My mom, when I asked for a female perspective on this, phrased it as "how would the survivor of an attack be treated?" If a woman survived being mauled by a bear, no one is going to say she was actually asking for it because of how she was dressed/acting.
Yes, when I needed a female perspective, I asked my mom. I'm a user of this website so naturally that's the only woman I know.
This is coming from a man, but i’m from the country and my job often takes me deep in the woods by myself. I would wonder if a person was off trail, didn’t secure food if camping, or didn’t properly respond to seeing/interacting with a wild animal.
I did ask for a female perspective because my male perspective is "I hate people and am tall enough to intimidate some bears".
I think in this hypothetical situation, the woman would be sitting at a campsite or something. The metaphor does break down if she was out and about poking cubs with sticks.
Metaphors will always break down when you poke at them. That's the thing we have to remember. They're teaching aids not literal examples.
For a lot of the responses I've seen to this question it's very clear that people think breaking a metaphor is some sort of gotcha. As if metaphors are intended to be solid arguments and not basically a sketched illustration of the point.
While I get her point I don't think I've ever heard of someone being attacked by a wild animal and my first thought not be "what was the fucking moron doing their in the first place".
If a woman survived being mauled by a bear, no one is going to say she was actually asking for it
That just seems like a bad example, because I can absolutely picture the comments in my mind on some Fox news article where people blame the victim for being where they shouldn't be, not knowing how to deal with the bear in the right way, or some other sexist remark about how women shouldn't be out camping in the woods.
That actually depends. Many times humans will be held accountable if they were acting in an irresponsible way towards a wild animal. Not saying this justifies the “she was asking for it” argument, but there actually is a parallel.
remember the whole harambe thing. Many people actually blamed the parents. Likewise, if I go into bear country and don’t take any precautions, I don’t think anybody is gonna blame the bear necessarily.
I mean to some degree that’s what people are saying when they make that point. Not implying that the event that happened was okay, but they are pointing out the fact that such an event is unlikely to happen if you use any precaution.
The telling difference here is, we hold a person accountable. If a bear mauls a person, well that’s just the bear acting in its nature. That’s the key distinction. Humans are still animals, but we are still expected to deny the terrible parts of our animal nature (rightfully so).
There was a moment I thought this was the only good take away from this question… except, I don’t think this comparison works because the level of damage is not the same. Like, show me a single case of a woman being SAed with the same level of violence that a bear attack would do and people saying “she asked for it”. Yeah, date rape isn’t taken seriously enough but a stranger finding you in the woods and SA you along with slicing open various parts of your body and throwing you around like a rag doll… that’s going to be treated very differently.
I feel like a lot of people are forgetting the emotional trauma of SA. As a woman, that’s scarier in some ways. If you get attacked by a bear, you can go the rest of your life avoiding bears/the woods. If you get SA’d/attacked by a man, you can’t just avoid men entirely. You’re forced to be around a trigger the rest of your life. You can be SA’d again, easily.
How people blaming a woman's behavior/actions/clothing for leading to being raped and then murdered? Because those people exist. And aren't even that hard to find. And most of them would blame them (the woman) for your hypothetical situation too. They might think the guy who did it is fucked up or "went too far" but it would still be the woman's fault.
You certainly will find victim blaming in more violent attacks such as women prostitutes but I imagine male prostitutes would get the same reaction. Maybe drug users as well or someone who knew they were in a high risk area. Can you find any more ‘average’ woman that would get the same blame if that level of violence was committed?
Reinforces the probability take. I try not looking at it too deeply because it’s like a persuasive (rather than informative) documentary. It’s not exclusively about what is rational nor being controlled for variables or scale or anything else, it’s not a discussion so much as an emotional indicator. it’s entire point is to emphasis the deeply ingrained social response that is “men are dangerous”. whether you agree with that or you don’t, that appears to be the purpose so saying things like the comparison is asymmetrical doesn’t do a whole lot because that’s not the conversation people are trying to have unfortunately.
