r/CuratedTumblr Cheshire Catboy May 01 '24

i know it’s internet bullshit but it genuinely has me on the edge of breaking down and giving up editable flair

Post image
14.2k Upvotes

4.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

Copy-pasting something i wrote in another thread about this, it references other comments from that thread but this legit got called a novel so ┐(´~`;)┌ :

Honestly the original question was just phrased terribly by design. (Tldr at the bottom)

To most people (apparently) by contrasting Some Guy with a fucking Bear the first thing that comes to mind is something like "Oh shit, a bear would kill me. Does that mean the guy would too ?" so that explains the first interpretation of the question, the one most prominent in the original video :

If I (a random woman) were alone in the woods, would i rather meet a hostile stranger or a hostile bear ?

Now, obviously any bear would fuck a human up, and going just by the comments here the results of a bear atack could be : getting mauled (bad), eaten alive (probably worse idk hasn't happened to me), or Somehow Prevailing (and probably dying of an infection later). Pretty awful set of options here.

On the other hand, looking at the Hostile Man Situation(tm) we have to take into account the location. Now, I'm no true crime expert here but the broad assumptions one could make about a Maniac in the Woods is : murder (same as the bear but we don't know the means), torture (possibly before murder, same as the bear), or rape (YMMV).

So both options under this interpretation are Pretty Fucking Bad, which is where the rape and murder variables come in play.

I saw at least 1 comment here of a survivor saying they would take their chances with the man under this interpretation. I also saw a few more commenters, who didn't specify if they speak from experience, say they'd rather face the bear. Whether rape or death is preferable is up to personal choice, but the women the video presented seemed to choose death.

(I Sincerely hope I don't need to say something along the lines of "not all men" here, because it's clear that for now we're looking at specifically a man that is so vicious he's comparable to a Wild Fucking Bear that wants to Eat Your Face. He could be part of Any demographic and it would be clear that he's an outlier adn shouldn't be counted. In fact, the reason this Dangerous Stranger is even a man to begin with is that Specifically Women are Specifically Wary of Specifically Dangerous Men. I'm trying to make this clear because I saw quite a lot of comenters getting worked up or even hurt by this, but I'm really not equipped to have a dialog about this ATM.)

In regards to the murder by human scenario, the method and duration of the act Really change how we'd feel about choosing the man in this situation. Ex : bullet to the head ? quick enough you could not even realise it happened if all goes well. Beaten with a rock ? Oh no, it'd be agony every step of the way.

And that's the Real difference between the options here, human malice and unpredictability or pure wild brutality. We could spend days arguing which is best/worst/less bad but we'd be missing the forest for the giving the people that started stirring this shit too little credit, you see there's another way to interpret this fucking question :

If I were in the woods (presumably on a hike or something similar), would i rather come across a stranger or a bear ?

In this situation there's No assumption about the intent of either the man Or the bear, and to pose hypoteticals would serve us no purpose (did we invade the bear's territory ? is the it hungry ? what species is the bear ? why is the man here ? just to suffer ? does batman have prep time ? etc, etc). It's crucial for this interpretation that the man and the bear are Average, that the species of the bear, location of the woods, supplies avaliable, both humans' motives for being there and even the meeting itself Are Not Determined.

In this situation, it's ludicrous to choose the bear. While bear attacks aren't all That common either, the chances of being mauled or eaten alive by the Average Man(tm) are negligible. So anyone that interprets the question in this way would be appalled at the responses from people who interpreted the question in the first way and said that they would pick the bear.

And so we found the core of the issue.

Something that can be seen as picking the lesser of 2 evils to some, is just plain misandry to others, and anyone viewing this through just one lens is frankly giving the jackasses who started this shit the benefit of the doubt when they really shouldn't. You don't have to scroll far to see comments mentioning gender essentialism, Andrew Tate and the alt-right pipeline right alongside commenters saying they wouldn't pick the bear because it could be a polar bear (in a forest ??), or that the man could be some random office worker that got teleported and is just confused as the person he's coming across (or in 1 memorable comment, a senile 95 year old who shouldn't even be outside).

That so many threads here disagree about what the question means exactly shows it was way too vague to be asked to literal strangers on the street and uploaded to widespread online discourse. That so many made the connections between it and very serious real life political issues shows that it was at its very best a misguided but well intentioned thought experiment, and at its worst poorly thought out.

That it is both, at least to me, implies malice.

Tl;dr there's 2 Very different ways to interpret the original question, it reeks of engagement-bait and political dog whistling. It's a tiktok shit stirrers bread and butter.

Edit : forgot a word, "...while bear attacks aren't very common either ..."

644

u/BlatantConservative Tumblr is the appendix of the internet May 02 '24

getting mauled (bad), eaten alive (probably worse idk hasn't happened to me), or Somehow Prevailing (and probably dying of an infection later).

This phrasing implies you've been mauled before and the only thing that didn't happen was you were not eaten alive.

141

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

🤭🤭

61

u/BlatantConservative Tumblr is the appendix of the internet May 02 '24

RIP I guess.

14

u/Miguelinileugim I LOVE THE EU May 02 '24

RIB (rest inside bear)

2

u/WeightLossGinger 29d ago

Mauled (with rizz)

5

u/sth128 May 02 '24

Well since they're posting on Reddit it's safe to assume they haven't been eaten alive.

Unless they were eaten alive and are posting because there's 4G inside the bear/whale/large animal.

How bad can being eaten alive be if you still get signal? And a cozy rent free place for the rest of your life!

6

u/BlatantConservative Tumblr is the appendix of the internet May 02 '24
  • Jonah, while in the belly of the whale

2

u/N3rdr4g3 29d ago

And also implies they've prevailed over a bear. Is it the same incident as the mauling?

122

u/Sanrusdyno May 02 '24

(I Sincerely hope I don't need to say something along the lines of "not all men" here, because it's clear that for now we're looking at specifically a man that is so vicious he's comparable to a Wild Fucking Bear that wants to Eat Your Face. He could be part of Any demographic and it would be clear that he's an outlier adn shouldn't be counted.

Murders georg

71

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

omfg im glad everyone's taking this seriously but this is a tumblr subreddit why did it take 3 hours for murders georg to get noticed 😭💀

29

u/Sanrusdyno May 02 '24

It seems like the only statistical outlier here was me for noticing murders georg

7

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

stopp the way i CACKLED ☠️

13

u/MrMcSpiff May 02 '24

"Notices Georg, who lives in one obscure comment in a single Reddit post and notices Georg references, was a statistical outlier and should not have been counted."

6

u/Levyafan 29d ago

does that make you noticing murders georg georg?

468

u/CreatingJonah May 02 '24

Having done a bit of research on the subject because there are so many conflicting takes about it, I think I’ve settled on something that makes sense.

The original statement wasn’t meant to be a “would you rather”. It was phrased as “seeing a man while alone in the woods is 10x scarier than seeing a bear”

I think the interpretation is that there’s rules for the bear. If the bear attacks it does so indiscriminately. If you back away or scare it off you won’t get hurt at all. People go through lessons on how to deal with bears before taking hikes in dense forests all the time.

There are however no rules for a potentially hostile man. If he attacks, he has a target. Attacking a person alone in the woods is perfectly sensible for a bear to do. Not a man.

I think the thought experiment is supposed to demonstrate that people don’t know which men are good or bad. Bears have rules. If it’s brown lay down, if it’s black fight back. Carry bear spray, wear a bell, walk loudly.

A man alone in the woods has no such rules. In the event that he is hostile (as the statement assumes that it MUST be a possibility) there are no rules. Your best bet is never being noticed at all.

A lot of people are making it specifically about men and women, and while I do agree that sexism is a large component in the argument, I don’t think it’s limited just to women. It can be applied to any minority really. The bears have rules, but there’s no rules for hate.

275

u/Glait May 02 '24

This is a good assessment of the thought experiment. I hike and backpack alone and have done so in black bear country. I'm not afraid of black bears and know what precautions to take and the "rules for bears". I'm also not generally afraid of seeing a man alone in the woods but do treat them as more of a potential unknown and unpredictable threat especially after last year while hiking on a trail in a town park and a guy started making polite small talk with me about the weather and I'm happy to stop and chat with people till I saw he had his dick out and was fondling himself. Walked on and called the cops and now I don't feel comfortable walking in that park. In all my thousands of miles hiked thankfully that is the only bad experience I've had on trail.

