Why She Chose The Bear

Listening to the experiences of communities we don't belong to.

In a culture defined as much by its selective silences as by its voiced concerns, the act of listening—to truly listen—to the narratives and experiences of those outside our immediate communities, assumes a stance bordering on revolutionary. It's a quiet rebellion against the waves of our own prejudices and the comforting lull of our insular worlds.

It is increasingly clear that the gravest divisions cleaving through the heart of our collective discourse are not just the loud proclamations of difference but the wide gaps of refusal to be quiet. The world suffers from noise. We talk too much, assuming we understand, assuming all ears have heard the same stories, walked the same roads. But they have not. Across the divides between races, between rich and poor, between man and woman—people cannot seem to stop and simply listen.

The tragedies, the triggers, the deep traumas that ripple through the lives of others, these are lost in people’s ceaseless squawking. So many speak as if the world were a mirror, reflecting their own image back to them, never distorted, never different. Which is often exacerbated by social media, where so many have something to say, all while ignoring what they still have to learn.

Recently, a video went viral, capturing a simple yet revealing question posed to various women: Would they prefer to be stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? This topic has since danced across the scrolls of TikTok feeds for days, eliciting responses from women around the world favoring the bear. The bear, with all its primal ferocity and unfathomable wildness, is the safer bet from the perspective of thousands, if not millions, of women. This choice reverberates deeper than a mere preference for survival partners—it is a well-earned indictment of men.

@screenshothqThe question of being stuck in a forest with a man or a bear is circulating on TikTok right now and sparking some interesting conversation.... we know what our answer would be 🐻🌳 #manvsbear #tiktok #tiktoktrend #trending #challenge #streetinterview #voxpop

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This preference—rooted deeply in the marrow women’s lived experience—seemed to baffle many men. Yet, instead of women’s responses creating a moment for reflection, most men instead chose rebuke. Their confusion swiftly curdled into indignation, sparking a flurry of counter-videos. These retorts, steeped in skepticism, missed the heart of the matter entirely. These men, in their videos, argue with a blend of disbelief and disdain, unwilling to look into the mirror of this cultural critique. They see the absurdity of choosing the bear but not the testimony it gives.

In reality, the very act of men choosing to post videos that contradict and undermine women’s experiences and fears serves to underline precisely why many women chose the bear. Consider the bear—untouched by the impulses of ego, misogyny, humiliation, or mockery that seem to animate so much of men’s engagement. A bear does not retreat to the dark corners of the internet to craft rebuttals steeped in blame. Should a bear launch itself at a woman, society does not interrogate her choices—what she was wearing, what time it was, what she did to deserve it, her right to simply exist in one space or another. No one demands of her an accounting for the bear's instincts.

But with a man, the terrain shifts, and it does so grotesquely. There lies a deeper threat—the added layer of judgment, of scorn, the double-edged sword of physical danger intertwined with moral inquisition. It is not merely that a man can be a physical threat, akin to any natural predator. Rather, it is that society often allows, even expects, his narrative to overshadow his actions, permits his voice to mute the truth of his deeds. In this grim ballet of blame, the victim must dance twice—once to escape the immediate threat, and once again, often endlessly, in the court of public opinion.

This is the dreadful symmetry of our culture, where a woman’s word is weighed and found wanting against a man’s, where her fears become footnotes in a story that she did not write but is nonetheless expected to recite. In this context, choosing the bear seems not an act of desperation but of discernment. For while both beast and man might offer mortal danger, only from man does the insidious echo of victim-blaming arise, shaping a narrative that questions her claim to victimhood at all. Thus, the choice of the bear is not merely about selecting the lesser of two evils but about seeking refuge in a threat that is, at least, honest in its ferocity and devoid of a subsequent moral crucifixion.

The risks women face around men are not merely hypothetical or poetic; the stakes are stark and deeply personal. Consider the chilling statistic that one in five women will be raped at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This number does not merely whisper but howls of the perils women navigate—not in distant woods, but within the confines of their daily environments, places presumed to be safe.

But the conversation is not solely about patriarchal violence or misogyny, it is also the issue of a society where people rarely invest in trying to become better. There is an ancestral chain binding many, an inheritance of ignorance and generational disdain. We have too often passed down viewpoints that are bankrupt in the way of empathy and growth. The question of the bear and the man is symptomatic of a deeper societal failure—a failure to teach our boys in the ways of anti-patriarchy, no different than the need to teach white children anti-racism. We must build bridges to cross chasms, not simply point out the rifts.

Ultimately, if those men were taught as boys to listen and grow, maybe the bear wouldn't have been the choice at all. Maybe in the heart of that teaching, there would have been a revolution so profound that the forests themselves would speak of it.

Personally, I don’t believe we are destined to be at odds with each other, to be forever choosing between lesser evils. No. We are meant for greater things, for deeper connections that transcend our primal fears and our societal instincts. If we could teach our sons, as fervently as we instruct them in the manners of strength and dominance, the deeper power of understanding and emotional courage, what might our world become? It is easy to envision a world where men and boys are taught not merely to dominate or to fix, but to hear, to cherish, to learn, and to foster the stories of those around them.

Herein lies the challenge: to transform the narrative from one of survival against one another to one of thriving alongside each other.

This transformation requires more than just the passive absence of misogyny or aggression. It demands an active cultivation of empathy, a robust nurturing of the soul that respects and reveres not just the similarity but the difference. If we succeed, perhaps the bear, with all its untamed might and unknowable mind, will no longer symbolize a safer choice, but rather a relic of a less enlightened time.

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April is National Poetry Month, and as such I’d like to share a poem from my forthcoming poetry collection, “We Alive, Beloved.” Which I need you all to stop playing around and get to buying, ha. It’s available for preorder everywhere by clicking this link. Remember preorders are deeply important for Black authors. Preorder numbers tell booksellers and the media that a book has the potential of being successful and should be invested in.