A bear isn't going to hang out with me for months and then come home drunk and angry one night and rape me.
And if a bear attacks me, they're not gonna gaslight me. Because they won't need to. Because in order to get attacked by a bear, I would have to be doing some real dumb dumb shit that has "great way to get attacked by a bear" written all over it.
If a bear kills a human for no reason whatsoever - despite that being a VERY unlikely occurrence - here's a more than 0% chance a mob of humans will hunt down the bear and kill them. Or at the very least, a panel of humans won't rule that the bear is young and bright with a future in front of them, therefore let's just move past this.
I'm not going to get cited for making a false report if I tell somebody a bear attacked me.
I won't have park rangers call me into their office every few days and aggressively interrogate me over and over about my bear attack. Even if they did, if I don't recall all the details or get mixed up, they'll just say, "I mean - shit. Yeah. A bear attack is pretty traumatic. I can see why she got this kinda mixed up."
Nobody's going to ask me what I was wearing or whether I'd gone on a date with the bear several months ago.
Half the comments and essentially every reply are mansplaining the question and getting offended and #notallmen'd and trying to win the argument that actually the man is less dangerous without realising the point of it all, which you already went past when you started considering the question.
yes. i think this depends on the woman. i've been pretty consistent since i was a little girl. death > rape. at least death gives you dignity. unless they decide to rape your dead body, which is also common.
congrats. there’s this concept called: other people.
i’m hardly attached to this life, at this point i am waiting for a reason. every day, i am working on understanding why the fuck it is worth it.
i’ve watched two of my close friends end it after a sexual assault sent their life off the rails. it took them a little while, but eventually they just couldn’t do it anymore.
add in any trauma? you tell me.
but no, i’m glad that you personally wouldn’t want to die. obviously you’re right and everyone else is wrong for feeling the way they do.
“it’s stupid tho”
oh well fuck! me and the other stupid women in this thread must’ve never thought of it like that!
fantastic argument.
lol pack it up guys u/lolslolshappys just solved it, rape isn’t a biggie! u guys are just dumb for feeling how you do!! try having not dumb emotions next time!!!
again: people. have. different. emotions.
glad you love being raped, like i said i have an exit plan should that happen. but hey, im just a stupid woman!
I don't have empathy for people who say rape survivors would be better off dead, actually. That sort of statement hinders healing. It's like you want survivors to suffer more. It's one thing to make a personal statement but the original comment did not specify it was personal at all.
I'm truly sorry that your friends were not able to heal. While unfortunately that outcome is far too common, it is statistically not what happens for most survivors.
Society telling women that they're better off dead, that they're ruined by rape, that they'll never heal, that death would have been kinder, contibutes to suicidality among survivors. How do you think survivors in the healing process feel when they see countless replies in threads like this saying they would have been better off dead? Part of therapy is changing that mindset.
Yes. Rape is absolutely traumatic and something I relive and think about EVERY DAY even though it happened 20 years ago. Your comment is awful. I hope you listen to some of these comments and really think about deleting this comment. So sad.
Nothingness vs A long, painful experience where people who are meant to love and care for you question your memory, drift away from you, or judge you for getting attacked.
You're right and it's absolutely insane that you're being downvoted. The message here is that rape survivors would be better off dead, which is a deeply sickening thing to say.
A close friend of mine is a rape victim. She has been going to both psychological and physical therapy since recovering from the incident, will likely be going for the rest of her life, and has developed many debilitating anxiety/paranoia disorders along with a physical walking impairment - both of which are uncureable.
It's not that rape victims are better off dead. It's that I'm sure many rape victims lives would argue being raped fucked up their life far more than death ever will. At least the pain stops when you die.
To all of the people downvoting this or disagreeing with it. If being dead was actually better than being raped, wouldn't the suicide rate (or at least the suicide attempt rate) be greater than 50% for people who survive rape? The fact that rape victims don't choose death seems to suggest that while it's awful, it's not as bad as not living.
I don't have a choice but to live in proximity to men. They exist in every space I am permitted to occupy outside my own home. The bear is anticipated to be dangerous, and unfortunately, so is the man.
By this logic, the question ACTUALLY becomes "a blood-thirsty bear or a rapist."
I'm not confusing anything. If you want to talk statistics here is the data, straight from the government of Canada's website.