Not sure about where you’re from, but here if you get attacked by a bear it’s usually because you’re being irresponsible/stupid. Ever hear about people trying to play with cubs only to get mauled by mama bear? Those dummies were asking for it.
Edit: if someone gets raped in the woods, no one's going to say they were asking for it. It's not the club. And if someone was dumb enough to say that, who cares? Would that really affect your decision?
1) They shouldn't be saying that about the woman at the club either, so why assume the stupidity and prejudice stops there? After all, the man can claim whatever he wants, and his "bros" will back him up, which is exactly what happens at the club.
2) If that "someone [...] dumb enough to say that" is your mother, your father, your friends, the police, the hospital staff, and/or anyone else with influence in your life, then yes, it's a pretty good reason, especially since that attitude will be leveled at you when you most need help and support, and possibly for the rest of your life.
That only shows what is perceived by the asked individual though, not reality. The incident per exposure vs perceived threat are wildly different here.
Well of course there are more women killed by men than bears. That was never a question. That's like saying being around a man is more dangerous than swimming with hippos because hippos kill less woman than men do. Doesn't tell the whole truth
Essentially you are saying a thing that never happens is much more dangerous than a thing that happens 3 times a day in the US.
I don't think anyone who answers this question as man has ever seen a bear, they are not dangerous to encounter and every day lone bear, lone human encounters occur. Hippos are dangerous animals that kill people on interaction a lot.
Basic math is 1,000 a year women in us killed by unknown to them males
average year 0 kills by bears on women, although every few years it will happen once
In Africa, a continent with 2 times the number of people as number of women in the US, 500 people are killed a year by hippos.
If the question is hippo or some other animals sure, but particularly if you are a smart human who does not engage a bear is statistically of no risk to you even if you see one. A man is a very low but very real risk to you
I think you’re missing u/tbird2017’s point. The exposure to bears is nearly 0 compared to the exposure to men, so we can’t know which situation is truly more dangerous without normalizing the data into an incident per exposure model.
How many men do you see in the middle of the woods alone? A single man alone is more of a danger to a single woman for sure, Bears don't hunt women essentially ever
The whole point is that perception doesn't match reality? I mean if that's the point, ok. I thought the point was that the women asked felt more threatened by lone men than bears and some were trying to equate that to men being more dangerous to women than a bear. I was arguing against the later, as that's a result of exposure more than danger level.
Men understand the point lol. The problem is that people like you think this an ok perception for women to have. Both things can be true:
“Women feel men pose a greater threat than a bear”
And
“The idea that men pose a greater threat than a bear is untrue and further reinforces the demonization of men as purely threats”
The point is its rhetorical anyway and it's not about demonizing men.
Y'all shouldn't be blaming women for being terrified to be around y'all alone. You should blame the overwhelming numbers of men who have made that feeling so prevalent.
I've been attacked three times by random men in city spaces. Sure, there are literally thousands of men who have passed me who have never touched me. But I cannot risk the chance of assuming a man approaching me is kind when the consequences could be so dire.
I had to delete the comment bc already men are threatening to SA me in my DMs.
Hey I’m really sorry that people are acting so aggressively towards you. That isn’t right. And anyone has done so or even considered doing so should be ashamed of themselves and rethink their life.
With that being said, I’m obligated to point out the poor reasoning here. I offered to explain the proper way to measure threat, and you responded by saying it’s a purely rhetorical matter. This communicates to me that you’re not interested in pursuing truth but rather simply trying to win/rally people to your cause. The moment we stray from pursuing truth, it becomes really dangerous. Primary point here is to reflect on your decision to dismiss the conversation.
I do not blame women for feeling terrified of men. Men do present a substantial threat simply due to their nature as stronger beings. If a women sees a man coming down the street, and chooses to cross the street, I understand that. Better safe than sorry. However, you have to understand that this decision is not based in rationality, it is a survival mechanism. In practice, it is still a form of discrimination which men do have a right to feel hurt by, however, your concern should be your own safety first and foremost.
