The question “would you rather be stuck in the forest with a man or a bear?” was posed by TikTok creator @screenshothq in April 2024. The message resonated strongly online, and more than 30,000 videos with the hashtag were created.

Many women chose the bear, and many fathers even chose the bear for their daughters. A 2024 Whatever.com podcast saw a female interviewee justify her choice of the bear with “I think I can outrun a bear” after the host accused her of following the bandwagon.

Justifications from women on TikTok also reflect the social climate of the day, citing that if attacked by the bear, they won’ t be asked what they were wearing; a common question asked in relation to sexual assault and rape allegations.

Stopping Family Violence senior project officer and trainer Helen Howard says the response from women shows a social issue of female safety in public.

“The fact that the women chose overwhelmingly the bear shows that their general experiences of safety or actually of not feeling safe gave a lot of women an opportunity to speak about that,” she says.

Stopping Family Violence deputy corporate executive officer Mark O’Hare says many men got defensive after hearing the responses, with many citing the now common phrase ‘not all men’.

“I think a natural defensiveness for men or people that obviously know men kind of go, ‘well hang on a minute, you know that’s very unfair’,” he says.

“They reflect on the men that they are or maybe the men that they know and put themselves in a negative light. I think that transcends into that narrative around this ‘not all men’.”

At the time of the online debate, Australia was the marching ground for women’s safety protests against domestic violence.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took to Government House lawn to meet protestors at the 2024 ‘March 4 Justice’ rally and share in their displeasure of the situation.

Despite the rhetoric at the time, the major political parties have not proposed any significant plans to tackle violence against women as part of the 2025 campaign so far.

No articles having been published on the man vs bear debate since November last year, and the discussion in political sphere seems to also have diminished.

Mr O’Hare says motions were put in place for change, but they won’t come into effect until later down the line.

“Unfortunately it does take often a number of crises to occur and that’s what happened not too long ago,” he says.

“The community literally said we’ve had enough. It pushed our government to make a number of system reforms that are in the process of being rolled out.”

The conversation appears as merely a trend, no longer gracing the TikTok for you page of users as something hot and new. So what so people think about it now?

Ms Howard from Stopping Family Violence says it has not received any extra funding for the organisation despite the discourse around the violence against women epidemic.

Violence against women results in the deaths of on average 125 women a year.