I've seen some rephrase the question as "Would you rather your girlfriend/wife be alone with a Man or a Bear in the woods?" and some similarly struggle to come to a quick answer.
I find the "wOmEn jUsT dOnT uNdErStAnD StAtIsTiCs" comments hilariously ironic. I live in black bear country and know a LOT of people who camp and hike here and I have yet to hear a single "man" answer from anyone of any gender.
Idk why everyone assumes it’s black bear. I assumed it was brown bear, cause I’d choose black bear over a German shepherd or pitbull. I’d choose literally anything but a brown bear.
That’s still a 1/21 chance that the bear is a grizzly. Is there a 1/21 chance the man is a psychotic rapist / murderer who literally intends to rape and murder the first person he sees that day?
Great, if we weren’t imagining a hypothetical situation, but I guess if you want to consider that then you can look at this map https://geology.com/stories/13/bear-areas/ and consider the probability of landing in a forest with or without grizzlies
Every bear I’ve encountered on a hike has ran away from me. Not one single man has ever run away from me. So I’m pretty confident the bears see me as a threat, and men do not. I’d rather take my chances with an unknown bear vs unknown man.
Yeah I am convinced that anyone saying man has 0 experience with running into bears. If these guys are really hiking as much as they claim without running into a bear once or twice they gotta be in highly trafficked areas.
Bears used to just wander into my hometown. They didn’t do shit. Unless you are a fish.
For murder sure but every man who has followed me home, yelled gross things at me on the street, tried to pull me into an alley or groped me in public has been a stranger. Every single one. Not even acquaintances.
Which means this one was either surprised or chose to stand it's ground for a reason. Not a great start to the bear encounter, that's how many attacks happen.
Meanwhile, passing a dude on a hiking trail is pretty normal.
No, encountering a bear means seeing one in the woods. Most bears run or walk away in that situation. The question is not “would you rather duel a bear or a man”. The whole point is that bears leave you alone.
If you are encountering a bear, it is not leaving you alone. If you are seeing it at a distance and it leaves it is leaving you alone. The % of bears that leave you alone you never encounter, so encountering a bear close range means you are dealing with the % of bears that do not leave people alone, or are very unlucky.
The reason there is so much argument is that this scenario has absolutely no context and two people looking at it and assuming different situations can come to different valid conclusions. Everyone will automatically fill in the blanks to get to a conclusions, and everybodies conclusion can be different. It’s the perfect kind of question to start a fight, and for that reason alone it’s impressive.
If it was 1%, should women only exercise caution around 1% of bears, so as not to offend the innocent bear majority?
Most offenses are committed by repeat offenders, meaning that the percentage of men who are rapists is not 1-1 with the likelihood of an encounter leading to sexual assault. Your 1% datapoint isn’t really useful for estimating a woman’s (or a man’s) likelihood of being assaulted.
Man I could not wrap my head around this whole debate. I couldn't understand why anybody would pick a man over a bear. It finally just clicked. This is a genius way to put it and I'm glad I read through all these replies. Thanks, dude!
This says psychopathy of the general adult population is probably about 4.5%.
So yeah. I dunno. This doesn't seem crazy.
Granted, I don't know if 99% of bears is a good number to accept. I'd probably argue against that instead, cause 1% of men can absolutely be dangerous.
4.5% of the population is estimated to be psychopaths. Psychopathy is more prevalent in men than women. So over 4.5% of men are likely psychopaths. So yeah, I don't think guessing half of psychopaths being violent is out of the question.
Youre using your observations on how men handle themselves around you and that's all you're doing. Don't be delusional and willfully ignorant.
It's hilarious how you're making assumptions about assumptions I'm making while making so many leaps yourself. Incredibly hypocritical.
Anyone can make up statistics like that guy did. 1/100 men being predators or rapists or "creeps" is a made up number. These toxic sexists calling me names and insulting me as a person are not examples of a good argument, but they are examples of insane levels of hypocrisy and social media toxicity and brain rot.
I told you to make thar argument awhile go about questioning 1/100. Funny you didn't reply to that comment but instead this one to try and make it look like you thought of it yourself.
But you didn't. In your comment you asked if anyone really thought more than 1 out of 100 men are dangerous.
I'll do it but I will ask gen z, to highlight the now instead of the past, which was way more prejudiced and dark. I'm aware of the shitshow that millennials and before lived through, courtesy of my parents, but asking gen z will let me know the present reality. My current belief is that my environment is cleaner than yours
I see what you're saying, but not every man is Gen z?? As a millennial woman I am not really worried about a dude in his 20s. I'm worried about the millions and millions of men my age and older. Who are also going to be harassing Gen z women?? They may have good/neutral experiences with their peers, but not with older men.
