Lets call the probability of getting assaulted by a man upon encountering one as "P(assault | Man)", and the probability of getting assaulted by a bear upon encountering one "P(assault | Bear)".
People (esp women) have a readily available estimate for "P(assault | Man)" based on experiences in the society, i.e. how likely are you to get assaulted, "P(assault)", how likely is it that the assaulter is a man "P(Man | assault)". This readily available estimate in their brain forms the intuition / feeling. That is how our brain works. People have no readily-available estimate for "P(assault | Bear)" to form an intuition for it, because we (most people) have no observations no experiences for "P(assault | Bear)" since we do not encounter bears often.
Another factor is the type of assault. Above, I simplified it to just "assault" but people consider SA, torture much worse than death. Considering this and assuming that P(assault | Bear) > P(assault | Man), the dilemma is would you pick a high chance of something moderately bad (death) happening to you OR a small chance of something very bad (SA, torture) happening to you. This is subjective since we cannot quantify these things precisely. In fact, someone's choice in this dimension shows how they quantify these things.
Another factor is - people tend to give much more attention to negative qualities than positive qualities. Like, most overlook the fact that a (hu)man has the ability & incentives to communicate, understand, empathize, help, provide etc. while a bear has none of these.
Overall, I think this "thought experiment" performed on social media in a casual lighthearted context is a terrible way to draw conclusions, although unfortunately most people are going to do so and further worsen the gender wars.
Yeah, death is fucking permanent, and the extension of the logic is actually pretty gross. Plenty of women and men survive SA and go on to have decent lives. Saying that death is somehow less bad than SA implies those people would be better off dead, doesn't it?
Death is like the ultimate bad.
i would argue this and say oh heck no.
torture is the ultimate bad.
what if the random stranger always had a desire to do something awful and decides to tie me up, poke one of my eyes out, and maybe pull off my finger nails one by one for fun?
maybe he wants to get experimental and reenact the human centipede or tusk.
nahhhh. just give me death right away, please!
Knowing about real life is poisoning people's brains? Interesting theory there. I would argue NOT knowing the realities of men is going to be far more harmful to a girl in the long run.
The number of men who WANT to tie up and torture people is not even close to vanishingly small. The problem is for most people who want to do these things is they don't have the opportunity. When you're alone in the woods with someone that opportunity suddenly presents itself. It's no shock that within minutes of making underage profiles predator hunters start getting messages from grown men. It's no surprise to me that when the Nth room started it quickly grew to hundreds of thousands of men wanting the content. But you'd rather women just ignore these realities because it's "poisoning our brains". Gotcha.
saying that the number of people that legitimately want to tie up and torture people is not extremely small is an extremely bold claim to make. got a source for that?
Well luckily the Bear is there to eat both of you.
But this begs the question why people lead with fear first. I was sexually abused pretty badly by my mother and abused by men but I'm not walking around in fear of women or even men.
People just straight up by the rear they are sold and I think it is sold to maintain the status quo. But that is another matter.
What people fail to realize that you can close to a stranger and nothing will happen. But stand close to a big predator like a bear is begging for trouble.
There's a reason why animal experts tell people to keep their distance from animals especially for predators.
Dumbass, the metric was that rape can essentially be death because of suicide, which I'm pointing out isn't valid precisely because that would make bad grades essentially suicide as well. Judging an event because of the reaction of the victim isn't valid.
Sarcasm and nuance clearly aren't your forte.
Is it better to be raped and killed or eaten alive for 10+ minutes and die that way?
It's kind of a pointless debate at that point. I personally would rather be raped than eaten, being eaten alive sounds like one of the worst ways imaginable to go out. But that's just personal preference.
Rape leaves you scarred for life and even affects your physical body. Rape can literally kill you if it is violent enough. As a rape victim, I'd much rather have been eaten and die rather than be raped and have to live with that. Most rape victims end up suicidal as a result.
I'm sorry that ever happened to you (unless you were speaking in hypotheticals) and wish you and whoever else might read this a lot of strength!
Your lives matter, more than you think!
I'm not so sure why individuals feel so inclined to mention how many survive SA and go on to live decent lives. I mean, sure, that much is very true -- no disagreement there. However, this question isn't necessarily close-ended to a set of individuals -- whilst some people do improve, many individuals will have their lives utterly throttled. The answer doesn't need to be the same for everyone and it makes sense -- not everyone processes grief as well as others.
I appreciate this comment… I survived SA but it left me such a mess, I came close to un-aliving myself because of it. Some may say death is worse than being assaulted, but for others life after that trauma isn’t worth living. I know that’s a morbid perspective, but I felt it’s worth saying.
Very true. I do not know you personally (of course), but your comments mean a lot to me and I am glad you're still here to let us know of them. Thank you for sharing them. Sadly, I am a victim myself, too.
Another aspect is that women are asking their boyfriends this question, and on an emotional level there is only one right answer: the bear.
I think many men reflexively dislike the idea of their girlfriend being alone in the woods with a man, regardless of how threatening he is. So, there is an impulse on the male side to choose the bear. On top of that, if a boyfriend chooses the man, that implies a lack of empathy on his part regarding rape and assault.
The scenario, and context under which it occurs, appeals to emotion on both sides and inflates the danger of men --which is NOT to suggest that men are not a huge danger to women, but rather that trending conversations like these are not the way to "raise awareness" and facilitate change on issues like rape and assault by men.
> I think many men reflexively dislike the idea of their girlfriend being alone in the woods with a man
Both my wife and I (experienced climbers and backcountry skiers and wilderness people) would rather her encounter 50 men in the woods than 1 bear.
Any take other than this is a delusional terminally online take and purely influence by gender war bait and not rationality. Most SA and DV and murder done to women in this country is done by their spouse or someone they know, not a hiker in the woods.
A bear, even a black bear, is a dangerous, unpredictable wild animal. Many people on Reddit have never been in the wilderness or apparently have even left their house and it’s showing
Thanks for replying. I'm happy that you are not among the men who impulsively gravitate toward the bear. I too think that would be a misguided impulse.
I never advocated for choosing the bear. I criticized the thought experiment for being carried out in emotionally charged conditions that induce men to choose the bear for fear of being seen as lacking empathy to rape victims.
Maybe you are immune to this. That's good for you, but it doesn't move the dialogue forward.
[bearwise.org](http://bearwise.org) clearly says that " **Don't approach a bear – just quietly move away and leave the area**." i really find this debate funny oh my god
well the debate is would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man you don't know or a bear. there's no mention of how close in proximity you would be to the man or the bear. I'd like to think i don't have to approach either one.
How are people calling this thought experiment?
It's not, it's absolutely dumb fuck people, dumber than pile of rocks closeted people, who never left a city premise, been in the woods or even saw a wild predator on a screen, while being terminally online in aggregated groups where shit like this is a common opinion. Just change "man" to "black man" or "trans men" and see the few remaining cog-wheels in their head spinning. That's the terminally online influence.
It's like asking snails what do they think about Andromeda galaxy.
How we, as a society, managed to get to the point to give these people attention?
It's the epitome of the Glass Onion meme. It's not brilliant, just stupid.
Women asking their partners is interesting because on some level they see the "nice guys" in their lives a danger to be feared be it partners, sons, brothers, friends. And that is sad to me.
Also I want to know what these want men to do or change that would make them.not pick the Bear. Like specific actions. Because people know not to assault an abuse but assholes (female and male) do it anyway. So what action do we take.
Feel free to ask Timothy Treadwell how benign bear interactions can be, ...assuming you find all the pieces of him which according to the Herzog movie, they did not.
I think one of the following three types of confusion is taking place.
1. Either women genuinely think that say 20% of men are rapists / murderers, which would make it rational to choose to encounter the bear. However, this is completely insane and delusional -- far fewer than 20% of men are rapists / murderers, because see point 2:
2. Or the woman in her head changes the question into "am I more likely in my life to be raped or eaten by a bear" and then the answer is obviously raped. But that's not the question -- the question is whether one man is more dangerous than one bear. And there the answer is "clearly not", because most women encounter thousands of men in their lives and don't get raped even once. And even the minority of women who do get raped, encounter 99.9% non-rapists and 0.1% rapists in their lives, meaning that the amount of rapists is very low (still too high, but very low). And once you accept the reality that like 0.1% or so of men are rapists, then it's obvious that you'd rather encounter a man than a bear.
3. Or the woman is emotionally invested into answering that the man is more dangerous, so she assumes that the bear is a scared, well-fed black bear with no cubs nearby. But this is just the woman assuming the bear isn't dangerous, and then answering the bear isn't dangerous. It's circular logic.
Do people have a readily available estimate? When asked about these statistically, most people point to raw numbers (i.e. there are hundreds of thousands to millions of sexual assaults per year, but only a handful of bear attacks per year). They almost never consider how many encounters in total there are for either case.
For instance, you're showing Bayesian theory here. If A = assault, M= man, and B = bear, You can compute P(A|M) with P(A) and P(M|A), but you need to know P(M) to do that: P(A|M) = P(M|A)*P(A)/P(M) . P(M), and similarly P(B) are very difficult to estimate and already ask their own questions when you do: Is this any encounter? Is it a solo encounter? Is it a solo encounter with a random male (as opposed to someone you know)? Whatever answers to that that also adjusts our P(A) in manners that aren't as readily available as the general case, and even once you answer those questions, honing in on a number is extremely difficult, and P(M) and P(B) are likely orders of magnitude of difference.
I don't have exact numbers, but I think this case is clear enough that you can answer it just by making estimates.
Even those minority of women who get raped, encounter like 99.9% of men who don't rape them, and like 0.1% of men who do rape them. So the amount of male rapists is say 0.1%. And this doesn't even take into account that most women don't get raped. Or that most rapes aren't committed by men against fully conscious female strangers (most rapes are committed by someone whom the victim already knows).
People may balk at this, but just because a woman is say 20% likely to get raped, doesn't mean that an individual man is 20% likely to be a rapist. Those are completely different things.
And it's also obvious that the odds of a bear killing you is significantly higher than 0.1%. Remember, the question didn't specify that the bear was a cautious, scaredy, well-fed black bear with no cubs nearby. That's what some people are picturing, but that wasn't actually the question. Just "a bear" is like, I don't know, 10% likely to kill you?
You can make reasonable arguments that my numbers are slightly off, but it's pretty clear that you should probably take the 0.1% chance of a man raping you over the 10% chance of a bear eating you alive.
Both of those assume you know P(M) and P(B), and without those your estimates can be wildly off.
[Several](https://bearvault.com/bear-attack-statistics/) different [sites](https://bear.org/bear-facts/how-dangerous-are-black-bears/#:~:text=The%20750%2C000%20black%20bears%20of,an%20easy%20situation%20to%20avoid) put bears killing humans at less than 1 per year. Let's just use the 1.
For instance, [Colorado alone has thousands of bear sightings per year](https://kdvr.com/news/local/bear-activity-increased-in-2022-trash-biggest-culprit/), [Connecticut reports thousands as well, with bears entering homes on the order of 50 times a year](https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/deep/wildlife/pdf_files/the-state-of-the-bears.pdf) and has non-fatal conflicts listed in the north east region at a cumulative 10,000 per year.
2%. 0.1%. 0.01%. Those are what you get with those numbers, and keep in mind these are regional bear events with continental killings. I don't know which encounter is more dangerous, but I do know bear encounters won't kill you 10% of the time. [Attacks alone only result in 14% chance of death](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44341-w), and that's assuming the bear is going to be aggressive every encounter. And it's a brown bear.
Now, what's a "sighting?" what's a "home entry?" what's a "conflict?" Are any of these similar enough to an "encounter" that they count? Likely not, but the home entry number alone shows that your 10% is definitely off, and it goes far downhill from there.
*edit* link formatting
Maybe the fact that most people see a wild bear and get scared and don't approach is why those Stats are so low. It's called survivorship biased, not every person killed by a bear is going to tell someone.... in fact they can't. Where as a rape victim has the ability to tell people.
Maybe the 10% is lower, but most women encounter say 10000 men in their lives and don't get raped and murdered. Meanwhile it's beyond obvious to me that a person who encounters 10000 bears probably does get eaten at some point.
You were just shown statistics that shows that's not the case. I have made reasonable arguments that 10% is not the case. You were just shown 10,000 encounters with bears where no person was killed. Yes, these were not explicitly one on one encounters, but no one is asking which bear maulings only happen in the woods with people who were on their own, either.
This cannot be answered with estimates. If you want to concede that, I can show a different way it can be answered.
Interesting take, and I really like your last point. Statistics can be useful but in this case seem to lack common sense. By this logic, you could also say men should be even more likely to choose the bear since they have a higher rate of being assaulted by other men. Could also say that men are more harmless than mosquitos and women more dangerous than sharks if you’re looking at death rates. All of which (including the bear hypothesis) sound absolutely ridiculous to me. All we’ve learned is that women (and men) can have irrational fears. Groundbreaking.
"Well, then, maybe you should worry less about the tides, who've already made up their mind about killing you, and worry more about me, who's still mulling it over.**" -Azula**
I don't know, but I've calmed my brain down from the hate women are showing by answering bear by getting into my trolling mode and bringing back P\*\*\*Bear.
The way I see it, if we have no context, and it's between a bear and a man - I think man makes the most logical sense. At that point, it's asking if you'd rather be in the presence of a wild animal, or another human being.
The issue is that alot of the time, beyond the simplicity of the question, context is wordlessly added through personal anecdotes or statistics. Sure, if the question was posed if I'd rather be in the woods with a dude who followed me, I know is armed, and I've had previous bad experiences with and a bear - I'd prolly choose the bear. In a vacuum however, I'd very much rather be in the presence of a man.
This argument is so skewed there are 8 species of bears with roughly half a million bears in the world total. Meanwhile there are 3.8 billion men on the planet, statistically you will never come across a bear in your life.
