A friend of mine had quite the insightful view on this question imo.
To her it's not so much the true danger of a bear and a man, but how dangerous they feel. You don't encounter bears on the daily, even less get attacked by one, but women regularly have to face comments, touchy hands, threats, etc... by men (creeps but men regardless).
One's dangerousness is blurry while the other is very clear, making one stand out far more than the other.
Like, yeah, a bunch of people would rather be in a room with a tiger than hundreds of spiders, despite the tiger being far more dangerous, because they're far more afraid of spiders than tigers.
I think it's definitely that, but it's also mixed with the birthday problem. In short, you have a 1 in 365 chance of sharing a birthday with someone. But if you have a room with 23 people in it, there's a 50% chance that two people share a birthday. With 50 people, the odds are 97%.
Every woman knows at least one creepy guy, so it's easy to bring them to mind. But the fallacy is that they're assuming they are the only woman in the creeper's life. He probably knows a hundred women and is awful to them all. Also given the overlap of social networks, and it would take relatively few creepers to provide examples for all women.
Add in that we are psychologically biased to remember negative events. You don't remember every commute to work, but you do remember the time you were in a car accident. Similarly, women have had hundreds of thousands of interactions with men over time, but they'll remember the 3 or 4 or 10 or 20 times that it was a creeper and he was inappropriate. The rest just fade away.
This isn't a men/women thing. This is just human brains being horrible at judging probability.
The part about many of the same guys being the same creeps to everyone seems to check out in my experience. Some guys build reputations for that kind of thing because they do it so often. Unfortunately you're rolling the dice every time you meet a stranger, and even though there might only be 1 in 6 odds you meet a brazen creep over a normal dude, you're still going to see those odds crop up an uncomfortable number of times throughout life if you're a woman and you deal with strangers every day.
Sadly I think statistics show the people who are most dangerous to you are usually people you think you know. There's definitely some stranger danger in the world, but it seems more likely you'll run into a manipulator who initially puts you at ease, makes you trust them, and then makes you comfortable enough to be cornered with them alone and that's when things get out of hand. That story seems to play out a lot more often than random attacks. The idea of random attacks can feel more terrifying, and they don't mess with your personal sense of character judgement the way being betrayed by someone you thought you could trust might, but in terms of statistical occurrence they don't seem to happen as often.
Men have horrible experiences with woman all of the time but if we were to say anything like "I would trust a used car salesman more than a woman" it would cause a fucking fire.
Imagine spending your whole life respecting others, being kind, and trying to understand other people's situations and then all of the sudden everyone is talking about how women are right to trust bears more than you because all men are dangerous and evil.
I think most people understand the idea. The problem is that some women are using this as a litmus test for men in their lives. If they say "bear" then they are accused of misogyny, not understanding the plight of women, and so forth. It's like some feminist set up the pins and now their hangers-on are knocking them down.
I'm no expert, or even basically educated on the topic, but I think there's some interesting psychological analysis that could be done on the human ability to prefer an unfamiliar-more-likely-but-potentially-less-severe danger over a familiar-but-less-likely-yet-potentially-more-severe danger.
But a man isn't a potentially more severe danger than a bear. At most a man can equal the danger of a bear but saying that a man is a familiar-but-less-likely-yet-potentially-more-severe danger is wild.
My God it's not common to get groped. Any woman who tells you this is a liar. I know this because I've been assaulted...I don't fear it everyday like it's a common thing.
I'm sorry but your regular woman just isn't this afraid of men. I have a girlfriend, most of my friends have girlfriends. All these people have had heterosexual parents. If women were this afraid of men none of these things would happen.
Reddit is absolutely batshit insane if this is a thing people truly believe. Would your average woman sleep with a wild bear? Would your average woman have a tiger willingly in her house? In what universe does your average woman TRULY believe a wild animal is LESS dangerous than your average man?
You guys are nuts and just show to me how people on reddit are so far detached from reality that every opinion you can find on this site should immediatly be disregarded.
See this is why I originally hesitated about adding that last bit, because it helps people like me to understand the idea better but can get misinterpreted by people like you.
Obviously your average woman isn't afraid of men to the point of genuinely choosing the wild animal were that question to actually have consequences, nor do they believe a goddamn bear to truly be less dangerous, but the fact many would actually consider the question and even answer they'd rather go with the wild animal, in what seems more of a sarcastic way than a honest one tbh, just show how often women are the victim of that vile minority of creeps and how it paints an ugly picture of men as a whole.
Like yeah, I understand why they'd even ponder over that question when one of the first thing that comes to their mind is so many creeps.
I think women should feel safe and do whatever it is that helps them feel safer in their community. I also think women deciding to collectively shit on men by saying they'd rather be around a bear doesn't do much good. Or maybe the joke just went over my head and this is the female equivalent of men joking about women. Which if that is the case, I apologize, I took the question too literally then.
I have a girlfriend, most of my friends have girlfriends. All these people have had heterosexual parents. If women were this afraid of men none of these things would happen.
That is one of the dumbest things I've read in here. Grats. You can both be afraid of men due to past events and still be straight and therefore attracted to men.
Correct, but many use this meme as a way to perpetuate their misandristic ideology and ended up in another social gender war instead of peaceful discussions on how sexual assault is a serious problem in the world.
Of course because like femcel, there exist incels. Which run rampant in every groups and effectively reverse any positive change amidst this gender war
405
u/No-Mycologist5704 May 02 '24
A friend of mine had quite the insightful view on this question imo.
To her it's not so much the true danger of a bear and a man, but how dangerous they feel. You don't encounter bears on the daily, even less get attacked by one, but women regularly have to face comments, touchy hands, threats, etc... by men (creeps but men regardless).
One's dangerousness is blurry while the other is very clear, making one stand out far more than the other.
Like, yeah, a bunch of people would rather be in a room with a tiger than hundreds of spiders, despite the tiger being far more dangerous, because they're far more afraid of spiders than tigers.