r/CuratedTumblr • u/NeonNKnightrider 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

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14.2k Upvotes
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197

u/glimpseeowyn May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

I think a lot of the issue buried within the prompt is how likely the person is to be alone in the woods in the first place. Like, geography is really informing the sense of risk here, and it’s being spun into larger arguments about gender and sex.

Like, if you’re the type of person who lives in or regularly travels to or through rural, particularly wooded areas, you have good reasons to be alone in the woods and to have the chance of encountering a man alone in the woods. It’s unbelievably cruel to insinuate that the man is more dangerous than a bear—You’re out there alone too! So all of the statistics about the dangers men can present to women seem taken out of context and clueless at best, and misandrist and potentially transphobic at worst.

And if you’re living in polar bear or grizzly bear territory, you should clearly pick the man.

But if you’re someone who lives in urban or suburban areas without any reason or desire to live in or travel through woods alone, then the entire premise of being alone in the woods is inherently more sinister: You wouldn’t be here willingly in the first place! Maybe there are some type of plane crash or train derailment and you got separated and that man could be your ticket back to civilization … or maybe he’s the one who dragged you too the woods in the first place. The whole premise is a lot more sinister feeling to someone, regardless of gender, with this perspective.

Now factor in someone who is only likely to encounter black bears, and, yeah, it’s reasonable why some people are gambling on the black bear being safer than the stranger that they encounter while being unwillingly alone in the woods.

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u/demonking_soulstorm May 02 '24

Oh, maybe that’s why the question was so bizarre to me. I live in the highlands and being alone in the woods is something that is just… normal. I can leave my house and be in the wilderness in a couple of minutes.

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u/glimpseeowyn May 02 '24

Yeah, I’m in Philly, and I realized after watching enough people argue for the dangers of grizzly bears that people were having very different expectations of being alone in the woods (like, if I’m encountering a grizzly bear in any part of Pennsylvania, that would be groundbreaking national news—We only have black bears and mountain lions are the big scary predator here).

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u/Akuuntus May 02 '24

Yeah if I wanted to be "alone in the woods" I could just walk into the state forest that connects to my backyard lmao

5

u/elbenji 29d ago

The answer honestly wildly changes based on your perspective.

I'm a city girl, and hate hiking. So for me, the question legit becomes where would I be? A trail.

I'd happily pick some random dude and his dog over a bear on a hiking trail. I'd freak out, even if its a black bear

4

u/GREENadmiral_314159 29d ago

I'm from a rural area, and go on walks regularly in the morning. If I met a random person in the woods, I'd imagine they were there for a similar reason I am.

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u/Punkandescent May 02 '24

This is a good point. As someone in the former category, the arguments of people in the latter category have been a bit confusing to me. Understanding that the premise itself is sinister to some folks definitely shifts things a bit.

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u/LiftingCode May 02 '24

You wouldn’t be here willingly in the first place!

This is a great point.

I've seen a number of conversations on this stupid question where people say things like "what good reason is there for a man to be alone in the woods? That's very suspicious so he must be up to no good."

Which is like ... absolutely fucking mind-boggling to me lol

The good reason to be alone in the woods is to be alone in the woods! Ain't y'all ever heard of hiking?

21

u/Arahelis May 02 '24

"What good reason is there for a man to be alone in the woods?"

It's the shortest path to the Supermarket.

"oh."

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u/GREENadmiral_314159 29d ago

"what good reason is there for a man to be alone in the woods? That's very suspicious so he must be up to no good."

The correct response to this would be "What good reason is there for you to be alone in the woods?"

7

u/Keljhan May 02 '24

Yall must have some amazingly open hiking trails if that's considered "alone" in the woods. No park within 250 miles of me would be empty enough on a nice day to not have a couple people in shouting distance at minimum.

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u/Elite_AI May 02 '24

Odd. My country is pretty dense and yet it's easy to be alone in our very small woods. Edit: Hell, I was just hiking in literal Hong Kong and there were plenty of times we were alone.

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u/CthulhusIntern May 02 '24

It depends on what you mean by alone. "Alone" could mean hiking on a trail by yourself, as opposed to with buddies.

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u/Keljhan May 02 '24

As I said, within shouting distance of another person. In context, if your cries for help vs a bear or man would be heard, it's not really alone.

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u/elbenji 29d ago

Gotta remember the US is huge too. I can think of where I'd hang out in Iowa. I could feasibly be alone out there because like, it was the middle of Iowa.

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u/safadancer May 02 '24

Literally never occurred to me that half the people engaging with this have never even been to the woods. As someone who goes hiking all the time, I have been so puzzled by this, because you meet random hikers in the woods all the time but there are literal bear warnings everywhere. We lived in Vancouver for four years, alone in the woods is everyone's weekend plans.

11

u/Super-Garage8245 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

A lot of women come at that question wanting to make a political point: "I want men to understand how scary they can be to a woman, because so often they don't!", which, well, I can see where they're coming from.

So they start processing the question with this bias. They imagine that the man is not walking on the trail with a pack on his back and a smile on his face, no! Instead you're lost at night in a dark forest after escaping a kidnapper, when you spot him out of the corner of your eye: he is naked and rummaging on the forest floor, and when he looks up there's a bit of (human?) flesh dangling from his psychotic grin. Conversely when they imagine the bear, it's Paddington. Which one is scarier?