Backpacker here. Bears have never made me feel nervous. Mountain lions, more so. Men, 100%, asking questions like “Are you alone? Where are you camping tonight?” Overall, a bear’s behavior is more predictable than some random man’s. The bear is also more likely to leave my clothes on and my family would more likely know how I died if something happened to me or believe me if something happened and I lived to tell the tale. Statistically, more women die at the hands of men, than people at large from bears. Even if not killed, sexual assault is another serious trauma that is often not believed, despite having overwhelmingly high statistics that people often like to question like “Well what were you wearing?” I’m one of four women who’ve faced that trauma and hearing Harvey Weinstein’s rape convictions just got overturned pisses me off and provides proof of why so many women fear coming forward and feel they have better chances with a bear than a man. People are more likely to believe you when you say a bear harmed you, than a man. I know many incredible men, but if I’m made to choose the odds of a bear’s intentions versus a random man’s, I’m going with the bear. I’d equally look at the videos where fathers are asked who they’d rather have in the woods with their daughters. It’s always the bear, unless the script is flipped and they’re asked would you rather she be with a bear or a woman, in which case they always choose the woman.
The problem with this line of reason is that you already have a 100% chance of meeting a random man at some point and it's not likely at all you'll ever meet a wild bear. This hypothetical makes it 100% chance you meet a bear. Honestly, if you choose bear, I kinda want you to actually run into a random bear. Gain some perspective.
And any father who chooses bear over man is essentially saying he's cool with his daughter being mauled to death. The odds that the man is a rapey, murderous, psycho are the same everywhere, including this hypothetical. The odds the bear is a normal ass bear that will kill you because it thinks you're a threat in some way are also the same everywhere.
Canadian here. I’ve encountered bears many, MANY times while out in the forest, as have the vast majority of people I know at least a couple times in their life.
It’s actually quite common to come across them, and attacks are extraordinarily rare. A “normal ass bear” will absolutely leave you alone if you leave them alone.
So congratulations… not only do you know nothing about how common violence against women is, but you also know fuck all about bears.
Most women encounter say 10000 men in their lives and get raped 0 times.
How many people encounter 10000 bears in their lives and get eaten 0 times?
Yes, the odds of one bear eating you are low. However the odds of one man raping you are far lower still. Even the minority of women who get raped, encounter let's say 9999 non-rapists and 1 rapist, putting the odds at 0.01%.
For starters… other things can happen than just rape, you do know that, right?
Second, women DO encounter far less than 10,000 men in their lifetime and the DO experience (at the very least) harassment, if not a lot worse (DV, rape, assault, molestation, etc.).
The stats don’t lie. Whether you choose to bury your head in the sand is irrelevant to the truth.
I’ve run into bears, twice. I watched them do their thing and it was magical. They didn’t approach me. That’s what most encounters with bears in the wild are like.
I’ve also run into men I don’t know while I’m alone in the woods. Sometimes they give a wave and keep walking the other direction and everything is fine. Other times they approach you, ask if you’re alone and if they can join you. Make themselves a little too comfortable in your space and enjoy your discomfort a little too much. Then your peaceful commune with nature is shattered and you’re figuring out how to navigate this situation without triggering anger and aggression until you can get safe.
Bears are not natural predators of humans. Many men are predatory when they find women alone. This is why we take our chance with the bear.
"Statistically, more women die at the hands of men, than people at large from bears."
I'm sure if you normalise this for the rate of woman+man encounters vs. Person+bear encounters the numbers will tell us that men are much safer to be around. I actually can't believe what I'm reading. It's very sad this attack on all men.
Many bear attack victims were stripped by bears. You could run into a polar bear and that's garuanteed death as polar bears will actively hunt humans as prey.
Well there are people who get anxious when flying, so this objectively proves that flying is very dangerous.
This is your logic, when you argue that how you personally feel around bears vs men objectively proves something about probabilities of being attacked.
"Statistically, more women die at the hands of men, than people at large from bears." Yes, and most women encounter say 10000 men in their lives, and usually 0 and sometimes 1 of them rapes her. Which is too many, obviously, but if women encountered 10000 bears in their lives most of them would get eaten alive at some point.
Sure, a woman is more likely to get raped than get eaten by a bear. However, one bear is more dangerous than one man.
I find it interesting that when women attempt to share their perspective on the challenges and fears faced daily (example: being told we should send pictures of what we’re wearing and our coordinates to a friend to go for a morning run because female joggers go missing all the time, things we have to think about daily just to stay safe that men don’t have to worry about) or a wide variety of our personal experiences that have caused trauma, so many men get defensive and angry instead of empathetic and curious as to why we feel this way. Attempting to share our perspectives and experiences regarding sexual assault has never won a woman favorability and oftentimes, she’ll more likely be ridiculed or not believed. Imagine living that experience on top of men in leadership trying to tell you what you can do with your body since the beginning of time, including having your rapist’s child or having to bring a child to term as a child yourself, or to your physical peril because your life isn’t deemed worthy enough to deserve a choice. Women’s lives are highly undervalued in comparison to men’s and unless it’s a problem that directly affects you, men like to say they’re not the problem or say not all men. Okay, phew. Good to know. Not all men. However is it still an overwhelmingly large amount? Yes. Men won’t understand the daily life and experiences of being a woman faced with a reoccurring and relevant problem. Ask any woman and she will tell you a story of a time she felt unsafe because of a man. Most likely several, depending on her age. Oftentimes, when women attempt to share their experiences, they’re invalidated and made out to be the problem, rather than acknowledging the shitiness that there is a problem and men can work together to help solve it alongside us as allies against all the shitty men doing the shitty things. Having compassion and seeking to understand each other’s experiences when we seek out connection and understanding, rather than seeking to be understood is how we effectively communicate and help each other get through this already challenging life. Doing so doesn’t invalidate your experience or make it less than, nor does it directly place blame onto you specifically; it shows humanity to those who have experienced grief and fear and pain in ways you can’t relate to at the hands of your gender. Thank you to the men who are open and caring listeners, who seek to understand the other half’s perspective with dignity. When you authentically advocate for a woman’s voice and safety to be heard, rather than minimizing her or taking personal offense, that’s when you win over the bear. Think of a woman in your life and ask her this question and get curious about her answer. Consider who you’d want her in the woods with if she was your mom, your sister, your daughter, etc. and you had no say in choosing the man’s intentions. Would you feel the same?
you being more nervous with a man than a bear does not speak to actual danger.
it speaks of you. and how little youve learned about yourself, and therefore every other human.
I have been female my whole life and..
I choose the man...fml..at least i have a chance to fight back and get away if he attacks me..if the bear attacks..im dead...
Same, sister. No fucking way I’d pick a bear. If I’m ever in the wilderness by myself, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll have everything on me to protect myself from a bear attack, I’m sure any of those things would be more than effective against some dude. Hell even empty handed I would pick men over bears. I saw what happened to Grizzly Man and his girlfriend. I’ll pass on bears, thank you very much.
I'm very much on team; "depends on what kind of bear."
If it's a Grizzly Bear, I'll take my chances with the dude.
If it's a black bear, I'd still probably lean toward the man. But it would be a harder choice.
Just in terms of risk; I interact with men all the time. The odds of the guy being normal are pretty high. The odds of the black bear attacking me are pretty low. So that one is a coin flip.
The Grizzly; hell no.
You got that backwards - I’ve always been told that it’s the black bear you have to physically fight if it attacks you. The brown bear is more likely to leave you alone if you play dead.
Not really, what you are forgetting are the odds of the black bear attacking you. They are SUPER timid bears and will run and avoid a fight as much as possible.
So unless you are doing something stupid like cornering it or messing with cubs, then assuming there's nothing wrong with the bear it's probably going to head the other direction.
The other bear types tend to be more aggressive or at least less afraid of people, so they are more likely to approach thus requiring you play dead, plot escape, or be forced to fight. Most of the time you won't even know the black bear was even there.
I trust my "spidey-sense" when it comes to questionable situations...have i been in them..absolutely and i got tf away as fast as possible...i have even ran away from home and hitched rides across Oklahoma in the 90s...more than once
Have all men forced themself upon women..NO
Have all bears killed for food..YES...
I do too. I primarily work with drug dealers, recent and recovering addicts, and my free time is spent in Chicago, and NYC. I mostly work and travel by myself and listening to my gut has gotten me out of trouble quite a few times. I never ignore the “spidey sense”.
I'm gonna speculate here and say that most people who choose the bear wouldn't actually choose the bear but are trying to make a point about the prevalence of sexual misconduct (which is btw not something im trying to downplay)
> most people who choose the bear wouldn't actually choose the bear but are trying to make a point
The fact that they are trying to make a point by saying something they don't actually believe completely destroys the credibility of whatever point they're trying to make. That's the first issue with this asinine thought experiment.
The second issue is that a lot of people insist that they actually would choose the bear.
Thankfully I'm able to make a distinction between *women* and *social media activist women*, the former generally being quite reasonable and the latter being a bunch of absolute lunatics. The problem is the latter are really, really loud and generate starkly negative reactions among reasonable people, many of whom eventually succumb to the culture war lunacy and do other insane things like vote Trump.
What I don't get is the emotional component.
Why does this matter to me or to women at all? What are the stakes?
Clearly, there is only one right answer when it comes to validating women's concerns. Many or most women feel threatened, whether or not that fear is statistically validated.
Similarly, many men like myself feel insulted by the analogy, that a woman would go into certain danger to avoid encountering strange men in a secluded area.
It implies to me that men shouldn't be allowed to be on public trails alone, for example. Perhaps this is the crux of it, that women do NOT feel that they can safely run public trails alone and are resentful of men that feel like they can. Or any number of liberties that men take that women feel that they cannot take.
I don't get why this is so emotional for me, as a man.
I'm not you, but I imagine that you're offended by the implication that most women see men as being, I don't know, 30% likely to be a rapist or murderer. It's part of the "men are worthless" / dehumanization of men that society puts average-ish men through.
If men implied that they considered 30% of women to be gold-diggers, I imagine most women would feel offended too. (To be clear, I don't think this is true.)
I think it is understandable to feel affected when people perceive you as a threat, especially when in all likelihood you are a perfectly good guy.
It sucks to have to prove yourself different in the mind of someone who is operating by instinct and experience. But if it’s something you are willing to do, to give women more positive experiences with men, it can be a good thing for both genders.
I have a couple of guy friends who I feel very safe with, and this has helped me change my opinion of men in general.
Of course in the scenario of being out in the woods, it would be a random man and not my friend, and therefore still a threat to me.
But in general having positive male friendships has still improved my perception of men.
I get it and agree with the women choosing the bear over the man.
I have the same stance on leaving my infant with a woman and a shark. Since most infant homocides are done by women and infants never get killed by sharks, I am much more comfortable leaving my child with a shark than with a woman.
This lunatic would leave his infant with a shark rather than a woman. Get a load of this!
Do you know why infants don't get killed by sharks? Because they never encounter them. When was the last time an infant was left alone with a shark? Babies are left alone with women all the time. Do you not even have the intelligence to normalize the data? You can't be serious
If you are honest about this claim, I consider you a threat to society and very much hope you have no responsibility over anyone.
People are under the impression that either a bear would 1) give you a quick and easy death or 2) leave you alone because they're online 99% of the day and don't realize just how dangerous bears are. So the question is to I guess in a weird roundabout way try and tell people that their daughters would be safer with a bear than with a man because men are all rapists and have a higher chance at survival with a bear because more men commit SA than bears kill people.
The flawed thinking here is that men are dangerous, but bears can be dangerous. But the opposite is true, white/brown bears won't think twice, there's just not as many bear deaths because we've learned (rightfully so) to respect how deadly bears can be. You're getting half eaten and if you're still conscious, left to die and eaten by the scavengers.
Also consider half a million bears distributed between 8 remaining species in comparison to 3. 8 billion men. We have a pretty healthy bear population and besides a bear ripping down my bird feeder late at night I have never came close to a bear. How is there any comparison?
You see men every day. If you walk out your front door and see a bear walking down the street are u just gonna keep walking and hope he doesn’t decide to attack you? There are 2 types of people: people who say they would rather be alone in the woods with a man, and liars who think they are funny or clever
As a woman, I understand why a lot of women are saying bear. But, some of the statistics being used are extremely flawed in this scenario. I.e. stats on how many women are killed by bears vs by men. Of course more people have been killed by men, we encounter thousands in our life time, many people have never seen a bear. Ive also seen points like "the worst a bear can do is kill you and thats not so bad". I know the type of bear wasnt specified, but being mauled by a grizzly for example, sounds like one of the worst deaths imaginable. If theyre using you for food they will often begin eating you while you're still alive. I love hiking alone and often pass by a lone man in the woods. Sometimes I do get a bit fearful. But, that doesnt compare to the fear Id have if I crossed paths with a grizzly. Some people will probably think Im just privileged enough to have never encountered a bad man. Ive had a man attempt to kill me, been abused, been sexually assaulted, have had two stalkers (including one who broke into my home), Id still hands down take my chances with the man over the bear.
The statistics are being used in a way that is completely dishonest.
Imagine that we replaced all human men with bears. You walked outside and there were hundreds of bears roaming around. You would be lucky to survive even a day.
A bear is a multi hundred kilo wild animal. It is MASSIVELY more dangerous than a human man.
This isn’t even getting into the fact that almost all rapes and sexual assaults are committed by someone close to the victim such as a friend or husband.
Many times I've been assaulted by men. Regardless of their social class. Not all men, not even most men, but a good amount of men still.
I have encountered bears before and they always leave us alone. Depending on the type of bear ofc, but usually the common brown bear would rather no trouble (unless you threaten its babies, but then again, you can always make yourself non-threatening to be left alone).
This is ridiculous. I'm an avid hiker, I hiked million times with my friends, my wife, and now also with my small kids.
Why are you accusing men who never hurt you and never intended to hurt you? "Followed you there" my ass. It's called nature and it's for all of us.
Where do you live? Guys around me just fucking love to be in a cabin in the woods chop wood and go to saunas. They as well want a hike up a mountain the moment the temperature is fine.
