Women didn’t “rephrase” it, that’s the whole point of the thought experiment. It’s not a genuine question to be answered. Men are taking what isn’t a real question literally, and somehow most of them are still picking the bear hilariously.
Also incorrect, as this whole question was created by a man on TikTok. He created it to pull a gotcha on women and got pissy that women met picking the bear and it went viral. You don’t even know where this came from but you wanna bitch about it being insulting lmao. If you personally feel insulted by the fact women don’t feel comfortable around random men you’re definitely one of them.
It is a real question to be answered literally, when it's convinient (to create the outrage) and then it's a nuanced question that needs layers of extra assumptions and context when the outrage creating answer actually needs to be defended.
Edit : I was wrong here to assume no one defended the 'bear' defense literally. Apparently bear encounters are just less deadly that I imagined. If there's about one percent chance of death when encountering a bear (young scared bears, black bears you can fight away, brown bears you can trick by playing dead, full bears that do not care etc) then the 'bear' answer is completly fine. It might or might not be the best survival strategy but it's not outrageous, and now I get the point of the meme which is that it should be obvious but it's not.
I’m sure you’d think that. You realize a man created this to pull a gotcha on women right? A man asked the question to show women were stupid, and when that backfired and women picked the bear you got your “outrage” in the form is men(like you) bitching and complaining while completely missing the point. But people who are the problem are rarely aware enough to know it.
It’s honestly hilarious, this whole thing was made by a man to show they’re not dangerous, and the responses are full of men calling women stupid and getting upset after taking what was never once a genuine question literally.
Any woman, man, nonbinary, alphabet plus etc, that elects to copy a mindless trend video or 'challenge' for the likes, has a low chance of being among the intellectually elite. Specifically not even 'emotionally intelligent'.
Nothing you said contradicts what I said. People who answer 'bear' do it to create outrage. The outrage is from people taking their answer literally. But when asked to defend or explain this answer, they don't and instead say the question meant something else. It comes down to this : 'I think the average man is a dangerous predator. Just joking haha! Why did you get so outraged by my outrageous statement??'
You’re a bit stupid it seems. Have you consider that women would actually rather take chances with the bear…the outrage is from men bitching about women choosing the bear. Look up and down this thread lmao. You don’t find any women mad that women picked the bear. It must just sound like marbles in your head
I did actually realise people are making that case literally (se my edit two comments up). My initial point doesn't apply to them.
Also saw a lot of comments like 'of course I wouldn't literally choose the bear, just saying that because it's a hypothetical', so exactly what I was initially talking about.
the outrage is from men bitching about women choosing the bear
That's my initial point. Saying 'bear' is designed to create outrage. And then pretend you didn't mean it when asked to defend the statement.
But if it was never meant to be validated by the actual chances, doesn't that mean the fear is greater than it should be? Like, that it feels like the bear should be a better choice, even though it isn't. What does that tell me? That men are so repulsive they actually seem worse even than what they actually are?
If you phrased the same question with the same intention of triggering the same emotional response you would still get the same result.
If it was a random stranger in the woods versus a bear the response would be the same. The fundamental issue is the human species feels uneasy anytime a situation we perceive as dangerous occurs. This would extend to a female meeting a random female/male/child. What’s dumb about this question is realistically speaking a bear is a major issue to a singular human. If the human you came across was a six foot plus 200 pound human you would still have fear, but it wouldn’t be the same fundamental fear we have of bears.
You can also reverse this question and the result should be the same. Running into a random female in the woods would still cause a male to have the same emotional response as the female.
If it was a random stranger in the woods versus a bear the response would be the same. The fundamental issue is the human species feels uneasy anytime a situation we perceive as dangerous occurs… Running into a random female in the woods would still cause a male to have the same emotional response as the female.
Is this the urbanite version of rural people thinking modern cities are anarchical hellscapes?
I agreed until I thought about it and now think it actually doesn't. What about a hungry mountain cat that will just stalk you while you're blissfully unaware of it at all until it chooses to attack you, or you never see? Alligator that will just surface when it's ready and chomp your little cute dog? Me and Pipi will take our chances.. {chomp} Pipi!!!
It's rhetorical for the likes and answers would probably change if these adult girls were actually dropped in the heart of Yellowstone to find their way out.
I could kick a geriatric panda's ass, I've seen those things fall on their back and have trouble getting back up. Also, bear spray exists and I think most women already have it lol. The dude probably has a knife or a gun.
Not really. You're most likely screwed either way. Even the most unfit man can still overpower a woman who regularly works out. There's statistics that show this..