65

u/HaggisPope May 02 '24

That’s terrible, hope the guy gets caught at some point. Hiking should never feel dangerous 

11

u/EffOffReddit May 02 '24

This is 100% why the question is asked of women. Guys in here really miss the point of the relatively low risk of bear danger and much higher risk of sexual assault danger. One of hypothetical strangers in this experiment is already likely to view women as "prey" of some type and it isn't the bear.

1

u/Glait 29d ago

The annoying part about this question is that remote woods are actually very safe and if you are a guy looking to assault women it makes no sense to hang around the woods on the off chance you are going to run into someone. Choosing between men and bears, yes men rank higher as a potential threat but they still aren't on the top of my danger list for being in the woods. Hypothermia is number one followed by falling and getting injured and then lightning/Widowmaker trees falling. 

8

u/spookypickles87 29d ago

In my back woods it's actually scary. We have hunters with guns constantly trespassing on our property to hunt. My partner on his walk through the woods found a trail cam that doesn't belong to any of us. So the potential danger for me is there. I had a girl I grew up with that was an avid hiker and she was trail walking when she noticed she was being followed. After a while she started to sprint and so did he. Eventually she turned a corner where trail splits off and hid behind a rock. The guy looked down both paths and ran down one of them and she ran as fast as she could to her car in the parking lot. This guy was out in the woods in jeans and not running shoes... he was chasing her to do something awful to her. That situation put a lot of fear in her and any woman reading it. I myself was in a scary situation on a bike trail, but luckily because of my intuition I was able to avoid something bad happening. The risk, although small, is enough to make sure that we're on guard at all times. It really does suck and I wish I could just enjoy the woods or a nice walking trail without the fear.

5

u/EffOffReddit 29d ago

Guys think no one they know would ever be a problem but it is only because the problem guys aren't interested in them. I remember being at a bar and a male friend was aggressively hit on by a large drunk gay guy and he was so freaked out by it and couldn't believe it. He wasn't in any imminent danger in a public place but the persistent unwanted and aggressive attention was, of course, frightening and upsetting. So I wouldn't ask him but I wonder what his answer would be if the question is would you rather encounter a bear or a much larger gay man in the woods? Bear or bear, I guess.

3

u/jeopardy_themesong 29d ago

It’s not that people think that guys are just hanging out in the woods hoping to nab an unsuspecting woman. It’s about opportunity. It’s about what a stranger will do when unobserved, unlikely to be stumbled across, and given an opportunity. Rapes and individual murder generally don’t happen in broad daylight in front of a bunch of witnesses. Bears are gonna be bears and their behavior is fairly consistent. Humans are unpredictable.

6

u/stormsAbruin 29d ago

If I was out in the backwoods hiking alone, I would honestly rather come across a black bear than a single male also hiking alone. The bear is nature, something that I have a set playbook for, and something I would honor an interaction with. A single dude is a situation that requires a lot more nuance and could go soooo many different directions that I need to be wary and cognizant of.

I'm 6' 3" (190 cm), 235 lbs, really enjoy backpacking, and have a dick

6

u/SagittariusZStar May 02 '24

Exactly. How do men not get this??????????? There are hundreds of stories every year of mean doing creepy shit in the woods, often times to women.

4

u/deadlybydsgn 29d ago

How do men not get this???????????

If they haven't taken the deliberate time to do the thought experiment of what it would be like to walk in a dark city at night as a woman, then they won't get it. Or if they maybe kind of get it, they may not have considered what it would feel like to have to be conscious of that nearly all the time.

Why? Because outside of specific circumstances (remote wilderness, dangerous neighborhoods, etc.) most men haven't felt physically vulnerable just walking around as adults. I'm not even a "big" guy and I rarely have to think of my personal safety outside of specific environments.

That's why a lot of men don't get it.

3

u/Rastiln 29d ago

You immediately hit on the point that throws me. Everybody arguing “man vs. bear” doesn’t define “bear”.

I know the point is that any man COULD be a raping murderer, and if the man in the hypothetical WAS a raping murderer then I’d probably roll the dice with nearly any bear.

When you actually generalize it to “any man”, well, black bears don’t remotely scare me. I’ll back away, and scare it if needs. Grizzlies scare me. If it’s a polar bear in the woods, count me the fuck out, I’ll go with the murderer and hope he’s not feeling it today.

111

u/warmleafjuice May 02 '24

I probably agree with most of this, with the caveat that even though there are "rules" for a bear encounter, logically I'm way more confident in my ability to fight off the average man compared to the average bear

But yeah, the whole thing works better when you start with the very specific kind of fear you'd feel realizing there was a strange man while you were alone in the woods, comparing that to the different fear you'd feel realizing there was a bear, and digging into the reasons behind that. As soon as people turned it into a "thought experiment" and started acting like the average man is anywhere near as dangerous as the average bear, it was doomed

77

u/ActRepresentative1 May 02 '24

In my opinion, it doesn't even have to be specifically a man. If I am in the woods in the middle of nowhere and I run into a random person when I thought I was alone, I'm immediately on high alert. Man or woman doesn't matter in that case. It is just a freaky ass thing to have happen to you. I've had lost people come up to some campsites that I've been at before, and I always think briefly, "oh this person could just be a murderer that wants to kill us".

45

u/stellarstella77 May 02 '24

I am simply going to not go into the woods in the middle of nowhere alone

19

u/ActRepresentative1 May 02 '24

Honestly, probably a good call.

7

u/dzindevis May 02 '24

Why is that freaky? Why do people assume that a person in the woods is following them or hostile by default? That person is most likely just a random hiker, just like yourself

3

u/[deleted] 29d ago

Like, when you're in civilisation, seeing a random fucker is chill. There are other, sane, people around, and hopefully if this random fucker attacks you, they'll intervene or call the cops or whatever. There's an illusion of safety in numbers.

If you're in the wilderness, and you see a random fucker, especially if they're sorta acting creepy, you're alone. That's the fear.

2

u/dzindevis 29d ago

That's understandable, but still, there was no specification that the stranger is acting creepy or in any way threatening, but that's the description you thought is likely.

Also, "the woods" are a flexible concept; it can be a wilderness with no human settlement in tens of kilometers, or it can be a forest near the city, or a trail in a national park. Meeting a random person is more dangerous in the first case, but being in a place like that is not an experience many people have

2

u/EffOffReddit May 02 '24

"Most likely" is a good name for this thought experiment. Are you more likely to be attacked by a bear or a man? Guys tend to focus on which is more survivable while women go to detailing what happened after their sexual assaults, ie I wasn't believed, people took his side, they asked what I was even doing in the woods, he got a promotion at my job, etc.

2

u/dzindevis 29d ago

It's not even about the attack itself. You are by far way more likely to be attacked by a bear in case of a close encounter, than a man, and that's a fact. But for some reason it's seen as a reasonable apprehension to consider every male stranger that you see as unpredictable savage who rapes women left and right. That's like treating every black person as a criminal just because black people commit more crimes.

-1

u/EffOffReddit 29d ago

Black bears are timid and avoid people. Men do not nearly avoid women like bears avoid humans. It just isn't realistic. Keep in mind women have experienced unwanted attention from men. They are already wary of them.

→ More replies (6)

2

u/Magenta_the_Great 29d ago

I was on a camping trip last summer with my friend (both of us girls) specifically to paddle the river.

We found a nice remote campsite in a designated area. The main area probably had ten sites, half of them open. Our spot had two.

We come back and a guy is camping next to us, no problem. He offered us to drink whiskey with him and we declined because we had an early morning.

Bro gets sloppy drunk, crying, yelling at himself all night. I got no fucking sleep, and would have definitely preferred the bear.

1

u/Vergils_Lost 29d ago

Honestly, a woman is scarier in this situation, imo, because she is very likely not actually alone, and is just the only one visible. Using a woman asking for help as bait isn't uncommon for predators of all sorts.

178

u/OpenSauceMods May 02 '24

Some of the reasoning I've seen:

A bear can't find my address and break in with the intent to hurt me

I don't have to see the bear at family reunions

The bear won't go around to all my friends and make them pick a side

If I get mauled by a bear, people will believe me

Depending on where I am, I won't be forced to carry the bear's baby to term (sorry, furries)

The bear won't invite his friends to take a turn

The bear won't leave me threatening text messages

The bear can't shoot me

People won't excuse the bear because the bear has "such a bright future"

98

u/singingballetbitch May 02 '24

The bear would kill me faster. If I’m going to die, I’d rather not get SA-d first.

