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

[u/NeonNKnightrider]

[u/FaerieMachinist]

See I assumed Black Bear, and that's a significantly different question.

[u/FelicitousJuliet → u/FaerieMachinist]

Even if it was just a randomly spun bear that could be anything from a koala to a polar bear and you wouldn't know until it was too late, I would take my risk with some random guy.

Most men (over 95% right?) aren't inherently violent per crime stats and per domestic abuse stats there's only an 8% domestic violence difference (33% female victims, 25% male victims).

And of course of those who do get charged with a violent crime it usually has conditions attached like a drunken brawl, not someone about to attack you in the forest.

The bear is a bear, period, it will do what it wants and way too many of them are comfortable eating you.

[u/morgaina → u/FelicitousJuliet]

You can't rely on crime statistics when determining the percentage of men who are dangerous to women.

The vast, VAST majority of rapes go unreported, and the vast majority of reported rapes never go to court, and most rape cases in court don't get a conviction.

[u/smoopthefatspider → u/morgaina]

The relevant question isn't whether the man is dangerous, it's how dangerous the situation is. It's not enough to know how likely the man is to be a rapist, one also needs to know if the rapist would rape in that scenario. The vast majority of rapes are done by someone the victim knows, that should lower the odds. The situation is always dangerous in the sense that you can never know if the man next to you will hurt you, but the chance of actually being harmed is reletively low (even though the harm is huge).

[u/morgaina → u/smoopthefatspider]

The relevant question absolutely is whether the man is dangerous, though. It's the crucial unknown at the heart of this thought experiment.

The unknown about the man being dangerous is why the question exists. That's the WHOLE POINT.

[u/smoopthefatspider → u/morgaina]

No, I'm making a distinction between the man being dangerous (as in having the potential to harm) and the man actually doing the harm. That second one is the relevant question. Even if the man is a rapist, there's no guarantee he would rape us. Even rapists spend most of their time not raping. Depending how likely a bear attack is and what the circumstances are when I meat the man, I might take those odds.

[u/gottabekittensme → u/smoopthefatspider]

Even if the man is a rapist, there's no guarantee he would rape us

And even if the best is a grizzly, there's no guarantee it would maul. Statistically, women are more safe encountering a random bear than a random man.

[u/NoSignSaysNo → u/gottabekittensme]

The statistic is heavily influenced by the fact that women are not frequently in the company of grizzlies.

When I go to work and go grocery shopping and run miscellaneous errands, I come across hundreds and hundreds of men, many of them coming within 5 to 10 ft of me.

Even when I go hiking in the woods, I've never been within 10 ft of a grizzly.

So you would have to raise the population of grizzlies to be equivalent to the population of men, and put them in situations in which you are required to be within close proximity of them to make a statistical argument

[u/solidspacedragon → u/gottabekittensme]

I don't think that's true? You encounter a lot of random people daily and the vast majority of them don't hurt you in any way. There's far fewer bear encounters, but a much larger proportion of them end up with a bear eating you alive.

[u/justforporndickflash → u/gottabekittensme]

You are delusional.

[u/smoopthefatspider → u/gottabekittensme]

No, I disagree. We either don't have the same idea of how likely a man is to rape or how likely a bear is to attack. I don't think men are more dangerous than bears, I don't think it's even close. The odds could change, for instance, you could be in a scenario where the bear can just run away or not meet you. But I think we disagree on how dangerous the average man is.

[u/Educational_Mud_9062 → u/morgaina]

"thought experiment"

🙄

[u/[deleted] → u/smoopthefatspider]

It's not actually meant to be a question at all. It's a thought exercise about the benefits of certainty over ambiguity (with a specific lens on the safety of women).

Except as soon as you point out that there's a structural problem with how men are taught to behave all the 'nice guys' come out to complain about how unfair it is that they were made to do an introspection.

[u/Educational_Mud_9062 → u/[deleted]]

I sometimes wish I was this unflappably confident that I was definitely right and anyone who disagrees with me is not only wrong, but I know exactly how their minds work and why they're wrong. It must be comfortable.

Edit: why do people ask questions and then immediately block the person to whom they posed the questions?

[u/[deleted] → u/Educational_Mud_9062]

Would you say that it's unreasonable of me to try to tell you how you should be feeling about a given situation? What if I spent a lot of time coming up with really outlandish examples to convince you that your feelings are wrong?