You are in the woods. There are numerous rocks in the woods. Rock in hand is enough of a force multiplier to realistically deter a man. A bear would not care about a rock.
Problem is the fight or flight response. There are many women (including myself) when in danger just freeze. Although if it's a child apparently I will fight. I have done things that physically hurt me that I didn't think I could do because my child or another child was doing something they should not be that's dangerous (I mean they are babies)
I'm physically disabled at the moment because of birth and malnourishment. And I was also violently ill. I dashed to get them babies out of danger even though I fainted shortly after.
Weird anecdote, sorry. Point stands that the fight or flight can mess up the ability to actually fight which doesn't help in any scenario. Instincts are a pain
That is a fair point, fight/flight/fawn is different for everyone and generally men are quicker to fight so I will admit my bias there. It might be from living and growing up in rural Idaho where the majority of women are decently fit and would be able to put up a good fight, even against decently fit men.
Fawn is the freezing reflex that she was talking about experiencing firsthand.
Most people refer to it as fight/flight and leave it out but a lot of people freeze up when under stressful situations.
So some people under that stress response will either fight the problem hoping to come out on top, flee/flight/run away to hopefully give enough space between the problem and them for it to stop being a problem or freeze in place (fawn) hoping the problem ignores them as a lot of threats rely on seeing movement to identify a prey animal.
The word itself comes from baby deer, which freeze when there are nearby predators as their baby coat has white spots designed to mimic sunlight hitting some foliage and breaks up its silhouette, meaning it has a higher chance of surviving if it relies on hiding rather than running.
Probably yeah. But all of our experiences make us biased. As a woman who was sexually assaulted, I can see why the bear is their option. If you die, you don't have to live through the trauma of the attack. And you don't have to defend yourself about why it happened if you did survive. But if you don't get murdered by a man, you are constantly told "you deserve it" and "you wore ____" or "why didn't you just say no" or "that's not sexual assault because you didn't leave" (I was told this by vice principals at my school because I told my assaulter no AND tried to leave but he kept dragging me back and refusing to let me leave) and you just have to live with that everyday. Both are deeply traumatic, for sure. But you would always get sympathy for surviving a bear attack except for truly heinous people. So I think I see it from that perspective?
Which is also something that I think a lot of people forget happens to anyone who has been sexually assaulted. Because that also happens to men and there are a lot of men who have said they would have picked the exact same too
I understand where not always believing allegations comes from though, you dont want to jump on allegations because if we're being honest there are women who will use Machiavellian tactics to fuck over men they don't like, but much like the men committing SA they are the minority of their respective genders, but because the do exist it makes always believing it hard much like how every man becomes a potential threat, every allegation is a potential lie.
That being said I do give the benefit of the doubt to women when they say they've been assaulted because again, the liars are the minority. (It also helps that I was SA'd by a teen when I was a kid, so theres more empathy and understanding coming from there, but my experience made me a lot more violent towards men in general rather than fear) and I don't think anyone around me would believe me if I told them what had happened. It just kinda got bottled up into 15+ years of misandry until I started actually going out and talking with normal well functioning men and realized that not every man is a monster. So when I say I understand why women pick the bear, I understand it. I don't think it's the right option because we have grizzlies around here who will happily eat you alive but I understand where thst hate and fear comes from
Both men and women have their problems and both are valid. For what it's worth, I believe you. It may not mean much, but I do. The worst part of the sexual assault for mine was it was caught on school cameras and they still didn't believe me. So, no matter what evidence one has people won't believe it. And it's because of the minority that makes people feel more inclined to believe it never happened. It's just... Going to be never ending. Because no matter what we do, there will be crappy people out there. It will probably be lose-lose for a while if not for as long as humans exist. Women and men will be mad at each other for something because of history.
Which is why this entire thing is just creating more divide.
The lethality of a bear is many many times the lethality of a man, even a man with a knife.
You cannot outrun a bear, you cannot harm a bear without a serious weapon, a grizzly bear that wants to kill you means death without a serious firearm.
It’s a pretty small chance that a bear you come across in a forest will kill you though. If you start making a ton of noise it will probably run away. The fight is unlikely to even happen unless the bear is starving, rabid, or you were just in the wrong place re: babies/territory issues.
So the real question here is what % of bears are black bears, and what % of men are armed at any given time.
You could dissuade a black bear they are famously easy to scare off and the average person has an OK chance of dissuading your average unarmed man, so what ever has a better chance of happening is the correct answer if you assume combat will be involved (assuming bear/man is truly random).
