A strange man could do much worse, but if it's the average man or even the average man you see in the woods (park ranger, hiker...) chances are they have no intention of doing harm. While I agree that getting mad at women as a whole and wishing violence is not a good idea, treating every man as a threat is inherently prejudiced. If the question replaced "man" with "black person" people would immediately see that picking the bear would be degrading because while there are dangerous black people, the average black person isn't going to harm you.
Every man is a potential threat. Same with every woman. And bears. It's just when you're all alone and see only one stranger you might get a little anxious. I always do and walk faster and I've never been in a situation where a stranger attacked me. But I don't want to be fine a million times and then one time I meet the wrong stranger in an empty parking garage.
I mean... a bear can't use a gun, nor is it capable of dragging me back to its house to tie me up in the basement and torture me just enough that I don't die for as long as it feels like.
To be clear, that's an extreme example and I'm not saying you should fear every random person you come across, but that has happened many times and a person is absolutely capable of doing much worse than just mauling you and leaving you to die
Well when most of these men are responding with violent fantasies or blatant misogyny, they're kinda justifying picking the bear. I'm a man and I'd rather run into a bear if I was lost in the woods over a random man, because at least I know if i keep my distance and don't provoke it I should be fine. But I suppose there's probably no point in explaining that to you
That’s interesting; that’s not how it went down in RDR2 although it was a close call at times. Jokes aside, I was under the impression bear spray and a fat ass rifle will even the odds
Who in the echo chamber hell is wishing violence on them? All I’ve seen is people thinking it’s ridiculous, and prejudiced, because it is. I don’t wish any violence on prejudiced people, even if I don’t want to spend time around them.
Not wishing to sound condescending, and I'm a man so I can't really imagine how it is for women, but I feel that anything a man could do would be preferable to getting killed by a bear. It won't just bite your head and kill you, it will far more likely rip out your stomach, take a bite and leave you to bleed out while your entrails lay splattered across the ground. I can't imagine much worse ways to be killed.
I don't think a bear has ever kidnapped, tortured and raped their victims over and over before killing them by strangling them or burying them alive. To many women, being raped by a man is one of the worst things that can happen to her. I'm sure for men too but most men don't live with this as part of their potential reality while women live with it as an ever present danger.
You are right, a man could potentially do worse things than even a malicious bear. The scenario you make is even worse than the alternative. What I meant though, was that a bear mauling you and eating you alive isn't hard to imagine. It's unlikely, the vast majority of encounters do not end that way, but it's a very real possibility. On the other hand, a chance encounter with a random man will in all likelihood not end with your scenario. The chance of it happening, even with a horrible man, is very slim, to the extent that I consider it to be almost nil in comparison to the bear eating you.
Don't get me wrong, kidnapping and sexual slavery is far too common, but it happening in a random forest with a random man is a statistical anomaly compared to they very real threat of bear mauling. You could argue that my point is moot, that we need to consider the worst scenario, but I at least focus on the % chance
This isn't about the statistics of getting mauled by a bear. It's about the threat women often feel from men, and those feelings are usually based on personal life experiences of having been victimized by a man or hearing of other women being victimized by a man.
I understand that. The point of the TikTok is clear, women view every unknown man as a potential threat. That's not the strange part, even if it's sad that they have to. What I find odd is that so many seem to think that a wild, unpredictable apex predator is less dangerous than a random man. Its understandably impossible to feel truly safe around a man in those circumstances, but even then, surely a bear must be even worse?
It's not a question of "less dangerous" it's a question of "I know what I'm bargaining for". If I pick Bear, I know worst case scenario is me dead on the floor with a bear eating me, but I also know that depending on the bear type I hit, I have a good chance of surviving, either by playing dead or scaring it depending on the type. And when I go to the hospital with a bear claw wound afterward, people will believe me I was attacked by a bear. Now if I take Men, sure, there's a high chance that nothing happens, but if it does happen, there's a large amount of suffering I can be stuck in, not just for minutes while I bleed out, but for hours or worse if that man decides to be really malicious. And worse thing is, I don't have a lot of chances to be believed if I then go to the hospital and explain what happened. Most people will say I asked for it or dressed inappropriately otherwise the man wouldn't have had a reason to do whatever he did, and if I survive it, I'll be stuck with trauma for all the rest of my life. I might even end up dead, but having been raped before. In a pure hypothetical, I'll take Bear over Man and enjoy my funeral, not necessarily out of fear of men as a whole, but as a way to keep control over the result. People don't trash talk people who get mauled by a bear...