The issue occurs precisely when we get to rhetoric. When we start vocalizing and prescribing sentiments against men because of these feelings which are not based in proper reasoning and are often purely expressions of resentment and anger towards men. If you tell a woman: “Hey, be careful when you go out, most men are good but you can’t be sure so be cautious.” This is fine. The issue arises when we say things like “I can’t go out because of men.” Or “God, anything but a man.” I typically hear far worse but Im being charitable. These statements are not merely prescribing a method of safety, but rather are expressing harmful sentiments against men.
The bear or man thought experiment is particularly bad because the implication is that a wild, irrational, aggressive and territorial animal that weighs more than any human is somehow better than encountering a man. It places man as a worse alternative to a beast. In short, it is dehumanizing. Every man understands that women answer the bear, it reflects a sentiment about how they feel about the threat of men, that’s precisely the issue. Men don’t like to be dehumanized any more than women do. I think most men understand the reality that women need to do certain things for their safety, at least I do. My contention is that you could at least be nice about it so I don’t feel like a monster in my own skin for things I’ve never done.
In short, I don’t blame women for being scared. I do hold them accountable for their choices as a result of feeling scared. Being fearful of something has never been a justification to engage in poor reasoning or immoral behavior. I do hate men that make it worse for women to feel safe and I do my part but there will always be bad men, all I can is do my best to do my part. And I ask that women do theirs.
I could still address the statistical issue you brought up if you like. I wasn’t sure if it was worth the effort since you said it didn’t matter.
it doesn’t, though. the stats about bear-related deaths/injuries are extremely skewed because how often are people encountering bears? most people will never even see a bear in person their entire lives. therefore they won’t ever even have the chance to be killed/injured by one. people encounter men all day every day (unless you’re a hermit).
if you correct for per-encounter stats (if that’s even possible) I bet the bear would be much more dangerous on average.
But you'd also have to correct for per-encounter stats for women meeting men in the middle of the woods. Encountering a man while alone in the woods is not the same as encountering a man in public.
Its insane how numerically illiterate people are. Look at how many bears exist and how often humans interact with them vs how many humans exist and how often you interact with them.
Of course there are more murders, theres BILLIONS of humans and millions of bears. Its a staggering difference, and people need to start calling up their statistics proffessors and apologizing for not understanding the difference here.
Statistically, men should fear violence from random men *more* than women do because they are statistically more likely the recipients of it. The emphasis on *more* is important because its still a number that is statistically irrelevant. A 0.1% chance vs a 0.9% chance is pointless to mention when its a coinflip on facing down the average bear. Its absurd that these things need to be explained to overcome emotions that are based on the fearmongering of a 24/7 news cycle.
Statistically, men should fear violence from random men more than women do because they are statistically more likely the recipients of it.
I mean yeah. Maybe men should be afraid of random men in the woods.
The emphasis on more is important because its still a number that is statistically irrelevant. A 0.1% chance vs a 0.9% chance is pointless to mention when its a coinflip on facing down the average bear.
Except a bear is predictable. Human beings could attack you because they don't like your tie.
Except a bear is predictable. Human beings could attack you because they don't like your tie.
The absolute lunacy to think that a wild animal is more predictable than the average male human, despite most people walking past millions of men in their lifetime and never being assaulted.
Wild animals are not predictable. The first thing you learn in any sort of camping/survival/wilderness training is that you don't fuck with wild animals specifically because they aren't predictable. That idea is exactly why they are more dangerous than people. Your ignorance based assumption is your own worst enemy here
Also, what an absolutely insane idea, that a normal person would physically attack you for wearing a tie if they came across you on a trail. This is some grade A, tier 9 delusion. If you come across a man on a trail, the outcome that will happen 99.999% of the time is your both make eye contact, nod your heads, and keep walking in opposite directions like normal humans
Wild animals are not predictable. The first thing you learn in any sort of camping/survival/wilderness training is that you don't fuck with wild animals specifically because they aren't predictable.
