Man VS Bear

Sri City : Imagine that you are alone in the woods for a night and you're standing at a crossroad, where if you choose one of the roads you will have to spend the night with a man you’ve never met before and or you spend the night with a wild and hungry bear. What would you choose?

“Man versus Bear” was an online controversy that started in April ,2024, where women were proposed with the question “If they had to be stuck in the woods alone for a night, would they rather choose a man as a companion or a bear?” And the overwhelming response of women choosing the bear over a man sparked a lot of outrage, especially among the men, as they were unable to comprehend the fact that women find bears less threatening than men. I know that it seems incomprehensible for anyone to pick a bear over a man, but maybe the perplexity doesn’t lie in the question, maybe it lies in a world where this question is even asked of women. This metaphor is  a statement on how unsafe and unsupported women often feel around men, especially when systems and communities fail to protect them. There are a few simple facts at the heart of this matter that will allow for a comprehensive decoding of why it is the bear over the man. 

When a bear hunts, it is driven by pure instinct, but when a man hunts, he is driven by a need to establish power and a deeper need to control and possession that is driven by a perceived rejection or humiliation of their ego. It is a moral/philosophical choice. A man’s violence towards a woman isn’t about survival; it’s about power. The people who are still in denial about this are people who are truly, blissfully unaware of the dangers a man can inflict upon a woman and do not understand power and gender structures within socio-legal norms. A few days ago, a female student from our university  shared a horrifying yet all too familiar account of what happened in the women’s coach on a train from Tada. A man walked in, exposed himself and started jerking off, and even threatened violence when women objected. The most chilling part wasn’t his act, it was the reaction of an elderly woman nearby who said, “We’re all used to this. We’ve seen this in our lives.” There are a lot of women in this world who don’t see this debate as a simple online controversy or trend, but as horrifying reminders of the things they’ve been through and survived.

For those who respond to this debate saying, “Oh, but the bear is wild and dangerous.” Well, thank you for assuming women don’t know what a bear is. We do. That's the point. A bear is dangerous, but it is also predictable. When you come across a bear in the woods, you immediately know that you're in danger. There is no second-guessing; your instincts immediately kick in. But with a man, danger doesn’t always come with claws and growls; it might even come with a pearly smile, one that builds trust. It's never all men, but it is enough men to keep women constantly questioning the morals and "red flags" of men, because with men, the potential of harm is never eradicated. And maybe that’s what’s more terrifying. Because with a man, the threat isn’t always visible, and by the time it is, it might just be too late.

The most widespread belief when it comes to rationalising women’s fear of men is that the reason women fear men is because of so-called “feminist propaganda”, while conveniently overlooking the fact that throughout history, women have been suffering physical, emotional, and sexual violence at the hands of larger and stronger men. Globally, about one in three women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, primarily by an intimate partner. Most of this violence occurs within relationships, but non-partner sexual violence also affects millions of women worldwide. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 29.3% of ever-married Indian women aged 18–49 have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence from their partners, yet only about 14% of them ever seek help. Of those who do, 77% never approach the police or legal systems, turning instead to family or simply enduring in silence.

Secondly, if a woman says she was attacked by a bear, most people wouldn’t question her story. But if she says she was assaulted by a man, suddenly she’s met with doubt, suspicion, and scrutiny. Why is that?

When a woman claims that she has experienced any kind of sexual assault by a man, especially one who has a good standing in society. She is asked questions like, “What were you wearing?”, “Why were you out so late?”, and “Did you lead him on?” And just like that, the burden of proving guilt is shifted onto her. But surely these questions would not be asked if the perpetrator were not human; a bear, for example. There’s no conflict of morality. People can feel empathy for the victim without having their culture, institutions, and communities threatened.

Women have long had to navigate a world where their pain and suffering have been diminished and doubted, especially when it has been caused by a man. This doesn’t mean that the world doesn’t recognise the sufferings of women, but it only does so when it fits the narrative that they want to believe in, and how society believes that some forms of danger are more acceptable than others. Take the case of actor Tanushree Dutta, who spoke out about being sexually harassed on a film set in 2008. Her allegations were dismissed and she was sidelined for years, only to be believed a decade later during the MeToo movement. It wasn’t that her suffering was unknown; it simply didn’t fit the narrative people were willing to accept at the time.

This comparison doesn’t diminish the horrors of a bear attack but shows how much easier people find it to believe the random violence of nature than a far more common and far more preventable violence committed by a man.

And I think all this brings me to say that the debate was never about the man or the bear. It was about the woman. It was about the woman who would choose death at the claws of a wild animal willingly because she knows that there are worse fates she could succumb to. It was about a woman who has lost so much faith in her own mankind that she hopes that an animal will be kinder to her than a human. It is about the 736 million women who experience physical/and or sexual violence in their lives. Behind each statistic is a woman who has learned that society would rather she tolerate the harm than name it. The danger isn’t distant or exceptional; it’s ordinary, intimate, and devastatingly accepted. The fight to change these statistics needs to be at a deeper societal level as a community. The numbers are staggering, but numbers can change. They change when voices rise together, when silence is broken, and empathy turns into actions.