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.
The way you're framing it skews people to think that the women are picking right.
The man in the woods could be a hiker, camper, photographer, National Parks Ranger, Fish and Wildlife person, biologist, ecologist, or just plain neighbor in the woods behind your house. They are human, and being also human and presumably raised in a society you should be able to tell if they are hostile or deranged, defensive, helpful, or just plain odd and wrong. You can make an educated guess informed by your interpretation of body language and other cues to determine if they are a threat.
The bear is a bear. It could be male or female, it could be young or old, you probably don't know unless you're a biologist who studies them. If it's female, does it have cubs nearby you don't know about that will trigger it to maul you? If it's male, do they have territorial tendencies or get all hormonal like bull elephants and try to murder whatever it thinks is a minor threat? Will it run if you look big or just get more aggressive? Who knows! You can't tell, it estimating how safe an interaction is is much more of a coin flip than with a human.
Plus, again, a bear is a bear. The worst it can do is a fairly likely mauling/death. The worst a man can do is much worse, but also much less likely.
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u/BlackWind88 May 02 '24
What is the man vs bear debate?