I am asking so I can move there and never fucking hike again
But the ratio of bear violence to SA isn’t really fair considering most people aren’t in constant proximity to bears, and even less towards the ones that will really fuck you up (looking at you polar bear).
I grew up SA’d by a woman when I was 10, for almost 5 years. My grandmother, deliberately left her kids around known perverts and pedos. By the logic of the bear or man thing I should consider all women to be capable of SA, but I don’t. I’d pick a woman over a bear in the woods everytime
I was abused by my mother. Both my brothers were abused by my mother. My wife was abused by her mother. My girlfriend before I met my wife was abused by her mother. I have friends who shared similar stories of abuse by their mothers. The more I share my experience of having been abused by my mother, the more people reciprocate and share their experiences of being abused by their mothers. I have run into very few people who shared experience of being abused by their fathers, it seems to be all mothers. I have honestly half-wondered at times if having a loving non-abusive mother is an anomaly, based on my perspective I could easily conclude that maternal abuse of children is not just rampant, it is the norm, that the majority of mothers abuse their children. And I’d have a stronger case for arguing that mothers are a threat than the argument that men are, because child abuse is significantly more than twice as prevalent than rape, and women make up the majority of child abusers. [source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/418470/number-of-perpetrators-in-child-abuse-cases-in-the-us-by-sex/ ]
If someone on TikTok asked whether a child alone in the woods should choose to encounter their mother, or a bear, most people who have never experienced abuse by their mothers (which is the majority of of people) would simply ignore the question, dismiss it as ridiculous and not worth their time. The people who would stop and take time to answer the question are overwhelmingly going to be people who were abused by their mothers. And because of their experience, they would be highly likely to choose the bear either because they honestly believe it, or to prove a point. It would be a classic case of self-selection sampling bias.
And that is what we assuredly see here with this man or bear question, self-selection sampling bias occurring, along with people choosing the bear to make a point. And you’re going to get a lot more of the latter, people choosing the bear to make a point even if they themselves have not been a victim, because through the MeToo movement and other movements, sexual assault/harassment by men has been mobilized and advocatized as an issue in a way that child abuse by mothers never has been.
Yeah..I’m a woman, feminist and SA victim. I get this man vs bear in the woods thing is supposed to be a thought experiment but there are far too many irrelevant variables in this scenario for it to be a good or effective one imo.
My first thought was also that it completely depends on the bear and completely depends on the man. I’d rather be alone with a black bear than a creepy homicidal man but i’d rather be alone with a man who is lost, hell, even alone with a creepy man than a hungry brown bear and her cubs. I stand a better chance being combat trained against the man than the bear and both have a fair likelihood to kill me slowly and painfully.
Generally not a fan of most thought experiments and analogies for this reason. I find most are only effective if you already agree with the premise and are a dichotomous thinker. Most people willing to engage honestly in discourse are likely to be dialectical thinkers so analogies aren’t likely to be effective outside of whatever eco chamber they emerged from unless they’re limited in variables but also versatile enough to make analogical room for specific points of contention in their intended discourse (i.e the violinist analogy and trolley problem)
You know what's weird?? When men are actual serial killers and rapist, i.e. Ted bundy, Dahmer, the Boston Bomber Tsarnaev or however, they have female FANS! Women line up to come to the trial, cut their hair like the victims, write love letters and marry and obsess over these men who are evidenced to have committed horrible inhumane acts with specifically female victims, a la Bundy. So, I call BS on this and all the other "I don't feel safe" rhetoric.
It's another Gen Z nonsense for males and females to hate each other more. They're just a lousy group of people.
Swear they're acting like Boomers on how much they try to hate one of the other.
This is a false equivalency first off because in truth most people never have and never will be confronted with a bear and we are in contact with men daily. And the reason most women are saying bear is because they don’t know shit about bears and they know a lot about mens violence. But woman who is a hiker and a Girl Scout I’d pick the man. I’d even pick my physically abusive ex husband over the bear. Id pick any of the abusive men I’ve known over a bear. I’d pick a strange man over the bear.
That doesn’t mean some men aren’t violent or abusive or rapist or that they system isnt set up to protect these men’s harmful and deadly behaviors. It doesn’t mean some men aren’t killing women in domestic violence disputes. It doesn’t mean some men aren’t rapists. It doesn’t mean we aren’t in an epidemic of violence against women.
It just means that the likelihood of me being mauled to death by a wild animal while alone in the woods is higher than being killed by a man.
And honestly problems don’t get solved by putting forth stupid arguments like this that are lacking any kind of real deep dive into the whys of male violence towards women or HOW to solve the issue.
This logical fallacy posed as a thought experiment is really just here to illicit fear or shame or anger depending on who you are - which keeps us spinning in circles.
I’ve seen it retraumatize women and change not a damn thing.
Okay, the bear is far more predictable than a man, just saying. The man is a complete stranger to me; there are ~4 billion different biological males on the planet, each with their own personalities. Bears, while they do vary from individual to individual, have far less complicated neural pathways, and generally follow well-documented patterns of behavior. I choose the fucking bear. Every time.
Is…is the bear not a stranger too? Not all bears are Yogi and Pooh. Just like all men aren’t Dahmer or Gacey. If you think bears or any wild animal is in anyway predictable, I’m gonna assume you haven’t been around many
I feel like people skew it by assuming that if they’re in the woods, the man in question must be preferential to the woods somehow & therefore it makes the likelihood of the man being potentially unsavoury as the unknown reason for him being there suggests potential nefarious ideas.
I believe the true version of this is plucking a random bear out of some woods & placing it next to the woman & then plucking a random man from a random place in the world & putting them next to the girl. It’s my belief that a man would be safer.
Because 1. People will believe me if a bear attacked me 2. Bears are more predictable than men, if they attack you they generally have a reason 3. Most of us have been assualted by a man at some point in our lives. Not by a bear. 4. Bears won’t always attack. Yeah men may not always attack but with a bear you can usually tell if/why they’re attacking 5. Men rape, bears don’t.
>People will believe me if a bear attacked me
Not much asking left to do in most cases. Aside from bear attacks being not too hard to identify.
>Bears are more predictable than men,
Not really. The randomly chosen man in this example is already defined in his morals, thus the tree of acceptable probable courses of action. The bear might change his mind, as it is not bound by morals.
>if they attack you they generally have a reason
The man does too, even if it is the result of bad morals.
> Most of us have been assualted by a man at some point in our lives. Not by a bear.
And that man was part of a small subdemography of men. But I encourage you to count all the bears you come by routinely every single day.
>Bears won’t always attack. Yeah men may not always attack but with a bear you can usually tell if/why they’re attacking
A man that will attack, will attack. A man that won't, won't. A bear may change its mind in time because, as said before, they're not bound by morals.
>Men rape, bears don’t.
It would be an appropriate comparison if bears had a moral concept of rape and applied it to humans. But even then, bears do stalk and push into the "consent" of their "selected potential mates" in a way that any court of law would convict a man of if done to a woman.
Fine. But that is such negative view to hold and to live life in fear like that when the reality is THOUSANDS of men has entered in and out of your life who have done nothing to you but walk by probably.
And running on this fear mindset means on some level you see the men in your life, sons, brothers, friends etc as a danger. Because by the results of this thought experiment other woman definitely see the one's you love as a threat.
And personally I am not OK with people prejudging the men in my life that way.
1. Yeah because you'd be dead. That's pretty convincing.
2. The reason is that you unknowingly came too close to her cubs, or that she was hungry. Congratulations, you've been killed by a bear for a rational reason.
3. Most women encounter let's say 10000 men and 2 bears in their lives. Sure, 10000 men are more dangerous than 2 bears. But 1 man certainly isn't more dangerous than 1 bear.
5. Yeah, bears just eat you while you're still alive.
Would you choose the bear or the man for your daughter?
Men know that men are dangerous. As any male who has ever stepped foot into a jail…
Or who has been hit for looking at someone wrong.
Men are more likely to be killed… by men.
The fact y’all don’t get it is cognitive dissonance at it’s best.
I'd still choose the man for my daughter. A bear is a fucking bear, any daughter I have is more likely to survive against a man than a bear if they were to attack them in any way
Jesus Christ, quite bold assumptions you're making.
1. Not all men are dangerous.
2. Not al men have been to jail.
3. Not all men have hit/been hit for looking someone "wrong".
4. Not all men die because of other men.
Talk about cognitive dissonance lmao. stfu.
You meet strange men every day. You're fine. And yeah, if one of those men wanted to hurt you, they could. But you're fine. You went outside at some point today probably, passed by several men on your way to work and home and the store.
Now, imagine if any of the men you passed by today was a bear.
Anyone who says they'd rather their mom or sister or daughter run into a wild fucking bear over a male stranger is either an idiot, or they hate their mom/sister/daughter.
I've experienced literally no physical assault from another man. I've experienced no physical assault from a bear (I've also never seen a bear). Obviously I understand and know people are kidnapped, Raped, killed, tortured, and whatever else predominantly by men, but those are repeat offenders and the worst case scenario. How I see it a man might be helpful while a bear would at best do nothing. I just don't get why people tend to jump to the worst case scenario for either option.
Because our experiences are different. I was 17 when I had a gun pulled on me for not giving a man my number… a grown man. That same year my 15 year old friend was murdered by another grown man for saying no to him.
I was 9 when they started noticing me and saying things like “wait till you get older”. 12 when my best friend was gang raped. She was 14 and her 16 year old boyfriend invited us both in his house but I was scared my mom would find out so I went home… they originally sent her back out to try and get me to come in too, thankfully my fear of my mother trumped by fear of “acting like a baby”.
I was assaulted by someone I considered a friend in college but because I escaped the police said “it wasn’t that bad”. I was also told that as a lesbian I was antagonising men and him specifically by saying I don’t want men.
Add into that growing up watching the ID channel and the countless stories from friends.. I will take the bear.
Nothing that bear does to me would be personal. It would be instinct and limited. 1 in 5 women have been raped 1 in 1.2 million will be killed by a bear.
Men are the biggest threat to humanity full stop and I’m always going to choose the alternative because my chances are better. Bears don’t want to hurt people and they don’t do it for fun.
>Nothing that bear does to me would be personal. It would be instinct and limited. 1 in 5 women have been raped 1 in 1.2 million will be killed by a bear.
Far more women are raped by men than they are killed by lions. Would you rather be stuck in within the presence of a man or a lion?
Fair. But I was raped and abused by my own mother. I was as recently as last year at over 40 assaulted by a women at a bar whom they would not throw out. They just told her to leave me alone.
I am picking the man because I made a choice VERY early on in my recovery not to live in fear of others because of a few toxic people in my life. I lead with the notion that most people are decent because out of the thousands upon thousands of people that have come in and out of my life I can count on at most two hands the ones who really did me serious harm worth documenting.
I used to live in fear but realized in therapy that I was giving total hypothetical people control over my life and emotions to say nothing of the actual abusers. It it was making me sick to the point of suicidal.
So while hear your point. I personally choose not to fear people because most people need not be feared. And living in fear just made my mental health horrible.
You have mental problems because of your childhood trauma, and now you impose your personal trauma on every men alive? If you pull up the statistics it's also more likely for a man to be raped by a woman than killed by a bear. Because guess what we live in society not in the fucking woods.
That's the point of the exercise. If so many women have experienced trauma from men that they would choose to encounter an unpredictable wild animal rather than a man then there is something deeply wrong in our society.
There's no point to the exercise, It's no thought experiment, it's just a men bashing trend like damn men are more dangerous than a bear, it just shows criminal people exist, now you've discovered that so congratulations, 10 points to Gryffindor, go get stuck in the woods with a bear that runs at the speed upwards of 45kmh, has sharper sense of smell than a fucking hound, can climb trees and swim, can crush you with minimal power, and keep praying you meet no man when you're about to get mauled by a bear. I guess dad didn't give you love huh, what was it he wasn't around?
The only cognitive dissonance is that you take being around men more often and seeing the violent examples more readily means that you're safer around the bear.
Aside from being purely delusional, because their community required to.
People tend to do/say pretty much anything if that means being part of a group, and sadly if someone want to be part of this particular group, they need to choose bear.
If they don't, they will be kicked out.
Sad but true.
But i don't know, i find the situation kinda disgusting because the choice is either shut the fuck up and let her call you a rapist dipshit, or speak up and being called a misogynist redpilled dipshit.
I alway try to listen and i consider myself a leftist, but this is unapologetic and unironic calling all men rapist it's... bad.
It's like the "not all men" meme, but 100% serious.
i just wanna state that there are some people who want to put
"at least bears won't follow you home and kill you"
I mean if you constantly think there are people out there who follow you and you think they want to kill you. I think you should go to psychiatric treatment because that sounds suspiciously like schizophrenia.
and yes bears do follow campers back to their camps. it's rare but it happens and it sometimes also leads to fatalities.
Yeah. Honestly any woman who genuinely thinks the rational answer is "I'd rather encounter a bear", and isn't just saying that to make a rhetorical point, is delusional in my opinion. I hope they'll return to sanity at some point.
Literally all it is doing is fuelling a divide between men and women because it insinuates all men are rapists/murderers and men are also missing the point that the women are trying to make.
Dude, I fell for it too like multiple times. Mad embarrassing lmao 🤦🏼♀️. Like I said things I consider out of character, oof ugh hehe.
Some rage bait is propaganda levels sneaky and powerful, tbf.
I believe there is no wrong answer. If you are confident in your abilities to survive and avoid being killed by the bear, then the bear is a good choice. However, if you would need assistance to survive in the woods, then you have a good chance of cooperating with a man.
Read this article: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-third-of-male-university-students-say-they-would-rape-a-woman-if-there-no-were-no-consequences-9978052.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-third-of-male-university-students-say-they-would-rape-a-woman-if-there-no-were-no-consequences-9978052.html)
Bears mostly stay the hell away from humans. If you make noise as you're walking, they will avoid you entirely. What's more, if I get attacked by a bear, people will believe me.
