Women can be evil too
The man or the bear? Or the woman?
If you’re a TikTok user like myself and a billion other people, you will have likely heard about the man or the bear question.[1] The question that sparked many a debate online was “would you rather be stuck in the forest with a man or a bear?”[2] Most of the woman asked this question responded with the bear, explaining that it’s more risky to be alone in a forest with a man. Of course the internet did was it always does and a debate raged on for weeks. Some funny memes have come out of the situation, which I’ve enjoyed, but the reaction to this question points towards a growing phenomenon amongst women.
A false dichotomy
Putting aside the fact that street interview videos are often curated to create a certain narrative, the fact that most of the women answered with the bear highlights a societal shift amongst women that’s become more popular with social media. There’s more hyper-vigilance around men and a prioritisation of women’s safety. This is not a bad thing in and of itself (unless taken to extremes), however, this way of thinking has contributed to a false dichotomy that women are safe and harmless while men are the opposite. There’s a caveat here that men have a greater propension for violence - I mean look at our prison’s - and sexual violence is largely perpetrated by men, but this does not mean that women aren’t capable of harming you in other ways and even acting in cahoots with men to enact violence on other women. Women can be harmful to others as well and not being aware of this will put you in harm’s way.
The popularity of being a girl’s girl has also heavily contributed to the “men evil, woman good” dichotomy. Women feel they need to support other women just on the basis of their shared gender and it facilitates vulnerability between women that is based on misplaced trust. This is dangerous - you should not be vulnerable or supportive of someone you don’t even know! Combined with the hyper-vigilance of men, the narrative that men are evil and women are good has become a subconscious belief for a lot of women. Not all women are good in the same way not all men are good.
Be cautious with everyone
Good and bad people exist across both genders and you need to be cautious and vigilant when dealing with any person. Never give 100% trust to someone you don’t know! When you are getting to know a new person, whether that be a friend, coworker, neighbour, potential spouse, a relative you’ve never met, you should have your antenna up for any red flags. Oftentimes, women feel they can automatically trust another women and they let their guard down. When you let your guard down around people who you don’t really know, you open yourself up to be vulnerable.
Now, there’s a difference between bias and caution and it’s important to know the difference so you can properly protect yourself from harm. To be cautious is to be careful and avoid danger or problems. Bias often means a prejudice towards a person or group of people - I believe you can also have a positive bias where you treat people better because of preconceived notions. Both positive and negative bias don’t allow you to see people as they really are. When you can’t judge someone accurately, you open yourself up to experience not-so-great things.
A good way to determine if you’re biased of just being cautious is that a bias is not based on reason or evidence for your perception of someone. You assume how an individual person must be from preconceived notions. For example, a woman may trust another woman she doesn’t know that well to babysit her children, but she may end up mistreating or abusing the kids. The positive bias is that women are more caring towards children and they can be trusted in their care. Although, this may be true for many women, it isn’t for all and you shouldn’t assume unless you know. Women often assume other women have their best interests at heart but this isn’t true. It works in your favour to assess people from what you see and act on that, not what your assumptions are. As the saying goes, don’t assume because you may make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”.
You can still experience mistreatment or be harmed by people you know and trust. The likelihood of this is lower than being harmed by people you don’t know very well. When you trust someone based on assumptions, you become more vulnerable and the probability of being harmed increases. I want you to lower your chances of being harmed by applying caution to all people equally. Hyper-vigilance of men will only lower your chances of being harmed by that demographic, but there’s still half of the population that you’re vulnerable to.
It’s important to judge people based on what’s apparent to you. Don’t let your biases, positive or negative, get in the way of seeing people for who they really are. You must have a healthy level of caution for people who don’t know well and most definitely for strangers. This isn’t to encourage paranoia, but to keep you safe!
Too vulnerable too soon
When you make assumptions about who people are, you open yourself up, you become vulnerable. This exposes you to potential harm from others because you’re putting trust in people without knowing you can truly trust them. Part of what makes people dangerous is not they will try to hurt you, but they will also have easy access to you or the people / things you love. An extreme example is to think of pedophiles, they will put themselves in trusted positions where they have access to children and people are likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. Even when their behaviour is strange, people may not suspect them because they’ve been automatically trusted.
Vulnerability is an important part of fostering strong relationships with others, but this isn’t something to expose to someone you just met. You need to get to know people for who they truly are and decide on how much to trust them, and consequently how vulnerable you are. I’m not suggesting you should be paranoid, but have a healthy sense of caution.
The human or the bear?
Not all woman are good and not all men are evil - humans are complex. Deciding someone is automatically good because of the social group they belong to is a bad way to make judgements of people’s character and intentions for you. Always trust your intuition and common sense and be cautious of anyone you meet or are getting to know, man or woman.
The man or bear question should really be if you were in the forest with a human or a bear, which would you pick, as any person could be harmful and evil. To be honest the question itself is nonsensical, because what normal person would genuinely pick the bear? There’s a saying for how to survive a bear attack so I wouldn’t want to take my chances with a bear encounter, especially if it’s a polar bear.[3] I feel like people are picturing Winnie the Pooh or something to choose the bear, but I’m even scared of little insects, so maybe that’s just my fear of animals talking.
The bottom line is, take care of yourself and be cautious.
Footnotes
[1] A billion is not a hyperbole there are 1.58 billion active TikTok users at the moment of writing this post.
[2] The TikTok account that’s credited with starting this trend is Screenshot HQ which does street interview types of videos. The TikTok that posed this question is here: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdULVEAt/
[3] The saying is: If it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s white, say goodnight.