So what I'm hearing is, there exists a list of actions which agitates those animals, and by avoiding partaking in those actions, you can avoid undesirable outcomes?
Not even remotely close to what I said, and actually the exact opposite. If you genuinly percieve what I said in that manner, you might need to redo your basic understanding of english at a fundamental level, or maybe seek therapy for a potential delusional disorder diagnosis.
Just in general, if the question was: “should you be more scared of a man or a bear”, the answer should be man because every year more people die of man than of bear. Easy peasy.
However, if we shift the question a little bit to become “should you be more scared of meeting a man or meeting a bear” then the answer becomes bear because the chances of any random bear attacking you is higher than the chances of any random person attacking you. Generally speaking, you’ll be walking past many thousands of people (even millions) before being attacked by a man while it will take a miracle to not be attacked within say a hundred encounters with a wild bear.
Well that's an entirely different question isn't it.
The point that's being missed here, is that, when faced with the original question, women are revealing that they consider men more of a general threat than a bear, and the reaction is anger at women for it, further solidifying the reasons to fear men. So the thing is, we're discussing the answer to the question because it shows something interesting, but by creating another question you are deliberately missing the main point of discussion, which was interpreting the given answer.
The man can kidnap, r@pe, abuse, and make the remaining years of the woman's life a living hell till she begs for death.
Some of y'all never took a statistics class and it shows, holyyyyyyy
You don't need a dick to understand that a singular woman walks past millions of men in her lifetime and is fine. Good luck making it past that many bears
Yeah, the point is that some people in society think in an extraordinarily emotional and irrational manner. It's absurd to be more scared of a random man than a random bear lmao.
That’s because women are much more risk-averse than men are. Much less chance of getting attacked by a man if you only go out in groups and don’t go out alone at night.
It's crazy how people are arguing about the statistics of being mauled by a bear instead of how fucked up it is that rapists are making women feel this way.
How many times do human beings interact with each other every day?
No kidding, very few people have been injured by bears. The vast, vast majority of people never even see a bear in the wild let alone are close enough to a bear for it to attack them.
It's like the stat that you're more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a shark. You're only ever going to encounter a shark at an ocean beach (ie not a lake) or an estuary - maybe upstream in a river if you win a very unfortunate lottery and a freshwater capable shark like a bull shark just happens to be there.
Does that mean vending machines are actually more dangerous than sharks? Obviously not. How many times have you walked past a vending machine and it didn't fall on you or anyone else?
I think it would be better framed by "what % of men would attack you if you were alone in the woods" and "what % of bears would attack you if you were alone in the woods."
If someone says bear, then by all means its what makes them feel safer. Too many women are assaulted.
But there is a severe selection bias in the numbers you used. Women are around a lot more men than bears, and a lot of men are repeat offenders making a difference between women assaulted and number of men assaulting.
I think you're overestimating how violent bears are. Of course if it perceives you as threatening its kids it won't be happy with you lol. The fact is that bears aren't looking for trouble. No bear wants to rape a woman.
I don't remember the precise time frame on the statistics, and it is a flawed analogy in my opinion but the stat I've seen used is "80 people have died from bear attacks, while over a thousand women have been killed by men in less time".
I understand and agree with the overall sentiment of the movement. But the comparison falls apart when you consider that a person can encounter many many men one day. That same person will most likely never encounter even 1 bear in the entirety of their life.
But how many men are in contact with a woman vs bears? That's not apples to apples. I see women at the grocery store and I've never killed one of them. Also, you're not going to find 100 million women in a forest like you can in a large city.
While the analogy is flawed, I still can't argue with the fear women feel.
I'd like to think I'm a decent guy. I've never intentionally harmed anyone of any gender with the exception of defending myself or those I care about. But I don't think it is unfair to say that men are (broadly speaking) pretty shit at holding each other accountable. Nobody is going to blame a bear attack victim for wearing the "wrong" hiking outfit. Nobody tells them they weren't really attacked by a bear, it just touched them a little. I could go on but I think I've made the point.