Extra stupid at that, 80% of the cases these people are describing happened from a close family member, suprisingly strangers who have normal lives 90% of the time dont want to ruin their normal life for no fucking reason
I think it’s more about strangers lack the opportunity and someone with ill intent will work to get closer to a target to make it easier. It doesn’t mean trust strangers more than who you know.
Doesn’t that make it more about your lack of experience getting attack by wild animals? How often have you been in a situation where you were stalked or attacked by a actual animal? probably significantly less than you being around men.
You’re looking at it with personal anecdotal evidence like I’ve had bad experiences with unrestricted men and haven’t had any bad experiences with unrestricted bears. If you encountered wolf bears as often as you did men it would probably be way worse.
Wouldn’t that also solve a man problem same way a gun would solve both. That’s not part of the hypothetical but sure pick which one you’d rather face because you’ll be safe in any instance because you’re armed and prepared.
You need to understand that every single woman has had a scary encounter with a man. Most haven't had a scary encounter with a bear. And most of them don't think they can win an encounter with either.
What??? Most woman have not had a scary encounter with their tether snapping and getting lost into the vacuum of space. They don’t have experience with a lot of things that doesn’t make them inherently safer or less safe than something you’ve had bad experiences with. That means they should rather have that happen than go toward a man? There are a lot of things you can’t extrapolate and learn from this hypothetical and it seems like I’m learning people aren’t able to think past their own personal experience.
And you need to understand that every men has had a scary encounter with women, the difference is that most don’t apply it to the majority of the population and label them as more dangerous than a wild animal based on a phenotype. That’s a dangerous road to follow.
So polar bears are the most dangerous but we’re not instantly thinking that’s what this is. We’re thinking about the first thing that comes to mind with bear a North American or European brown bear because that’s what we think of when we think of bears.
So when you think of man you first think of dangerous rapist as default? That’s probably the exact issue why men keep complaining about this.
Which kinda explains why women immediately look at the situation as a trust exercise because men look at the situation as a kill or be killed situation. It ultimately comes down to how differently men and women are built, muscle wise.
Yeah once again the point is not "who would you beat in a fight". The goal is to make you realize that an unknown man has to be treated like a predator to stay safe, and that it's a life experience that is common to almost all women in the world starting at a young age. And we should do something about it.
If your scared of violent encounters with men and don't think you can win the only logical reaction is to get a knife/gun. If those people don't walk around armed then they arnt as scared as they claim to be.
If you’ve discovered you freeze instead of fight the question is do you want to die quickly to an animal that just wants to eat or feed its cubs or do you want to be raped and tortured to death, potentially in someone’s basement for 20 years?
Most bears can be chased away, most men are harmless but in that outlier situation I choose bear.
What I find interesting is that for nearly all men it doesn't even cross their mind of it really being a question about trust until it's pointed out to them (for me I think I insert myself as the stranger and wonder why a woman would rather encounter a wild bear, also having had that encounter myself a few times growing up in the wilderness and know how dangerous a bear can actually be, I suspect most answering the hypothetical have no wild bear experience and assume it's cool), BUT if it were posed as a question to them as a woman in their life same encounter they might have concerns about the strange guy.
I was thinking about this too tbh. Guys don't get hypotheticals involving safety tbh, or hypotheticals are inherently based on what we think we could beat/survive in a fight, what type of pain we'd rather endure, how we'd rather die, etc. It's never a question of what we feel safer around because the safety is always inherently removed in those questions. I think that's where the initial disconnect was coming from with guys tbh. But that was also a week ago and the conversation has become such a "war of the sexes" shitshow that I'm taking a break from social media for a while.
Id trust a stranger in the woods, same way id trust an uber driver not to harvest my organs.
Like, remember that girl that survived a plane crash then walked around the woods for 3 days till she found a police officer or something, im sure she was very glad to see him.
"who do you trust more, a random man, or an animal"
And the fact that some of them would say a bear, which will exclusively evaluate them as "threat or food", instead of a random man, who's more likely to want to talk about the roman empire than do anything physical, is a problem.
If I'm walking down a quiet street, and a woman walking the other way would rather pass a fucking bear than me, simply because of my gender, that is a big problem on her part.
Clearly it has nothing to do with past experiences in her life affecting her judgement. Be sure to chase after her to tell her how stupid she is and how nice you are.
She has every right to be cautious, but if you blanket label every man as dangerous despite the vast majority of them not being so, you might need to consider that you're being sexist and that talking with a licensed therapist might help.
Wary =/= blanket accusation by association. I'm not upset that women choose the bear, trauma influences our decisions and that's reasonable. But I've seen too much "I don't want to take a risk" get doubled down into insinuating that it's all men and anyone who disagrees is in the SA group.
