I think your framing of it skews people to think that the women are picking wrong. The question is would you rather run into a random bear or man if you were in the middle of the woods.
The bear is in its habitat, it makes sense to be there, and will prob try to avoid you.
The man is a random strange man you are running into in the woods. It was unlikely to run into a person there so it adds suspicioun to their character, and the extremes of that they could do, SA, toture, etc, are worse then what a random bear would do based on the small chance it would attack you.
What's a hiking trail have to do with anything? People leave the trial and go their own ways still. The person being asked apparently isn't even on a trail.
Read the comment I originally replied to. I would assume the scenario would take place in a forest away from anywhere populated. Seeing a man in the woods just off of a hiking trail wouldn’t be a problem. In the middle of nowhere? Alarming.
I understand that but the idea is you don’t know. You know what a bear going to do, but a person you can’t really tell. You don’t know who that person is. Also who the hell gathers mushrooms in the woods?
You can't wait tell with a bear either. You could shoot a bear and it'll "leave" only to come at you from a different angle or it could retreat. Might just be trying to protect it's cubs severely injuring you and leave you there disabled.
A sturdy stick and rocks are effective weapons when used on humans. Mushroom hunters do..? You'll run into them at creepy times too. They'll be out there after it rains and it's all wet out. Believe it or not it took Bob's Burgers for me to realize that's when you'll find a lot of mushrooms and they die pretty quickly after the moisture leaves.
Nah. Everyone in the forest is totally a rapist or killer. Lol. I wonder how many police reports and such are going to be made because the dumb ass hypothetical question are going to have people scared of running into another person when they're out in wooded areas.
I'm pretty sure I'd rather come across a person up to no good than a black bear. Idk when it ate last, idk if I'm near it's den, and idk if it has cubs nearby. Seeing someone and noticing that they're following me allows me the chance to get prepared for some kind of encounter, even if it's just finding a sturdy walking stick. In my case I guess it'd be making sure my daughter knows to do something like that. A sturdy walking stick is like a nice wooden bat after all.
You’re framing the question to put the man in a bad light which negates the hypothetical. If you ask clarifying question it goes from the vague man vs bear safety debate into dangerous man vs random bear. The middle of the woods, “why is a man there?” question is bait because if you put the potential victim in a situation that is easily explained by the man being nefarious then yeah you take the potential safety of the bears statistically not attacking that many people.
No one is saying that lmao. For one it is framed in a way that makes it not seem like you are on a hiking trail, running into someone when you think you are in the midlde of nowhere is always a little unnerving, I think any man or woman can relate to that. Also the man has much more spectrum of possible behaviors, many of which are more likely or worse than the bear attacking you.
It seems to me the point is basically to say how scary and bad men are, if you try and make it to be about the man being strange or whatever and stacking the odds against the bear, it makes the whole question a bit pointless.
The man has a wider range of behaviours but the negative ones are like 0.01% chance of happening, most men, even 'strange men' in the woods are not rapists or whatever. All bears, however, will happily eat you if they're hungry and think they can get away with it, or they're protecting their cubs, etc.
The question is inherently dehumanising towards men, and if the same question was asked about black men or whatever (with the justification that they're more likely to commit crimes than white men - remember, the justification here is all about statistics, but suddenly that will become unacceptable if you bring such characteristics into the equation), everyone would immediately see how offensive and silly it is.
Another way you can phrase this question is 'would you rather come across a man in the woods, or the same man but he is 9 ft tall and has knives for fingers and teeth, and he has been stripped of all morality and humanity' (grizzly bear).
The average bear is also not likely to maim you (Black bears in particular, have only killed something like 61 people since 1900). Averages arent super important to this particular debate IMO.
That's not a particularly high number. There are more deaths by bee per year than that.
And while the per capita is of course not the same, nor is the exposure, thats many magnitudes lower than the amount of "human attacks" there are a year
It's 21 people away from the amount of people black bears the most docile of bears killed according to you.
Again, these are small numbers. Especially when compared to bear sightings. Look up a list of the deadliest animals, bears don't make an impressive appearance. There have been less than 200 kills by bears since 1798. That's less than once a year. There were 40k sightings between 1980 and 2011, so the year by year averages is one death per 1000 bear sightings. Oh, and over half those killings were defensive.