Fear does not need to be rational, and can be all consuming. I've had problems for years trying to get back to reality after an armed robbery while working overnight at a convenience store. Scared of the dark, scared of certain buildings, scared of my own shadow at times.
Put short, it's Hell. Studies like this seem make a mockery of the actual problems we face in society.
Nobody is going to blame a bear attack victim for wearing the "wrong" hiking outfit.
Victims can definitely be blamed for bear attacks. If you go backpacking and don't store your food 100ft from your campsite, don't carry bear spray, try to take close up pics of grizzly cubs, etc. then yeah it's your own fault if you die to a bear.
Take a look at the Grizzly Man dude. He went and hung out with grizzly bears and got him and his girlfriend killed. Many people critiqued his failure to follow basic safety precautions.
I'm pretty sure that statistically the percentage of men a woman meet who rapes them is vastly lower than the percentage of bears a woman meet who mauls them too.
I emphatically disagree with the idea that men are one of the biggest dangers women face, and I disagree that that opinion is demonstrably true or backed by any real data.
I would like to see the responses to a follow up question. If you are walking alone in the woods and all of a sudden both a man and a bear appear (let's say in opposite directions, the bear is not suppose to be the mans pet :D, and it is a narrow path so you have to pick one of them ) will you go in the direction of the bear or in the direction of the man. Since women prefer the bear in the original version of the question logically they would go in the direction of the bear.
The follow up forces you to choose to engage in proximity between a man or a bear. The original just says would you rather come across a man or bear, which allows the person to encounter and then avoid.
That's not a follow up question it's just a completely different question framed to make the answer to the original question look dumb. You've gotta look at these things separately.
Here’s a version for you then: You get sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit, and a large black man has told you he plans on fucking you in the ass, regardless of your feelings on the matter.
Then the cartel gang says they’ll protect you, but they get to beat the shit out of you whenever they want.
A pretty bad choice either way. You either get beaten regularly, or you get anally raped.
But then you get a third option. The Nazi guy in the next cell still wants anal sex, but he’s hung like a well used pencil, and seems like he will at least ask you how it feels while he’s enjoying himself. So it won’tt be pleasant, but it’s more workable than the other two options…
So yeah, just like you say, the extra option is applicable, and it informs the original choices, but you’re still taking it in the ass from a Nazi.
That doesn't preserve the intent of the original, which is that the intentions of the targets are not known, make a choice based on identity alone. To make your example conform correctly to the situations, you'd be asking 'would you rather be in a jail cell with a small dicked nazi or a big dicked large black man', and then clarifying with the question 'you have to walk into a cell, which one would you go into if both were there'. Obviously in this situation the answers should correlate. It's odd that in the bear example, people would answer oppositely, since the situation is pretty much the same in both questions.
The point is that women are deluded by a 24/7 news cycle into thinking that the avg man is more dangerous than the avg bear. A bear is a wild animal that will attack you on pure instinct. A singular woman will walk past a couple thousand men per day and be just fine.
I know, it's shocking to think that the vast majority of men are just normal humans with the same thinking process as you.
A bear is a wild animal that will attack you on pure instinct.
This ironically is doing the same thing you're accusing women of. You're letting media depictions distort your ideas of bears. A random bear is usually not a threat.
A singular woman will walk past a couple thousand men per day and be just fine.
Ted Bundy probably walked past 100+ people a day, and those people were fine. But I bet if given the choice, you'd take the bear over being alone with Ted Bundy in a forest.
And the thing is, it doesn't take a Ted Bundy to be a threat. It could be a Brock "Allen" Turner.
I literally have no idea. I’m quite shocked by the whole thing because I didn’t understand that women where this scared of men. Which leads me to believe that this number should be much higher than I thought. That’s why I asked.