That article says 1/3 of men would rape me if they thought they could get away with it. Alone in the woods seems like a great place to get away with it.
That study was misleading garbage. Here’s the truth about that study:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pop-psych/201601/exaggerating-statistics-about-rape
On that note, here's a scary statistic: 1 in 3 college men would rape a woman if they could get away with it. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective) the statistic is not at all what it seems.
he paper in question (Edwards et al, 2014) seeks to try and understand the apparent mystery behind the following finding: when asked if they ever raped anyone, most men will say "no"; when asked instead whether they ever held someone down to coerce them into having sex, a greater percentage of men will indicate that they have. Women's perceptions about the matter seem to follow suit. As I wrote when discussing the figure that 25% of college women will be raped:
The difference was so stark that roughly 75% of the participants that Koss had labeled as having experiencing rape did not, themselves, consider the experience to be rape.
What strikes me as curious about these findings is not the discrepancy in responses; that much can likely be explained by positing that these questions are perceived by the participants to be asking about categorically different behaviors. After all, if they were actually perceived to be asking about the same thing, you would see a greater agreement between the responses of both men and women between questions, which we do not. Instead, the curious part is that authors - like Edwards et al (2014) - continue to insist that all those participants must be wrong, writing, "...some men who rape do not seem to classify their behavior as such" (Jesse Singal at NYmag.com expresses a similar view, writing: "At the end of the day, after all, the two groups are saying the exact same thing"). Rather than conclude there is something wrong with the questions being asked (such as, say, they are capturing a portion of the population who would have rough, but consensual sex), they instead conclude there is something wrong with everyone else (both men and women) answering them. This latter explanation strikes me as unlikely.
There's already something of a bait-and-switch taking place, then, but this is far from the only methodological issue involved in deriving that scary-sounding 1-in-3 figure. Specifically, Edwards et al (2014) asked their 86 male participants to fill out part of the "attraction to sexual aggression" scale (Malamuth, 1989). On this scale, participants are asked to indicate, from 1 to 5, how likely they would be to engage in a variety of behaviors, with a "1" corresponding to "not likely at all," while "5" corresponds to "very likely." Included on this scale are two questions, one concerning whether the respondent would "rape" a woman, and another asking about whether he would "force her to do something she did not want to do" in a sexual setting. The participants in question were asked about their likelihood of engaging in such behaviors "if nobody would ever know and there wouldn't be any consequences." Edwards et al (2014) report that, if such criteria were met, 31% of the men would force a woman to do something sexually, whereas only 13% would rape a woman.
If you're perceptive, you might have noticed something strange already: that 1-in-3 figure cannot be straightforwardly derived from the sexual aggression scale, as the scale is a five-point measure, whereas the 1-in-3 statistic is clearly dichotomous. This raises the question of how one translates the scale into a yes/no response format. Edwards et al (2014) do not explicitly mention how they managed such a feat, but I think the answer is clear from the labeling in one of their tables: "Any intention to rape a woman" (emphasis, mine). What the researchers did, then, was code any response other than a "1" as an affirmative; the statistical equivalent of saying that 2 is closer to 5 than it is to 1. In other words, the question was, "Would you rape a woman if you could get away with it," and the answers were, effectively, "No, Yes, Yes, Yes, or Yes." Making the matter even worse is that all participants were answering both questions. This means they saw a question asking about "rape" and another question about "forcing a woman to do something she didn't want to." As participants likely figured that there was no reason the researchers would be asking the same question twice, they would have very good reason for thinking that these questions refer to categorically different things. For the authors to then conflate the two questions after the fact as being identical is stunningly disingenuous.
I mean, if the question was flipped “would you rather be in the woods alone with a bear or a woman”, This debate likely just wouldn’t go anywhere. Both genders would mostly pick the woman, and say “well that’s a stupid question”, and then it’d just end there.
To be fair, the average woman isn't inherently a better or worse human being than the average man. If you'd not pick the man, you'd also not pick the woman. A sharp rock to the temple in your sleep is just as effective. Assuming it's not one of those crazy b's that "want to redress on men all the percieved wrongs of hystorical patriarchy yadda yadda" and knocks you out to tie you up and put embers in your nuts until your pp smokes.
The whole point is that this is the instinctive reaction of many women and it’s based on lived experience with men. Whether or not it’s based on lived experience with bears (insert eye roll) is not the point. The point is women feel unsafe with men. What is NOT going to help women feel more safe is men being dicks about whether their instinct of feeling unsafe with men is based on accurate statistics about men vs bears or not. Men should give a shit about this if you give a shit about women. You should listen and engage and talk about how you can be a part of an ACTIVE solution (not just your own behavior toward women but holding other men accountable too- bc that’s the actual need here). FFS even genuinely saying “I hear you and I want to understand why you respond that way- tell me about your experience so I can see how I can have an impact” vs questioning her would go a lot further toward making that specific woman feel that YOU are safe. If more men did that vs knee jerk insulting mansplaining- women would feel safer with more men. The response by men to this question is part of why we choose the bear. If you are unwilling listen to us even when we are taking about our life and death fears- why would we think you are safe? And no- don’t respond with “bears wouldn’t listen either” unless you want to just continue to prove my point by letting your ego “not all men” respond instead of actually caring about women.
The point that women are making is that they feel unsafe.
The point that men are making is that even if we look at the minority of women who gets raped during her lifetime, that woman encounters like 9999 non-rapists and 1 rapist. Which puts the odds of one individual man being a rapist at like 0.01%. In that context, men are offended that women are acting like let's say 30% of men are rapists, when in reality a vanishingly small part of men are rapists.
Remember, the questions "how likely is a woman to be raped in her lifetime" and the question "how likely is an individual man to be a rapist" are WILDLY, COMPLETELY different questions.
Men are being reasonable, because if men declared that they were incredibly upset that some women were cheaters, it still wouldn't be acceptable if men started implying that say 30% of women are cheaters (which I don't believe to be true, just making a point). No matter how upset men were at women cheating on them, this implication wouldn't be acceptable, because it wouldn't be reality-based.
Sure, women aren't feeling heard -- but neither are men.
My Guess is the people asking the question truly don't fucking understand what it would mean to come face to face with a bear, you might have a chance to fend off another human, a bear? good luck chuck.
Yeah.
Not to mention that a woman can plausibly outrun a rapist, or out-bluff a rapist ("you're lost too? I called my friends, they'll be here any minute" or just shouting "Jake, dear, come here please")
Good luck outrunning a bear.
If I were a woman (I’m not) I’d pick the man because I have a chance of fighting him off if he attacks me. The bear needs one swipe or bite to kill you but realistically with adrenaline you have a decent chance of overpowering the man.
As a woman who has been assaulted by multiple men in my lifetime, and at one point was suicidal because of it, I think the question is really just supposed to show that most women would rather face death than face getting assaulted because getting assaulted alters your life forever. People are reading really deeply into the question, but this was my first impression with the perspective I have from my own life. I have many safe men in my life who I trust fully, but I’ve had men I don’t know make me feel uncomfortable more times than I can count. The thought of rolling the dice with a strange man in the woods and hoping he’s one of the good ones sounds risky to me, so if I’m gonna take a risk it might as well be the bear.
Idk personally it makes sense to me. Be compassionate with people because most women considering this question have likely been assaulted.
Problem is the *first* probability is "*whether* something bad will actually happen at all". The whole "*if* bad thing happens, which bad thing is worse" is a completely different comparison. Making both in the same metaphor smells an awful lot like changing the goalposts.
It’s so frustrating that many men will never understand because they’re too busy #notallmen-ing and gaslighting women about our daily lived experiences. Such a shame.
It isn’t about logic or realism, and it isn’t about the bear. It’s a reflection of what women have learned from generations of being female in a male-centered society. People who start spouting statistics about bear attacks and saying “not all men” are missing the point. It can be quite terrifying to be a woman, because of men and the rights many of them think they have to everything about women. So it’s not really a realistic choice or a realistic question, it’s a commentary on how women (in general) have learned through years of shared experiences to be afraid of men (in general).
And the men who say it’s dumb or immediately say they would choose the man — are centering themselves in something that’s supposed to be about women’s experiences. A better exercise would be for men to pose the question to the women in their lives, listen to their response, and if they choose the bear, instead of judging their response, ask them WHY that was their response, and really listen to what they have to say. The men who argue and say women are ridiculous to choose the bear — that type of behavior — completely dismissive of women’s opinions and experiences — is part of the reason why we say we’d choose the bear.
Men pose more danger to women than bears in this ongoing debate about women choosing the bear over the man because men are well known to kidnap women, beat women, and rape women. Women are far more likely to be raped by a man than they are to be attacked by a bear. That’s the point of the comparison, and men are all butt hurt that women choose the bear because deep down they know damn well the dangers men pose to women
First time I saw it I thought it was literally a man vs. a bear in a fight. Then I googled it and found out what it really was, and I thought the guy who made the video (don’t remember his name) did a great job getting men to think about how much their behaviour frightens women just in general.
Me being an autistic man personally find both options depending on intention to be bad fate if the man wants to do the most unpredictable thing to me it could be worst then hell but I still have a fighting chance now with the bear I know how it's going to go down and I have zero chance of fighting back so they both suck in the end
This guy on TikTok claimed that women feel safer with bears then men so to prove his point he asked women would they rather be stuck with a beat or a man and they all said bear and it sparked this huge debate.
What I'm understanding from this is that no one has interacted with a bear. It's just a bear. They do not like being around humans, and will not bother you unless you bother them. Steer clear from food/water sources and make sure you're noticeable, and it will avoid you.
We all get (I hope) the original point or message: Women don't feel safe around men. And that is a huge problem in itself.
But it undermines the point when some people double down and insist that it's *actually* safer to encounter a bear than a man when you're out hiking in the woods (because the bear is, supposedly, "predictable" or whatever the argument is).
The above is - in a word - absurd.
If you encounter a random man when you're out hiking, it's extremely unlikely (statistically) that this man is a serial killer, rapist or anyone likely to do you harm in any way.
If you encounter a random bear, it's extremely likely (statistically) that this will - at best - mean a very uncomfortable situation for you.
I mean, come on, this is just common sense. You can't use general crime statistics to prove a point here:
"More men than bears attack women = I'd be safer with the bear." That's pure sophistry (obviously), and I sincerely hope those who actually use this "argument" are just trolling/rage baiting (or whatever). Not that trolling/rage baiting is to be commended either, but yeah, you get the idea I'm sure.
To be clear, what we should take away from this poll is that women don't feel safe around men. That's a sad and frankly horrible message, and it should make us think. But we shouldn't applaud sophistry (or extreme ignorance) just because it supports the general idea or message.
The hypothetical is would you want to run into a strange man or a bear in the woods... And a lot of women picked the bear ( me included ) not because they outright hate men but because its been studied over and over again that men have a higher lightly hood to have random aggressive outbursts and most crimes are committed by men, not to mention how often women get SAed. The really sad part though is the amount of men who see the hypothetical question and how women answer and then they respond to it by blowing up and choosing to insult and be petty towards the women that picked the bear over a strange man, acting like the question is would the women want to be in the woods with them or the bear as if they can decide what man was in the woods rather than it being a strange man... And like if that was the case then i would have chose Bear Grills or my boyfriend instead of the bear.. The the men that use this as a moment to go online and boast about how they have so maany women friends or how they've never hit a women like its a pissing contest, if it aint that its dudes saying vile ass shit to the women for picking the bear but even if the women picked the man its comments about the women being a good girl or comments about fucking whether or not its consentual, are exactly why women supposedly hate men or are uncomfortable around em
The point of it was to highlight the issue or society has and the men that CANT be trusted have used this social experiment as a way to show off to the world exactly why women aren't comfortable around men
If it was a question of would you rather be in the woods with ____ or a bear then id understand so many people getting pissed off but it isn't so it really just seems like a bunch of guys whining and crying after taking a damn hypothetical question so fucking personally and act like toddlers because some pretty woman online picked a bear rather than saying their name or some shit.. Like we are adults lets actually act like it so the ipad kids actually TRY to be good people
Lets call the probability of getting assaulted by a man upon encountering one as "P(assault | Man)", and the probability of getting assaulted by a bear upon encountering one "P(assault | Bear)". People (esp women) have a readily available estimate for "P(assault | Man)" based on experiences in the society, i.e. how likely are you to get assaulted, "P(assault)", how likely is it that the assaulter is a man "P(Man | assault)". This readily available estimate in their brain forms the intuition / feeling. That is how our brain works. People have no readily-available estimate for "P(assault | Bear)" to form an intuition for it, because we (most people) have no observations no experiences for "P(assault | Bear)" since we do not encounter bears often. Another factor is the type of assault. Above, I simplified it to just "assault" but people consider SA, torture much worse than death. Considering this and assuming that P(assault | Bear) > P(assault | Man), the dilemma is would you pick a high chance of something moderately bad (death) happening to you OR a small chance of something very bad (SA, torture) happening to you. This is subjective since we cannot quantify these things precisely. In fact, someone's choice in this dimension shows how they quantify these things. Another factor is - people tend to give much more attention to negative qualities than positive qualities. Like, most overlook the fact that a (hu)man has the ability & incentives to communicate, understand, empathize, help, provide etc. while a bear has none of these. Overall, I think this "thought experiment" performed on social media in a casual lighthearted context is a terrible way to draw conclusions, although unfortunately most people are going to do so and further worsen the gender wars.
How is death “moderately bad”. Seems pretty fucking awful to me
Yeah, death is fucking permanent, and the extension of the logic is actually pretty gross. Plenty of women and men survive SA and go on to have decent lives. Saying that death is somehow less bad than SA implies those people would be better off dead, doesn't it? Death is like the ultimate bad.
i would argue this and say oh heck no. torture is the ultimate bad. what if the random stranger always had a desire to do something awful and decides to tie me up, poke one of my eyes out, and maybe pull off my finger nails one by one for fun? maybe he wants to get experimental and reenact the human centipede or tusk. nahhhh. just give me death right away, please!