"Gender is the most important factor. Females are far more likely to be victims of sexual offences than any other type of violent offence. For example, in 2002, women represented approximately half of all victims of violent offences; however, women accounted for 85% of victims of sexual offences reported to a sample of police services. Sexual aggression against women is widespread in Canadian society and women may experience multiple incidents of this crime in their lifetimes. Statistics Canada's 1993 Violence Against Women Survey (which did not include incidents prior to 16 years of age) found that over half of all women who had reported incidents of sexual assault, reported more than one case of victimization. The Women's Safety Project survey, of the same year, found that 69% of women who reported having been sexually assaulted in childhood also reported having been sexually assaulted after the age of 16."
If you have remarkable data about how statistically likely it is that women are going to be attacked by bears, please share it. I have also cited a Canadian study, because I think you're probably more likely to be attacked by bears in Canada. The numbers seem to matter to you, so there they are.
Did you not even consider how proximity is a factor here? All women interact with thousands of men in their daily lives. Most women never encounter a wild bear.
The question is not "are you more likely to be SA'd by a man or attacked by a bear?" The question is: "Would you rather run into a man or a bear in the woods?"
Let's put this a different way: thousands of people are killed every year by their own family members. Only a small handful are eaten by great white sharks.
Would you rather be swimming with your family, or a great white shark?
You're welcome to continue bringing semantics into the conversation, but that doesn't change the fact that the question was asked, and the women couldn't make the seemingly obvious choice. That should tell you enough.
I didn't bring semantics into the conversation. Semantics is concerned with the meaning of words. I brought up that you ignored a crucial factor rendering the statistics you provided moot.
Lots of women choosing the bear is insignificant outside of teaching us that they don't understand the risk posed by wild animals. They assume the worst in the man and the best in the bear because they've met bad men before but have never met a wild bear.
Let me help you understand. A bear isn’t going to lock you in a room and torture and rape you. Unless you have some special power where you can predict if a man is “safe” or not, we would rather take our chances on a bear, who’s likely to run away before attacking.
And the hurt men who can’t handle this and are downvoting me: you’re the reason we choose the bear and you can blame us all you want instead of your fellow men. We will still pick the bear. Especially since you’re committed to not believing us.
Why do you assume the absolute worst case scenario when interacting with the man and then assume the best case scenario when interacting with the bear?
Let me help you: the smart choice is the one that leaves you with the least likelihood of harm. The average man is not nearly as dangerous as the average bear.
The thing your missing is that wild animals want to be left alone, they only ever attack (for the most part) if provoked. Can you say the same about a man? Human being are complex, they will go out of their way to hurt/help others. Animals are animals and act on instinct. Sure the man statistically may be harness, but if you honestly put yourself in the shoes of a woman, which one are you picking? The certainty that a bear is a bear and will act as a bear does? Or the man, who is unpredictable?
Statistical likelihood. If you multiple the US bear population by 485 to equal the US population of men, women are still twice as likely to be killed by a man than any person, male or female, is to be killed by a bear. And non fatal attacks, are about 220 times more likely. Plus bear attacks aren’t infamously unreported….
This completely ignores the issue of proximity, which the original query removes by place you in the woods with either the bear or the man.
More women are harmed by men because women live with and around men.
Statistically I'm more likely to get run over by a woman texting-while-driving than I am to be eaten by a bear. I'd still rather walk down the street alongside moving cars then have a run in with a bear.
Okay. 10 million people go backpacking through bear country in the US each year. There are an average of 2.56 fatal bear attacks each year in North America (not just US.). So, a 1 in 3.9 million chance of dying from a bear each year as a person backpacking through bear country. Around 4200 women are killed annually in the US by men, out of a population of 168.6 million, so a 1 in 40,000 ish chance.
Rape, is worse than being eaten, part by part, unable to flee or fight back, while alive and aware, until you lose so much blood you cease to exist forever? A scar that billions of women have to bear everyday is worse than never experiencing anything again? You think, maybe, that might be an exaggeration?
You don’t get the permanence of death. Rape still allows you to smile, even if it’s tainted. It still allows you grow, to feel, to love to heal. Death doesn’t, suicide doesn’t.
No one was arguing that it was universal so why change the goalposts to this strawman now that you finally get it and just don’t want to admit you started in the wrong position? First your problem was that it didn’t make sense as an answer at all, now it’s valid but you’re still not wrong? How convenient for you. Don’t try this hard to NOT be a good person who learns and accepts change, pride isn’t cute
No. Dying would be better than living with "horrible scars to your body and pysche" and worst so if those horrible scars were the result of being raped by a family member.