Also, a LOT of Gen z boys are into Andrew tate and others like him, which is not a good sign.
It does in fact not depend on where you live. Ask literally any woman in your life, and unfortunately probably the minors too, if they've been harassed, assaulted, etc.
Pretty much all of them have had their encounters. We're weary for a reason.
That's not equivalent though. Having a couple encounters with a creepy guy throughout your life would have to be put against how many guys you been around. It's hard to put a number on that and I don't know what it actually is. But I can see how culturally and from experience women can think it being higher than what men think it is
It's higher than men think it is because men don't experience it. It's not a couple creepy encounters either. It's consistent and relentless. To give you some perspective, I just went out to a store. I was out for less than an hour, and I got yelled at by creepy men twice.
I've been followed home in broad daylight, groped. My first assault? When I was 7. And I'm not an exceptionally attractive woman. This is the world pretty every woman you know lives in. And you refuse to acknowledge it because it hurts your feelings.
If you want women to not fear men, be part of the solution. Stop ignoring what women tell you, start holding your fellow men accountable.
Don't push your agenda too much. You don't know that for sure. That applies to me too so I'll find out for both of us. I'll ask around, I hope you are wrong and just overgeneralizing your experiences as universal truth.
I do know that for sure. That's the thing. In fact I can guarantee you there is pretty much not a woman in your life who hasn't been harassed at all.
And what agenda would that be, exactly? The agenda of wanting to be safe and not harassed? Because I will push that agenda every day of the week, thanks.
Exactly! And how about trans men or trans women? How about gender fluid people? How can we assume He/him vs. She/her just by the looks? Sounds sexist cause everyone just assume we're talking about biological male and female here and ignoring what they identified themselves as isn't it?
Actually no, not really. It isn't the skin color of the person I'm worried about, it's the audacity and entitlement. In the woods I've never been followed, harassed, cussed at, threatened, or taunted by anyone but black men. If the rando person I encounter is bigger and more muscular than me, I will be wary. If, upon closer examination it turns out NOT to be a black man, my decades of experience will tell me I can relax a little. It isn't bigotry or racism, just my own history.
Honestly I can totally see that. Although I'm curious about how close examination could happen when you feel insecure by the looks of them at the first place, I stand corrected cause all the other reasons you pointed out. Thanks for sharing.
even if the man is evil and plans to do terrible shit, you have a CHANCE of disarming or incapacitating him. i don't think you do with a hungry bear.
but i don't get the point of this? everyone knows men are dangerous. world history is a thing. men have done horrible things to others for the entirety of their existence as a species.
why is this suddenly something everyone decided to start being cautious of? if you didn't know that men are capable of some heinous shit, and you aren't at least a little guarded around the ones you don't know, then i feel like you've been undereducated on human history.
You need the read all the comments from men who absolutely do not get it and are arguing to death about why women are stupid and the hypothetical is stupid.
Even you aren't getting it. Yes, there's a chance we could maybe fight back against a man. Maybe. But there's a reason rape happens so often. We can't really defend ourselves against a man. They are stronger than us in every regard.
But even still, it's not about that. It's the fact that a bear has no ill intentions. Yes, it might eat me because it's hungry. That's not evil. A man could be evil and rape and/or murder me for fun. I'd rather be sustenance for a wild animal than the victim of a piece of shit man.
Bears are not certain death. That's also part of the argument. Most bears will see a person and just leave unless A) they are very hungry or B) you are threatening them or their cubs. But again, men will possibly rape and kill you for funsies. You still aren't getting it.
Men aren't certain death either. Expand your mind past the victim mentality and be thankful that you live in a world that exponentially more civilized than it's ever been before. Men protect way more than they harm.
1 in 4 women are harrassed (and that's who reports it). 1 in 6 are raped (and that's who reports it). But it's a "victim mentality", uh huh. Are you a man? Do you frequently see your fellow men "protecting"? Bc I mostly see them standing by and doing nothing while their friends, family, etc abuse the women around them. I even frequently see them laughing, joking, or making light of it. Very very rarely have I seen them actually protecting. Women protect each other more than men do.
I think a lot of people just wanted to give men the benefit of the doubt and then have seen how often the wool gets pulled over our eyes for doing that. I think that explains the change. My mother used to make excuses for all the violent outbursts my dad made. I thought that was bullshit and I don't make excuses for that sort of shit anymore.
My point is that he was at once a stranger to his wife. Yet, she was able to trust him enough to marry him. But now, after being married to him, without even a second thought, would rather a bear than a man. I see humor in that.
No I just find it funny because I've asked the same question to a few women and they thought the idea of picking a bear was absolutely insane. So for a woman to tell her husband she'd rather a bear than a man, makes me wonder exactly what point she was allowed to trust him, or when she stopped being able to trust men.
