The Bear Hugger and What it Means in a Gendered World

There's been lots of hype about the "bear hugger" this week after two clery releases were sent out about  a third-degree assault on the MU campus. 

Pretty much everyone had something to say on the topic, and whatever your stance on the police, the subsequent arrest of the alleged assaulter, and the wording of the clery releases, it got me thinking about how this whole ordeal and the buzz surrounding it was affected by gender.

I noticed that most people took it as a joke, especially the first email, which described the assault as a "bear hug"- not a stranger forcibly holding a female or another more detailed description of what happened. When people did stand up for the victim, whether it was through social media or verbally, it was almost always women. Perhaps as fellow women, we feel an empathy with the female victim more than men do.

As far as the actual assault goes, both victims were women- and African American women, which adds  another cross-sectional factor into the mix.

I wondered if the clery release would have been worded the same- or even been reported at all- if a male had been the victim. To me, this would be another way that masculinity and hegemonic masculinity can get in the way of health and safety- a man would feel too "manly" to report something that may seem harmless to some, but made him feel threatened or uncomfortable. Similarly, I wondered if the same outcome would have occurred if the "bear hugger" was a female- would the circumstances have played out the same way, or would it have been reported at all? Women are seen as more docile and weak- perhaps a victim wouldn't have felt as threatened by a female as opposed to an unknown male.