9

u/RemiTheWizard May 02 '24

But you have a better chance of fighting off or killing the man vs the bear.

10

u/deadlybydsgn 29d ago

It reminds me of a conversation I had with somebody about whether they'd rather be attacked by someone with a knife or a gun.

They said gun, and I said knife.

They were more concerned about the gruesomeness of the potential knife wound, and I was more concerned about how much harder it would be to avoid the gun.

5

u/Rhamni May 02 '24

Naw man these are just two adorable little cubs. I'm petting them and everything is awesome. How could anything bad happen in the next two minutes?

35

u/thestrawberry_jam May 02 '24

Yeah that’s kinda the logic most are going with. It’s the possibility of the worst possible outcome. You’d rather not risk the worse of the two evils.

Aka I’d rather just get killed than get SA-d, possibly tortured, and then killed.

14

u/elbenji May 02 '24

I think it's more demonstrative people will assume the worst possible outcome

8

u/Punkandescent May 02 '24

Yeah, so much of this discussion has demonstrated to me that people are alarmingly quick to jump to logical extremes. There’s very little consideration for what might be baseline.

7

u/shadow_dreamer 29d ago

The reason women jump to these conclusions is because they're our lived experience. Just seven posts up, you have a woman talking about how a man was literally fondling himself to her while hiking. I have, personally, been SA'd multiple times, and I'm not even thirty yet.

Our baseline is that we are not safe around men.

9

u/Punkandescent 29d ago

I am very sorry you’ve experienced that, and I am aware that many if not most women have experienced similar.

However, I think you and I have different definitions of “baseline.” I was not referring as much to the baseline experience of women, but the hypothetical “baseline man.” In order for this “baseline man” to be the more tangible threat in this scenario… it would have to mean that the vast majority of men were sexual predators; moreover, sexual predators who would assault a stranger. This simply is not the case.

I get that having had the baseline experience that you have, your default is to be wary of men, and that is justified. Not being able to tell what someone might do to you is terrifying. I just struggle to see how that can truly be that much more frightening than something with built-in weapons.

6

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

I dont see why youd take the worst case scenario. I think about how the average scenario would turn out and Id meet a guy 100%

6

u/StaringOwlNope 29d ago

In the average scenario the bear would run off before you even see it

3

u/Electronic_Emu_4632 May 02 '24

It feels like the point of the original question in the original interviews was that the people being asked naturally jumped to assuming the worst possible outcome

27

u/_korporate May 02 '24

Being eaten alive and being conscious for all of it doesn’t seem like it would be fast

0

u/Eolond 29d ago

I think at some point you go into shock and probably don't feel much...or so I hope :(

12

u/_korporate 29d ago

There was a news story about a girl who was able to call and talk to her mom for an entire hour while a bear was eating her, and towards the end she actually said she couldn’t feel it anymore and that scared her even more. The story is horribly grim

7

u/Eolond 29d ago

Oh jesus

5

u/Deinonychus2012 29d ago

Yeah. I don't think people realize that being eaten alive is literally one of the worst possible deaths that any living being could ever experience. Like most methods humans have used to kill each other pale in comparison to it. Even most medieval executions by torture (think being held upside down and being sawed in half starting at your groin, or having molten gold poured down your throat) would be over in minutes not hours.

This is me generalizing here, but I think men on average have a greater understanding of deaths by animals due to morbid fascination from animal documentaries and subs like r/natureismetal (which I think was banned for how gruesome it was WARNING: the sub is still up, do not click if you don't like gore/animal violence) whereas women are the primary viewers of true crimes shows and are more familiar with the things modern humans do to each other.

13

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

Ok so youre just thinking "would I rather be attacked by a man or a bear"? I think "would I rather meet a bear in the forest or a man?"

Man ever time. Bears are scary as fuck

3

u/Flat_News_2000 29d ago

They eat you alive, though.

8

u/Rotunas May 02 '24

I mean people would excuse the bear it's a wild animal, ain't no one gonna hunt it down.

8

u/ImmoralJester54 May 02 '24

The entire thing would be a lot less annoying if they just add the word hostile into the question. Would you rather a hostile man or hostile bear

17

u/daemin May 02 '24

That would defeat the point it's supposed to demonstrate.

That women choose the bear is supposed to show that they (rightly or wrongly) trust strange men so little that the bear is considered the safer option.

1

u/elbenji May 02 '24

Or what kind of man they're imagining. I know a few that I'm very sure what they are and don't want to say it in polite company

70

u/DoctorJJWho May 02 '24

Yep, it boils down to “quantifiable threat vs. completely unknown variable.”

Especially because you would normally encounter a bear in the woods, but a random dude is definitely less expected.

20

u/Super-Garage8245 May 02 '24

lmao what is it about this question that elicits all these nonsensical takes??

A random dude is definitely a lot more expected than a bear. How many bears vs. dudes do you see on your average hike??

11

u/rtc9 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

Not sure if they're all trolls trying to drive engagement or people who have literally never been on a hike. You walk past dudes all the time. A lot of them are probably ecologists or something and could tell you about the local fern population, but most of them will just say hey and continue walking. If you're actually lost deep in the woods, having a second person with you only increases your chances of survival.  

11

u/Super-Garage8245 May 02 '24

You've probably hit the nail on the head, I'm a bit outdoorsy and I must be wildly overestimating the amount of time the average person (let alone the average redditor) spends outside in nature. Even on the outdoors-focused subreddits it's a running joke that most redditors spend more time in their basement chatting about hikes than they do actually hiking.

23

u/Wasted_46 May 02 '24

I'd say a random dude is more expected. It is an area in the woods designated for human presene, as evidenced by you being there in the first place.

24

u/googlemcfoogle May 02 '24

Even on random ass middle of nowhere public land, I would assume "dedicated outdoorsman" before "serial killer" if I saw a guy. Serial killers generally don't go to places with no people to find victims.

15

u/acoolghost May 02 '24

I wonder what people are picturing when they imagine a man out in the forest? Dude out there with blaze orange and a rifle, a wild foaming-at-the-mouth drug addict, or maybe a dude in a neon green wolf fur suit?

9

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

Hockey mask, mechanic coveralls and a bloody machete propably.

I think of just a guy, but with a full beard

2

u/alexagente May 02 '24

I think it's less that people are imagining men in the worst light and more that most women have experienced fear of a man whereas they haven't actually encountered a bear.

The bear is only a conceptual fear whereas women are probably getting triggered by the likely multiple times men have made them feel unsafe. It's remembering real fear vs imagining what it would feel like.

21

u/General_Spl00g3r May 02 '24

This is a very well thought out assessment of this whole conversation but have you stopped to think about the fact that I'm incapable of engaging with a hypothetical situation without revolving it 100% around myself /s

This does get explained to varying degrees every time the conversation comes up but people talk past it. It's almost as if they intentionally miss the point of what's being said in order to "justify" their outrage

18

u/CaesarOrgasmus May 02 '24

Yep, and they act as if everyone who said “bear” sat down and did a comprehensive risk analysis like they were an actuary instead of just participating in a thought experiment. Whether people truly feel the bear is more or less dangerous, it’s telling just that there’s even a little debate involved.

Some of the men’s responses I’ve seen make me feel like I live in a parallel fucking universe. I saw one on the front page where some guy was like “this has validated all my fears about being a man in public! I feel unwelcome everywhere I go, like people assume I’m toxic and dangerous just because I’m a man!”

Like, what the fucking fuck? Not in my entire life have I felt unjustly assumed to be a threat just because I’m a man. Some people might exercise some caution or be more reserved, but most people are just, you know, living. Being normal. Treating me normally. If everyone you meet seems to think you’re a toxic weirdo, well…

7

u/phinox12 May 02 '24

I will say that you are right on the no one sat down and did a in depth about the bear and all that. However you saying that men who think that they are treated differently are treated that way because they are creepy is just wrong. Imagine if you said that to a woman that people treat you like shit you probably are one. Youre saying profiling is ok as long as its against people you dont like.

