Would you rather be trapped in the woods with a man you don’t know or a bear (who, presumably, you also don’t know)? If you’ve been on social media recently, you might have seen this hypothetical question circling around. Initially it sounds like a philosophical riddle. But it’s not. It’s a sharp reminder of the epidemic that is male violence against women and girls.

SCREENSHOT filmed a vox pop where they asked random women on the street this question, now viewed more than 14 million times, and all but one picked the bear over a man. Since this video went viral, thousands of women have posted their thoughts on TikTok, with some even filming their male partner’s response to this question.

The vast majority of women who have answered this question choose to be stuck in the woods with a bear over a man, and the reasons are heartbreaking. One comment said “Men don’t understand that we’re not picking the bear because we think we’d survive,” another wrote, “If I said a bear attacked me, I’d be believed and nobody would ask what I was wearing or how much I’d had to drink”. One woman simply said, “Bears aren’t rapists, easy choice.” 

Unsurprisingly, not all men (pun intended) have reacted well to this discourse, with many in disbelief – one TikToker, Jonathan Buchanan, said in a video “I just want ya’ll to slow it down and realise that social media isn’t real life.” He calls women’s responses ‘ridiculous’, and has racked up more than 34,200 likes to date. The most liked comment on his video – with more than 57,400 – reads ‘After this video, I’ll take two bears.”

Meredith Steele, who goes by @babiesofsteele on TikTok, posed the question to her husband, with a twist, asking “Would you rather our daughter be stuck in the woods with a bear or a man?” To which he replied, “What kind of man?” She then goes on to ask him if he would pick a woman or a bear, to which he says ‘woman’ without hesitation. Eventually, he decides: “I’m leaning towards the bear. Maybe it’s a friendly bear.”

“What if it’s a friendly man?” Steele counters. Her husband flinches. “Oh, that’s worse!”

It’s not often that debates around male violence against women and girls go mainstream, but the simplicity of this question has achieved this hard feat – it cuts through all the noise, all the ‘whataboutisms’ and arrives at an undeniable conclusion: women are afraid of male violence, not because they are hysterical or overreacting, but because male violence is a very real threat. 

An overarching theme in how women have responded to the question is a focus on what happens if they survived a violent attack, and the subsequent victim-blaming they’d likely be subjected to. With a bear, society would be sympathetic and treat the injuries as real. The same can often not be said when a man attacks a woman.

This social media discussion has further highlighted how deep misogyny goes. Many men in the comment sections of these videos are dismissive or, in some cases, just outright misogynistic. In many of the viral videos where women are asking their husbands, they have framed it like Steele, by bringing in a daughter as the hypothetical victim. Sadly, it often takes proximity or genetic relation to a woman for men to understand patriarchy and misogyny, and subsequent fear of male violence, rather than a basic care for all women. 

Whether this fear of men is real or not should not even be up for debate. The facts paint a grim picture, and one that is, if anything, underestimating reality: Globally, an estimated 736 million women – almost one in three – have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30% of women aged 15 and older). This figure does not include sexual harassment. 94% of survivors of rape or attempted rape are women. 98% of adults arrested for sexual offences are men. Despite these numbers, women are continually invalidated for their real, lived experiences.

We shouldn’t have to use a hypothetical quandary such as ‘Would you rather be trapped in the woods with a man or a bear?’ to highlight the extent of male violence. This in itself is an indictment of how unequal society is. We should just be believed. But, as any woman who would pick a bear knows, that is simply not the world we live in. 

Image: Adobe