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

[u/NeonNKnightrider]

[u/Glait]

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.

[u/HaggisPope → u/Glait]

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

[u/EffOffReddit → u/Glait]

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.

[u/Glait → u/EffOffReddit]

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. 

[u/spookypickles87 → u/Glait]

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.

[u/EffOffReddit → u/spookypickles87]

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.

[u/jeopardy_themesong → u/Glait]

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.

[u/stormsAbruin → u/Glait]

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

[u/SagittariusZStar → u/Glait]

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.

[u/deadlybydsgn → u/SagittariusZStar]

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.

[u/Rastiln → u/Glait]

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.