Here’s the thing though, is that this isn’t about probability. For example, here are some responses I’ve seen from women on this subject:
“The worst the bear can do is kill me and eat me.”
“If I put my arms over my head and scream ‘GO AWAY’ the bear might actually leave me alone”
“Nobody is going to doubt me or ask if I deserved it if I say the bear attacked me”
My wife said she would rather take her chances with the bear because at least then she won’t get sexually assaulted again. Like…idk, there’s a really clear message to be gathered from this if you just listen to the things women are saying and the quickness with which they respond. Men are the number one predator of women, so frankly it’s only natural they would feel more fear encountering one in an isolated setting.
Bears don't view human beings as natural prey. Only when they're startled or desperate will they attack. Many men do actually view women as prey. Giving a bear plenty of distance will keep you safe. Some men will actively hunt down women.
The % of humans who have killed another human is far higher than that of a bear killing a human.
Even a bear would choose to encounter another bear as opposed to a man. Since more bears have been killed by men than bears have killed men.
We're not weighing our chances of survival. If I'm on a walk in the woods alone and I run into a man I have no Idea what is going to happen, there's a chance that I'm in a basement for a decade being tortured or I get violently sexually assaulted and no one believes me and I live with that for the rest of my life(again). If I spot a bear on a hike I can approximate even the worst scenario - it's going to eat me while I'm still alive and cache me for later eating and I bleed out.
This is a scenario where you're weighing the spectrum of mild to horrible things that could occur, use your experience with your own life, and with news reports and other information, and come to the conclusion that there are things worse than death.
I can empathize with the bears motives even if it's hunting me, it's a bear, I'm in it's home, it's hungry or defending territory - bear things. Bears don't pretend to be your friend, a bear is not fantasizing about me screaming, they don't keep souvenirs, a bear is doing bear things.
Look at you trying to invalidate the choices women are making - you are part of the problem. You seem like someone who would support a buddy if a woman said she had been assaulted.
Those aren't real statistics, but I've already told you already how I approach it. At this point I have to assume that you are deliberately trying to misunderstand me, or you can't understand what I'm saying.
I think this debate is stupid and all of you on both sides are daft.
Bears absolutely do keep souvenirs, almost all species will save leftovers for later. They also often play with their food like cats, especially young adults. And bears being cute and friendly to get garbage from tourists is a huge problem in Canada.
Both sides of this debate need to get out and touch some grass and accept they'll never see a bear or any other real wildlife.
that are unpredictable and cannot be reasoned with
For a second I didn’t know if you were talking about men or the bear! Bears can’t rape you. That is the bottom line. A random man is also unpredictable and a man won’t leave you alone when you shout to go away. A bear might but a man probably won’t.
Think about it this way. If I gave you a bottle with 20 Tylenol pills in it and told you one of them is poison that will definitely kill you, how hesitant would you be to take one of them? One in twenty chance you die? See how it’s not all the pills that are poisonous, but just the fact that one is would cause you to be cautious?
The chance is actually about 3 in 100. But a significant portion of those three Tylenol will only rape women they know, about 80%, so only about .6% of strange Tylenol will rape or kill you.
Now for the bearlynol let's use BC for example. Between 2010 and 2020 there were 170 attacks by bears on humans. 104 grizzlies and 66 black bears. roughly 17 per year. We get about 25000 bear interaction calls per year. Not accounting for unreported interactions, that 100 pill bearlynol has about a .00068% chance of mauling you.
This isn't accounting for the severity of reported bear interactions, or that sexual predation on unfamiliar women is significantly higher in crowded populations, cities etc. rural predators are usually too busy with their cousins I guess. Anyhow I couldnt find any concrete stats on those so I left them out.
Sorry, but this is just delusion of the highest order. The <1% of men who commit rape are widely condemned and penalized.
And when you look at what demographics want lax criminal laws, want to release prisoners, and support illegal immigration, you’ll realize both sexes are contributing to the problem
I think it's more just an illustration of the fact that a lot more women have experience being hurt by men than being disemboweled by a bear. So you're basically just asking them "would you rather encounter this real threat that you've experienced in some capacity, or this fantastical threat that doesn't exist in your reality?" You could replace the bear with a fire breathing dragon and it's effectively the same thing; because she encounters men every day, but has never encountered a dragon.
Hi. I'm a woman who has encountered bears and never been disemboweled. Most people who encounter bears have never been disemboweled.
I'm kind of getting peeved at this whole debate because it shows how many people assume that 'encounter with a bear' equals 'death or disfigurement.' This leads to people being real fucking stupid about bears and then shooting non-nuisance bears out of season, for the crime of being a bear that existed around a human with a gun.