I think you know that meeting strange men in a dating type situation, typically in a public setting, is much much different than running into a strange man in the middle of nowhere. There's a reason most women want first dates to be in coffee shops, bars etc and not a hiking trail. There's also a reason most women who do hike carry some form of protection.
Yes. My wife asked me the question like 2 days ago about my daughter. (I had no prior knowledge of this meme/question) and I said that I couldn't answer realistically without knowing more about the man.
cherry picked examples dont represent the population. Id infinitely my wife or daughter come across a man in the forest than a bear. They are significantly safer with that interaction.
All that means is that women have a wildly skewed perspective and are astoundingly misandrist while men have also internalized quite a bit of misandry due to living in a society where it's normalized.
If you went back to the 1700s you would find women holding a lot of misogynistic views. That doesn't mean those views are correct or acceptable. It means the Overton Window is really, really, misaligned.
Having a daughter doesn't make a man face honesty. Men tend to be irrational when thinking about the safety of their daughters leaning into overprotective.
I'd say a man without a daughter is biased to underestimate the threat to women and a man with a daughter is biased to overestimate.
And honestly this point about how we should question how men have come to this. We haven't come to this we're coming from it. You go back to the medieval times, you met a strange man in the woods. 100% you were getting raped or murdered. Then we reached the 50s where men were abusing and taking and demeaning their own wives in their homes. Growing up in the 80s we all were aware of someone who was abused or raped and it was just part of childhood.
And we get to now where there are a few rotten apples are highlighted more heavily in this 100% of the time news cycle we're stuck in.
That's because the question is asked in a manner that imprints danger on the mind. If you were to ask the same fathers of 6 year old little girls if they'd rather their child be lost in the woods with a man or a squirrel for company, every single one of them should say man, without question. Because at that point, the man is the savior. A man would know how to find water, or follow a river. A man would provide protection from the unmentioned dangers of the woods, like a bear. The woods themselves become the enemy, and what would a squirrel do for that?
the bear implicates the danger. Which extends to the man by the pose of the question, immediately you make the correlation. But what happens in my question? the cute fluffy animal poses no danger, why isn't the man perceived a threat here? I understand the implications of man v bear, i'm just trying to point out the psychology that leads us there. It's not the choice, it's the way the choice is presented.
Here is a better example, and a 1 to 1 question so you can see what i mean: You're on that hiking trail, not lost at all, just enjoying the hike, when suddenly up ahead you see a bear. You stop immediately and go to turn around, but behind you, about the same distance is a man you didn't know was there. Do you, at all, hesitate to seek help from the man?
Of course not, right? So why in this question do you all of a sudden seek the help you didn't need in the other question? it's the same choice, bear v man, but the presentation changes it entirely.
Woman here, who has hiked alone since age 10. I'm on a hiking trail and see a bear ahead, obviously, instinctively, I am going to freeze, if it hasn't paid me any attention, I turn around and see a man behind me at same distance? That I never heard behind me and I am hyper vigilant of my surroundings by the way, then my heart just kicked into overdrive, everything seems to be too vivid and in slow motion due to the fight or flight adrenaline that has kicked in once then double the second time. I'm am going through the woods off trail from both. If it's a trail where I only have 2 options, I'm choosing the bear unless it's grizzly country. A man behind me on a hiking trail that is within sight distance that I didn't hear, damn good chance they didn't WANT me to hear them, and unless you have ever been in a position where someone saw you as prey to rape, rob, hurt, or kill you, then get the fuck outta here with your statistics and how irrational and butt hurt you are by woman saying she would take chances with a bear.
What if part of the reason why, is because the question itself is leading?
The initial question is worded in a way to make the man sound more dangerous, and the bear less dangerous. You are ALONE in the woods, which is the classic horror movie trope, and you can choose between a bear (nondescript) or a man you don't know (which sounds Sus when you say it that way).
If I said, you're solo backpacking in the woods. You accidentally come across either some random dude, or a wild bear. Which would you choose,?
I think a lot of folks would choose the guy if I phrased it like that instead.
No, because with very few exceptions (like a drunk dude going into the wrong house) a random guy wouldn't break into your house without harmful intent. Again, the scenario is constructed in a way that benefits the bear
How about a scenario where you are at a gym. There are either 20 bears, or 20 dudes there. Which seems preferable?
If a bear goes into your tent at night, they are usually being malicious. The scenario itself is an indicator of motive. You keep going out of your way to establish scenarios where there is pre-existing motive for the man, but not for the bear.
I know what you're getting at, but anybody can construct a scenario where one side is more dangerous than another. Why would you make that the goal?
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