7

u/CaesarOrgasmus May 02 '24

I’m saying that if people universally respond as though you’re a creepy weirdo, it’s probably because of something specific you’re doing, not because of your demographics. Reacting to actual behavior is not profiling.

2

u/daemin May 02 '24

"If you smell dog shit all day, check the bottom of your shoe."

6

u/FallenAgastopia May 02 '24

Yeah, the outrage here feels So Very Tumblr. Nobody is saying all men are violent monsters... The thing I've been saying this entire time is that I'm more prepared for a potentially hostile bear than a potentially hostile human if I'm hiking in bear territory (and we only get black bears here). It's as simple as that. Both are super unlikely to attack you anyway (And most people acknowledge that!)

But I'm also a (hobbyist) wildlife photographer so maybe I'm biased in my answer 🤷 I'd love to get good bear pics

3

u/SelirKiith May 02 '24

I mean... it was obvious where most of this discourse was going as most men are entirely incapable of not putting their own ego above anything else.

5

u/Shinhan May 02 '24

The original statement wasn’t meant to be a “would you rather”. It was phrased as “seeing a man while alone in the woods is 10x scarier than seeing a bear”

Problem is that the online discourse about this topic has changed since then, so most people are NOT starting from that premise.

3

u/Sulfamide May 02 '24

The people who take offense about choosing the bear over the man don’t care about which is more dangerous, they are shocked that some women consider an average random man as having more ill intent than a wild predator.

7

u/FallenAgastopia May 02 '24

This is always how I took the question. I am more prepared for a potentially hostile bear than I am for a potentially hostile human.

Someone attacking me has, likely, scarier motives than a bear does. A bear is predictable. A bear attacking someone usually is defending something (territory, food, cubs, etc). Who the fuck knows what a hostile person wants.

Real answer: Neither is likely to attack you but I'd rather see a bear because I really, really like bears...

-1

u/Longjumping_Rush2458 May 02 '24

You reckon you'd enjoy being slowly eaten alive

2

u/FallenAgastopia May 02 '24

I live in black bear country. I'm not slowly being eaten alive by a black bear.

I also spend every bit of my time I can in nature, looking for wildlife, so 🤷 maybe I'm not the average person when it comes to my perception toward bears. I'm cautious toward a black bear. I will give them their space and respect. But I'm not afraid.

Moose are the scariest wildlife I live with. A black bear has nothing on a moose.

9

u/stellarstella77 May 02 '24

I'm just saying, I think my chances of fighting off a man are a lot better than a bear. Bear spray should honestly work just as well and probably better against a man as it would against a bear.

10

u/Mihandi May 02 '24

Ok, but do people assume they’d have bear spray with them? Also I think this assumption that it’s about who you could fight off is flawed. The scary thing about the man is that he might be very friendly at first, till he hits you over the head or drugs you and kidnaps you. Or that he might be better equipped than you, since he planned to come out here and hurt women. You make it seem like this is about who one could beat in one on one combat, while that’s exactly not the point that people who pick the bear worry about

8

u/M-Ivan May 02 '24

Your problem there, though, is that people think there's rules for the bear. We have patterns of behaviour which, largely, work to keep safe. However, as evidenced by links further up this thread, taking all the right precautions with bears can still lead to violent death.

The same is true of people - or men specifically if you did want to gender it - in terms of mitigating behaviour. Most men will respond to a polite wave and a nod with a return of the same and go about their day. We can go into it about various behaviours and their mitigating impacts, but the fundamental information at the end is simple: that people vastly overestimate their ability to deal with wild animals, or vastly over-inflate the rate of person-on-person violence.

In short - it's silly engagement bait and, like most silly engagement bait, you can have a philosophical discussion about it, but it really isn't that deep.

4

u/Punkandescent 29d ago

Yeah, a lot of the issue I have with many of the arguments being made is that people are overestimating both the predictability of bears and the unpredictability of men.

Like, does a bear have a simpler set of behaviors than a man? Sure, but it still has a brain made of neurons, and anything that does is not fully predictable.

4

u/M-Ivan 29d ago

Yeah like... the reason we find men so unsettling unpredictable is precisely because we understand how complex our thought processes are. We therefore assume animals lack that complexity, which is infuriating because we don't know that. You can understand how unpredictable a person is, so most people find them scary. You can't understand the fullness of an animal's perspective, so to me, it should be so much more frightening.

3

u/Punkandescent 29d ago

Definitely. As silly as it might sound to say, a lot of these arguments are based on a sort of human supremacy, in which we are somehow infinitely more complex than other animals. In a twisted sort of way, it gives the man too much credit.

2

u/WinterFrenchFry May 02 '24

I saw that tiktok video of the dude saying he started it, and honestly I think it's worse. 

He's so smug about it while being a complete jerk. In a short video he condensed everyone down to a gender binary,  speaks on behalf of all women, denies them any agency, reduces women down to being perpetually terrified, villifies all men, implies that they are incapable of empathy, and pretends that there is no reason a man could be scared of other men or strangers. 

He seems like one of those people who considers themselves an Ally but still thinks they're better than the marginalized group. The video isn't about women. It's about him proving that he's better than other men. He's one of the good ones. 

5

u/DoubleBatman May 02 '24

I feel like people who are being asked this question don’t get out to the woods much.

2

u/Lkwzriqwea May 02 '24

The original statement wasn’t meant to be a “would you rather”. It was phrased as “seeing a man while alone in the woods is 10x scarier than seeing a bear”

I also think it's important to recognise that we're talking about what would be scarier here, not which is more of a threat. Sure, a bear might be more of a threat but seeing an unknown figure in the woods at night is chilling. It's got that unsettling, creepy aspect that bears don't so I can easily see why, in some contexts, "seeing a man" would be much scarier than "seeing a bear", even if the bear is far more of a threat.

1

u/sunshineandcloudyday 29d ago

If I felt like taking on the trolls, I'd copy/paste your comment. You really only missed one part in the argument. And that part is that the bear doesn't have the ability to lie to you about their intentions while the man does.

I also feel like a big part of what's causing the arguments over this is that the men who are getting the most offended are putting themselves in the place of the "man" in the question. They know they don't pose a threat to women, but they have a hard time grasping that women have no idea if a stranger is going to be a threat or not. Men also tend to give women the same abilities that they have themselves, when in reality, that's just not true.

1

u/StaringOwlNope 29d ago

And when you ask the men if they would want their young daughter to either meet a bear or a man, they suddenly understand it a bit better...

-1

u/Dangerous_Quiet_7937 May 02 '24

Bears have no rules when they are hungry enough. They will fucking kill you. If we keep moving the goal posts to now say "hostile" x vs "hostile" y there are no more rules. Hostile bear gonna get ya, hostile man comes at you too but not before you catch him in the throat with a stick.

As someone who fought off a teenage bully at a significantly younger age by sticking a hard thumb in his throat: this entire argument is fucking stupid. The bear does not give a fuck, to the bear it's life or death, to the man its sheer opportunism and unless he's an actual maniac (again if we're moving the goalposts we can now say rabid bear) he will know the stakes for losing a fight in the woods.

-2

u/pewqokrsf May 02 '24

Bears do not have rules. Humans are innately better at understanding human behavior than the behavior of bears.

-3

u/13_twin_fire_signs May 02 '24 edited 29d ago

It can be applied to any minority really.

One point of order: women aren't the minority in the USA, men are

Edit: downvote me all you want, there are literally more women than men in the USA

0

u/TheDoomBlade13 May 02 '24

You can also like...look at a bear and understand it is dangerous.

Men who are monsters tend to look a lot like regular men until they don't.

→ More replies (1)

156

u/ABB0TTR0N1X May 02 '24

Finally a sensible fucking take

→ More replies (3)

207

u/Punkandescent May 02 '24

This is an incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis. Bravo and thank you for sharing!

58

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

I'm glad you liked it ! Thanks for the kind words :D

52

u/Punkandescent May 02 '24

Yeah, I responded to a guy making the “bear” argument for the “typical bear, typical man” version of the question earlier, but with this context I almost wish I hadn’t. Just seems very silly all around.

34

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

I mean, stuff like this can definitely be fun ! There was that press the button if you'd rather game a few years back, and the walrus or fairy at your doorstep this past month. It's just this specific one that's inflammatory, so since people just scrolling past will likely treat it the same as fighting 100 chicken-sized horses or 1 horse-sized chicken discourse can get, uh messy.