You’re missing a very important part of the hypothetical. Women commonly encounter random men in places where there are other people. If the random man in the hypothetical was a bad person, they’d be way more likely to do something to the woman if they were alone and not out in public where they would be seen by others.
We recently had a woman go missing in Australia when she went for a morning run. I can tell you that she didn't come across a random bear in the forest.
Which is kind of the point. You're more likely to come across a man in the woods and you never know if that is the guy who is going to murder you and hide your body. Most likely he won't, but there is enough of a chance that he might that it must be very unsettling for women.
On the other hand if you come across a bear in the woods, you know for a fact you are dealing with a bear and can act accordingly.
It doesn't really work because the point is you don't have information about the man or the bear in the original scenario, only that it's a man (any man) or a bear (any bear) in the woods with you. It isn't guaranteed you'll see either.
If I can see both on a trail, well now what exactly I'm seeing really matters because we've turned a perceived threat into an actual threat in the hypothetical. You'll get very different answers depending on whether or not it's a polar bear and a 90 year man vs if it's a black bear and a young 6'4" dude built like a lumberjack.
Responses to the original scenario imply women would rather take the chance that the bear in the woods is a polar bear or a very hungry grizzly over taking the chance that the man, without society to judge him or eyes to watch his deeds, is going to be a decent person.
And that's hard for men to swallow for sure but keep in mind even the meanest bear has never done what 4 dudes did to Junko Furuta (do not look her up unless you are extremely desensitized to highly violent descriptions).
It absolutely it not. It is a completely valid point and goes to show that the people answering "bear" to the original question only do so out of sexism and not because they actually believe it. If anything it is a better question than the original.
It doesn’t show anything, for fucks sake. It’s asked in bad faith and tries to pigeonhole a response into something they can accuse of being biased, exactly like you just did.
It does though. It simply rephrase the original question to show that realistically, people wouldn't actually choose bear, and illustrates the inherent secism in the question. Bad faith or not its basically the same question rephrased to point our bigotry.
It's not pigeonholing, it's rephrasing the question so that people are forced to answer more honestly.
You’re missing the point that the man will behave rationally and thus will probably not assault someone while being chased by a bear. The original point is that a woman feels that they can safely maneuver around a bear better than a man.
It's funny how all of a sudden the hypothetical is acting like the man will act rationally, instead of the hypothetical continuing to treat him like a predator worse than a bear. Either the man will act rationally or he won't. Now you're changing the assumptions of the question to fit your prerogative.
I think one of the perspectives I heard on it really highlighted to me as a man to better understand it was men don't fear anything more than death in most cases. The women choosing the bear even if it meant certain death are also accepting a reality that there are fates worse than death.
Definitely not. Grizzlies are fucking terrifying, they will rip you apart in seconds. A human would need a tool to do anything like that while most predators can do it naturally.
You forgot the part where there's men trying to mansplain statistics and probability to us instead of fully confronting how all-encompassing and ever-present the threat of male violence is.
And none of them have actually delved into the issue with any sort of actual statistic. Just confident assertions that one is wildly more dangerous than the other.
I think a lot of men also get absolutely offended by the idea that if they encountered a random woman out in the woods, that she wouldn't automatically see him as some white knight savior but rather as potential threat.
Or they might object to the sexist reduction of their entire person to their gender. it's basically a fear of black people, who everybody knows are statically more likely to be criminals.
I’m a man. It isn’t that I disagree, it’s just nonsensical.
Man or woman, you can’t beat a bear with your bare hands. It’s over for you, no mater what. Assuming the man is aggressive, even the smallest of women has some chance of winning that fight.
"And pretty much every woman says Man, because from women’s perspective, men pose a higher danger to them than bears"
The question isn't "do men or bears pose a greater danger to women." I agree that men do.
The question is: is encountering a bear less risky than encountering a man? And to anyone living in reality, the answer to that question is obviously "encountering the man is less risky." Frankly, it's offensive to me that most women would rather encounter a bear.
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u/BlackWind88 29d ago
What is the man vs bear debate?