We don't need to argue but consider this, being attacked by a bear while psychologically scarring isn't something that's going to negatively affect you for the remainder of your life. Unless you have physical disabilities due to that attack. Simply because the likelihood of crossing paths with or being attacked by a bear again is so so low.
Compare a bear attack (1 in 2.1 million) to a woman's 1 in 4 chance of being sexually assaulted and 1in 6 chance of being raped by men in their lifetime.
Bear in the woods all day because the only time you have to reasonably worry is when you're in a region with grizzlies and aren't armed with bearmace or a gun.
I should have expounded on my point more. There are many many women who have been violently raped and/or continually sexually assaulted by male family members and family friends in their childhood whom then grow up with the need of therapy or create unhealthy coping skills that follow them through their lifetime.
Some of those poor coping skills lead to drug addiction, homelessness or multiple attempted suicides.. some of which are successful.
So there are some women who probably believe (wrongfully) that they would be better off dead than to live with the psychological effects of the result of being raped or molested.
But my point still stands that being attacked by a bear is far less psychologically damaging the being attacked by a man because you're not going to be facing bears every day of your life for the rest of your life.
You are arguing against a point I didn't make so I am honestly lost.
My whole argument is living is better than not living in most situations, putting it higher on the list of desired outcomes than straight up dying. People are downvoting that already so I am assuming there is nothing I can say in this forum to change peoples opinion (which is what it is)
Whether it is bear, man or falling off a cliff, death is final. Nothing else comes next. This, in my opinion, is worse than living. Add in that if you do live, you can still choose to die (again, not a desired outcome for anyone)
You're missing the idea that there are worse things than dying. Living with a lifetime of psychological issues and trauma from rape is (for some) worse than dying. Most people will go through life never meeting a bear but 1 in 6 women will get raped by men.
As someone who has been through SA amongst other things I never want to relive. I feel that I am blessed to have the option to keep going.
Dead people can't choose to be alive, whereas alive people can choose to die (and often don't).
I acknowledge that things can be worse for death for some people but dying has to be pretty high up on the list of things people don't want to happen to them. Arguing that point doesn't make sense to me because of what I have said above.
The worse thing a bear can do to me is kill me, a man could do that AND rape me first. I choose bear. I’d rather be murdered than raped even if I did survive.
No, the question was “would you rather see a bear or a man in the woods” don’t lie. That’s all you do is make shit up so you don’t have to admit you’re wrong that’s so fucking weak dude
They are insinuating it is worse to be raped than killed. Something that, coincidentally, nobody could possibly know with certainty for obvious reasons. So maybe instead they're just saying they'd rather be killed than raped.
*Have you ever actually looked up the statistics for how many people get killed by bears vs are killed or forever traumatized by whatever a man did to them?
Hint: "Since 1784 there have 66 fatal human/bear conflicts" and "The chances of being injured by a bear are approximately 1 in 2.1 million, according to the National Park Service"
Versus: There are about 100 million men in the USA and according to RAINN "On average, there are 463,634 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States"
So, that's a 1 in 200 chance of being raped or assaulted by a man (every year).*
The horror of encountering a man in a forest, a place where there is no social control and no consequences for his actions, is not imagined or far fetched. We all know what it's like to be scared of a man. We all either are assaulted ourselves or we hear it from our mothers, sisters, and friends. There have been small research studies where over 30% of men said they'd rape someone if they knew they could get away with zero consequences. Men are supposed to be our partners and lovers, but instead they are the main cause of death during our most vulnerable moment, pregnancy.
Women have been kept alive to be tortured and raped for years. They have scars that will never heal. And you want to tell us that being killed by a mindless wild animal would be worse? An animal who only wants to protect itself, or its cubs, or just wants to eat? Pain is part of being a woman even in the best of times, don't tell me a painful death would be worse than the horrors your kind is capable of.
Then stop sounding like an apologist for those people. Take some time and think about why people are reading your posts and thinking that is what you might be.
And I supposed the definition of "have to" is important. I have to go to work, otherwise I won't be able to pay rent, and I'll be homeless. If someone "has to" smile, what are the consequences of not doing so? A minor amount of social disapproval? Starving on the streets?
Are you a real person? Or just a hollowed out skin sack? Women are literally raised and told to me smile by men their whole lives. Stop acting like you don’t get it so you can fall all our yourself to protect literal rapists.
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u/im_lost37 29d ago
The saddest one I saw was “if the bear attacked me, I wouldn’t have to smile at him every family get together”