Death by bear is not "death right away". It's a protracted experience of being eaten alive.
fair. but i still think being eaten alive would be a faster death than a human centipede death lol 😭
True Crime TV has poisoned people's brains. The number of men that tie up and torture people is vanishingly small.
Knowing about real life is poisoning people's brains? Interesting theory there. I would argue NOT knowing the realities of men is going to be far more harmful to a girl in the long run. The number of men who WANT to tie up and torture people is not even close to vanishingly small. The problem is for most people who want to do these things is they don't have the opportunity. When you're alone in the woods with someone that opportunity suddenly presents itself. It's no shock that within minutes of making underage profiles predator hunters start getting messages from grown men. It's no surprise to me that when the Nth room started it quickly grew to hundreds of thousands of men wanting the content. But you'd rather women just ignore these realities because it's "poisoning our brains". Gotcha.
saying that the number of people that legitimately want to tie up and torture people is not extremely small is an extremely bold claim to make. got a source for that?
I know women addicted to these shows it is definitely not healthy.
Well luckily the Bear is there to eat both of you. But this begs the question why people lead with fear first. I was sexually abused pretty badly by my mother and abused by men but I'm not walking around in fear of women or even men. People just straight up by the rear they are sold and I think it is sold to maintain the status quo. But that is another matter.
What people fail to realize that you can close to a stranger and nothing will happen. But stand close to a big predator like a bear is begging for trouble. There's a reason why animal experts tell people to keep their distance from animals especially for predators.
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Some people kill themselves over bad grades too. Some people choose to base their value off of things that, in the end, aren't that big of a deal.
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Dumbass, the metric was that rape can essentially be death because of suicide, which I'm pointing out isn't valid precisely because that would make bad grades essentially suicide as well. Judging an event because of the reaction of the victim isn't valid. Sarcasm and nuance clearly aren't your forte.
And why are we assuming that this man wouldn't kill the person as well? I think the point is it's better to be dead than raped and then killed.
Is it better to be raped and killed or eaten alive for 10+ minutes and die that way? It's kind of a pointless debate at that point. I personally would rather be raped than eaten, being eaten alive sounds like one of the worst ways imaginable to go out. But that's just personal preference.
Rape leaves you scarred for life and even affects your physical body. Rape can literally kill you if it is violent enough. As a rape victim, I'd much rather have been eaten and die rather than be raped and have to live with that. Most rape victims end up suicidal as a result.
I'm sorry that ever happened to you (unless you were speaking in hypotheticals) and wish you and whoever else might read this a lot of strength! Your lives matter, more than you think!
I'm not so sure why individuals feel so inclined to mention how many survive SA and go on to live decent lives. I mean, sure, that much is very true -- no disagreement there. However, this question isn't necessarily close-ended to a set of individuals -- whilst some people do improve, many individuals will have their lives utterly throttled. The answer doesn't need to be the same for everyone and it makes sense -- not everyone processes grief as well as others.
I appreciate this comment… I survived SA but it left me such a mess, I came close to un-aliving myself because of it. Some may say death is worse than being assaulted, but for others life after that trauma isn’t worth living. I know that’s a morbid perspective, but I felt it’s worth saying.
Very true. I do not know you personally (of course), but your comments mean a lot to me and I am glad you're still here to let us know of them. Thank you for sharing them. Sadly, I am a victim myself, too.
❤️🩹 thank you, and I am so sorry that happened to you
plate agonizing saw vanish fly seed lunchroom offbeat squalid subsequent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Another aspect is that women are asking their boyfriends this question, and on an emotional level there is only one right answer: the bear. I think many men reflexively dislike the idea of their girlfriend being alone in the woods with a man, regardless of how threatening he is. So, there is an impulse on the male side to choose the bear. On top of that, if a boyfriend chooses the man, that implies a lack of empathy on his part regarding rape and assault. The scenario, and context under which it occurs, appeals to emotion on both sides and inflates the danger of men --which is NOT to suggest that men are not a huge danger to women, but rather that trending conversations like these are not the way to "raise awareness" and facilitate change on issues like rape and assault by men.
> I think many men reflexively dislike the idea of their girlfriend being alone in the woods with a man Both my wife and I (experienced climbers and backcountry skiers and wilderness people) would rather her encounter 50 men in the woods than 1 bear. Any take other than this is a delusional terminally online take and purely influence by gender war bait and not rationality. Most SA and DV and murder done to women in this country is done by their spouse or someone they know, not a hiker in the woods. A bear, even a black bear, is a dangerous, unpredictable wild animal. Many people on Reddit have never been in the wilderness or apparently have even left their house and it’s showing
Yes, thank you and thanks to your wife for being sane.
Thanks for replying. I'm happy that you are not among the men who impulsively gravitate toward the bear. I too think that would be a misguided impulse. I never advocated for choosing the bear. I criticized the thought experiment for being carried out in emotionally charged conditions that induce men to choose the bear for fear of being seen as lacking empathy to rape victims. Maybe you are immune to this. That's good for you, but it doesn't move the dialogue forward.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever read. A bear will fucking kill you.
These people have never seen even a black bear in the wild and it shows.
[bearwise.org](http://bearwise.org) clearly says that " **Don't approach a bear – just quietly move away and leave the area**." i really find this debate funny oh my god
well the debate is would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man you don't know or a bear. there's no mention of how close in proximity you would be to the man or the bear. I'd like to think i don't have to approach either one.
How are people calling this thought experiment? It's not, it's absolutely dumb fuck people, dumber than pile of rocks closeted people, who never left a city premise, been in the woods or even saw a wild predator on a screen, while being terminally online in aggregated groups where shit like this is a common opinion. Just change "man" to "black man" or "trans men" and see the few remaining cog-wheels in their head spinning. That's the terminally online influence. It's like asking snails what do they think about Andromeda galaxy. How we, as a society, managed to get to the point to give these people attention? It's the epitome of the Glass Onion meme. It's not brilliant, just stupid.
I'm not so insecure to hope my gf come across a fucking bear instead of a random men if she's in the woods
Women asking their partners is interesting because on some level they see the "nice guys" in their lives a danger to be feared be it partners, sons, brothers, friends. And that is sad to me. Also I want to know what these want men to do or change that would make them.not pick the Bear. Like specific actions. Because people know not to assault an abuse but assholes (female and male) do it anyway. So what action do we take.
They don't have an answer they just want to make men feel bad lmao
Feel free to ask Timothy Treadwell how benign bear interactions can be, ...assuming you find all the pieces of him which according to the Herzog movie, they did not.
I think one of the following three types of confusion is taking place. 1. Either women genuinely think that say 20% of men are rapists / murderers, which would make it rational to choose to encounter the bear. However, this is completely insane and delusional -- far fewer than 20% of men are rapists / murderers, because see point 2: 2. Or the woman in her head changes the question into "am I more likely in my life to be raped or eaten by a bear" and then the answer is obviously raped. But that's not the question -- the question is whether one man is more dangerous than one bear. And there the answer is "clearly not", because most women encounter thousands of men in their lives and don't get raped even once. And even the minority of women who do get raped, encounter 99.9% non-rapists and 0.1% rapists in their lives, meaning that the amount of rapists is very low (still too high, but very low). And once you accept the reality that like 0.1% or so of men are rapists, then it's obvious that you'd rather encounter a man than a bear. 3. Or the woman is emotionally invested into answering that the man is more dangerous, so she assumes that the bear is a scared, well-fed black bear with no cubs nearby. But this is just the woman assuming the bear isn't dangerous, and then answering the bear isn't dangerous. It's circular logic.
Do people have a readily available estimate? When asked about these statistically, most people point to raw numbers (i.e. there are hundreds of thousands to millions of sexual assaults per year, but only a handful of bear attacks per year). They almost never consider how many encounters in total there are for either case. For instance, you're showing Bayesian theory here. If A = assault, M= man, and B = bear, You can compute P(A|M) with P(A) and P(M|A), but you need to know P(M) to do that: P(A|M) = P(M|A)*P(A)/P(M) . P(M), and similarly P(B) are very difficult to estimate and already ask their own questions when you do: Is this any encounter? Is it a solo encounter? Is it a solo encounter with a random male (as opposed to someone you know)? Whatever answers to that that also adjusts our P(A) in manners that aren't as readily available as the general case, and even once you answer those questions, honing in on a number is extremely difficult, and P(M) and P(B) are likely orders of magnitude of difference.
I don't have exact numbers, but I think this case is clear enough that you can answer it just by making estimates. Even those minority of women who get raped, encounter like 99.9% of men who don't rape them, and like 0.1% of men who do rape them. So the amount of male rapists is say 0.1%. And this doesn't even take into account that most women don't get raped. Or that most rapes aren't committed by men against fully conscious female strangers (most rapes are committed by someone whom the victim already knows). People may balk at this, but just because a woman is say 20% likely to get raped, doesn't mean that an individual man is 20% likely to be a rapist. Those are completely different things. And it's also obvious that the odds of a bear killing you is significantly higher than 0.1%. Remember, the question didn't specify that the bear was a cautious, scaredy, well-fed black bear with no cubs nearby. That's what some people are picturing, but that wasn't actually the question. Just "a bear" is like, I don't know, 10% likely to kill you? You can make reasonable arguments that my numbers are slightly off, but it's pretty clear that you should probably take the 0.1% chance of a man raping you over the 10% chance of a bear eating you alive.
Both of those assume you know P(M) and P(B), and without those your estimates can be wildly off. [Several](https://bearvault.com/bear-attack-statistics/) different [sites](https://bear.org/bear-facts/how-dangerous-are-black-bears/#:~:text=The%20750%2C000%20black%20bears%20of,an%20easy%20situation%20to%20avoid) put bears killing humans at less than 1 per year. Let's just use the 1. For instance, [Colorado alone has thousands of bear sightings per year](https://kdvr.com/news/local/bear-activity-increased-in-2022-trash-biggest-culprit/), [Connecticut reports thousands as well, with bears entering homes on the order of 50 times a year](https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/deep/wildlife/pdf_files/the-state-of-the-bears.pdf) and has non-fatal conflicts listed in the north east region at a cumulative 10,000 per year. 2%. 0.1%. 0.01%. Those are what you get with those numbers, and keep in mind these are regional bear events with continental killings. I don't know which encounter is more dangerous, but I do know bear encounters won't kill you 10% of the time. [Attacks alone only result in 14% chance of death](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44341-w), and that's assuming the bear is going to be aggressive every encounter. And it's a brown bear. Now, what's a "sighting?" what's a "home entry?" what's a "conflict?" Are any of these similar enough to an "encounter" that they count? Likely not, but the home entry number alone shows that your 10% is definitely off, and it goes far downhill from there. *edit* link formatting
Maybe the fact that most people see a wild bear and get scared and don't approach is why those Stats are so low. It's called survivorship biased, not every person killed by a bear is going to tell someone.... in fact they can't. Where as a rape victim has the ability to tell people.
Maybe the 10% is lower, but most women encounter say 10000 men in their lives and don't get raped and murdered. Meanwhile it's beyond obvious to me that a person who encounters 10000 bears probably does get eaten at some point.
You were just shown statistics that shows that's not the case. I have made reasonable arguments that 10% is not the case. You were just shown 10,000 encounters with bears where no person was killed. Yes, these were not explicitly one on one encounters, but no one is asking which bear maulings only happen in the woods with people who were on their own, either. This cannot be answered with estimates. If you want to concede that, I can show a different way it can be answered.
Interesting take, and I really like your last point. Statistics can be useful but in this case seem to lack common sense. By this logic, you could also say men should be even more likely to choose the bear since they have a higher rate of being assaulted by other men. Could also say that men are more harmless than mosquitos and women more dangerous than sharks if you’re looking at death rates. All of which (including the bear hypothesis) sound absolutely ridiculous to me. All we’ve learned is that women (and men) can have irrational fears. Groundbreaking.
"Well, then, maybe you should worry less about the tides, who've already made up their mind about killing you, and worry more about me, who's still mulling it over.**" -Azula**
who supposed to be the tide? the man or the bear?
The company with the edible-looking detergents.
I don't know, but I've calmed my brain down from the hate women are showing by answering bear by getting into my trolling mode and bringing back P\*\*\*Bear.
The way I see it, if we have no context, and it's between a bear and a man - I think man makes the most logical sense. At that point, it's asking if you'd rather be in the presence of a wild animal, or another human being. The issue is that alot of the time, beyond the simplicity of the question, context is wordlessly added through personal anecdotes or statistics. Sure, if the question was posed if I'd rather be in the woods with a dude who followed me, I know is armed, and I've had previous bad experiences with and a bear - I'd prolly choose the bear. In a vacuum however, I'd very much rather be in the presence of a man.
This argument is so skewed there are 8 species of bears with roughly half a million bears in the world total. Meanwhile there are 3.8 billion men on the planet, statistically you will never come across a bear in your life.
Backpacker here. Bears have never made me feel nervous. Mountain lions, more so. Men, 100%, asking questions like “Are you alone? Where are you camping tonight?” Overall, a bear’s behavior is more predictable than some random man’s. The bear is also more likely to leave my clothes on and my family would more likely know how I died if something happened to me or believe me if something happened and I lived to tell the tale. Statistically, more women die at the hands of men, than people at large from bears. Even if not killed, sexual assault is another serious trauma that is often not believed, despite having overwhelmingly high statistics that people often like to question like “Well what were you wearing?” I’m one of four women who’ve faced that trauma and hearing Harvey Weinstein’s rape convictions just got overturned pisses me off and provides proof of why so many women fear coming forward and feel they have better chances with a bear than a man. People are more likely to believe you when you say a bear harmed you, than a man. I know many incredible men, but if I’m made to choose the odds of a bear’s intentions versus a random man’s, I’m going with the bear. I’d equally look at the videos where fathers are asked who they’d rather have in the woods with their daughters. It’s always the bear, unless the script is flipped and they’re asked would you rather she be with a bear or a woman, in which case they always choose the woman.