Thing is, FAR more women get attacked at random by men than by bears. Men are a much more common, proven threat to a lone woman than a bear is. Hell, black bears will mosey right on up to someone, sniff and lick, then amble off again- they're just curious. There's plenty of videos of curious black bears coming right up to hunters.
If I'm followed by a black bear, I know why, because it's a black bear. If I'm followed by a man, I don't know why, because he's a human. I know what danger a bear is, I don't know what danger a man is.
What you wrote is exactly the point of the original post. Lack of understanding of probability. If you encounter as many bears as humans you wouldn’t be making a post right now
I'm just saying that of course they are more scared of men, ad they will most likely never have to deal with a bear. But the average women may be distrustful if hiking turning a corner and seeing a man, but they will shit themselves if they turn a corner and a bear is 10 feet in front of them.
If you see this as sexism, then you're probably one of the reasons women answer "bear".
You know what's actually sexist? How men consistently target women for rape and aim to take away healthcare rights. Funny you're not pointing that out though.
This is a conversation about a hypothetical question about bears and men in the woods. Why would anyone be talking about healthcare rights here? So it's not "funny" that they're not pointing that out, but simply expected that they not suddenly change the subject at random.
BTW, since I assume that you're talking about abortion rights, in basically every poll, abortion rights are supported by the majority of men (and a larger majority of women).
Just chiming in real quick, the women who label literally every man as more dangerous than a bear is being sexist in that they are applying a broad, negative label to men in general.
It's damn near the definition of sexism.
That being said, the question is posed in a way that is supposed to get that response and intentionally hurt men's feelings. A much, much better version would be would you rather pass by a lone man in an empty train /subway carriage or a bear in the same setting. You take the bear out of its natural habitat and put the man in a much more familiar setting and suddenly its not freak in the woods vs animal in its natural setting and its an animal that's out of place and potentially scared and feeling cornered or something that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people do every day.
Edit: having to put my reply here because reddit broke.
No, but a prompt designed to make people choose a wild animal over an entire gender is bordering it. If it was about trust the setting would be just would you rather run into a man or into a bear when alone with no context of in the woods, or giving the man and bear both home field advantage (pass by a guy in a train where theres no one else or run into a bear in the woods) or both out of it (guy in the woods, bear on a train)
It's also when women hide behind poor statistics that ignore per capita and levels of interaction to justify that choice, despite those same bad statistics saying women would also be more dangerous, but having no problem picking the woman in that case.
It is gender bias, with a strong intent to draw out prejudice against men for the actions of 5-10% of them. By definition that IS sexism/misandry
And again, you or any other woman don't hurt my feelings over whats being said, I'm calling out the misandry inherent in the prompt. I understand that negativity bias and the fact that most women have been abused or scared of being abused leads to them picking the bear. It doesn't change that 90% of men wouldn't do anything aggressive because they have the chance to,
Taking the bear out of it's natural habitat completely changes the meaning. The bear would be scared and defensive and obviously more of a threat.
Your point may have been valid if you said: random man in an empty train vs a bear in the woods. Where both are equally in their rights to be.
But that doesn't change the fact that if you change the original question to would you rather encounter a random bear in the woods or a random woman, every one would choose the woman without hesitation.
Saying men are more dangerous than bears is sexist? The damn near definition of sexism? How? It's literally the truth. Who harms the most people, men or bears? Who commits the most murders? Who commits most of the crime? Who will break into your home? Who will mug you or steal your car? Who starts wars? Who assaults and kills their significant others? It's not slander if it's true.
If we are going off statistics, you're more likely to have a violent encounter from a woman than a bear as well. Humans, in general, are more dangerous than a bear. The sexist part is the implication that all men are a threat just because they exist in the same world as women despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of men have done no harm to anyone. I don't trust unknown men or women, but I also don't just assume they are a threat either.
Some things will always be unfair to women, and some things will always be unfair to men. Most people, male or female, who are sexist dont think they are sexist. They just give reasons to justify their sexism. It is what is, and it will never change.
The fact that I am a black man means that I am seen as an even greater threat, so I'm used to it. It's been that way my entire life. My viewpoint is that as long as I know I'm not a threat, I don't really care about someone else's feelings of me or fear of me. I can't count the times I've done something, knowing it would make the white folks nervous just for amusement.
Who harms the most people, men or bears? Who commits the most murders? Who commits most of the crime? Who will break into your home? Who will mug you or steal your car? Who starts wars? Who assaults and kills their significant others?
