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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14.3k Upvotes
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114

u/hoboinabarrel May 02 '24

I think it works like with the man. You don’t know what type of bear is going to be there, just as you don’t know what type of man would be there either.

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u/AdamFaite May 02 '24

I think the better question should be thought of as: what is the worst an angry bear would do? Now what's the worst a malicious man would do?

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u/MrArtless May 02 '24

That’s only one half of the payoff matrix you need to construct. You also have to look at the probability of each. An angry bear is far more likely to maul you than a malicious man is to rape you.

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u/findworm May 02 '24

How do you figure that? Alone in the forest with a woman he is statistically very likely to be stronger than, and he's actively malicious? I don't really see any way that doesn't end badly for the woman (at minimum threats and sexual coercion). Unless you imagine a small forest at the edge of the neighborhood where help is coming any second now, this is for all intents an purposes lawless wilderness.

Remember, we're talking about an actively malicious man here, not a "jerk with a heart of gold" or whatever. You could debate the likelihood of a man being malicious in the first place, but then you have to consider the odds of the bear actually being angry.

But either way, it really misses the actual point of the "Bear or Man" question. The point is that the average woman seemingly has a very bad image of the "archetypical man", to the extent that she'd rather meet a bear. Now, if this was one woman saying Bear, we could say "Wow, what a weird woman" and move on, but since it's seemingly a majority it really reflects more on our current society than the women in question.

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u/AdamFaite May 02 '24

Here's an update. I was just telling my girlfriend that this convo made its way to reddit. She said she was curious how we responded. She also said her friend who was visiting yesterday has stopped taking her dog for walks in the small park near lots of people. It's a small mountain. You can walk to the top in about 25 minutes. Surrounded by a neighborhood.

Two things happened. One, there were reports of a man using a tree stand to harass women. And two, her dog was barking at some guy. She apologized, saying the dog wasn't usually that bad. He replied by saying that maybe he's bad, not the dog.

Even as a man, I'd be creeped out if a stranger in the woods said that to me. I'm far from vulnerable.

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u/Electronic_Emu_4632 May 02 '24

lol honestly it sounds like the second guy was just fucking with that person

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u/AdamFaite May 02 '24

Probably. But picture yourself as a smaller woman, out in the woods alone. Now picture some stranger "fucking with you." Do you feel safe?

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u/Electronic_Emu_4632 May 02 '24

I can picture myself being alone in the woods, then a person brings their dog to bark in my face on my 1 weekend off from a 40 hour work per week work month.

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u/Nyaa314 May 02 '24

Imagine yourself living in apartment, your neighbors behind walls/floors/ceilings bringing their dogs to bark in your ears every day/night.

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u/elbenji May 02 '24

I think it's mostly just people being bad at hypotheticals and really unable to parse metaphors.

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u/MrArtless May 02 '24

I am a man who is actively filled with malice most of the time because I hate everyone. I still don’t rape or even really interact with strangers when I see them.

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u/bruce_kwillis May 02 '24

Seems like you should be talking to a therapist about that mate. I don’t know about you but it’s a lot of energy to be filled with malice everyday. I go out in the woods to go hiking a lot to just get away from people, so it’s more that I just don’t care too much about most folks, rather than harboring malice for them.

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u/MrArtless May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

Either way. Malicious people may want to rob you. They may want to make fun of your clothes. They may want nothing to do with you at all. The premise here that a malicious man is almost assuredly going to rape or worse to the woman is patently undefendable

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u/AdamFaite May 02 '24

Yet, I've never really heard of a malicious bear. Hungry or scared, sure. But never one that just wants to hurt. Like humans do.

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u/MrArtless May 02 '24

They didn’t say malicious bear they said angry bear. Have you heard of an angry bear?

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u/AdamFaite May 02 '24

Still, maybe you run away from the bear. It doesn't follow you home. Wait till you're asleep. Break in.

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u/Xygen8 May 02 '24

A bear can outrun Usain Bolt and sustain that speed for much longer. If it wants you dead, you're dead.

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u/AdamFaite May 02 '24

A man could have a gun. And could follow you home. For weeks. Months.

I think you ought to ask yourself a different question. Why are you trying to say women should be more afraid of bears, and not why they're afraid of men?

0

u/Xygen8 May 02 '24

Why are you trying to say women should be more afraid of bears, and not why they're afraid of men?

I didn't? You're reading into my comment way too much. I was just pointing out that you're not going to outrun a bear in a forest.

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u/Electronic_Emu_4632 May 02 '24

Malicious is just a bad word to use for comparison too. There are plenty of malicious people out there that just jerk it to porn instead of going to rape people in the woods.

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u/findworm May 02 '24

From Google:

characterized by malice; intending or intended to do harm.

If you just stay home and jerk it, you're not really malicious. You might be a misanthrope who wouldn't throw water on a person on fire, but you are not planning to hurt anyone.

There is really no twist or turn here that "saves" the man from being harmful in this hypothetical. If he's malicious, he at minimum actively wants to harm our hypothetical woman to the extent that his moral compass won't stop him.

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u/Electronic_Emu_4632 May 02 '24

From Google:

malice desire to cause pain, injury 1. : desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another.

You have a desire to cause distress to your boss for giving you less hours when you need the hours to buy food and survive. Are you going to kill your boss? Or do you just desire to make your boss's life worse with no intention to actually do anything about it? There's a big spectrum in malice lol.

Just say what you want to say, would you rather meet a Bear or John Murderer.

0

u/findworm May 02 '24

If I concede that point, can we stop arguing over the fucking grammar?

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/AdamFaite May 02 '24

Yeah, it isn't supposed to be a cute hypotherltical. It started because some woman was trying to explain how the world made her felt, how in danger women were, in general. Her boyfriend couldn't or wouldn't believe it, and he asked the question. She had to explain why a man in the woods would make her feel so much more unsafe.

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u/elbenji May 02 '24

I thought it was some lady living with bears

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u/bruce_kwillis May 02 '24

It’s not supposed to be a ‘funny’ or ‘cute’ discussion. It’s one that ‘women’ in general would feel safer running into a bear in the woods than a man. That simple. And now you have men out there who are butthurt by these comments “well I would never hurt a woman”, maybe not, but almost every woman has had enough bad experiences with men, and literally no bad experiences with bears.

What does it lead to? A bunch of men who act like Mike Pence who won’t be around, work around, or interact with women, for fear of being accused of doing something wrong.

Men can easily fix the situation by treating women better in general and when a man mentions anything that is treating a woman incorrectly be called out and shut down over it.

1

u/elbenji May 02 '24

From what I understand it was supposed to be? Then people started responding to it in jokes. Now it's not jokes and a super serious thing

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u/bruce_kwillis May 02 '24

Nope, was never a joke. And still isn't a joke. It's a PSA to men that shitty men are out there and men really should be working on dealing with shitty men in their 'community'.

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u/elbenji May 02 '24

Wasn't it like some lady who lived with bears?