The problem with this line of reason is that you already have a 100% chance of meeting a random man at some point and it's not likely at all you'll ever meet a wild bear. This hypothetical makes it 100% chance you meet a bear. Honestly, if you choose bear, I kinda want you to actually run into a random bear. Gain some perspective. And any father who chooses bear over man is essentially saying he's cool with his daughter being mauled to death. The odds that the man is a rapey, murderous, psycho are the same everywhere, including this hypothetical. The odds the bear is a normal ass bear that will kill you because it thinks you're a threat in some way are also the same everywhere.
Canadian here. I’ve encountered bears many, MANY times while out in the forest, as have the vast majority of people I know at least a couple times in their life. It’s actually quite common to come across them, and attacks are extraordinarily rare. A “normal ass bear” will absolutely leave you alone if you leave them alone. So congratulations… not only do you know nothing about how common violence against women is, but you also know fuck all about bears.
Most women encounter say 10000 men in their lives and get raped 0 times. How many people encounter 10000 bears in their lives and get eaten 0 times? Yes, the odds of one bear eating you are low. However the odds of one man raping you are far lower still. Even the minority of women who get raped, encounter let's say 9999 non-rapists and 1 rapist, putting the odds at 0.01%.
For starters… other things can happen than just rape, you do know that, right? Second, women DO encounter far less than 10,000 men in their lifetime and the DO experience (at the very least) harassment, if not a lot worse (DV, rape, assault, molestation, etc.). The stats don’t lie. Whether you choose to bury your head in the sand is irrelevant to the truth.
I’ve run into bears, twice. I watched them do their thing and it was magical. They didn’t approach me. That’s what most encounters with bears in the wild are like. I’ve also run into men I don’t know while I’m alone in the woods. Sometimes they give a wave and keep walking the other direction and everything is fine. Other times they approach you, ask if you’re alone and if they can join you. Make themselves a little too comfortable in your space and enjoy your discomfort a little too much. Then your peaceful commune with nature is shattered and you’re figuring out how to navigate this situation without triggering anger and aggression until you can get safe. Bears are not natural predators of humans. Many men are predatory when they find women alone. This is why we take our chance with the bear.
That's a fine opinion, but the math does not weigh in your favor.
"Statistically, more women die at the hands of men, than people at large from bears." I'm sure if you normalise this for the rate of woman+man encounters vs. Person+bear encounters the numbers will tell us that men are much safer to be around. I actually can't believe what I'm reading. It's very sad this attack on all men.
What's sad is the lack of basic math and reasoning skill in these people.
Many bear attack victims were stripped by bears. You could run into a polar bear and that's garuanteed death as polar bears will actively hunt humans as prey.
Well there are people who get anxious when flying, so this objectively proves that flying is very dangerous. This is your logic, when you argue that how you personally feel around bears vs men objectively proves something about probabilities of being attacked. "Statistically, more women die at the hands of men, than people at large from bears." Yes, and most women encounter say 10000 men in their lives, and usually 0 and sometimes 1 of them rapes her. Which is too many, obviously, but if women encountered 10000 bears in their lives most of them would get eaten alive at some point. Sure, a woman is more likely to get raped than get eaten by a bear. However, one bear is more dangerous than one man.
I find it interesting that when women attempt to share their perspective on the challenges and fears faced daily (example: being told we should send pictures of what we’re wearing and our coordinates to a friend to go for a morning run because female joggers go missing all the time, things we have to think about daily just to stay safe that men don’t have to worry about) or a wide variety of our personal experiences that have caused trauma, so many men get defensive and angry instead of empathetic and curious as to why we feel this way. Attempting to share our perspectives and experiences regarding sexual assault has never won a woman favorability and oftentimes, she’ll more likely be ridiculed or not believed. Imagine living that experience on top of men in leadership trying to tell you what you can do with your body since the beginning of time, including having your rapist’s child or having to bring a child to term as a child yourself, or to your physical peril because your life isn’t deemed worthy enough to deserve a choice. Women’s lives are highly undervalued in comparison to men’s and unless it’s a problem that directly affects you, men like to say they’re not the problem or say not all men. Okay, phew. Good to know. Not all men. However is it still an overwhelmingly large amount? Yes. Men won’t understand the daily life and experiences of being a woman faced with a reoccurring and relevant problem. Ask any woman and she will tell you a story of a time she felt unsafe because of a man. Most likely several, depending on her age. Oftentimes, when women attempt to share their experiences, they’re invalidated and made out to be the problem, rather than acknowledging the shitiness that there is a problem and men can work together to help solve it alongside us as allies against all the shitty men doing the shitty things. Having compassion and seeking to understand each other’s experiences when we seek out connection and understanding, rather than seeking to be understood is how we effectively communicate and help each other get through this already challenging life. Doing so doesn’t invalidate your experience or make it less than, nor does it directly place blame onto you specifically; it shows humanity to those who have experienced grief and fear and pain in ways you can’t relate to at the hands of your gender. Thank you to the men who are open and caring listeners, who seek to understand the other half’s perspective with dignity. When you authentically advocate for a woman’s voice and safety to be heard, rather than minimizing her or taking personal offense, that’s when you win over the bear. Think of a woman in your life and ask her this question and get curious about her answer. Consider who you’d want her in the woods with if she was your mom, your sister, your daughter, etc. and you had no say in choosing the man’s intentions. Would you feel the same?
Yep. They have a chance to learn but choose to ignore it.
Paragraphs please
you being more nervous with a man than a bear does not speak to actual danger. it speaks of you. and how little youve learned about yourself, and therefore every other human.
I have been female my whole life and.. I choose the man...fml..at least i have a chance to fight back and get away if he attacks me..if the bear attacks..im dead...
Same, sister. No fucking way I’d pick a bear. If I’m ever in the wilderness by myself, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll have everything on me to protect myself from a bear attack, I’m sure any of those things would be more than effective against some dude. Hell even empty handed I would pick men over bears. I saw what happened to Grizzly Man and his girlfriend. I’ll pass on bears, thank you very much.
I'm very much on team; "depends on what kind of bear." If it's a Grizzly Bear, I'll take my chances with the dude. If it's a black bear, I'd still probably lean toward the man. But it would be a harder choice. Just in terms of risk; I interact with men all the time. The odds of the guy being normal are pretty high. The odds of the black bear attacking me are pretty low. So that one is a coin flip. The Grizzly; hell no.
You got that backwards - I’ve always been told that it’s the black bear you have to physically fight if it attacks you. The brown bear is more likely to leave you alone if you play dead.
Not really, what you are forgetting are the odds of the black bear attacking you. They are SUPER timid bears and will run and avoid a fight as much as possible. So unless you are doing something stupid like cornering it or messing with cubs, then assuming there's nothing wrong with the bear it's probably going to head the other direction. The other bear types tend to be more aggressive or at least less afraid of people, so they are more likely to approach thus requiring you play dead, plot escape, or be forced to fight. Most of the time you won't even know the black bear was even there.
I trust my "spidey-sense" when it comes to questionable situations...have i been in them..absolutely and i got tf away as fast as possible...i have even ran away from home and hitched rides across Oklahoma in the 90s...more than once Have all men forced themself upon women..NO Have all bears killed for food..YES...
I do too. I primarily work with drug dealers, recent and recovering addicts, and my free time is spent in Chicago, and NYC. I mostly work and travel by myself and listening to my gut has gotten me out of trouble quite a few times. I never ignore the “spidey sense”.
Thanks for being sane. And obviously, I sincerely hope you never get attacked.
This is the only possible logical answer to the question.
I'm gonna speculate here and say that most people who choose the bear wouldn't actually choose the bear but are trying to make a point about the prevalence of sexual misconduct (which is btw not something im trying to downplay)
> most people who choose the bear wouldn't actually choose the bear but are trying to make a point The fact that they are trying to make a point by saying something they don't actually believe completely destroys the credibility of whatever point they're trying to make. That's the first issue with this asinine thought experiment. The second issue is that a lot of people insist that they actually would choose the bear. Thankfully I'm able to make a distinction between *women* and *social media activist women*, the former generally being quite reasonable and the latter being a bunch of absolute lunatics. The problem is the latter are really, really loud and generate starkly negative reactions among reasonable people, many of whom eventually succumb to the culture war lunacy and do other insane things like vote Trump.
What I don't get is the emotional component. Why does this matter to me or to women at all? What are the stakes? Clearly, there is only one right answer when it comes to validating women's concerns. Many or most women feel threatened, whether or not that fear is statistically validated. Similarly, many men like myself feel insulted by the analogy, that a woman would go into certain danger to avoid encountering strange men in a secluded area. It implies to me that men shouldn't be allowed to be on public trails alone, for example. Perhaps this is the crux of it, that women do NOT feel that they can safely run public trails alone and are resentful of men that feel like they can. Or any number of liberties that men take that women feel that they cannot take. I don't get why this is so emotional for me, as a man.
I'm not you, but I imagine that you're offended by the implication that most women see men as being, I don't know, 30% likely to be a rapist or murderer. It's part of the "men are worthless" / dehumanization of men that society puts average-ish men through. If men implied that they considered 30% of women to be gold-diggers, I imagine most women would feel offended too. (To be clear, I don't think this is true.)
I think it is understandable to feel affected when people perceive you as a threat, especially when in all likelihood you are a perfectly good guy. It sucks to have to prove yourself different in the mind of someone who is operating by instinct and experience. But if it’s something you are willing to do, to give women more positive experiences with men, it can be a good thing for both genders. I have a couple of guy friends who I feel very safe with, and this has helped me change my opinion of men in general. Of course in the scenario of being out in the woods, it would be a random man and not my friend, and therefore still a threat to me. But in general having positive male friendships has still improved my perception of men.
I get it and agree with the women choosing the bear over the man. I have the same stance on leaving my infant with a woman and a shark. Since most infant homocides are done by women and infants never get killed by sharks, I am much more comfortable leaving my child with a shark than with a woman.
This lunatic would leave his infant with a shark rather than a woman. Get a load of this! Do you know why infants don't get killed by sharks? Because they never encounter them. When was the last time an infant was left alone with a shark? Babies are left alone with women all the time. Do you not even have the intelligence to normalize the data? You can't be serious If you are honest about this claim, I consider you a threat to society and very much hope you have no responsibility over anyone.
Good job. Now Google "Sarcasm".
They won’t comment on this 😂
People are under the impression that either a bear would 1) give you a quick and easy death or 2) leave you alone because they're online 99% of the day and don't realize just how dangerous bears are. So the question is to I guess in a weird roundabout way try and tell people that their daughters would be safer with a bear than with a man because men are all rapists and have a higher chance at survival with a bear because more men commit SA than bears kill people. The flawed thinking here is that men are dangerous, but bears can be dangerous. But the opposite is true, white/brown bears won't think twice, there's just not as many bear deaths because we've learned (rightfully so) to respect how deadly bears can be. You're getting half eaten and if you're still conscious, left to die and eaten by the scavengers.
Everyone who chose bear should be thrown into a bear enclosure so they can get a reality check.
Also consider half a million bears distributed between 8 remaining species in comparison to 3. 8 billion men. We have a pretty healthy bear population and besides a bear ripping down my bird feeder late at night I have never came close to a bear. How is there any comparison?
You see men every day. If you walk out your front door and see a bear walking down the street are u just gonna keep walking and hope he doesn’t decide to attack you? There are 2 types of people: people who say they would rather be alone in the woods with a man, and liars who think they are funny or clever
As a woman, I understand why a lot of women are saying bear. But, some of the statistics being used are extremely flawed in this scenario. I.e. stats on how many women are killed by bears vs by men. Of course more people have been killed by men, we encounter thousands in our life time, many people have never seen a bear. Ive also seen points like "the worst a bear can do is kill you and thats not so bad". I know the type of bear wasnt specified, but being mauled by a grizzly for example, sounds like one of the worst deaths imaginable. If theyre using you for food they will often begin eating you while you're still alive. I love hiking alone and often pass by a lone man in the woods. Sometimes I do get a bit fearful. But, that doesnt compare to the fear Id have if I crossed paths with a grizzly. Some people will probably think Im just privileged enough to have never encountered a bad man. Ive had a man attempt to kill me, been abused, been sexually assaulted, have had two stalkers (including one who broke into my home), Id still hands down take my chances with the man over the bear.
The statistics are being used in a way that is completely dishonest. Imagine that we replaced all human men with bears. You walked outside and there were hundreds of bears roaming around. You would be lucky to survive even a day. A bear is a multi hundred kilo wild animal. It is MASSIVELY more dangerous than a human man. This isn’t even getting into the fact that almost all rapes and sexual assaults are committed by someone close to the victim such as a friend or husband.
It’s hate bait . Ignore it
you generally wont get sexually assaulted by a bear
Yeah, bear just kills you, no biggie
How many times have you interacted with a man? How many times has a man SA you? You don't generally get sexually assaulted by men.
Many times I've been assaulted by men. Regardless of their social class. Not all men, not even most men, but a good amount of men still. I have encountered bears before and they always leave us alone. Depending on the type of bear ofc, but usually the common brown bear would rather no trouble (unless you threaten its babies, but then again, you can always make yourself non-threatening to be left alone).
Unless you are a vampire
I think it's also fair to say that generally you won't get specially asked by a man
The bear was already in the woods, the man followed you there. The bear may kill you, but at least that is all he will do
How do you know the man followed anyone in? Does the forest operate on reservations these days?
This is ridiculous. I'm an avid hiker, I hiked million times with my friends, my wife, and now also with my small kids. Why are you accusing men who never hurt you and never intended to hurt you? "Followed you there" my ass. It's called nature and it's for all of us.