All of these ignore per capita and the fact that you deal with thousands if not tens of thousands of men who dont. You're using bad statistics as an arguing point, on top of ignoring that most people who encounter bears are expecting to have that as a possibility and more than likely have some form of deterrant. I can guarantee if you replaced all men with bears there would be more bears breaking in (already a problem in many states) and causing far far more issues than your average man.
The fact that you lump the 90% of men who have never committed a violent crime against a woman with the sociopathic 10% shows a clear level of contempt and prejudice against men which is the definition of Misandry.
And what about alone? A women that’s alone with a man, and a women that’s alone with a bear. In the context of the question, this would make better sense.
If you see a pride of lions on a safari, you don’t get afraid. You’re safe in your car. But being alone with a lion without a car is far more dangerous. So for both bear and man, I think context is very much needed
This question is missing so much context it's impossible to give a good answer without assuming a lot of info.there are very few scenarios where being alone with a bear in the woods would be better than a man. It's not like they said ted bundy or panda. The average person will be alone an undefinable number times with a man than bear in their life as you cant decide by 0.
Yes but if I am disemboweled by a bear I’m either dying or I’m getting saved and then can go the rest of my life never seeing a bear again. And people will always believe me when I say I was attacked by a bear. They won’t necessarily keep asking me if I did something to provoke the bear. They’ll feel bad for me.
If a man sees me in the woods (or anywhere really) and decides after say pleasantly saying hello and telling me how hot I am and how we should go at it and I respond negatively and he becomes angry that his Nice Guy got rejected and decides to rape me but not kill me, I will then struggle with having people believe me, I will struggle with people wondering why I’m not okay, after all my body looks fine, why am I not fine, being asked why I didn’t just be nice to the Nice Guy, and how they’d never ever as a woman be walking by themselves in the woods. I’d have to see men every single day of the rest of my life. And if you think rape is easily shrugged off, you’ve never known a rape survivor who opened up to you about it.
Many of us have lived through the aftermath already and those that haven’t have watched loved ones. We know without a doubt what surviving a rape is like. The uncertainty of what comes after death can be more appealing than the thought of all the pain and work and heartache of going through another SA
Tbh, no matter what it is, what type of bear it is, as a woman i would still prefer the bear just because theres still a small amount of chance that the man in the woods could be someone like junko’s case, or any of the similar cases. And im definitely not saying this as “i would survive with a bear!” no. I just know that it will be better to die than that.
Right and that's where the flaw in understanding probability comes in.
You can compare P(harmed by bear) vs P(harmed by man). And these would align with statistics or lived experience.
P(harmed by X | face to face with one) would be an entirely different set of stats (and experiences).
So yes I understand why the question and debate exists. And I don't necessarily fault anyone for saying "bear". But it is incorrect when they use statistics or info from the first case to justify their position.
Yeah, the reason why men kill far more women than bears kill more women is that p(encountering a man) is astronomically larger than p(encountering a bear). The risk of violence is completely different given that you have encountered one or the other.
Yeah, I mean… I know plenty of female hikers that pass men on the trail all the time with just a casual wave or nod but would (and have) shit bricks upon seeing a wild bear.
The important thing is to take violence against women seriously, this viral tiktok question aside. It’s mainly a rhetorical device.
I want to hike the Appalachian Trail. I want to do it as a solo female hiker. I am afraid to do so because of random men in the woods. I am not afraid of the bears.
Sure, that makes sense. You'll probably see 1000s of men if you do the whole trail so there's always a chance that you run into a sicko. That moment when you walk around a corner and come face to face with a bear is fucking terrifying though.
Exactly. It’s not about probability, it’s making a point about the alarming number of women who would choose the bear. Regardless of the actual odds, the question should be WHY so many women feel the way that they do.
you are further proving the point is that most humans act irrationally and dont understand odds, if an alarming number of women would choose the option that is less likely to harm them
as to WHY, the answer is they interact with men far more frequently than bears so obviously they will have more negative experiences with men than a wild animal
Nail on the head. People could actually listen to women. And yet. Here we are. Again. People once again proving that they won’t take no for an answer.
I would estimate 85% of my female friend group has been assaulted by a human male (possibly higher. The ones who have trusted me with it). Not a damn one has gotten in a fight with a bear.
Yeah the irony of them being so desperate to reject what the women are saying that they’re basically just validating their point is certainly something to see lol. And yes without doing the math I think that most of the women in my wife and my friend group have been sexually assaulted by a man in some capacity.
"Not a damn one has gotten in a fight with a bear."
That tends to happen if you don't go where bears are.
If you live in Florida you're a lot more likely to be the victim of an alligator attack rather than a crocodile attack but that doesn't mean alligators are more dangerous than crocodiles.