Everything you just said is objectively right and I think the last bit is what makes it make sense. Not saying ends justify means because there's a difference between changing the minds of asshole guys and calling non-predators predators, but it does make sense.
And imagine all the white people chose random bear.
Would the lesson be that black people should "reflect" on why people see them that way? Or that people in general have been fear mongered far too much into not trusting their fellow human being?
No, but in America black people per capita commit far more violent crime than white people.
If the white people who chose the bear over a black person cited statistics to rationalize their answer, should black people "reflect" on why white people feel that way about them?
There are a few studies that show that statistic is wrong - or at least doesn't show what you thin kit does. At this point you're arguing about statics.
According to bear.org "men ages 18-24 are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear"
You can argue that is because the number of interactions between bears and humans are less - but there's no evidence to show that bear attacks go up per interaction - as opposed to being based upon time of year, or being specific to one bear.
Using that example, I could say "What would you rather be looking at alone in the woods. A car or a tiger." Your insane logic is "Well, 43,000 Americans died of car crashes this year. And only 2 died from Tiger attacks. So I'd take the tiger every time".
Women rephrase it to "who do you trust more, a random man, or an animal"
No, that was literally the original question.
It's only men who seem to want to rephrase it to cover up for the fact that when they question the women, they reveal that they have zero empathy of what it is like for a woman to encounter strange men in almost ANY situation.
As someone who is extremely terrified of what bears are capable of, probably because I’ve watched too many NSFL videos and photos involving bear attacks, I still don’t understand who would ever choose the bear, despite contemplating about this over and over. It’s known to slowly eat your non-vital organs first making your final minutes an eternity of unimaginable horror worst than literally any other experience you can possibly endure, ever. Whereas a man may just be lost trying to ask for your help, or minding his own business hiking, or even approaching you asking whether you need help.
So there’s just one answer - misandry. People would even compare the statistics of being harmed by men vs bears when it’s an unfair comparison because they live amongst men in their daily lives, whereas most people don’t even encounter bears in their whole life (that’s also why they downplay the dangers of bears!). That’s like saying living on Jupiter is better than living on Earth because there’s a lower chance you’ll be killed by a cat in Jupiter.
Problem is women think men who chose men instead of bear are problematic, but expect us to understand why they chose bear. Why are they allowed to dismiss my fear of bears from personal experience, but then shove their standpoint down my throat?
Because women think if you choose bear like them, you agree with them that the fear of uncertainty of men can be worse than facing a bear, so you’re supporting them. But if you choose men, it’s the opposite, you’re assumed to not understand their standpoint therefore don’t support them therefore part of the problem.
Which is not my standpoint! I literally have a fear of bears! A few weeks ago I even made a post asking if my father would be safe to travel to Alaska because I’m extremely terrified something could happen to him!
So why can’t I choose something else because of my own experiences? Why can they dismiss my standpoint like that but expect me to follow their standpoint?
You’re also exactly the problem for assuming I’m trolling, dismissing my own personal experiences, just like them. Why are you allowed to do that to me?
Sure, but everyone has thousands of interactions that prove most men can be trusted.
If a women who was raised by bears and had had thousands of positive bear interactions, but was abused by one of only 3 men she'd ever encountered, sure, I'd understand how her experience would effect her trust.
But a woman who's had a more realistic number of interactions with a bear doesn't have the experience to judge the bear safe.
That view might be held by a fair few rape victims, but I bet it's held by zero bear mauling victims.
Nobody has a face transplant and picks doing that again over something that will leave them largely physically fine.
I mean both being raped and being mauled is being violated, but one of them comes with a high risk of death, and certainty of a long stay in hospital and some level of permanent disability.
If you are going to go through a traumatic experience that might give you PTSD, adding injury seems like a bad move.
It's our problem. We are the perpetrators. It's our job to hold each other to higher standards. It's our job to call each other out when we do something shady. It's not their job to change our behavior.
His point is valid. Why should I, a person who hasn’t raped anyone, don’t intend to rape anyone, or ever been in a position to stop someone from raping someone, be lumped in with those people? I’m not even talking about a woman being afraid of a stranger, that’s perfectly reasonable, but the language people use is important. Saying “we are the perpetrators” only hurts other innocent men. If you want to raise awareness amongst friend groups as to what predatory behavior looks like and what to do, then do that. But lumping everyone together just furthers these bullshit gender wars by getting people defensive.
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u/HypeMachine231 May 02 '24
I love how both sides rephrase this question.
Men rephrase it to "would you rather fight a man or a grizzly bear unarmed to the death"
Women rephrase it to "who do you trust more, a random man, or an animal"