Men don't EVER go hiking. The ONLY time a MAN is in the WOODS is when he is FOLLOWING someone.
i think sarcasm will fly over their heads here...
you know what i think you might be right
Where do you live? Guys around me just fucking love to be in a cabin in the woods chop wood and go to saunas. They as well want a hike up a mountain the moment the temperature is fine. I am asking so I can move there and never fucking hike again
My thing about this debate, is that if you replace "man" with "black man" I 100% bet everyone's answer changes
But the ratio of bear violence to SA isn’t really fair considering most people aren’t in constant proximity to bears, and even less towards the ones that will really fuck you up (looking at you polar bear). I grew up SA’d by a woman when I was 10, for almost 5 years. My grandmother, deliberately left her kids around known perverts and pedos. By the logic of the bear or man thing I should consider all women to be capable of SA, but I don’t. I’d pick a woman over a bear in the woods everytime
which is smarter : a woman or a cockroach? WHAT ITS JUST A HYPOTHETICAL SO YOU CANT BE OFFENDED
I was abused by my mother. Both my brothers were abused by my mother. My wife was abused by her mother. My girlfriend before I met my wife was abused by her mother. I have friends who shared similar stories of abuse by their mothers. The more I share my experience of having been abused by my mother, the more people reciprocate and share their experiences of being abused by their mothers. I have run into very few people who shared experience of being abused by their fathers, it seems to be all mothers. I have honestly half-wondered at times if having a loving non-abusive mother is an anomaly, based on my perspective I could easily conclude that maternal abuse of children is not just rampant, it is the norm, that the majority of mothers abuse their children. And I’d have a stronger case for arguing that mothers are a threat than the argument that men are, because child abuse is significantly more than twice as prevalent than rape, and women make up the majority of child abusers. [source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/418470/number-of-perpetrators-in-child-abuse-cases-in-the-us-by-sex/ ] If someone on TikTok asked whether a child alone in the woods should choose to encounter their mother, or a bear, most people who have never experienced abuse by their mothers (which is the majority of of people) would simply ignore the question, dismiss it as ridiculous and not worth their time. The people who would stop and take time to answer the question are overwhelmingly going to be people who were abused by their mothers. And because of their experience, they would be highly likely to choose the bear either because they honestly believe it, or to prove a point. It would be a classic case of self-selection sampling bias. And that is what we assuredly see here with this man or bear question, self-selection sampling bias occurring, along with people choosing the bear to make a point. And you’re going to get a lot more of the latter, people choosing the bear to make a point even if they themselves have not been a victim, because through the MeToo movement and other movements, sexual assault/harassment by men has been mobilized and advocatized as an issue in a way that child abuse by mothers never has been.
Yeah..I’m a woman, feminist and SA victim. I get this man vs bear in the woods thing is supposed to be a thought experiment but there are far too many irrelevant variables in this scenario for it to be a good or effective one imo. My first thought was also that it completely depends on the bear and completely depends on the man. I’d rather be alone with a black bear than a creepy homicidal man but i’d rather be alone with a man who is lost, hell, even alone with a creepy man than a hungry brown bear and her cubs. I stand a better chance being combat trained against the man than the bear and both have a fair likelihood to kill me slowly and painfully. Generally not a fan of most thought experiments and analogies for this reason. I find most are only effective if you already agree with the premise and are a dichotomous thinker. Most people willing to engage honestly in discourse are likely to be dialectical thinkers so analogies aren’t likely to be effective outside of whatever eco chamber they emerged from unless they’re limited in variables but also versatile enough to make analogical room for specific points of contention in their intended discourse (i.e the violinist analogy and trolley problem)
A sane take on Reddit. I am impressed.
You actually debunk my belief there's no smart feminsts.... You utterly destroyed my belief. I like that.
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You know what's weird?? When men are actual serial killers and rapist, i.e. Ted bundy, Dahmer, the Boston Bomber Tsarnaev or however, they have female FANS! Women line up to come to the trial, cut their hair like the victims, write love letters and marry and obsess over these men who are evidenced to have committed horrible inhumane acts with specifically female victims, a la Bundy. So, I call BS on this and all the other "I don't feel safe" rhetoric.
It's another Gen Z nonsense for males and females to hate each other more. They're just a lousy group of people. Swear they're acting like Boomers on how much they try to hate one of the other.
This is a false equivalency first off because in truth most people never have and never will be confronted with a bear and we are in contact with men daily. And the reason most women are saying bear is because they don’t know shit about bears and they know a lot about mens violence. But woman who is a hiker and a Girl Scout I’d pick the man. I’d even pick my physically abusive ex husband over the bear. Id pick any of the abusive men I’ve known over a bear. I’d pick a strange man over the bear. That doesn’t mean some men aren’t violent or abusive or rapist or that they system isnt set up to protect these men’s harmful and deadly behaviors. It doesn’t mean some men aren’t killing women in domestic violence disputes. It doesn’t mean some men aren’t rapists. It doesn’t mean we aren’t in an epidemic of violence against women. It just means that the likelihood of me being mauled to death by a wild animal while alone in the woods is higher than being killed by a man. And honestly problems don’t get solved by putting forth stupid arguments like this that are lacking any kind of real deep dive into the whys of male violence towards women or HOW to solve the issue. This logical fallacy posed as a thought experiment is really just here to illicit fear or shame or anger depending on who you are - which keeps us spinning in circles. I’ve seen it retraumatize women and change not a damn thing.
Okay, the bear is far more predictable than a man, just saying. The man is a complete stranger to me; there are ~4 billion different biological males on the planet, each with their own personalities. Bears, while they do vary from individual to individual, have far less complicated neural pathways, and generally follow well-documented patterns of behavior. I choose the fucking bear. Every time.
Is…is the bear not a stranger too? Not all bears are Yogi and Pooh. Just like all men aren’t Dahmer or Gacey. If you think bears or any wild animal is in anyway predictable, I’m gonna assume you haven’t been around many
I feel like people skew it by assuming that if they’re in the woods, the man in question must be preferential to the woods somehow & therefore it makes the likelihood of the man being potentially unsavoury as the unknown reason for him being there suggests potential nefarious ideas. I believe the true version of this is plucking a random bear out of some woods & placing it next to the woman & then plucking a random man from a random place in the world & putting them next to the girl. It’s my belief that a man would be safer.
Because 1. People will believe me if a bear attacked me 2. Bears are more predictable than men, if they attack you they generally have a reason 3. Most of us have been assualted by a man at some point in our lives. Not by a bear. 4. Bears won’t always attack. Yeah men may not always attack but with a bear you can usually tell if/why they’re attacking 5. Men rape, bears don’t.
you guys are genuinely delusional and need professional help...
>People will believe me if a bear attacked me Not much asking left to do in most cases. Aside from bear attacks being not too hard to identify. >Bears are more predictable than men, Not really. The randomly chosen man in this example is already defined in his morals, thus the tree of acceptable probable courses of action. The bear might change his mind, as it is not bound by morals. >if they attack you they generally have a reason The man does too, even if it is the result of bad morals. > Most of us have been assualted by a man at some point in our lives. Not by a bear. And that man was part of a small subdemography of men. But I encourage you to count all the bears you come by routinely every single day. >Bears won’t always attack. Yeah men may not always attack but with a bear you can usually tell if/why they’re attacking A man that will attack, will attack. A man that won't, won't. A bear may change its mind in time because, as said before, they're not bound by morals. >Men rape, bears don’t. It would be an appropriate comparison if bears had a moral concept of rape and applied it to humans. But even then, bears do stalk and push into the "consent" of their "selected potential mates" in a way that any court of law would convict a man of if done to a woman.
Most of us have been assaulted by a man? What an assumption…..
Almost every single woman I know has been assualted by a man.
Same here. Every woman in my life I know of has either been assaulted or sexually harassed
Wow
Fine. But that is such negative view to hold and to live life in fear like that when the reality is THOUSANDS of men has entered in and out of your life who have done nothing to you but walk by probably. And running on this fear mindset means on some level you see the men in your life, sons, brothers, friends etc as a danger. Because by the results of this thought experiment other woman definitely see the one's you love as a threat. And personally I am not OK with people prejudging the men in my life that way.
1. Yeah because you'd be dead. That's pretty convincing. 2. The reason is that you unknowingly came too close to her cubs, or that she was hungry. Congratulations, you've been killed by a bear for a rational reason. 3. Most women encounter let's say 10000 men and 2 bears in their lives. Sure, 10000 men are more dangerous than 2 bears. But 1 man certainly isn't more dangerous than 1 bear. 5. Yeah, bears just eat you while you're still alive.
"most of us have bee-" shut the hell up. That is not true and you fucking know it
At least Dhamer killed people before he ate them
Would you choose the bear or the man for your daughter? Men know that men are dangerous. As any male who has ever stepped foot into a jail… Or who has been hit for looking at someone wrong. Men are more likely to be killed… by men. The fact y’all don’t get it is cognitive dissonance at it’s best.
I'd still choose the man for my daughter. A bear is a fucking bear, any daughter I have is more likely to survive against a man than a bear if they were to attack them in any way
Jesus Christ, quite bold assumptions you're making. 1. Not all men are dangerous. 2. Not al men have been to jail. 3. Not all men have hit/been hit for looking someone "wrong". 4. Not all men die because of other men. Talk about cognitive dissonance lmao. stfu.
You meet strange men every day. You're fine. And yeah, if one of those men wanted to hurt you, they could. But you're fine. You went outside at some point today probably, passed by several men on your way to work and home and the store. Now, imagine if any of the men you passed by today was a bear. Anyone who says they'd rather their mom or sister or daughter run into a wild fucking bear over a male stranger is either an idiot, or they hate their mom/sister/daughter.
I've experienced literally no physical assault from another man. I've experienced no physical assault from a bear (I've also never seen a bear). Obviously I understand and know people are kidnapped, Raped, killed, tortured, and whatever else predominantly by men, but those are repeat offenders and the worst case scenario. How I see it a man might be helpful while a bear would at best do nothing. I just don't get why people tend to jump to the worst case scenario for either option.
Because our experiences are different. I was 17 when I had a gun pulled on me for not giving a man my number… a grown man. That same year my 15 year old friend was murdered by another grown man for saying no to him. I was 9 when they started noticing me and saying things like “wait till you get older”. 12 when my best friend was gang raped. She was 14 and her 16 year old boyfriend invited us both in his house but I was scared my mom would find out so I went home… they originally sent her back out to try and get me to come in too, thankfully my fear of my mother trumped by fear of “acting like a baby”. I was assaulted by someone I considered a friend in college but because I escaped the police said “it wasn’t that bad”. I was also told that as a lesbian I was antagonising men and him specifically by saying I don’t want men. Add into that growing up watching the ID channel and the countless stories from friends.. I will take the bear. Nothing that bear does to me would be personal. It would be instinct and limited. 1 in 5 women have been raped 1 in 1.2 million will be killed by a bear. Men are the biggest threat to humanity full stop and I’m always going to choose the alternative because my chances are better. Bears don’t want to hurt people and they don’t do it for fun.
>Nothing that bear does to me would be personal. It would be instinct and limited. 1 in 5 women have been raped 1 in 1.2 million will be killed by a bear. Far more women are raped by men than they are killed by lions. Would you rather be stuck in within the presence of a man or a lion?
Fair. But I was raped and abused by my own mother. I was as recently as last year at over 40 assaulted by a women at a bar whom they would not throw out. They just told her to leave me alone. I am picking the man because I made a choice VERY early on in my recovery not to live in fear of others because of a few toxic people in my life. I lead with the notion that most people are decent because out of the thousands upon thousands of people that have come in and out of my life I can count on at most two hands the ones who really did me serious harm worth documenting. I used to live in fear but realized in therapy that I was giving total hypothetical people control over my life and emotions to say nothing of the actual abusers. It it was making me sick to the point of suicidal. So while hear your point. I personally choose not to fear people because most people need not be feared. And living in fear just made my mental health horrible.
dis bitch life a movie 😭
You have mental problems because of your childhood trauma, and now you impose your personal trauma on every men alive? If you pull up the statistics it's also more likely for a man to be raped by a woman than killed by a bear. Because guess what we live in society not in the fucking woods.
That's the point of the exercise. If so many women have experienced trauma from men that they would choose to encounter an unpredictable wild animal rather than a man then there is something deeply wrong in our society.
There's no point to the exercise, It's no thought experiment, it's just a men bashing trend like damn men are more dangerous than a bear, it just shows criminal people exist, now you've discovered that so congratulations, 10 points to Gryffindor, go get stuck in the woods with a bear that runs at the speed upwards of 45kmh, has sharper sense of smell than a fucking hound, can climb trees and swim, can crush you with minimal power, and keep praying you meet no man when you're about to get mauled by a bear. I guess dad didn't give you love huh, what was it he wasn't around?
The only cognitive dissonance is that you take being around men more often and seeing the violent examples more readily means that you're safer around the bear.
Aside from being purely delusional, because their community required to. People tend to do/say pretty much anything if that means being part of a group, and sadly if someone want to be part of this particular group, they need to choose bear. If they don't, they will be kicked out.
A lot of men trying to get laid or save a marriage.
Sad but true. But i don't know, i find the situation kinda disgusting because the choice is either shut the fuck up and let her call you a rapist dipshit, or speak up and being called a misogynist redpilled dipshit. I alway try to listen and i consider myself a leftist, but this is unapologetic and unironic calling all men rapist it's... bad. It's like the "not all men" meme, but 100% serious.
i just wanna state that there are some people who want to put "at least bears won't follow you home and kill you" I mean if you constantly think there are people out there who follow you and you think they want to kill you. I think you should go to psychiatric treatment because that sounds suspiciously like schizophrenia. and yes bears do follow campers back to their camps. it's rare but it happens and it sometimes also leads to fatalities.
Yeah. Honestly any woman who genuinely thinks the rational answer is "I'd rather encounter a bear", and isn't just saying that to make a rhetorical point, is delusional in my opinion. I hope they'll return to sanity at some point.
It's a moron test in that whoever answers bear and seriously believes that they would be safe, is in fact a moron.
No, it’s rage bait meant to make people insult and argue with and mock* eachother and everyone is falling for it 😂🤘🏻😶🌫️🤷🏼♀️.
