{"id":241279,"date":"2026-02-26T07:15:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T12:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=241279"},"modified":"2026-02-18T15:47:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:47:35","slug":"honors-thesis-asks-thoughts-on-man-or-bear-question-tries-to-assess-outside-influences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/02\/honors-thesis-asks-thoughts-on-man-or-bear-question-tries-to-assess-outside-influences\/","title":{"rendered":"Honors Thesis Asks Thoughts on Man-or-Bear Question, Tries to Assess Outside Influences"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s one thing Erin Tumminello \u201926 (CLAS) wants to know from every fellow undergrad at UConn, it\u2019s this: What do they think of Man or Bear, which is, of course, if you\u2019re alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a man or a bear?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hypothetical question that went viral<\/a> on TikTok in 2024, quickly migrating to other social media platforms and drawing an overwhelming number of responses from women who said they\u2019d pick the bear any day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were saying things such as, \u2018If the bear attacked me, people would believe me,\u2019 or \u2018Bears act on instinct. Men can be cruel on purpose.\u2019 They were expressing the fact they felt safer taking their chances with a bear rather than a random man because of gender-based violence and sexual violence,\u201d Tumminello says, noting the \u201cman\u201d in the question is generally assumed to be a cisgender man.<\/p>\n

\"A
Erin Tumminello \u201926 (CLAS) is working on a sociology honors thesis project looking at how political affiliation and gender affect undergraduates’ feelings on the man-versus-bear question. (Contributed photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sociology<\/a> major took the question to their classmates recently through notice in the Daily Digest and by word-of-mouth, soliciting answers to an online survey that asked not just thoughts on the man-or-bear question but also the person\u2019s political affiliation and gender to see if either of the latter affected how they answered the former.<\/p>\n

Tumminello\u2019s results, which will become the basis of their honors thesis<\/a>, weren\u2019t surprising, they say, considering it\u2019s a sampling of a student body in a fairly politically homogeneous part of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, anyone of any gender can be a perpetrator and anyone of any gender can be a victim and a survivor,\u201d Tumminello says. \u201cThe trend sheds light on gender-based violence, rape culture, and victim blaming. People brought up, \u2018I chose the bear because no one\u2019s going to blame me for being attacked or ask what I was wearing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The survey asked five demographic questions and five research-based questions, Tumminello says, including how the person feels about the trend, whether the question makes them feel validated or scapegoated, and if the debate accurately reflects real-world issues.<\/p>\n

They received 150 responses, which they pared down to 81 after eliminating ones that were blank or incomplete. It\u2019s a number that was manageable yet one that gave Tumminello some good material with which to work, they say.<\/p>\n

Fifty-two of the respondents were women, with only one identifying as conservative, one as somewhat conservative, and a few as no political affiliation, Tumminello says. Nonetheless, the majority of the women, regardless of political preference, noted gender-based violence, harm perpetrated by men against women, or feelings of fear around men. Seven specifically mentioned sexual violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong women, gender definitely seemed to be a stronger indicator of opinion as opposed to politics,\u201d Tumminello says, adding that most of the women said they agreed with the trend and felt validated by it.<\/p>\n

When it came to the men who answered, Tumminello says their results were more mixed.<\/p>\n

Among the 13 men who responded, all were liberal except for one who identified as conservative. Half of the men either explicitly or implicitly referenced gender-based violence, while a handful hadn\u2019t heard about the trend and didn\u2019t have much information about it.<\/p>\n

Of the 12 liberal men, one disagreed with the trend but didn\u2019t have overly negative feelings, Tumminello says, and another noted that women can also commit sexual violence against men but felt the trend addressed real-world issues.<\/p>\n

The conservative man, however, \u201cexpressed very strong negative feelings, which is very useful information for me. He expressed the \u2018not all men\u2019 sentiment and claimed it was stereotyping against men,\u201d Tumminello says. \u201cThat suggested political alignment might have been more of an indicator for men than it was for women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sixteen nonbinary individuals answered the survey, each identifying as liberals to varying degrees and offering positive to neutral views of the trend. One of the respondents said they feel safer when they\u2019re perceived as masculine versus when people saw them as feminine.<\/p>\n

Tumminello says they expected political alignment to be a little more impactful, especially among women, and was surprised when both liberals and conservatives said they agreed with the trend and that it addresses real-world issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had a more mixed group in terms of politics there might have been more variations, so it might have been a little less predictable if the dataset was more mixed,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n

Still, the project has Tumminello reflecting on the comments they found attached to the original TikTok post, some of which said things like, \u201cThe scariest thing I\u2019ve encountered while solo hiking was the sound of a beer can crushing a short distance away through the trees,\u201d and \u201cAt least we know the bear\u2019s intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also has fostered an appreciation for the help their advisor, assistant professor Bhoomi Thakore, has given and the opportunity that UConn afforded them to do their research.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t talk about gender-based violence and sexual violence enough,\u201d Tumminello says. \u201cMan versus bear specifically raises topics like rape culture, victim blaming, toxic masculinity, and our response to someone who says they experienced sexual violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

They continue, \u201cTrends like this are not meant to attack men or any particular gender. They\u2019re meant to bring awareness to the systemic problems in our society.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The survey asked five demographic questions and five research-based questions, including how the person feels about the trend, whether the question makes them feel validated or scapegoated, and if the debate accurately reflects real-world issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":241293,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2431,99,2235,2458],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-241279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-sociology","category-student-life","category-today-homepage","category-undergraduates"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 08:23:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241279"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241366,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241279\/revisions\/241366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/241293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241279"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=241279"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=241279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}