Fear Not Welcome Here

Which would you choose to encounter if you were alone and unarmed in a forest: a male stranger or a bear?

This is a question that has been posed and debated on various social media outlets for the last year, give or take. Most every woman who engages in the conversation or references it will choose the bear. Yes, an actual wild animal that could chew you up and rip you to shreds is preferable to some random dude.

I’m not the one.

Maybe because the forest is the natural habitat for a bear that is only doing what a bear does whereas coming upon a strange guy lurking amongst the trees taps into all of the stranger-danger-serial-killer cultural tropes we see in movies and television series? While the threat from a rando in the woods is not high, the threat of violence, the threat of verbal abuse, the threat of rape, or the threat of murder from men is an actuality that all women confront and/or consider throughout their lives.

It’s another variation on the thought exercise/question that has been around for ages and was prominent during the peak discussions of the #MeToo movement: What would a woman do in a world without men?

Women let their imaginations run free and the most common response is typically associated with a woman being able to have her body in a place/space/time/continuum where she does not face the fear of bodily harm or mansplaining.

A better question for me is: What would a woman do in a world without fear of men?

I don’t want to live without men. I know some women do, and I totally get it, but not me. On the crudest of levels I’m simply not willing to live without a good cock. Maybe when my vulva shrivels up and falls off. Sure, I’ve lived long enough to see for myself that many of the adults “in charge” who happen to be men are not the best or the brightest or the most qualified for their leadership roles, but that’s a problem in need of a change not a final solution. I don’t want men to go away I just want to be free of fear. And bullshit. To be free to make choices that are not constrained by dozens of calculations, big and small, that inhibit my movements because of them.

Here’s a few examples:

Hiking by myself. How do I not think about what I would I do if I was confronted by a man with bad intentions? I live within a ten minute walk of miles of hiking trails and the majority of them are intermediate/advanced. It’s highly, highly unlikely that a male human predator would care to hike uphill for thirty minutes under a hot Southern California sun with minimal shade, waiting behind a craggy rock for the right moment to pounce. The biggest threat to my person is male Bighorn sheep and when I do encounter a group of them—they know I’m coming long before I see them—they’ll simply trot off in another direction, far, far away from the stinky homo sapiens. I’ve hiked in many different terrains where there were long stretches of flat and abundant trees and bushes so it’s not a misguided reflex to feel guarded when I’m by myself on an isolated trail, that’s human nature, but it’s misplaced in my current hiking environs. Dry, desert nature.

Leaving my house every day. How do I let go of the finely honed defense mechanism I’ve developed since I was a little girl that I must always be aware of my surroundings and who may be watching me? I’m a born and bred urban dweller, forged in the bustle of large sprawling metroplexes most of my life (e.g. Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles.) Walking to and from home at the same time every day for school or work or the dog means I’m creating a recognizable pattern for a creeper to track and follow me. Mostly, I have to suit up and brace myself for the potential confrontations and micro-aggressions. I’m fortunate to live in a smaller, quieter, and safer city now, but this is a form of armor I cannot easily strip away. And probably never should. People intent on doing harm aren’t going away ever.

Walking by myself, particularly at night, requires a quick mental checklist of phone, keys-as-claws that are easily available in pocket or in hand, and an oversized jacket. Because even if it’s a warm summer day or night, if I show my female body, I will potentially attract unwanted attention.

Which leads to… wearing clothes. Why do I have to think about how my body is being presented to the world with my sartorial choices? There’s the societal pressure with the public square’s gate keeping of female bodies and there’s the personal self-esteem issues of self-loathing everything one puts on one’s body because of internalized societal stigma and expectations, but this is a conversation about just walking down the street, running errands, or grabbing a coffee. And I’m not talking about overt and intentional body-con outfits or tons of exposed skin, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just a more form-fitting t-shirt or leggings or a bit of cleavage popping up from a sports bra. I’m not looking for attention. I’m looking to get through my day. And somehow there are men who can sniff out the female frame from a football field length away. That’s 360 feet (in American) or 110 meters (for rest of the world that uses the metric system), including the end zones. And those men make me feel uncomfortable, self-conscious, and angry. What are you looking at?

There are plenty of times when I wear what I want to wear and I don’t care. But there are those days when I could be wearing the baggiest and most body diminishing clothes in my closet because my body is in its monthly water balloon metamorphosis and I can still feel male eyes trying to pierce through the layers to determine what exactly? I don’t know. Are they looking for boobies? Butts? Vaginas? Ultrahigh-energy particles? Other dimensions? Dark matter? Oh, you found some dark energy, bud, trust me.

I know the difference between a general “look-over” of another human being upon passing and the penetrating stare of male-on-female focus. It has lessened as I’ve aged out of nubile-ness, but it’s still happening. And it triggers my limbic system. This triggers my stress response and cortisol levels. This triggers fear.

Fear is a constant. Sometimes it’s immediate and conscious but mostly it’s hitting my amygdala. You know, that small gray mass in your brain that helps process emotions like fear and anxiety.

It’s not surprising that women suffer higher rates of anxiety and depression and jaw-clenching. Yep, it’s a thing called bruxism.

Females begin this battle before we even reach puberty. Young girls and grown-ass women must make choices to survive that may have nothing to do with hunting and gathering but rather a management and regulation of externally triggered emotional responses all while working full time jobs, going to school, raising kids, caring for aging parents, and coping with our own mental and physical challenges of simply existing on Earth and not fully understanding why and what it all means and what’s the point. That’s my touch of nihilism for the day.

All women have at minimum tales of harassment by men whilst living their lives. And it triggers that deep lizard brain fear of being unalived. It triggers fear.

I wish I had a definitive answer of how to change this predicament. No means No and women should be able to go where they choose at any time and wear whatever they want or be butt naked at 2am in the middle of downtown and not be catcalled and objectified and menaced and stalked and threatened and conditioned from youth to feel like a piece of meat for half of the population.

No woman should live with fear. But that’s not real life.

And no man is coming to save us. Even the best of them.

So like the Amazons who lived on Themiscyra, perhaps women should form their own collectives, fiercely independent, and highly skilled and trained with those of us who would be warriors and those of us who would be thinkers, and all of us would be healers. Especially for our limbic systems.

In the interim, I’ll continue having my personal debate over situations such as: which is better? Taking an elevator, alone with a strange man or taking the stairwell, alone with the unknown? The elevator may be my only choice because the floor I require is more than a five-story walk-up. But then I’m trapped in a small space with some suss bro. If the stair well is a possibility, it may be darker, no cameras, more isolated, less likely a friendly will walk by. But if I encounter a potential baddie on the stairwell I could run, I could get the upper-hand and kick him down the stairs. Or he could get the upper-hand. There are Pros and Cons to both and sadly the big Con is having to think about it in the first place.

I’ll cross my fingers and hope in either case, elevator or stairs, it’s the bear.