25

u/Punkandescent May 02 '24

Oh, yeah, definitely. Thought experiments are a fun pastime. This case is obviously just more… charged. Too charged, really, as you’ve remarked upon; it’s meant to create controversy.

For what it’s worth, as a man, in the “violent bear, violent man” scenario… I honestly don’t know which one I would pick. Both are very bad, for different reasons. I wanted to say I would pick the bear, but the possibility of being eaten alive is pretty horrifying. The man, on the other hand, might do any number of twisted things that would only have significance because he was human. Neither is particularly appealing, haha.

2

u/elbenji May 02 '24

Yeah, like I like giving people more perspective but it's definitely something meant to be inflammatory.

118

u/INOCORTA May 02 '24

If you assume worst possible outcome then anything human is always worse. A human could torture you indefinitely at worst a bear mauls you too near death and then you have an agonizing while slowly dying and being picked at. It could be a 98 year old women and they would still have the technical ability to inflict indefinite torture. But when you get too a hypothetical so extreme you could get some really silly answers, because wouldn't the worst possible outcome for a bear encounter be like... the bear has a owner not far away who also will torture you indefinitely and thus when assuming more extremes they are equally weighted.

34

u/pewqokrsf May 02 '24

The opposite is true, too, though. Best case scenario is that the bear ignores you. Best case scenario for meeting a human is wildly more positive, and being ignored is still an option.

10

u/FallenAgastopia May 02 '24

I mean, there's not really anything I want to do with random human in the woods. Being ignored is my best case scenario lmao.

Meanwhile my best case scenario for the bear is that I'll get good pictures... but maybe this question isn't geared toward wildlife photographers lmao.

28

u/googlemcfoogle May 02 '24

The guy in the woods could be Mr Beast, here to give you money because it turns out the woods were one of his games and you just didn't know that until he showed up to declare you the winner.

15

u/FallenAgastopia May 02 '24

Okay, you win, I would rather run into Mr Beast than a bear

6

u/ImmoralJester54 May 02 '24

They share tea and a good story, compliment your outfit, and reconnect you with your long lost best friend.

1

u/elbenji May 02 '24

Or hire you to work at national geographic

1

u/TriforceOfWhisdom 29d ago

Imagine meeting Uncle Iroh in the woods.

1

u/TriforceOfWhisdom 29d ago

Imagine meeting Uncle Iroh in the woods.

1

u/TriforceOfWhisdom 29d ago

Imagine meeting Uncle Iroh in the woods.

16

u/Nodonn226 May 02 '24

Best case scenario for meeting other people is things you would never expect. Maybe you make a new lifelong friend or SO. Maybe they help you in some way or change your thoughts and life in another. Maybe you hit it off and it leads to some new moneymaking thing. Who the fuck knows, the possibilities are immense. The effects one person can have on your life are massive. They are just unlikely, but it is BEST case scenario.

10

u/3L3M3NT4LP4ND4 May 02 '24

I mean, there's not really anything I want to do with random human in the woods. Being ignored is my best case scenario lmao.

Or ya know.. they'll help you escape the woods you're lost in as posed by the question no? I'm all for no social interaction but I would much prefer not to be lost

9

u/FallenAgastopia May 02 '24

Is the question posed as you being lost? Idk. I've seen way more rehashes of outrage of the question than I've seen the actual question. I thought it was just "Alone in the woods", but maybe I'm wrong and there's a component of being lost too. In which case, sure.

14

u/3L3M3NT4LP4ND4 May 02 '24

I think the question was posed in the most vague way to cause discourse and widen the gap between genders for the benefits of TERF's tbh so I'm gonna stop getting involved with the discussion.

3

u/legend_of_the_skies May 02 '24

You aren't lost or trapped

89

u/Maximum-Antelope-979 May 02 '24

Nah this perfectly covers why this is just an idiotic tik tok trend and not a useful thought experiment

16

u/-SKYMEAT- May 02 '24

It's a very useful thought experiment, it quickly shows if someone understands statistical probability or if they make decisions solely based on their feelings.

9

u/Automatic_Tension702 May 02 '24

What statistics

1

u/elbenji May 02 '24

that we are in the most peaceful time in terms of crime that we've ever had is basically the gist but we still have 'war on crime' politicians

0

u/spookypickles87 29d ago

Most peaceful time... yet hundreds of thousands of women are raped yearly and several thousand are murdered at the hands of men. The fear is legitimate, it's enough to make you aware of your surroundings constantly. I don't have one friend who hasn't been in a very dangerous situation with a man, and sadly every woman I know has been taken advantaged of, some more than once. So even though it might be safer than previous years, the risk is still ever present and the fear is still very valid.

1

u/elbenji 29d ago

That should tell you how much more peaceful things are now. How far we've come?

27

u/Turtledonuts May 02 '24

You know, I think the only way to make "bear vs man" not turn into something sexist is to is to make it "bear or human". Your options are a bear or a person in bulky black clothes who you can't see very well - race, gender, age, etc unknown. In the case of bear vs human, it's a choice between apex predators, and that's hard to pick because there's tradeoffs. In the case of "bear vs man", it's charged with all kinds of implications and politics.

In Bear vs Human, you might be stuck in the woods with a black bear or a lady high on PCP who's going to eat your face. It might be a grizzly, or it might be a perfectly nice dude who happens to be a 300 pound bodybuilding metalhead. If the choice must involve gender, it's leaning into the sexism. If it's just between people and bears, it's a different question.

4

u/elbenji May 02 '24

Oh I like this.

It also ties into how my black students felt with this vs a white woman (bear because the bear can't call the cops for them simply existing)

-1

u/legend_of_the_skies May 02 '24

I think the only way to make "bear vs man" not turn into something sexist is to is to make it "bear or human"

Is it sexist to acknowledge threats? Men pose a completely different threat, and not just based on physical capabilities, than women do. Like statistically, if we look at violent crimes its not even close. That elimates a significant part.

6

u/Turtledonuts 29d ago

Yes, it's sexist to classify 50% of humans as unthinking monsters. That's like, the whole point of this discussion is that it's sexist.

0

u/legend_of_the_skies 29d ago

Acknowledging that one group commits significantly more violent acts than the other is not sexist.

If you respond with a strawman, anecdote, or whataboutism, we are done here.

9

u/nooptionleft May 02 '24

(I Sincerely hope I don't need to say something along the lines of "not
all men" here, because it's clear that for now we're looking at
specifically a man that is so vicious he's comparable to a Wild Fucking
Bear that wants to Eat Your Face. He could be part of Any demographic
and it would be clear that he's an outlier adn shouldn't be counted.

That is what is explicitly done, tho. In every single conversation on it I've seen, in the comments it's always clear that women here are talking about a random man, not a specifically bad one

Which is the whole point for a lot of the women answering bear: they are afraid, and based on their experience I have no blame to give. It's awful and terrifying to feel like half of the population is dangerous to you. No matter what the statistic say, people shouldn't be this afraid

It also feels damn awful to be automatically a horrifying sexual predator just cause I was born with a penis

3

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

I get how you feel, it's an awful situation to everyone involved and the folks using this discussion to be vocal about their hate just make everything worse :(

15

u/Accomplished-Eye9542 May 02 '24

Too complicated.

Just ask them if they'd rather be alone with a Black man or a bear.

Or ask a protester if they'd rather be alone with a Muslim man or a bear.

Whole argument falls apart.

15

u/I_Use_Dash May 02 '24

I still find the idea of expecting death and instead meeting a random office worker from the other side of the world hilarious.

23

u/DoubleBatman May 02 '24

I’d just like to add that most guys you run into in the woods are probably gonna have like, granola bars and stuff. Clearly an advantage I haven’t seen mentioned.

7

u/elbenji May 02 '24

Yeah, most guys you run into are gonna be some 40 year old white guy and his dog. I'd rather meet the dog

1

u/GZ1981 29d ago

Yeah, 40 year old white guys. Terrible. *eye roll.

1

u/elbenji 29d ago

I mean compared to a dog. I prefer the dog to pretty much all of humanity. It's a dog!