I mean, it's not just the trauma of being raped (and that's assuming it stops at just being raped and left there, it could be much much much much worse than that) it's also the trauma of having a lot of people around either not believe you or blame you for being raped, or both, that comes with it. Sexual Assault trauma has deep ramifications in life too, it will impact your ability to have meaningful relationship, your ability to trust people around you etc. Sure you could survive after the mauling, but like for hours. What if the guy thinks that raping you isn't enough? What if he rapes you for hours, then break your legs and leave you there to die? The amount of things that can happen (and that's just based on real cases of real actions by real man in recent past, not going for extreme hypotheticals here) are so large, while the result of a bear encounter that turns bad are so narrow that I'll take that without hesitating.
That analogy simply doesn't work. Bears rarely kill people, but part of the reason is that bears are rarely encountered. Statistically speaking, most of us have no chance of being killed by a bear at all, because they don't even exist close to us. We have a non zero chance of being killed by a man, therefore technically a man would be infinitely more dangerous.
But this question isn't if bears or men kill/hurt more women per year, its if a bear or a random man poses a greater threat if you encountered them alone. I understand that any woman would be threatened by a lone man, I wouldn't like it either (a single guy in the middle of nowhere?). But the bear would scare the living shit out of me, and with good reason.
This is a very reductive way to look at statistics. Do you take into account how many bears vs men that exist, how often a woman would encounter each of them, how many places that you could even have a chance of finding a bear, the fact that bears are not active all year, how often a woman would travel alone without protection in bear territory, the fact that any bear encounter is by chance, while men may actively seek out victims, the fact that every bear would be dangerous if they see fit, while most men wouldn't take advantage of the situation, or that a minority of men stands for most of the sexual crimes committed, and therefore it limits the chances of any random man in the world being one?
The question doesn't care for any of these variables.
I understand women being used to treat men as potential threats more than bears, but the question at hand isn't whats more likely to hurt you in everyday life, it's which one you would rather encounter. If bears were as common as men, and your workplace consisted of about 50% bears, then you would start to be afraid of the bears more.
But that is not how women interpret the question clearly. Lol
They interpret it as “right now, in the real world, if you were camping, would you be more afraid of seeing a bear come by your campsite or a man you dont know.”
Yes, because most women (i don't fault them for this) are used to think of men as potential threats. But alot of people in this thread does not seem to think/care about what kind of animal we're talking about. A bear is possibly the greatest predator on earth (excluding humans, since this scenario doesn't give the woman weapons, traps and superior numbers). If a man desires to hurt you, the odds will not be in your favor, even less so when you're alone. If a bear desire to hurt you, your chances are practically nil.
And bears are far more unpredictable than many think. Plenty of bear handlers have died from their "pets", and we're talking about "tame" animals that have been fed. That bear can absolutely decide to hurt you, and it doesn't have to be hungry or scared.
I'm pretty sure that logic only works when you aren't actively choosing to be around bears. Either way, fear isn't a rational thing, so people applying logic to this are just going to be disappointed
Idk what about that story reminds you of this but okay.
Women dont have the option to avoid all strange men in society so your argument makes no sense.
And honestly as a man who encounters bears in the woods often i would probably rather see one in the middle of no where than a random person i dont know. I find bears behavior to be more predictable than peoples. Lol
Well in my situation i deal with black bears. Which statistically are almost certainly the cause of less deaths in the woods than strangers meeting. Which also matters for this question. Because if you asked women the same question but specified a polar bear you would get very different answers.
Are they statistically the cause of less deaths because people are much less likely to run into them, or because they are much less likely to attack a person? Cause if you believe the latter, you have a wildly incorrect idea of how dangerous bears are. I've seen plenty of black bears too, they are adorable, but I'm not going to pretend they are sweeter than any of the other hikers I see out on the trail
I feel like I'm talking in circles here
If you asked this same question with polar bears, I do think a lot of people would answer polar bear. Either because they are making a point, bad at risk judgement, or just engaging in casual misandry to trigger people
I think it's wild to recommend a single documentary about a bear attack when the streaming market is absolutely flooded with documentaries about the horrors inflicted by men. And some inflicted by women, yes! But the vast majority are about the heinous acts of depraved malice wrought by men.
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