I have no idea where the question making the rounds on social media as to whether a woman alone in the woods would rather run into a bear or a man came from, but of course it caused the usual suspects to lose their shit when women chose bears.
My brother and I almost got shot by a hunter once when we were playing in the woods, on our own property, and I've been nervous of them ever since. When I worked a summer out in Banff I went to parties in the woods with groups of young people but I was nervous a bear might show up too.
Northern Ontario's black bears are one thing, and apparently they're all over the Sault now, but grizzlies are a whole 'nother level of bear.
Anyway, I read an essay the other day addressing the tempest. It's by Laura Killingbeck, a solo biker, hiker and backwoodser, and it reminded me of my younger days when I wanted to be just like her after reading "The Dove" and "Walking Davis", books by young men who solo travelled.
I don't think the problem of being female had occurred to me yet and although I did a lot of single gal adventuring, including heading out to Banff for work - and hitchhiking to Jasper a couple of times, which included getting dropped off at that damned ice field at least once (do NOT tell my children about this) - it was to have fun with other young people, not be alone in the wilds.
The internet is more polarized than the real world, of course, but just to prove it, in case you've forgotten about the real world, a man of my intimate acquaintance said, "I think I'd rather run into a bear than another man alone in the woods, too."
He saw Deliverance.
I'll just say I'd rather run into another woman alone in the woods than either a man or a bear, preferably Laura Killingbeck. In fact, I'd welcome it, and I imagine a lot of those men online scoffing at our fear of men, as if they don't share it, would, too.
It could be something he says. Maybe he makes a comment about my body or my appearance. Or he asks if I’m carrying a weapon and then presses for details about where I’m camping that night. Sometimes, it’s a shift in his tone, a leer, the way he puts his body in my space. But, usually, it’s a combination of things, a totality of behaviors that add up to a singular reality: this man is either not aware that he’s making me uncomfortable, or he doesn’t care. Either way, this is the danger zone. Even if he has no intention of harming me, the outcome of that intention is no longer possible for me to assess or predict.
In this moment, my mind snaps into a single, crystalline point of focus. My intuition rises to the surface of my skin. I become a creature of exquisite perception. The world is a matrix of emotional data: visceral, clear, direct.
I need to get away from the man. But I need to do it in a way that doesn’t anger him. This is the tricky bit. Men who lack social awareness or empathy often also lack other skills in emotional management. And usually, what men in these situations actually want is closeness. They’re trying to get closer to me, physically or emotionally, in the only way they know how. That combination of poor emotional skillsets and a desire to get closer is exactly what puts me in danger.
I've been in this situation with a man, even while surrounded by other people, but also alone, and it doesn't matter what their intent is, once the <ding ding ding> goes off in my head it drowns out the learned desire to please, no small feat that, and extricating myself from the situation without being raped and murdered is the priority.
Women are set up from birth to not say "NO!", to not offend, to not make a scene, at the same time we're set up to take responsibility for male choices, including their physical violence against us, and blame ourselves for our own choices, including staying past the time our instincts told us we should leave.
I was raised by a widowed Feminist of her time, have a university degree. I've never known what it's like to not have options. And yet, there was a time when I'd have chosen the bear, not while out alone in the woods, but - in my own home alone with a man we both believed loved me. Certainly alone with him in our car, because I didn't just imagine him giving me every indication he might deliberately take us both out in a fiery crash, rather than lose me to another man, he was making me very much aware of it.
Would he have done? Who knows? Like I say, I didn't imagine my fear that he would. And I didn't imagine him wanting me to be afraid he would either.
I took over the driving, at least, and I didn't imagine his relief that I did, either.
Later he said something about being afraid I was laughing at him, and I thought of that Margaret Atwood line about men being afraid women might laugh at them, while women are afraid men might kill us.
We've come a long way, women have, and damn it, we brought men along with us, some of them kicking and screaming, and it's all worth it. Thanks to us, Canadian men have more choices in life than ever before in the history of the world. And as difficult as divorce is on children, who really just want their parents to stay together, there's benefit in their knowing, too, women can leave men.
Anybody can leave anybody.
It's a life lesson as good for our sons to learn as it is for our daughters. Nobody has to stay in a relationship that isn't working out for them. We all have the choice to leave now. Perhaps it's what's even behind the rise in adult child estrangement from their parents, their siblings, their families.
Freedom to live as we want.
So here's what I don't understand, the backlash against women, by men, for choices that benefit all of us, them every bit as much as us. More so, even, because they still get to men, free to wander out in the world on their own without the social conditioning from birth that they're responsible, not just for the happiness of other men, but for their violence should they fail in that responsibility to make them happy.
Female Liberals are leaving politics, afraid for their lives, because of Conservative male harassment online and off. And in spite of Michelle Rempel Garner's "both sides" at Committee the other day, it isn't both sides. I live in an Ottawa neighbourhood where Freedom Convoy thugs roar around in trucks waving Fuck Trudeau flags like the worst of America's MAGA cult.
Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre wears a sweatshirt with POILIEVRE emblazoned on it at his son's soccer practices in the same neighbourhood and my Liberal neighbours just nod politely at him. I would ignore him. But none of us would even consider for even a moment harrassing him.
Nor would we even for a moment consider running for the Liberals in this neighbourhood. We're afraid even to put up a Liberal sign or a PRIDE flag, ffs.
I have all the respect in the world for female Liberal politicians, so the least I can do is a bit of singing their praises online - and voting for them. Maybe even be brave and risk a rock through the window by putting up a Liberal sign. Braver still and hanging a PRIDE flag.
I want to show support for, not hatred of, even though Conservatives publicly declared themselves our enemies, unless you're a fascist, when they joined forces with our attackers, the Freedom Convoy, in February 2022, while Liberals just want to govern in the interests of more of us than not.
To be clear, the point of the violence and intimidation being perpetrated by Conservatives against the rest of us is to make Canada a one party state, Conservatives in charge from coast to coast to coast.
Why anyone would vote for that is beyond me.
I choose the bears, thanks.
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