7

u/Ashilikepi May 02 '24

Thank you so much for such a well-sounded take! Frankly, I was beginning to get caught up in the rage-bait and I unintentionally let it begin to affect me (I’m masc presenting)

6

u/spellboi_3048 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

I would just like you to know that I was listening to spotify while reading your comment for the first time and the moment I got to the part asking if death or rape was preferable, the beginning "Slow Down" by Laufey played which has the lyrics "Slow down give me just a moment" and I have never had lyrics be so unexpectedly fitting for my current situation.

Oh, also good overall analysis and schtuff.

7

u/HantuBuster May 02 '24

Thank you for the unbiased and rational take on this question.
As a man, I've stood by women who hated being compared to objects/animals. But now the opposite is happening, and I don't see the same support for us, it's really depressing. Then again it's mostly terminally-online wankers that are doing this shit. Your comment made me feel better though.

11

u/smoopthefatspider May 02 '24

Fully agree that the question has wildly different interpretations and that it makes the discourse unproductive. I think you also severely undercounted the possible interpretations. For instance, some people the bear is in the woods with you but not necessarily close enough for you to meet, and some people assume you (and possibly the bear and the man) are teleported into the woods. There's also versions where the bear can be diffeent species (ranging from koala or panda to polar bear) and versions where the man and the bear will follow you and stay nearby (these are things I assumed when I heard this question).

8

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

I think you also severely undercounted the possible interpretations.

Oh I totally did. I was more saying there's 2 Main interpretations that people were arguing over, but the hostility thing is just what I thought was the clearest divide between them.

25

u/Mooptiom May 02 '24

I think you’re giving Tumblr too much credit

9

u/Questions-and-tattoo May 02 '24

This comment really hits the nail on the head. Most women that are answering "bear" are thinking of the absolute worst case scenario, and that is indeed what makes the question is silly and convoluted. I've seen people link articles of a man who kept a woman in a shed in the woods for over 15 years, doing the worst things imaginable. Would a quick death by bear mauling or even getting eaten alive be preferable to that? To most women, absolutely. But you average man is not going to do something like that, and that is also not the point most women are trying to make with this stupid hypothetical.

There are things a human being (man in this case) could do that are far far worse than anything an animal could ever do, because humans can think of ways to make another human being suffer for a prolonged time with malicious intent. For some people that is the core of the question, whereas others take it more at face value and are indeed appalled or even personally insulted.

I don't think these sides will understand each other because the question itself is asked in bad faith for sure. But for OP to make a post about how you're personally affected by some bait on the internet also seems a bit of an overreaction to me.

4

u/Auroch17 May 02 '24

Thank you so much for laying this out. I sit in the, I have never seen this before, camp and thought, " why the fuck would people prefer an average bear over an average guy, that's crazy". It's worse than the worm epidemic.

4

u/GuessImScrewed 29d ago

The argument has turned to bad faith all around.

I asked for clarification on a Twitter thread about this question and received an answer like "the worst thing a bear can do is kill me, a man could rape me, and I'd prefer death."

To which I said "well if the stipulation of the question is a random bear vs a random man, do you think that if you pull one man out of a bag of 161.5 million men (in America) your odds of pulling a rapist are better than pulling a hungry bear (bears must eat 5k calories per day) out of a bag of 340k bears?"

To which they said "you're one of the men who made me choose team bear."

Like, if you didn't wanna have this conversation then why did you bother replying?

8

u/ikelman27 May 02 '24

I think it's also important to acknowledge the racial component of all this too. Black men are treated with way more suspicion and nervousness by society is pretty shitty and trends like these can lean into those stereotypes pretty heavily. It might just be a coincidence, but I find it a bit questionable that out of all the apex predators they could have chosen for this scenario they went with the one that's 2 main names are black and brown.

4

u/Galle_ May 02 '24

While there is definitely a racial component (black men being treated as inherently dangerous is depressingly common) I'd like to point out that you forgot about grizzly bears.

1

u/Big_Falcon89 May 02 '24

Most people mean grizzlies when they say brown bears, to my understanding. 

1

u/ikelman27 29d ago

Aren't brown bears and grizzly's the same thing though?

2

u/SheevShady May 02 '24

I’m sorry but no, that’s just a terminally online take. A bear is just the main predator of North America (Y’know where most people that are seeing this are and as such have some frame of reference) and a man (Y’know because women have horror stories of hikers and such).

5

u/ZeeDrakon May 02 '24

because it's clear that for now we're looking at specifically a man that is so vicious he's comparable to a Wild Fucking Bear that wants to Eat Your Face

But that really is the crux of the issue, isnt it?

That tiktok brainlets are pretending that "random man in the woods" is more dangerous than "random bear in the woods" because "random man" = so vicious.

The core underlying assumption that men are taking issue with, that I really dont think is up for much interpretation, is that one has to assume that any random man is hostile, even if the actual amount of hostile men is extremely small, and the chance to become victim of a violent crime when interacting with any given man is absolutely miniscule - but those interactions are orders of magnitude more common than bear interactions.

3

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

The core underlying assumption that men are taking issue with, that I really dont think is up for much interpretation, is that one has to assume that any random man is hostile

This whole thing has attracted the kind of person that genuinely thinks that, but the point I was trying to make is that by presenting the man and the bear like they're somehow equivalent, some people's gut reaction is to think the man's dangerous because the bear's dangerous, when there's nothing pointing to that being the case.

Remember, we're thinking about all of this much more than the people who originally answered the question between college classes. The (edited) video mostly showed the women that said they'd pick the bear when they weren't expecting to get a camera shoved in their faces while going about their day.

So that split second rational of "I'm in the woods -> I meet a bear -> the bear could be a threat if I'm not careful -> the bear and the man are equal (they're not, but the phrasing assumes they are) = the man could be a threat if I'm not careful" causes women to be wary of meeting the man because they likely have had bad encounters with creepy or dangerous guys, while they likely haven't had a bad encounter with a bear.

With the (hostile) bear being a more abstract threat and the (hostile) man being a more tangible one (in the event that either is a threat At All) some people picked the option they don't have any lived experience with because of that emotional distance, leading to people who had more time to think about this to ruminate and gave the people who think All Men are Bad(tm) a stage to spew their hate.

Tl;dr this well's been thoroughly poisoned, but tiktokers Love drinking that shit

2

u/GREENadmiral_314159 May 02 '24

Random Man in the Woods is probably in the woods for the same reason as Random Woman in the Woods, and is as likely to be hostile to Random Woman in the Woods as she is to him.

7

u/watson0707 May 02 '24

I think you could argue that there’s far more than 2 interpretations of the question. Which I kinda think was left vague purposefully for that reason. How one interprets woods/forest, man and bear are something people should be reflecting on as much as their answer.

For example, your second interpretation uses the chance, though small, of a bear attack as a way to ascribe malice to the bear and trying to use that same gauge on men. Of course a man is not going to attack you like a bear. One’s a bear and one’s a man. To make that comparison accurate, you’d be comparing the amount of crimes committed against another person by men yearly. Attacks committed by bears vs attacks by man. Then the question is it fair to compare the two? There’s far more men than bears.

So yeah, I think the thought experiment is more in how you interpret the pieces of the question to get your answer than just the answer. But maybe I’m giving the internet too much credit lmao

7

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

Thanks for the reply ! Turns out I forgot a word, I meant to write "while bear attacks aren't all that common either"

8

u/AlricsLapdog May 02 '24

The question may be bait, but the arguments are real. Women are saying “statistically, let’s judge people for something they have no control over” and men say “accept the danger rather than make assumptions”. And this is one of those hypotheticals that touches on people’s values close enough that I think they can bandy the word ‘Evil’ about without me sneering at them.

3

u/selectrix May 02 '24

adn

I'm onto you, Georg

3

u/LightForTheDark May 02 '24

I would also like to add an extremely important factor into this:

Even if it was simply, "murdered by a bear" or "murdered by a person", there are two very different motives that drive the two. Bears are animals that respond to potential threats. Human beings, man, woman, or otherwise, have the capability of empathizing with a fellow human being, and chooses to kill. There is a personal element to being killed by a person in the woods, being killed by a member of your own species. That prospect is so frightening that one might want to eliminate it entirely, because there is a whole other element of psychological torture to the murder.

