Bears vs. Men

I hate TikTok

The Internet has been bringing me one of the most profoundly stupid discourses about gender I have had the displeasure to experience in my past sixteen years of arguing about gender on the Internet. I tried not to write about it, because writing about it would only add fuel, but I kept seeing memes and it pissed me off so much I had to write something.

So. If you were in the woods, would you rather come across a bear or a man?

The answer is obviously a man, you fucking morons.

You people have watched too many slasher horror movies. In the movies, a lone man in the woods is a blood-soaked serial killer with a chainsaw. In real life, encountering a man in the woods is called “coming across another hiker” and it happens every time you hike on a reasonably popular trail.

I don’t actually believe that any of the people saying “I’d rather come across a bear in the woods!” are serious. You guys aren’t going on a hike and having a panic attack any time you see a guy peering at a paper map and asking you if this is Huckleberry Trail. You say “nope, this is Redwood, Huckleberry is up that ridge but you can take Cherry to it at the next fork,” like a normal person. If you don’t, your problem is not the patriarchy, it’s an anxiety disorder—and I’m saying that as a person with an anxiety disorder myself.

Bears, on the other hand, are very scary! A nice thing about men, as opposed to grizzlies, is that when you shoot a shotgun at them they generally stop advancing towards you.

How many rapes even happen in the woods, anyway? I am pretty sure that the most likely locations for a woman to be raped continue to be the marital bed, prisons and other institutions, and her childhood bedroom. Murderous strangers in the woods are a rounding error.

As stupid as this discourse is,¹ it’s also actively harmful to both men and women.