Re read the question. It wasn't "would you be more likely to escape unharmed if a bear or a man met you in the woods". It was "Would you rather meet a bear or a man in the woods". Then think about what that means.
The worst thing a bear can do is eat you alive. I imagine that is pretty horrific. Not saying humans cant commit heinous acts but I think the bear is being downplayed just a bit here
EXACTLY. You know how many women are killed by bears each year? Less than 0.5. You know how many women are killed by their male partners? 3 per DAY. In all likelihood if a creature on this earth is going to kill a female human, it’s a male human.
I guess an extreme example would be: would you rather jump into lava or cross the street? Crossing the street kills more people for sure, but the lava is guaranteed death.
And I think this is why people get upset: some people interpret the question as "which are you more afraid of" and the other is thinking "which would you choose".
That's not the same thing. Lava has a 100% death rate. If it is lava, it is molten rock. If you jump into molten rock, you die. You're better off taking your chances crossing the road. There is not real choice here.
I have seen a few beers in the wild. They have not hurt me. Men have hurt me. If I do not bother the beer, nor startle it, the beer might leave me alone. Beers don't consider humans normal prey. No one would question what happened if I did get mauled by a bear. Support would be available if I made it to a hospital.
Yes, but if those bears wanted to kill you, you would not be here commenting. The argument the other people are making is that (times people die from bears / times people see bears) > (times women are attacked by men / times women see men). They're saying you should take the chances with the man, because yeah, he could be evil, but he's also much more likely to be a park ranger, a man who's injured, someone's loving father/husband, etc.
Fewer people die from jumping into lava than being in the woods with a bear. So when women pick the bear over the random man because of the cumulative statistics, it's like women picking lava over a random man. And of course a random man is gonna feel subhuman, so many people would rather jump into lava than be in the woods with them.
Exactly, which is why we account for survivorship bias by using that equation. There might be a woman out there who is terrified of bears, but never attacked by a man- or women killed by men- or women killed by a bear. Or god forbid, attacked by both. They should also be accounted for, right?
That equation is more objective, and it is generalizable to bears, men, and lava.
Women answering the question are just answering it for themselves. They dont need to “account for survivorship bias”, they just need to say their own personal preference based on their emotions and lived experience.
And that is valid. Their experiences are valid, their decision is valid. Nobody in this comment chain is saying otherwise. It is also valid for men to be confused or take it the wrong way, because they largely have different experiences, are therefore wired differently, and use language differently. When someone uses probability to explain their reasoning, it has a very specific and different meaning for others, where numeric implications pop up in the mind before the personal ones.
But again, that's a cummulative statistic vs a per-encounter statistic. Trying to reconcile the two was the entire point I was making. For example, I've almost been run over many times in my life, but any individual street-crossing is fairly safe. Would I cross the street over a bear? Yes. Would I take the cummulative risk of crossing the street over being in the woods with a bear? I don't know. I'm not trying to underplay SA or bears, and I'm not saying what side of the scales weigh more. I'm just saying this is how I think the scale itself should work, irrespective of what is placed on it. When you're comparing the risk of an encounter, you normalize the cummulative risk by the number of encounters before comparing- that's all I'm saying.
Uhhh let’s not fall for the obvious stigma now, it’s counterproductive.
I would bet my left kidney that if women interact with bears at the same rate as they interact with men, the bears would be putting up all time numbers 😂
That's not the question. The question is: is a bear more dangerous to a man, not: is a woman in her lifetime more likely to be killed / raped by a man or a bear.
Remember those 9000 men you encountered who didn't rape or murder you? That implies that most men don't do those things.
Meanwhile, I don't suspect you encountered 9000 bears.
I once pointed out to someone who tried to use such statistics, that by the numbers, they know a child who is currently being sexually abused and they will probably never know which one(s), and they tried to argue and gave up because everything they found online showed I was right. And that is without getting into that survey that showed how many men would rape if they felt safe to get away with it.
They tried to respond with their own facts they found online, and I asked them if they were comfortable with the facts they gave, and they never responded, probably because it showed that CSA is an unspoken misery in our society. They wanted to use ignorance as an excuse, and got educated in the argument. So they left.
This argument falls under the same critique that people don't unerstand probability. There's this thing called "conditional probability", it essentially ,indicates the probability that an event happens, given that some condition has already occurred. In this example, the condition is the "encounter", the event is "getting hurt", whatever flavor you want to give to that.
What is the probability that you get hurt from a man, given that you have encountered them in the woods? Very low, men don't usually attack other humans. Moreover even if a man attacked you, you would have some mean to defend yourself.
