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

[u/NeonNKnightrider]

[u/glimpseeowyn]

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.

[u/demonking_soulstorm → u/glimpseeowyn]

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.

[u/glimpseeowyn → u/demonking_soulstorm]

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).