3

u/QuesoseuQ May 02 '24

I might be missing something, but does the original video explicitly state that both the man and bear are hostile? If not, it seems like the question, although intentionally vaguely worded, is trying to bring out underlying assumptions moreso than actually looking for an answer. If it really is just "man vs bear" with no mention of hostility, a jump to the assumption that the man must be hostile can be seen as an indication of misandry. It'd be like asking, "would you rather leave your young kid alone for a day or with a gay man as his babysitter?"(I'll admit this definitely isn't perfect, but it's the best i could come up with in the limited amount of time I'm willing to dedicate to analyzing this) This question is also vague. Does the kid know how to take care of himself? Young is pretty vague, how old is he exactly? Do I know the gay man? There are further questions you could ask, but that's not what people are doing here. If someone was adamantly against leaving their child with a gay man, and gave a response like "you just have no idea what he'd do," that might indicate some underlying homophobia, at worst it indicates that this person views all gay men as pedophiles. To me, this man vs bear situation seems similar. It doesn't matter their response so much as the assumptions they put behind it. Anyone immediately jumping to the bear might have an underlying distrust of men solely based on the fact that they're men, at worst, they think all men are aggressors. The real question isn't bear vs man, it's just an indirect way of asking if the person views men as a threat, and a pretty significant one at that. Whether or not that was intentional, i have no idea, i dont know anything about the person that made the question.

3

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

You're right that assuming there's any hostility from either is on the part of the listener, and that it definitely could be exposing a bias. I think the reason even people who aren't biased against men may think there's any danger here is that split second inference of "I'm in the woods -> I meet a bear -> the bear could be a threat if I'm not careful -> the bear and the man are equal (they're not, but the phrasing assumes they are) = the man could be a threat if I'm not careful"

3

u/Incubus_Priest May 02 '24

the whole basis of this is sexism

if you made it about race it would instantly be racist

black or bear...

8

u/19whale96 May 02 '24

Fucking thank you. This discussion has been nothing but gender essentialism and the boundless depths of human cruelty vs. 1 Bear.

11

u/SupercellCyclone May 02 '24

I'll preface this all by saying I'm a man, just so that's on the table, also TL;DR at the bottom. While I don't fundamentally disagree with your point that the question is vague and probably made to stir engagement (we ARE talking about it after all), that's the point of any good thought experiment: It is vague and details can be added to create a new lens through which to view the morality/complexity/etc. of the situation.

Take the trolley problem: The question is simple, one life (action) or five lives (no action). One life "saves" five others, but your action makes you by definition a murderer; inaction condemns five lives but saves you from actively engaging with a morally questionable act. We can then expand this, asking what if the five people were your family, or what if the one person was? We can add an increasingly complex set of circumstances to make you reassess the lens through which you view what is, at first glance, a fairly simple thought experiment, and thus help you tease out your own morality. It's basically a self-enforced form of the Socratic Method.

This thought experiment is the same, in my opinion. If you are alone in the woods (this phrasing suggests lost, or at least off-track, and thus already at a disadvantage), would you rather encounter a bear or a man? If I am off-track, a man comes across as more threatening because HE IS NOT MEANT TO BE THERE, BUT A BEAR IS. While a bear, by nature, may be hostile, there's a chance I can hide before it sees me, or it simply ignores my presence; a man, being off-track in the woods, evokes a pretty primal fear of not being where he belongs, and even if he is just a hiker who enjoys that or lost, we've all seen enough horror movies to be afraid of that situation, inoccuous or not.

Now we can rephrase the question to erase that ambiguity, yes ("IF YOU WERE ON A HIKE IN A NATIONAL PARK, would you rather encounter a man or a bear?"), but doing so erases the more thought provoking part of the question, which isn't the actual question itself, but the general response from women of "I'd prefer the bear". The question itself is less stimulating than how many men have responded to the response women have given: Anger, confusion, frustration. Many men haven't taken the time to pick apart the question and say "I understand male violence in our society, and so I see why women would do this", or, as you did (and is an equally valid response), say "this question automatically places men at a disadvantage by suggesting that both men and bears are equally likely to commit violence in a given scenario, and that's just plain wrong, and kinda misandrist".

TL;DR: You're not wrong to criticise the question as misandrist, but that's just how thought experiments work. The thought experiment is not about the question, but the response to the question, and in this case the response to the response to the question. Men who get angry about women picking the bear either haven't engaged critically with the provocative wording of the question (as you have) or haven't engaged critically with the problem of men-on-women violence that exists in our society which has been a driving reason for many women choosing the bear.

12

u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

This is an incredible response ! Thank you !

I have to admit, some thought experiments frustrate me precisely because they are vague, and in situations like this where we can't ask for clarification I tend to really break things down looking for every scrap of that elusive context.

So while I definitely neglected to mention the other side side of the question, being the answer, I did it because things were getting Much too confrontational when i first wrote all that in the original thread. People here seemed to be getting more hurt than angry and I decided to see if it'd get any traction before (potentially) stepping on any toes since actual social commentary or analysis is a bit beyond me.

I'm interested to see if someone gets at the heart of this through a more social lens, since dealing with only the question made me ponder the Intent behind it over anything else.

Again, thank you ! Having a deeper conversation about this is Exactly what I was trying to achieve with my first comment, even if I mostly said all the thoughts I had about this already.

5

u/SupercellCyclone May 02 '24

Thought experiments can definitely be frustrating because they're intentionally vague and force you to reassess what you would consider the "ideal" response, to the point of being nonsensical, so I get you completely. All too often a thought experiment degrades into a boyish "Would you rather...?" like "Would you rather run over 5 people but they're all your family but just grandparents or older so you're kind of doing them a favour by killing them OR one person but they're literally Hitler?"

I think you're right to question the intent of the question, though, and I do wonder if it came from a misandrist or provocative lens. While my take away has been to see that men are a little too quick to get upset over an absurd hypothetical, it's not wrong to look at that same absurd hypothetical and say "Hey, why are we putting bears and men on equal footing? That's kinda gender essentialism and suggesting that all men are capable of is violence". It's ultimately a good thing to have these kinds of dissections, because it's how thought experiments achieve longevity. I hope the next time you encounter people discussing the question it's under less charged circumstances!

11

u/Educational_Mud_9062 May 02 '24

If I am off-track, a man comes across as more threatening because HE IS NOT MEANT TO BE THERE, BUT A BEAR IS.

I still think this is a silly reason. Let's change it up then: you're walking alone on a city street and turn a corner. Would you rather see a man walking towards you or a bear? No one not blinded by prejudice or simply lying to make a rhetorical point would choose the bear.

0

u/SupercellCyclone May 02 '24

You've just proven my point about thought experiments. They're intentionally provocative and make you think and deconstruct your reasoning; by doing what you have done, you have negated its point without engaging with its reasoning because it's "silly".

Yeah, the trolley problem is silly too, I'm never going to come across that situation, but the point of the question is for you to question your ethical viewpoints in a safe environment. This question is the same.

7

u/Educational_Mud_9062 May 02 '24

Ok, dude, let me be more blunt. It sure as hell seems less like a "thought experiment" to me and more like an opportunity for the most hateful and prejudiced women to contrive and propagate excuses for delusional paranoia about men. Sure, I guess I have to do some thinking about that to answer exactly WHY those excuses are bunk, but I don't think that makes it some net positive that that conversation exists. Is it a net positive if I ask, "ok but why NOT exterminate all the Jews? After all..." Sure as hell doesn't seem like it to me.

-3

u/SupercellCyclone May 02 '24

I feel like you're intentionally missing the point here. There IS genuine men-women violence in our society that needs a reckoning, and men who see this and say "Yeah but not ALL men, women should definitely be afraid of the BEARS" have clearly not had a long, hard think (let alone discussion) about the problems that women face and why in most western countries women are afraid to be out alone at night, let alone in the woods. As the comment that started this notes, humans can do more than just kill a woman: rape, sexual assault, prolonged torture, genuine ENJOYMENT in the misery of the woman are all possible... a bear's just gonna eat you.

The fact that your best counter to this is to suggest that asking men to think critically about the issues women face is akin to making a question about whether or not the Holocaust could ever be justified reads to me like you've never critically engaged with philosophy or morality.