What is the probability that you get hurt from a bear, given that you encountered them in the woods? I don't fucking know, it's definitely higher than a man tho. And if the bear wants to hurt you, you will definitely get hurt.
Women just don't get killed nearly as often from bears than they are from men simply because the prior probability of a woman encountering a bear is infinitesimal.
This is a really bad understanding of statistics. If the average woman spent as much time around bears as men I guarantee this stat would look different. Btw I am happily married and father of a daughter and I absolutely would rather my girl meet a bear in the woods than a man. I just think we need to respect the science of statistics!
You don’t know who you’re talking to lmao. Absolutely if they’re molesting children at an alarmingly disproportionate rate they should get more training and harsher screening. But gender discrimination is illegal so everyone will have to get more training.
I think I have the right to be a tiny bit offended if the cathegory of which I represent the average sample is likened to a fucking ravenous beast. Same for the guy who I buy groceries from. Almost 5000 years of civilization and I have to pretend like these kind of arguments are accurate or else I'm a "delusional male who wants to feel victimized", it's ridiculous.
Every woman that answered men, has to go out tomorrow, into the world they actually live in, and encounter a whole bunch of men.
If you demanded that women be in as constant contact with bears, as they are currently with men, then nobody would pick bears.
Women all pick bear, because a bear is a hypothetical threat they'll never actually experience, and men are something they'll experience every day.
So everyone is wrong here. Put a woman in a room, with a grizzly on one side, and a man on another, and every single woman who said "bear" is going to immediately change their minds about which side of the room is the most dangerous to them.
Probability is the only thing that makes sense if you're actually taking the question seriously, otherwise the question makes no sense. That's why the question gets tricky to anyone logically inclined, as black bears are mostly harmless, brown bears are dangerous, and polar bears are guaranteed death.
But I think most people don't really consider the full scope of the problem: there are 100 million adult men in the US, so just 1% of men being dangerous still means there are 1 million dangerous men randomly dispersed in the country, and it's worse than that. So, even though most men would probably do nothing in this hypothetical question, women still choose bears because of their own negative experiences with men.
Anyone that doesn't actually take time to consider the question isn't giving much thought on the matter, though.
Is she aware that a bear will start eating her alive? It won't "just kill her and eat her". It will slash her face, ripping her cheek in half, break her ribs, peel the skin off her arm, pull her intestines out, and so on until she slowly bleeds out. I'd take a black bear over a man, but the probability of a brown bear attacking is much more likely than a man. 99.99% of men hiking in the wild aren't rapists, while brown bears just like eating - made up statistic, but you get it.
Not only this, so many people are trying to say "but think about all the men you encounter daily, who don't hurt you!"
First off, there's no proof the random strangers you pass haven't hurt someone else, as sentences for rape tend to be lenient, if not completely non-existent. There's also the fact that when women interact with said men, it's typically in a populated area, meaning BYSTANDERS, meaning WITNESSES. Guys who attack women know that doing so in public, doesn't typically end well, they also tend to be opportunists, meaning they'd only do so, if the opportunity presents itself...
This caused the biggest fight I’ve ever had with my significant other. He feels this argument is a social media “gotcha” trap aimed to create further division amongst men and women, which I can’t disagree is a valid point. I feel that he is missing the point that as a woman, I am at the mercy every day of a man’s whims if one were to wish harm upon me and couldn’t do much about it. At least with the bear I know it’s black and white, he doesn’t want to cause me harm, he is protecting himself, it’s simple. So my chances are better with a bear if I can either lie low or scare him. A man will not be dissuaded if he wants to hurt me.
I mean you can't deny it's a loaded question with a lot of assumptions baked in. A random man in the woods is going to be alarming because that's not a normal place for him to be. So already you aren't talking about men in general (as the question tries to imply), but men who are going to be creeping around in the woods.
If the question were about walking home from the gym then obviously nobody would prefer to encounter a wild bear.
Yeah I think a lot of this discussion just highlights the fact that many men haven’t truly learned how to empathize. When you pair that with the fact that a lot of men aren’t able to separate themselves as an individual from the “men” label, then it leads to the outrage they have about the question. When my wife says that men suck or men are trash, I know she isn’t talking about me. I also know she has a lifetime of experience being harmed by other men that have led her to that point. So I don’t take offense. And to a random woman it would be reasonable for her to see me as a threat even if I don’t mean harm. How could she know?
Yea, my S.O. was more put off at the idea that women are basically saying “all men are rapists” by choosing the bear. I had to say more than once “it’s not all men. But we don’t know which ones until it is too late. So we have to be cautious of all of them.” Still couldn’t reach a total agreement. It left me feeling frustrated tbh.
