I’ve thought much on this woman-meets-man-or-bear-alone-in-the-woods meme, and I tried to write on it yesterday. Whatever else it may be, my effort to understand is an example of visceral reaction clouding judgment.
If you know the meme it says something like this: Women say if they were on a walk in the woods alone and had the choice between meeting a bear or an unknown man they would choose the bear. Who knows the evidence for this claim? I do not know, but I have seen where women say that, yes, given the choice they would take their chances with the bear. Truth be known, meeting a bear in the woods is very seldom dangerous, as hard as that is to believe.
Who knows how often a woman alone in the woods meets an unknown man, or how dangerous that indeed is? A woman would have to judge by her past experience with unknown men she meets alone away from any possible help. Barring that experience in her past she would have to rely on ideas she has gained about men in general.
What might her dad have taught her about men and how she should feel if she met an unknown man in person. Hard as it is to accept, I think an average father might say odds may be better for good treatment with a bear than an unknown man.
Wow. This just feels so wrong! And efforts to figure it out run into the ditch on both sides. If I take the meme at face value I have to say I see the point. But I just can’t stay there. The visceral reaction won’t let me.
What do we do when things don’t feel right? Sometimes our mind can’t function for the feelings; sometimes the feelings need to set pause on the best conclusions of our mind.
In this case I know I am reacting to something that feels like an unjustified and damaging insult. Men get enough belittling — lay off already! The problem is, what does a woman do if she meets an unknown man in the wilderness alone? It is a difficult hypothetical. Are men as bad as the meme suggests? I do not think so. Can we demonstrate objectively, or justify, the inclinations of women in the meme? No. Are we supposed to try? I don’t know but I think so.
Such is the nature of hypotheticals. The set of encounters alone in the woods with a bear is vastly smaller than that of encounters with unknown men alone. I imagine it would have to be something like 1 to 10 million throughout human history, but no one knows.
And perhaps that is where it ends. This is based on normal human fears and an hypothetical that is virtually impossible to quantify.
The mind can’t do much with it. Feelings reign.
Maybe admitting that is the hardest thing for me. And possibly that is true for the “other side” as well.
Randy Huff and his wife lived for 5 years in Roanoke (Hollins) where they raised 2 sons. Randy served as Dean of Students at a Christian school and then worked in construction. For the last 8 years he has served as pastor of a church in North Pole, Alaska.
