less likely to believe kids who feared for their lives, one way or the other. If we weren’t going to be believed, it didn’t make much point to tell anyone. A typical response back then was to be shamed for telling or accused of lying, as if it were our fault. I am so glad your mother was right there to witness this idiot, and that your father took the paper to task. In a perfect world, I hope the idiot was fired, but I suspect not. Even getting a good talking-to would be terrifying because of potential repercussions.
When I was about the same age, my father beat the sh!t out of me with a belt. This would have been 1968/’69/’70-ish. I was black and blue from the waist up. At the time, we lived just down the street from a sheriff’s substation, and I seriously considered going to them to file a complaint. But at that age? I had no illusions that they might take me seriously. If they had believed me and confronted my father, I feared that he would become even more violent and possibly try to kill me. There had been a few times previously when he was angry with me and told me to get in the car while he was all steamed up. I was terrified that he would take me somewhere and kill me, because his temper is that bad. He was also a pillar in the community. He wouldn’t want to suffer the damage to his reputation that my telling might create, and I was equally certain that none of the adults in his circle and our church would believe me.
I covered up the bruises as best I could. Most of them weren’t visible underneath clothing unless you looked closely. But I wandered down to our church and told my favorite priest about it, showed him the bruises, and asked his opinion about going to the sheriff’s substation to file charges. He was afraid that it would turn out very badly for me, and recommended against it. Pretty much what I’d thought. I was glad that he believed me, at least, and so I just let it lie.
I’m glad kids today have more recourse than we did, and a better chance of being believed overall.
That trauma is still with me. I moved far away from home around 1980, for the sake of my mental health. I regret that it keeps me away from my Mom most of the time (they are still married), but she and I have always been BFFs and chat with each other every day. I don’t know how she manages to tolerate it.
((SputnikDeb)) My heart hurts for you. That’s a lot of trauma to carry all these years. I wish you peace.
The bear. Definitely the bear. There are tactics one can use to often diffuse a situation with a bear. There are no tactics one can use to change the mind of a man who intends to harm.
EXACTLY. But so many men don’t understand how women always have to be on guard and so have taken offense at this debate. It’s all about listening to women, which seems to be getting more difficult for men to do in all aspects of a woman’s life.