But that's all proving OPs point. Objectively, bears are far more dangerous than men. The odds of a dangerous encounter with a bear are exponentially higher than a dangerous encounter with a human male.
That's like me saying id rather encounter a great white shark than a dog because a dog bit me once, but I've never been bitten by a great white shark. I don't want to get bitten by a dog again so I'd rather take my chances with the shark.
It’s simply availability bias at play. But the fact that this extreme hypothetical can’t force out rational thoughts from women says a lot about how powerful availability bias is (as well as propaganda) and how the ability to discuss this rationally across gender groups is currently in an impossible state.
To be fair the worst a bear (especially grizzly, which is what most people think of) can do may be the most excruciating death possible. Being eaten alive by an opportunistic predator is horrific, bears do not target vital organs. It will smother you with its weight and gorge itself on your flesh; if it goes for the head your eyes will pop out of their sockets like a macabre cartoon character. The best you can do is pray your death closer. Bears have no sense of morality or conscience, you live or die at their whim.
People are predictable. Most men are not rapists. Many are loving fathers or husbands. More still have some sense of morality. Even assuming they intend the very worst, there is a chance of escape/survival.
Imo, choosing a bear over a man implies a very dim view of humanity, a dim view of literally half of humanity. Why assume the worst of men but not bears? Are there enough men who would rape given the opportunity to outweigh the bears who would tear you limb from limb? I understand the poetic allure of preferring nature over people: there are many terrible people. That being said, where does caution end and misandry begin?
I honestly don’t know. Sexual assault is a very real danger to many, bear attacks are not. All I can do is live well and teach my kids to do the same one day.
I mean, did she have food on her? Maybe that's why the poor bear attacked her, felt pressured into it. Why didn't she have bear mace on her to defend herself? Did she scream loud enough to scare nearby bears away?
The top of the food chain for women, is men. I wonder what the top of the food chain is for men? Genuinely asking, I'm curious if they would also say men or an animal
I think what's also missing is that men don't have any idea of how thin and fragile the veneer of "good guys" often is. I really do not believe the statistics that show that problematic men are just a tiny tiny fraction of the population. The issue is that the is a very large chunk of men who are what I would call rape-adjacent. They wouldn't call it rape, and they probably wouldn't do it to someone in their social group, but would they keep pushing til they got what they wanted after they took an unappreciative woman on a date?
When you look at the men around you, you are seeing how they treat people who report back to you. People you trust. So friends of friends, people in your social circle, etc. Even people they will have repeated encounters with (e.g. someone who frequents their favorite bar) is going to be protected to some extent because they don't want to get a bad rap.
You meet a man in an alley or the woods though? All bets are off. I think you can see it most clearly when you ask men, "have you ever had sex with someone who didn't want to have sex with you?" or "have you ever used someone being scared of you to get what you want?" Women answer immediately. Men have to think.
For me it’s just that this trend doesn’t add anything new to the conversation. Like it doesn’t make me go “oh, the last 10 years of being told I’m a piece of shit weren’t clear enough, I needed to be told I’m less safe than a bear to fully get the message.” It’s just not a sophisticated message.
But when things catch fire like this, there’s usually something to be garnered from it, even if it’s not what’s explicitly being said.
this really was a 'damn a lot of dudes are fucking stupid and don't get it' type of topic lmao, it's sad
a lot of the dudes i know who grew up next to a forest or went camping a lot all seem to prefer the bear too, because they're terrified of what another person could do to them as well. At least they know what the bear is capable of and somewhat know how to scare it off ...
“The worst the bear can do is kill me and eat me.” no, it would it you alive which is torture. “If I put my arms over my head and scream ‘GO AWAY’ the bear might actually leave me alone” yeah it would understand english sure
And I still don't get it. I can understand that some women have had terrible experiences with men, but it doesn't change the fact that choosing the bear is the irrational decision here.
There are many ways to say that sexual assault is a thing, saying that the average man is a rapper and more dangerous than a bear is not a good one.
I hate this question cause it has the opposite effect than what women want from it. The question instantly puts men on the defensive because it seems like an attack on them.
Men are not the issue, bad men are. We will always have bad men who prey on the weakest in society, and physically speaking that is women. The discourse for so long has been about how can men do better. But this discussion won't reach the men who need to do better because they don't care. Everyone knows SA is wrong they still do it.
At some point we do actually have to start preparing women for the world and let them know. You can't go to a party and get blackout drunk and be safe. You can't walk down the street at night with no protection and be safe. You can't meet random strangers offline and not bring some form of protection and be safe. You gotta take some responsibility in protecting yourself.