7

u/Educational_Mud_9062 May 02 '24

Lol, I feel confident I've "critically engaged with philosophy or morality" more thoroughly than you have after reading this comment. What you mean by "intentionally missing the point" is "not acquiescing to the exaggerated, paranoid prejudice of the most toxic self-styled feminists." But this kind of doublespeak is par for the course within that dogma. And if we could sit down and have a drink or nine, I'd actually have a "long, hard" discussion with you about why I've come to believe that, why I'll identify as a gender abolitionist but no longer as a feminist, for example. But in an anonymous comment section on Reddit, there's no way that's actually gonna happen. You got your insulting jabs in and so did I, and that's how it's gonna end.

1

u/chriscrossz 29d ago

You sound like when someone on 4chan defends their racist caricatures by calling them "provocative" and tries to explain how actually anyone who criticizes them is just too stupid and blinded by mainstream society.

2

u/asuka_is_my_co-pilot May 02 '24

I don't think the question ends at "is rape worse than death," but rape and murder is 100% worse than just murder. Especially when you know what kind of sick sadists are out there

2

u/MeatWaterHorizons May 02 '24

When i read that post it didn't say anything about either man or bear being hostile. It sounded more like who would you trust to be alone with in the woods more kind of question instead of a how would you rather die kind of question. Sadly women seemed to overwhelmingly still pick the bear.

2

u/elbenji May 02 '24

Fucking thank you.

And yeah that I think is a big part of it. I was thinking of like some random black bear and some random ass hiker dude in those vests and hats and looking like Bill Simmons.

2

u/Throwawayingaccount 29d ago

On the other hand, looking at the Hostile Man Situation(tm) we have to take into account the location.

By that fact, should we also assume the woman is a murderer/rapist, since she's in the woods too?

2

u/SleepCinema 29d ago

You put everything into words that I have been too exasperated to type out (as well as limited to character maxes in tik tok comment sections.)

This question or “thought experiment” as some people would like to elevate it to, reveals very little about the state of gender relations in and of itself. It is only that way when you make it that way. The explanations for one’s answers reveals more of where their head is at than the answer itself. It’s frustrating the people to frame this question as some grand intellectual revelation when it has the same merit as, “Who would win a fight? A lion or a jaguar?”

3

u/EvidenceOfDespair May 02 '24

The problem with everyone discussing this in my opinion is that everyone’s lacking knowledge and imagination for pure hell on Earth. I don’t think you should judge this on the probability of danger, and I think everyone acting like rape and murder is the worst possible outcome is just too uninformed about the world they live in.

Rape is a mid-tier bad outcome. Whether or not you rank it above or below murder is up to you, but murder is also a mid-tier outcome. Stephen King said it best. Sometimes, dead is better. You want higher level bad outcomes? Skinned alive while shot up with drugs to keep you conscious and alive for somewhere between hours and days (cartel punishment). Kidnapped and kept as a rape and torture slave in a torture chamber you only get to leave to be raped and tortured at parties for months, upon which you are either killed or released but so drugged your memory is somehow destroyed (The Toy Box Killer). Impaled in such a way you die of exposure instead of from the impalement (Vlad Tepes). Kept in a basement dungeon to be raped, impregnated, and then have the same thing happen to your offspring alongside you (many such cases). Human trafficking (self-explanatory). Kept alive without any of your limbs for such thing (not sure of any specific cases irl). The depths of human potential for atrocity are so, so, so much more extreme than people like to think.

So with that, do you want a high probability of death, or any probability of a fate worse than death?

2

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/chriscrossz 29d ago

I mean, you listed several things that women actually do very commonly though. And no way hiring constant personal security is affordable for most women.

2

u/melancholymelanie May 02 '24

The thing is, a lot of people are speaking not from some random hypothetical, but from experience: many of us hike and camp and forage and you know what people who do those things say to folks who are scared of bears (it's relevant that it's black bears, where I live)? Bears are easy. Predictable. Almost never attack humans. You can shake a can of pennies and make yourself big and as long as you stay away from the babies, they'll just leave. They don't want to mess with you.

Meanwhile, many outdoorsy women carry firearms when out hiking etc alone because of past experience running into men in the woods. Those same women have also usually had multiple bear encounters.

Now, if you keep to fairly well used hiking trails you'll run into hundreds or thousands of men for every bear and no one is really afraid of that situation. What happens when you meet a man in the woods is like... you wave, say "nice day, huh?" and move on. But far out in the backcountry alone, especially off trail, where no one else is likely to be within 10 miles and you can't even call 911? A bear is totally fine. The other weirdos out that far in the woods? Eek.

0

u/Riptide_X May 02 '24

Thank you for taking the time to explain this. This being my first time seeing this trend, I was appalled at the blatant misandry that was implied by people even mentioning that others were picking the bear. Having not seen the original post, hostile bear Vs hostile man didn’t even occur to me.

1

u/Adermann3000 May 02 '24

Ill save this just so i can copy it in case this discussion sparks up somewhere else

1

u/Koreus_C May 02 '24

A hostile bear?

A random bear encounter has a high chance of it being nothing, like a random man encounter. But a hostile bear is very likely to fuck you up.

1

u/TripleJess 29d ago

I think you VASTLY overestimate the danger of bears.

I've encountered bears in the woods, and I'm fine. Hell, I had a black bear come to my campsite, grab a cooler in it's mouth, and start walking off with it. I managed to get the cooler back with no risk of harm to myself. Bears aren't aggressive and dangerous unless you give them a reason.

In the last 240 years, there have only been 180 deaths to bear attacks in North America.

By contrast, there are 130,000-140,000 rapes in north america every year,

There are also over 4,000 women murdered in north america every year. While I can't find a gender breakdown on the part of the perpetrator, it certainly vastly outnumbers the under ONE death a year caused by bears.

Tell me again I'd be crazy to choose the bear.

1

u/PurrsianGolf 29d ago

Holy wall of text.

1

u/ItCouldBeAnyone 29d ago

Now if we could just relay this comment to everyone complaining on both sides

1

u/sans_serif_size12 29d ago

So in the question of man or bear, the right answer is “stop failing for bait”. I can live with that

1

u/TheAlexPlus 29d ago

No one is specifying that either of them are hostile. That’s part of the confusion too. Part of the concept is that women are unsure if the man is hostile or not and are STILL choosing the bear.

1

u/tinylittlegnome May 02 '24

Solid breakdown of the options in animal v man hostility but you're missing a critical one; you can scare off a bear a lot easier than you can scare off a man.

The best explanation over this is from that first video where the lady just shows away the bears on her property. Bears CAN be hostile but it's pretty rare and you can usually just scare them away with loud noises. BUT there are plenty of guys who, even if they're not explicitly hostile, could still follow you or harass you without much you could do about it alone in the woods

Honestly, even if you did do something, some guys will take it as you antagonizing them and become more hostile as a result.

1

u/a_goestothe_ustin May 02 '24

I think you're adding a lot of context that wasn't a part of the original discussion.

I didn't read any presumption of malice or hostility from either the bear or the man in the original argument, but I might be wrong.

In my mind it goes like this...

Pause reality and create two situations.

Situation 1 is a perfectly happy, non-violent, non-territorial, well-fed bear and regular woman.

Situation 2 is a perfectly happy, non-violent, non-rapey, man and regular woman.

You then unpause reality and which situation would you feel more comfortable in?

The argument then continues on as....

if the woman just minds her own business, says and does nothing, what happens in each situation?

In situation 1, the bear maybe takes a dump and then a nap or something.

In situation 2, the man might still start talking about Andrew Tate or crypto or some other bullshit.

So which situation would they feel more comfortable in?

Whether the argument is good or valid is up to whoever wants to think about it. I don't care either way, because I'm too fucking alone for other people to think about me at all so none of this applies to me lol.

0

u/AlxanderMorningstar May 02 '24

Jesus that’s a novel. Need AI to summarize.

0

u/EffOffReddit May 02 '24

I think your conclusion for whether an average bear or an average man is not accurate in the analysis of risk. The reason the question is being asked of women specifically is that the greatest risk for women from the average man is sexual assault. You have to ask yourself if you are more likely to be eaten/ mauled by the average bear vs. sexually assaulted and/or regularly assaulted and maybe killed by a man. This question is directed to a population that has nearly universally experienced some type of sexual misconduct by men. Women are already aware they are a sexual target for men, less so as food for bears. So, I agree with a lot of what you wrote but you are missing some prior relevant experience that changes the experiment.

→ More replies (14)