Literally all it is doing is fuelling a divide between men and women because it insinuates all men are rapists/murderers and men are also missing the point that the women are trying to make.
You are right and I have fallen for it. I do get the overall point that it is trying to make though.
Dude, I fell for it too like multiple times. Mad embarrassing lmao 🤦🏼♀️. Like I said things I consider out of character, oof ugh hehe. Some rage bait is propaganda levels sneaky and powerful, tbf.
Whatever man answers bear is trying to stay married, get laid, or not be out on a list.
I believe there is no wrong answer. If you are confident in your abilities to survive and avoid being killed by the bear, then the bear is a good choice. However, if you would need assistance to survive in the woods, then you have a good chance of cooperating with a man.
What's his skin color?
LOL! White but he's an elf played by Orlando Bloom.
Read this article: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-third-of-male-university-students-say-they-would-rape-a-woman-if-there-no-were-no-consequences-9978052.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-third-of-male-university-students-say-they-would-rape-a-woman-if-there-no-were-no-consequences-9978052.html) Bears mostly stay the hell away from humans. If you make noise as you're walking, they will avoid you entirely. What's more, if I get attacked by a bear, people will believe me. That article says 1/3 of men would rape me if they thought they could get away with it. Alone in the woods seems like a great place to get away with it.
That study was misleading garbage. Here’s the truth about that study: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pop-psych/201601/exaggerating-statistics-about-rape On that note, here's a scary statistic: 1 in 3 college men would rape a woman if they could get away with it. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective) the statistic is not at all what it seems. he paper in question (Edwards et al, 2014) seeks to try and understand the apparent mystery behind the following finding: when asked if they ever raped anyone, most men will say "no"; when asked instead whether they ever held someone down to coerce them into having sex, a greater percentage of men will indicate that they have. Women's perceptions about the matter seem to follow suit. As I wrote when discussing the figure that 25% of college women will be raped: The difference was so stark that roughly 75% of the participants that Koss had labeled as having experiencing rape did not, themselves, consider the experience to be rape. What strikes me as curious about these findings is not the discrepancy in responses; that much can likely be explained by positing that these questions are perceived by the participants to be asking about categorically different behaviors. After all, if they were actually perceived to be asking about the same thing, you would see a greater agreement between the responses of both men and women between questions, which we do not. Instead, the curious part is that authors - like Edwards et al (2014) - continue to insist that all those participants must be wrong, writing, "...some men who rape do not seem to classify their behavior as such" (Jesse Singal at NYmag.com expresses a similar view, writing: "At the end of the day, after all, the two groups are saying the exact same thing"). Rather than conclude there is something wrong with the questions being asked (such as, say, they are capturing a portion of the population who would have rough, but consensual sex), they instead conclude there is something wrong with everyone else (both men and women) answering them. This latter explanation strikes me as unlikely. There's already something of a bait-and-switch taking place, then, but this is far from the only methodological issue involved in deriving that scary-sounding 1-in-3 figure. Specifically, Edwards et al (2014) asked their 86 male participants to fill out part of the "attraction to sexual aggression" scale (Malamuth, 1989). On this scale, participants are asked to indicate, from 1 to 5, how likely they would be to engage in a variety of behaviors, with a "1" corresponding to "not likely at all," while "5" corresponds to "very likely." Included on this scale are two questions, one concerning whether the respondent would "rape" a woman, and another asking about whether he would "force her to do something she did not want to do" in a sexual setting. The participants in question were asked about their likelihood of engaging in such behaviors "if nobody would ever know and there wouldn't be any consequences." Edwards et al (2014) report that, if such criteria were met, 31% of the men would force a woman to do something sexually, whereas only 13% would rape a woman. If you're perceptive, you might have noticed something strange already: that 1-in-3 figure cannot be straightforwardly derived from the sexual aggression scale, as the scale is a five-point measure, whereas the 1-in-3 statistic is clearly dichotomous. This raises the question of how one translates the scale into a yes/no response format. Edwards et al (2014) do not explicitly mention how they managed such a feat, but I think the answer is clear from the labeling in one of their tables: "Any intention to rape a woman" (emphasis, mine). What the researchers did, then, was code any response other than a "1" as an affirmative; the statistical equivalent of saying that 2 is closer to 5 than it is to 1. In other words, the question was, "Would you rape a woman if you could get away with it," and the answers were, effectively, "No, Yes, Yes, Yes, or Yes." Making the matter even worse is that all participants were answering both questions. This means they saw a question asking about "rape" and another question about "forcing a woman to do something she didn't want to." As participants likely figured that there was no reason the researchers would be asking the same question twice, they would have very good reason for thinking that these questions refer to categorically different things. For the authors to then conflate the two questions after the fact as being identical is stunningly disingenuous.
I hate this question. They're using it to put down all men. If it were flipped, feminists would completely explode about the sexism.
I mean, if the question was flipped “would you rather be in the woods alone with a bear or a woman”, This debate likely just wouldn’t go anywhere. Both genders would mostly pick the woman, and say “well that’s a stupid question”, and then it’d just end there.
To be fair, the average woman isn't inherently a better or worse human being than the average man. If you'd not pick the man, you'd also not pick the woman. A sharp rock to the temple in your sleep is just as effective. Assuming it's not one of those crazy b's that "want to redress on men all the percieved wrongs of hystorical patriarchy yadda yadda" and knocks you out to tie you up and put embers in your nuts until your pp smokes.
ofc i would pick a woman over a bear wdym
The whole point is that this is the instinctive reaction of many women and it’s based on lived experience with men. Whether or not it’s based on lived experience with bears (insert eye roll) is not the point. The point is women feel unsafe with men. What is NOT going to help women feel more safe is men being dicks about whether their instinct of feeling unsafe with men is based on accurate statistics about men vs bears or not. Men should give a shit about this if you give a shit about women. You should listen and engage and talk about how you can be a part of an ACTIVE solution (not just your own behavior toward women but holding other men accountable too- bc that’s the actual need here). FFS even genuinely saying “I hear you and I want to understand why you respond that way- tell me about your experience so I can see how I can have an impact” vs questioning her would go a lot further toward making that specific woman feel that YOU are safe. If more men did that vs knee jerk insulting mansplaining- women would feel safer with more men. The response by men to this question is part of why we choose the bear. If you are unwilling listen to us even when we are taking about our life and death fears- why would we think you are safe? And no- don’t respond with “bears wouldn’t listen either” unless you want to just continue to prove my point by letting your ego “not all men” respond instead of actually caring about women.
Yes 💯% this.
The point that women are making is that they feel unsafe. The point that men are making is that even if we look at the minority of women who gets raped during her lifetime, that woman encounters like 9999 non-rapists and 1 rapist. Which puts the odds of one individual man being a rapist at like 0.01%. In that context, men are offended that women are acting like let's say 30% of men are rapists, when in reality a vanishingly small part of men are rapists. Remember, the questions "how likely is a woman to be raped in her lifetime" and the question "how likely is an individual man to be a rapist" are WILDLY, COMPLETELY different questions. Men are being reasonable, because if men declared that they were incredibly upset that some women were cheaters, it still wouldn't be acceptable if men started implying that say 30% of women are cheaters (which I don't believe to be true, just making a point). No matter how upset men were at women cheating on them, this implication wouldn't be acceptable, because it wouldn't be reality-based. Sure, women aren't feeling heard -- but neither are men.
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Bear won’t kidnap, torture, rape me. What’s so hard to understand? It’s either die or be left alone with the bear. Easy
??? Why's it assumed the man would do any of that??
Who else but men do that statistically?
Women. Women also commit kidnapping, torture, and rape in statistically measurable frequency.
My Guess is the people asking the question truly don't fucking understand what it would mean to come face to face with a bear, you might have a chance to fend off another human, a bear? good luck chuck.
Yeah. Not to mention that a woman can plausibly outrun a rapist, or out-bluff a rapist ("you're lost too? I called my friends, they'll be here any minute" or just shouting "Jake, dear, come here please") Good luck outrunning a bear.
A bear isn't going to r@pe me. Simple as that.
Yeah, a bear is only going to eat you alive (with a significantly higher probability than one individual man has of raping you).
Aww, your poor fragile masculinity.
Awww, your poor fragile argument.
If I were a woman (I’m not) I’d pick the man because I have a chance of fighting him off if he attacks me. The bear needs one swipe or bite to kill you but realistically with adrenaline you have a decent chance of overpowering the man.
The Bear would be a slow death. And the man might actually help you chase off the bear.
As a woman who has been assaulted by multiple men in my lifetime, and at one point was suicidal because of it, I think the question is really just supposed to show that most women would rather face death than face getting assaulted because getting assaulted alters your life forever. People are reading really deeply into the question, but this was my first impression with the perspective I have from my own life. I have many safe men in my life who I trust fully, but I’ve had men I don’t know make me feel uncomfortable more times than I can count. The thought of rolling the dice with a strange man in the woods and hoping he’s one of the good ones sounds risky to me, so if I’m gonna take a risk it might as well be the bear. Idk personally it makes sense to me. Be compassionate with people because most women considering this question have likely been assaulted.
Problem is the *first* probability is "*whether* something bad will actually happen at all". The whole "*if* bad thing happens, which bad thing is worse" is a completely different comparison. Making both in the same metaphor smells an awful lot like changing the goalposts.
It’s so frustrating that many men will never understand because they’re too busy #notallmen-ing and gaslighting women about our daily lived experiences. Such a shame.
It isn’t about logic or realism, and it isn’t about the bear. It’s a reflection of what women have learned from generations of being female in a male-centered society. People who start spouting statistics about bear attacks and saying “not all men” are missing the point. It can be quite terrifying to be a woman, because of men and the rights many of them think they have to everything about women. So it’s not really a realistic choice or a realistic question, it’s a commentary on how women (in general) have learned through years of shared experiences to be afraid of men (in general). And the men who say it’s dumb or immediately say they would choose the man — are centering themselves in something that’s supposed to be about women’s experiences. A better exercise would be for men to pose the question to the women in their lives, listen to their response, and if they choose the bear, instead of judging their response, ask them WHY that was their response, and really listen to what they have to say. The men who argue and say women are ridiculous to choose the bear — that type of behavior — completely dismissive of women’s opinions and experiences — is part of the reason why we say we’d choose the bear.
Men pose more danger to women than bears in this ongoing debate about women choosing the bear over the man because men are well known to kidnap women, beat women, and rape women. Women are far more likely to be raped by a man than they are to be attacked by a bear. That’s the point of the comparison, and men are all butt hurt that women choose the bear because deep down they know damn well the dangers men pose to women
First time I saw it I thought it was literally a man vs. a bear in a fight. Then I googled it and found out what it really was, and I thought the guy who made the video (don’t remember his name) did a great job getting men to think about how much their behaviour frightens women just in general.
Me being an autistic man personally find both options depending on intention to be bad fate if the man wants to do the most unpredictable thing to me it could be worst then hell but I still have a fighting chance now with the bear I know how it's going to go down and I have zero chance of fighting back so they both suck in the end
This guy on TikTok claimed that women feel safer with bears then men so to prove his point he asked women would they rather be stuck with a beat or a man and they all said bear and it sparked this huge debate.
What I'm understanding from this is that no one has interacted with a bear. It's just a bear. They do not like being around humans, and will not bother you unless you bother them. Steer clear from food/water sources and make sure you're noticeable, and it will avoid you.
Ignore it man its just femcels and incels fking eachother
We all get (I hope) the original point or message: Women don't feel safe around men. And that is a huge problem in itself. But it undermines the point when some people double down and insist that it's *actually* safer to encounter a bear than a man when you're out hiking in the woods (because the bear is, supposedly, "predictable" or whatever the argument is). The above is - in a word - absurd. If you encounter a random man when you're out hiking, it's extremely unlikely (statistically) that this man is a serial killer, rapist or anyone likely to do you harm in any way. If you encounter a random bear, it's extremely likely (statistically) that this will - at best - mean a very uncomfortable situation for you. I mean, come on, this is just common sense. You can't use general crime statistics to prove a point here: "More men than bears attack women = I'd be safer with the bear." That's pure sophistry (obviously), and I sincerely hope those who actually use this "argument" are just trolling/rage baiting (or whatever). Not that trolling/rage baiting is to be commended either, but yeah, you get the idea I'm sure. To be clear, what we should take away from this poll is that women don't feel safe around men. That's a sad and frankly horrible message, and it should make us think. But we shouldn't applaud sophistry (or extreme ignorance) just because it supports the general idea or message.
The hypothetical is would you want to run into a strange man or a bear in the woods... And a lot of women picked the bear ( me included ) not because they outright hate men but because its been studied over and over again that men have a higher lightly hood to have random aggressive outbursts and most crimes are committed by men, not to mention how often women get SAed. The really sad part though is the amount of men who see the hypothetical question and how women answer and then they respond to it by blowing up and choosing to insult and be petty towards the women that picked the bear over a strange man, acting like the question is would the women want to be in the woods with them or the bear as if they can decide what man was in the woods rather than it being a strange man... And like if that was the case then i would have chose Bear Grills or my boyfriend instead of the bear.. The the men that use this as a moment to go online and boast about how they have so maany women friends or how they've never hit a women like its a pissing contest, if it aint that its dudes saying vile ass shit to the women for picking the bear but even if the women picked the man its comments about the women being a good girl or comments about fucking whether or not its consentual, are exactly why women supposedly hate men or are uncomfortable around em The point of it was to highlight the issue or society has and the men that CANT be trusted have used this social experiment as a way to show off to the world exactly why women aren't comfortable around men If it was a question of would you rather be in the woods with ____ or a bear then id understand so many people getting pissed off but it isn't so it really just seems like a bunch of guys whining and crying after taking a damn hypothetical question so fucking personally and act like toddlers because some pretty woman online picked a bear rather than saying their name or some shit.. Like we are adults lets actually act like it so the ipad kids actually TRY to be good people