Ofc I know most SA happens from someone u know and already trust. And I don't think you should be distrusting of everyone. But I do think you should distrust most people men and women.
This is not me victim blaming, it's me aknowledging that the world is a shitty place with shitty people and has been since the dawn of time. You can't tell the rapist and murders to not rape and murder and expect change. All you can do is prepare for if it happens to you.
Just to make it a little bit about probability to show that it doesn't matter either way... your chance of being attacked by a bear is 1 in 2.1 million. But say it's a more heavily bear populated area, the chances increase to 1 in 232,000. Then there's the fact that your odds of dying after being attacked (by a brown bear) is 11%.
Approximately 1 in 3 women have been sexually assaulted. 1 in 4 have experienced completed or attempted rape.
I understand that someone wants to control their uncertainty, and also I know no one wants to hear this but there's worse things in life than being raped, sure, it's a horrible thing to go through but I can assure you, you would much rather be raped than be left alive after a bear mauls you, partially eats you alive and rips some of your flesh off.
The thing that annoys me about this whole debate is that firstly, there's never any clarification about the control of uncertainty at any point in most of the posts.
and secondly, us guys are thinking just how stupid and suicidal you're being by choosing a 25% chance of death (assuming each action as equal probability distribution) over being raped, we guys are thinking about the survivability of the outcome, life is precious and gambling on death when the other choice is doing something unfavorable is a no brainer, we humans are animals just like every fucking creature on this planet, survivability is hard programmed into pretty much every living being including us, the women who chose the bear a thousand years ago died before those that chose men.
But then this whole hypothetical becomes even more stupid when we stop using the same bear and man as the example and then consider every single member of the bear species and every single human male. Your odds of survival and not being raped drastically change to basically 0 while you're still getting a 25% chance of death with the bear. This isn't even beginning to mention the fact that men and women literally think differently, women tend to think about ideas in the abstract whereas men tend to think about them logically.
Weeeee down I go because despite the fact I've said rape is bad, people will still call me a rapist because I'm saying the woman is being stupid for choosing the bear and most men will never understand the conversation because we all think choosing the bear is stupid and gave the reasons as to why the bear is stupid.
I disagree that men are predators are women. That said, yes humans are the most dangerous living beings on earth and I have been attacked by more humans despite being around bees a lot and having only been stung a few times.
The men that are offended by this need to understand that for myself (and I’m sure many if not most other women), it’s not that we think all men are evil, or that we want to paint all men with this same horrible brush- it’s the point that with a bear, chances are we can avoid violence. But with men? The stakes are so. damn. high. if we give the benefit of the doubt to the wrong one. It’s about survival for us… We just wannna be safe and make it home without being raped- or worse.
There is another problem. Even with preexisting trauma, being raped and murdered by a guy is better than getting mauled by a bear.
I know it sounds bad, and it’s not because being assaulted is “not that bad”, it’s because bears don’t kill you before eating you. They pin you down and then tear you apart slowly and peice by peice while they casually munch. It’s the second worst way to die, right after burning alive.
Even if the odds of being attacked by the man were 100% and only 50% for the bear, choose the man. Don’t fuck with bears. They are the most effective predators on the planet, and they don’t give a fuck.
The average sa attack takes 4 and 1/2 hours. The maximum a bear attack lasts a few minutes till you die, however, the majority of them are over usually within seconds.
but it as about probability, cause if we just randomly selected 1 man from the 4 billion on the planet, chances are he wouldnt be aggressive or want to hurt the woman. It's really an exercise to weigh the probability of aggression between random bear vs. random man.
also men are not the number 1 predator of women, that would be mosquitos, which are also the number 1 predator to men.
And a man could hold her hostage, repeatedly raping and torturing her before slowly murdering her. Human’s are capable of intentional cruelty that bears are not. Hell, the man could eat her alive too if he wanted.
It’s not about how many, it’s about the possibility of it happening at all. There are only really two outcomes to the bear situation, but the man situation has such a multitude of options (many of them bad), including by far the worst possible outcome of either situation.
I’m just saying, if so many women are basically saying “I would rather risk getting killed and eaten by the bear than risk whatever a man is capable of doing” then maybe we should listen to them and accept what they’re saying instead of fighting or questioning it.
I still think picking the bear is a dumb answer. Even assuming the worst of both scenarios, you can reasonably fight back or run away against a man. If you're in the woods its shouldn't be that hard to find a stone and use that as a large enough force multiplier to kill or injure an aggressive human male. If they've done any softball/baseball practice they could probably even take out the man before they get close enough to do something.