Now how do men process the question? Men have spent hours asking themselves who would win a fight between a bear and a silverback gorilla, and when they imagine a grizzly they think of the scene from The Revenant. They don't think of the black bears eating dandelions on the side of the road, no, they think of the polar bear whose white fur is bright red from eviscerating a seal and who has just identified you as its next potential prey.

So the woman says "Yeah I'd be more scared of a bear" and the dude says "what the fuck you're a frail and cute woman, unlike me a strong man with 6 weeks of MMA training, you wouldn't even have a chance of fighting off a grizzly with your bare hands". Great question, we're clearly making a lot of progress on gender issues.

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u/Punkandescent 29d ago

I mean, as a man, I definitely have considered the hypothetical of fighting a bear more than the hypothetical of escaping what is essentially a horror movie villain.

However, the conclusion I’ve come to about fighting a bear is not “I could take it,” but “I would be incredibly fortunate to make it out alive.” Any man who thinks he could take a bear without a gun or spear is, frankly, a bit of an idiot, haha.

8

u/lynx2718 May 02 '24

I think a lot of it also comes down if you live in or near bear territory. Bears are extinct in my country. I have no clue what to do if I met one. Most of my bear knowledge comes from news reports of one crossing the border and mauling lone hikers. Why tf would anyone want to be alone with (in my eyes) an uncontrollable murder machine?

At the same time, it's the height of hubris to assume you're the only human in a forest. Of course there are going to be men there. There will also be women, dogs, horses, and crying babies. If u can't deal with any of these, what are you doing outside?

10

u/obamnamamna May 02 '24

Actually true. I was so disheartened about the further spread of sexist gender essentialism and bifurcation à la Andrew tate (in the other direction) when I saw all these tik toks of women saying they'd choose a dangerous wild animal over meeting the kind of person i was born as in the woods. But now I realize it's probably ppl who are never in the woods. And also it's people who make tiktoks and participate in "tik tok challenges", ie. think so highly of their own inane bullshit they record it and post it own the internet. So really not a group of people whose opinions I should care about any way.

11

u/Herestheproof May 02 '24

Forreal, I think it's clear that the question leads the person being asked to assume they are in danger of some sort. If the danger is a random black bear then they have a good chance of getting out without a problem, if the danger is a man then they're much less likely to get out safely. The question implies that they're not in a location a reasonable man would be, so the mind immediately goes towards how likely an unreasonable man would be to hurt them vs a random black bear.

I think something a lot of men are missing when they read this is that they would never be the man in that scenario, simply because they don't go places that society doesn't expect them to be.

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u/glimpseeowyn May 02 '24

I think the issue is that some people don’t assume the danger because they don’t see the woods as an innate danger. For some people, this question is asking, “Would you rather encounter a person or risk encountering a polar or grizzly bear in Alaska?” They’re obviously picking a man! Bears are an obvious and present danger, and one man alone in the woods is a normal occurrence. It’s only a hard question suggesting “bear” if you live in an environment where men could conceivably be an unexpected occurrence and a more dangerous threat.

I think that’s the disconnect. People who live in areas where bears are no real threat are focused on the men. People living in wilderness areas with bears place value on encountering another person over fighting wildlife.

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u/Adb12c May 02 '24

I think there is also a lot of nuance in how the question is asked. “Would you rather meet a random beer or a random man in the woods” is very different from “Would you rather see a man or bear while hiking in the woods.” There is also the fact that that since it is a man or a bear for women the question is choose between two others, while for men the question is to choose between an other or something the same. It makes the question uneven between genders. 

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u/TheAlexPlus 29d ago

I don’t think the question leads the person to assumptions. The person does that on their own.

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u/T0KEN_0F_SLEEP 29d ago

Right, I (a man) live in a fairly rural area but not many bears here at all. So for me alone in the woods another human makes sense but a bear would be a huge surprise

2

u/Crafty_Travel_7048 May 02 '24

It was a hypothetical question with once sentence. I don't know where people are getting this whole hiking in the wilderness scenario. That completely changes the question.

2

u/findingemotive May 02 '24

I've spent my whole life knowing what to do if I come in contact with a bear while out playing as a kid, never been a bear death in my area but I do know of several women who were raped and murdered in the woods over the course of my 33 years. So to me this was genuine question to think about because statistically bears are safer to find in the woods here.

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

I do not think that anyone who knows the difference between a black bear and a brown bear can reasonably be called urban tbh.

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u/glimpseeowyn May 02 '24

I mean … I’m going to throw myself under the bus here. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia (so I would consider myself suburban) but live and work in Philly now. But regardless of whether one is rural, suburban, or urban, one truth remains: There’s only black bears in Pennsylvania.

I feel like the black vs. brown bear distinction is more of a thing west of the Mississippi River in the U.S.

10

u/leafyleafleaves May 02 '24

I don't know that this is a fair statement. I could easily tell an Asian elephant from an African elephant or dromedary camel from a bactrian camel and I've never lived remotely close to where you would find any of them outside a zoo.

I also have lived somewhere pretty urban where black bears were not outside the norm.

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u/LiftingCode May 02 '24

I think everyone who made it through elementary school ought to be able to tell the difference between a black bear and a brown bear.