I’m not sure where it came from, but this thing about a woman choosing between a bear and a man has been going across social media. At first, I laughed, because I completely understand why some women might choose a bear.
Given an opportunity to choose between a bear and a man, I might go with a bear myself. Given a choice between a bear and a woman, I might go with the bear too. It’s not a gender thing, it’s a people thing. People come with baggage.
I know what to expect from a bear. People are wonky. I thought the whole thing was a pretty good joke from a female perspective, but I’ve seen it take a turn for the serious – and sadly some men have made the point women make with the (hopefully) initial joke. If it wasn’t initially a joke, it was… unkind to the good men out there, and yeah, they do have a right to say something, just as a woman would have a right to say something if the underwear on the joke were of a different gender.
Yet as it plays out across the internet, various examples pop up in response to women that do a good job of demonstrating why a woman would make the choice of a bear – some demeaning and sexist stuff. That’s the stuff you see. The stuff you don’t see are the men who either know it’s a trap – because it is a trap – or know that even defending the good guys out there (there are some of us, I count myself among them) will cause other men to show up from the shadows to beat on them. Why? Well, because they want to be seen as good men, clearly. Good men, though, might be offended by the whole thing.
Maybe good men should be offended. If men made generalizations about women, all manner of fury would rain down on them, as some female influencers have pointed out.
Let’s change this up a bit. If a woman is walking down a dark alley and sees a black man and a white man, which does she choose? Suddenly we have profiling. This is why I say it’s a trap. A well baited trap, sure to cause some anger amongst both good and bad men.
As someone who has walked across streets in dark places so as not to alarm women – all 5’3″ of me, looking hispanic in the U.S. – I see both sides because I’m used to being hated for the wrong reasons.
Maybe there is a woman out there who answers – and I think properly – it depends on the man and the bear. Toxic masculinity is a thing. I understand that, and I think most men do just as well as women in very different contexts. Some men are jerks, just as some women are… less than perfect, let’s say.
Toxic femininity is a thing too, though I’m not well read on the topic and I don’t presently want to be. You can find it on search engines, and no, it’s not a bunch of guys talking about bad women. On cursory inspection, it looked much more deep than that and something maybe women should talk about too.
I find it convenient as an individual to lump people in general into toxic and non-toxic categories, but that too isn’t fair – it’s really about toxic relationships, and not always the romantic kind.
If you’d choose a bear over me, I’m good with that. I’d like some distance from the bear anyway. While bears might be more predictable, the stakes are higher, and I don’t feel like winning a Darwin award.
In the end, it’s easier to avoid women and bears, which is probably why I’m single and uneaten. I’m good with that. So much less drama.
Many of we humans that litter the planet aren’t used to this concept of ‘social distancing’. It will be tough for many; for people like me it is amazingly easy as we have been doing it for some time, for varying individual reasons.