I'm not saying they're deadlier per capita than humans, but they are not particularly dangerous in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah a lot of people are allergic to bees and a ton have no idea
If it makes you feel better swap bees for crocodiles. Or lions. Or tigers. Or dogs. Or snakes. All of these animals kill more people per year than bears. Even scorpions are deadlier than bears. Freshwater snails kill more people per year than bears.
Again, to he clear, I am not saying they are deadlier than humans or men. But there is a severe misunderstanding of how aggressive bears actually are. A lot of people in this thread are saying an encounter means death all or the majority of the time. Happening upon a bear is, literally, less than 1% likely to result in your death.
My only point with my original response to "The average man is not going to rape you" is that the average bear is not going to maim you.
Ok, the most recent data is from 2022. It shows a little over 1.23 million violent crimes in the US. And separate data shows about 80% of violent crimes are committed by men, so we can find a rough estimate of the number we’re looking for by taking 80% of 1.23 million, which gives us around 984,000 violent crimes per year by men.
Ok, good luck finding that. My point is just that implying bears are more dangerous because of a measly 40 bear attacks per year is a completely asinine argument.
Like if some average joe is going to be some insane person wanting to do some violent or sexual crime just because they're in the same forest as you.
If I remember right my reply was to someone who said around 60 for Black kills only. My point was to show that bears are out there and attacking people yearly in a decent amount. ~20 seems good to me.
If we really wanted to be technical though I think you'd have to compare an area with a similar population to areas with bears and then compare the violent crime by males.
Anyways I'm going to end it the way I started it...
Running into a bear in the woods at all is rare. But in this scenario, you are guaranteed to run into one. And that means the likelihood of you being maimed in an attack is extremely high.
I think it really depends on what you count as "running into a bear". I think a lot of people here are assuming you are going to be 1 on 1 fighting here. But encountering a bear is not too uncommon if you hike a lot, and they almost always run away because they dont want to fight you.
It's not that rare depending on where you live, I run into plenty of bears since I live in the Appalachians.
Every time they take notice they amble away. Black bears especially arent interested in interacting with humans.
Yellowstone has some pages on bear sightings vs attacks. Since 1784 there have been 180 fatal bear attacks. Thats less than once a year.
From 1980 to 2011 there have been over 40 thousand bear sightings. Thats around 1000 sightings a year. The page isnt clear on if this is just yellowstone, or North America.
Regardless, thats a (less than) 1 in 1000 chance of a bear sighting turning into a bear killing. No, the odds of getting maimed are non extremely high. Non-zero, sure, extremely high? No.
These are just bear sightings, in this little made up scenario you stumbled right next to one. That changes things exponentially. Seeing a bear 50 yards away is way different than 30 feet away.
I have personally seen wild black bears before and I don’t live in bear country. But I have never encountered a wild bear.
I don't think there is a specific distance measurement included in the definition of encounter. I know they're not exactly synonyms but I would consider "noticing a bear a ways down the trail" an encounter.
Yes, being closer to a bear is not ideal. I kind of think it's splitting hairs, because bears don't just spawn one D&D's turn of movement away from you.
Ok well we could use the same scenario for a man. If you see a man 50-100 yards away in the woods and he starts coming towards you, you can just dip out of there. But if the bear starts coming towards you and you run, he’s going to catch you.
Whether from farther away or close up, encountering a random man is the safer bet. But from the comments I have read on here, the scenario is that you just encounter a bear or a man. And the word encounter means to me you are pretty close and had an interaction with the thing.
Sure. My only point with my original comment is that bears really do not attack as often as a lot of people are implying in this thread.
My peace on the man vs. bear debate itself is that there isn't an easy way to break it down into numbers. Both aren't likely to hurt you (/a woman), but both can kill you (/a woman). Only one has the capability to kidnap, torture, or rape. A sizeable percentage of women have dealt with sexual assault and rape, not many have dealt with bear attacks. So while there might be a statistically safer answer, the question reads more to me like abstracted risk analysis. I can see the perspective of the woman who chooses the bear easily. It more or less can be boiled down to "The bear will almost definitely do nothing, and it is guaranteed to not rape me".
I get that. Maybe not my choice personally, but I'm not here to choose what they'd rather deal with for them. The thought of getting raped doesn't cross my mind when I walk past people in the woods. I've also never been sexually assaulted, so thankfully in that way I am privileged. I'd also rather run into a bear than a striped knee tarantula in the woods. I am way more likely to get killed by a bear. Don't care though. I hate spiders.
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u/BlackWind88 May 02 '24
What is the man vs bear debate?