Choose the bear

(CW: Sexual harassment and assault)

The scenario

This scenario went viral on Tiktok because to the shock of many men, a lot of people who identify as nonbinary or women choose the bear, many without hesitation.

Other videos ask fathers: Would you rather have your daughter meet a man or a bear in the woods? What man, the father asks, suspiciously. The answer is: Any man.

Often, the father chooses the bear. Once in a while, they do it with a dawning, horrified understanding.

Me? I’m team bear. Obviously.

Choose the bear

I’ve got science to back me up. In most of the United States, the bears we are dealing with are black bears (Ursus americanus). They can be up to 400 lbs or even more, but most often are significantly smaller. Black bears used to be common all the across the country, but were hunted almost to extinction on the East Coast (as, to be honest, most everything was). Now, with declines in hunting and a major rise in secondary forest growth and suburbs, bears are coming back. They wander into exurbs and suburbs, yanking down birdfeeders, wandering over porches, and helping themselves to garbage and grills. They are very “meat is on the menu” sort of bears. They like meat and won’t turn it down, but the best food is the easiest food.

Black bears can live very close to humans, but they don’t really want to be WITH them. Even the most habituated black bears don’t want to be around loud humans and usually take advantage of our stuff when they think we are gone or asleep. Encounters that go badly are often between bears and dogs, or bears and dogs where a human gets in the way. Other bad encounters are when a bear ends up inside someone’s house, feels trapped, and responds predictably.

There are exceptions to this of course. Fatal bear attacks can happen in the woods, and do. About 1-3 of them per year.

In some parts of the US (especially Alaska, but other areas as well) and Canada, there are also brown bears, aka grizzlies (Ursus arctos, yeah, I know, arctos is in the name and they are not polar bears. Polar bears are Ursus maritimus, because swimming). These are much larger than a black bear and also have a meat-heavy diet (though neither turns down a good berry patch). They are much more aggressive.

But there are fewer of them and brown bears don’t hang in human-dominated environments. Again, fatalities are around 1-3 per year. Neither species of bear discriminates based on gender.

By comparison, men are pretty deadly to women. Fewer women are murdered per year compared to men, but of those, women are five times more likely to be murdered by an intimate partner. One out of five women have experience attempted or completed rape (a quarter of men have too!). 81% have experienced sexual harassment (compared to 43% of men).

Who does most of this violence?

Most of the time, men do. The majority are white.

Choose the bear

I did a quick video about this meme, and posted it to my social media accounts (where I usually share quirks of human anatomy). On Tiktok and Instagram, no one said much. Facebook was similar.

On Youtube, however, things took a turn.

Women agreed with me. Some of the men did too. But many of the men in my comments purport not to understand. They are so confused. Can’t this foolish lady see that bears are dangerous? Men are safe! Especially if, as they note, the woman is ugly! They felt compelled to leave me comments.

The video now has 80 comments and counting. Some are delightful.

I have since disabled the comments on my YouTube channel but cannot disable comments on that particular video. They continue to trickle in.

Every one of them makes me want to choose the bear.

These men want to explain the dangers of bears to me.

I wrote a book with a chapter on bears. I have helped to trap and dart bears. I have held baby bears. I have encountered bears many, many times while hiking in the woods. I have gone running in Alaska while holding cans of bear spray because of, guess what? Bears. I have seen a grizzly in the wild (it had golden fur. It was amazing.)

I know full well most of these people probably qualify as what my generation would call teenage edgelords. The comments do not hurt me, they are no different than others I’ve received on the internet and in real life. Many are milder.

But they do make me think. We woman, nonbinary people. We are telling these men that we choose the bear. We are telling them WHY.

We are telling them why, and when we do, men are angry. They tell us to go off into the woods and get eaten by bears.

And they wonder why we keep choosing the bear.

Choose the man?

Here’s the thing. Science and statistics are fine. But I want to know. These boys. These men. Who is raising them? Who is telling them that it’s ok to think like this, to act like this?

Share and choose the bear.

Peers, probably. Parents, maybe. Society at large, certainly. Society tells these men that their desires and power and entitlement are the most important thing in the world. Society tells these men that if they commit terrible crimes, the worst thing that will happen is that they will, er, ruin their own lives. The person they assault doesn’t even matter enough to be hurt.

We may want to choose the bear. But choosing the bear is a fantasy. We are stuck in the woods of our own society. With the men of our own making.

We wish we could choose the bear.

How do we change? Women and nonbinary people are telling men that we don’t feel safe. The first step for change is for men to believe us. It’s clear that some do!

The next? Is for those men who DO understand to help call out those who won’t. To tell the teenagers edgy isn’t funny. To get on their friends, their family members. A simple “what the hell, man” is a perfectly good start.

If men want us to choose them, it would help if they were worth choosing.

Where have you been?

• Is it this piece about what it is that makes people annoying? It’s not annoying. It’s enlightening. Promise.

• Maybe it’s a new finding of an orangutan using a known medicinal plant for a would on its face. Every time we think we are smarter, animals surprise us.

• Or maybe it’s about how years of damming have been, er, damning for some of China’s native fish?

Where have I been?

• Episodes are still coming out of a podcast I produced called Transforming Tech. It’s got real, actionable advice about how to hire, retain, and advance, women of color in your industry. It’s not limited to tech, everyone can learn something.

• I also got to write for Templeton Ideas about a tiny cell part called the paraspeckle! It was only discovered in 2005, but it could be important for why some of our cells—and by extension, our bodies—can live for so long.

• And I have another essay in Scientific American! This one is about our little extra parts. Our extra nipples, wiggling ears, and more that remind us not who we are, but who we were.

Anti-Discourse Actions

• Letter Writing continues! Our goal this year is 500 letters, so we’ve got a long way to go. I’m writing with Vote Forward, asking people to vote.

• I have also begun contributing my rates to the database for the Freelance Solidarity Project. They are trying to come up with a good database of who gets paid for what…and what that means. If you’re a freelancer, join us!