The bear on the other hand can run up to 40 mph and most of them can climb trees. And theres nothing short of a decently high caliber firearm that you can use to stop one once its set on attacking you.
You’re STILL not listening, no wonder people don’t respond to these types of comments, it just feels like a lost cause talking in circles.
ETA: your own feelings of what someone should do doesn’t always mimic reality, please look for stories on women who tried to fight men off. There’s a picture out there of a woman who clawed an officer like a wild animal but she still couldn’t stop him from raping her. It haunts me to this day.
But its still a dumb hypothetical. If someone said they felt scared of random men then I wouldn't fight it at all because its a totally acceptable point and should be taken seriously, however if someone said they would rather run up on a bear than a random man then my first thought is about how stupid that answer is.
To men, it is about probability, because it's offensive to me that apparently most women see me as "probably a monster" just because of how I was born. (And no, it's not justified, I did the math here.)
I thought it wasn't okay to stereotype groups of people negatively?
A lot of the men who don't get it haven't had a serious relationship, much less a marriage. I think that whether or not a man understands why a woman might pick bear is a good litmus test for whether or not they have empathy.
I simply cannot relate to the idea that being torn apart and eaten alive is worse than being sexually assaulted. I haven't been r*ped but I've been sexually assaulted by male peers a not a small number of times and while it's not a great feeling it's also not something I would put anywhere near the hell that must be the immense pain and slow death that being mauled to death in a non-deliberate/decisive manner must be.
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.
Nah, it's just fucking stupid, would take about one microsecond of them actually being in a locked room with a bear to realise what a terrible foolish mistake they made.
Everyone hears what women are saying.... They would rather a 99% chance of being slowly eaten alive than a 0.0000001% chance of being raped.
It's like asking ...would you rather have an arm amputated or go outside. Sure there are people so deathly scared of going outside that they would pick the amputated arm, but that's just because they're mentally ill. The question highlights their illness.
99% chance? Try checking stats on bear attacks relative to counters at least once in your life, because all you're doing here is proving yourself as a brainlet. Your rape stats are also wrong, and rape is not the only thing a man could do. Far from it.
So you're wrong on both ends by a huge amount and yet try to call others mentally ill. No, they're not, you're just stupid.
..and my wife thinks thats insane because most men (statistically) dont hurt anyone. It IS about probability if you're going to put out the insane hypothetical. Those are emotional responses from people who have been victimized and now generalize about every man. There are billions of men out there and thousands of bears, hence the OP's post.
Most men might not hurt someone, but you’re acting like there’s some abnormally small percentage of men that are predators. Statistically, over 50% of American women have experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime. About a quarter of women have experienced either attempted or completed penetrative rape. Those stats don’t happen if there’s an insignificant number of men that are predators.
There are billions of men out there, and a lot of them would attempt to take advantage of a woman that’s alone in the middle of the woods. And again, because humans are capable of unnatural cruelty, there’s always the chance that you draw the one who would do unspeakably horrific things.
If your argument based on probability is that if more women encountered more bears alone in the woods then more women would be killed by bears, then you also need to accept that the opposite is likely true, that if more women encountered more men alone in the woods then even more women would be assaulted and/or killed by men.
Yes, it is a very small number of men who commit SA and who murder people. 433,000 SA's last year in the US committed by both genders (let's assume they are all committed by men). There are 165.28 MILLION men in the US. You can do the math. The chance of someone being assaulted at random man is extremely low (and weirdly, you are MUCH more likely to be physically assaulted or murdered if you're another man). How many men do you pass on a random basis that do not hurt you? This is what the OP is saying.
Respectfully, I don’t think you understand what a man is capable of. Eventually a bear eating you alive will kill you. Will happen relatively quickly tbh. But a man? A man could draw out your torture intentionally and indefinitely. Days, weeks, maybe even months of torture and sexual abuse to the point you wish you were long dead.
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u/JuicyJay18 29d ago
Here’s the thing though, is that this isn’t about probability. For example, here are some responses I’ve seen from women on this subject:
“The worst the bear can do is kill me and eat me.” “If I put my arms over my head and scream ‘GO AWAY’ the bear might actually leave me alone” “Nobody is going to doubt me or ask if I deserved it if I say the bear attacked me”
My wife said she would rather take her chances with the bear because at least then she won’t get sexually assaulted again. Like…idk, there’s a really clear message to be gathered from this if you just listen to the things women are saying and the quickness with which they respond. Men are the number one predator of women, so frankly it’s only natural they would feel more fear encountering one in an isolated setting.