CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault.
By now, you’ve probably come across the heartbreaking “men vs bear” videos on TikTok, where women admit they’d rather take their chances alone with a bear in a forest than be left alone with a man.
Crucially, the trend isn’t saying that women feel safe with a bear, but that bears are predictable and will only act within their nature. And, well, if you survive a bear attack, people will actually believe you.
“At the end of the day, women can trust a bear to be a bear, but can’t trust a human man to be humane,” wrote one TikToker poignantly.
Another summarised the debate as “a bear sees a threat, a man sees an opportunity”.
Even more frustrating was this apt comment: “If you survive the bear, it will go away. If you survive an attack from a man, [he will] keep coming after you until he wins.”
The point of the men vs bear discourse is not to shame men, but to illustrate just how unsafe women feel, and how many women have been victimised by men.
It’s become particularly popular in Australia, where a spate of femicides have left women feeling even more afraid for their safety. After mass protests across the country calling for an end to men’s violence, the conversation is more plaintive than ever.
If things have gotten to the point where women will take certain death at the hands of a bear over possible sexual assault — or capture and exploitation — at the hands of a man, well, this should encourage men to rethink the experiences of women around them, and build empathy toward the terror many women feel daily.
Unfortunately (though unsurprisingly), for a lot of men, this has not been the case.
Since this trend took off — which mostly consists of women sharing harrowing stories of what men have done to them — there has been a subset of men who have decided the best way to respond to this is not to, I don’t know, become better at holding their friends accountable and making spaces safer for women, but instead make violent memes about these women.
In posts to social media that I have chosen not to share, men have made gleeful memes of women being savaged, ripped apart, bloodied, mauled and eaten by bears.
They’ve shared videos of bear attacks with captions either mocking women or saying they deserve this fate for choosing the bear. “What did they expect?” these men claim, unwittingly echoing the very mindset women are protesting against.
Some men have even threatened violence against women for not choosing them, while others have apparently punished women for daring to suggest men can hurt them.
Men have reacted to emotional videos of women discussing being sexually assaulted with comments demeaning them, gaslighting them, threatening them, and even telling them they aren’t attractive enough to be assaulted by a man.
Which, obviously, only stands to prove our point.
The fact that — even in a hypothetical situation meant to draw attention to men’s violence — men continue to victimise, mock and degrade women only validates what women have been saying all along: that sure, a bear might kill them, but if it does it will be out of fear or hunger. But a man can do this and a lot worse to women, and all it takes is a hurt ego or perceived slight.
The male fragility and victim blaming to come out of a trend that is meant to illustrate just how hurt and jaded women are would be funny if it wasn’t so on the nose.
All I know is that the venn diagram of men who leave such heinous and cruel comments, and the type of men you should choose a bear over, is a circle.
Help is available.
- If you require immediate assistance, please call 000.
- If you’d like to speak to someone about sexual violence, please call the 1800 Respect hotline on 1800 737 732 or chat online.
- Under 25? You can reach Kids Helpline at 1800 55 1800 or chat online.
