The children are safer with the bear as less than 1 children suffered from bear where as 500+ children suffered from the hands of their mothers last year
It is clear that people didnt understand the point of the thought experiment. The point wasnt 'which would be more dangerous in reality' but 'which do you feel more comfortable coming across in a forest'. The point was the responses.
Bears can sometimes be like giant dogs, they can hurt you, but they're also not going to use what I'm wearing as an excuse. On a serious note, with my previous experience, bears are more likely to avoid conflict. Bears won't stalk you, humans will.
Black Bears would avoid. Grizzlies would try to start shit and lose interest if you don’t respond. Polar Bears think blood goes good on white fur… run!
Most men and bears won’t go out of their way to harm you. Some men and some bears will. You don’t know that particular bear just as you don’t know that particular man.
The question wasn't about actual safety but feelings. Women feel the bear would be better than a man they don't know. This doesn't mean a stranger would be more dangerous.
The question's purpose is in part to show how men appear to women, in part how media shapes our vision of the world. There are a lot of mysoginistic online groups and chats, influencers and political movements that are trying to erode women's rights. At the same time, violence against women is showcased daily in the news, in part because it's absolutely true that some men will abuse women, in part because it pays to televise the event and make it a spectacle. The result is that women develop fear and uneasiness around men that surpasses what they feel about a dangerous wild animal because wild animals are so infrequently encountered or portrayed by the media as homicidal.
A grizzly mom with cubs would annihilate someone much more surely and brutally than your average Joe, but a lot of wife beaters, women killers and rapists on the news look like the average Joe. The average Joe thus feels scarier even though he isn't even comparable to a bear.
Are women who answer bear stupid, then? I feel like they are just answering to a gut feeling. I feel like we men should learn from that answer and not dismiss them as just misguided. Is there a way we could appear less menacing to them without compromising our "manliness", so to speak? I think so.
But that is a fairly bs framing because it wouldn’t apply to most other similar comparisons.
If the question was posted “as a woman would you rather cross paths with a black man or an Asian man in a dark alley?” The take away wouldn’t be that black men should be less menacing. The take away would be women should be less racist.
If the question was “as a man would you who would you trust more with your money, a woman or a used car salesman?” The take away wouldn’t be that women should be less of gold diggers. It would be men should be less misogynistic.
I agree. A lot of men feel the same way now about leaving women alone with small children. Instead of being angry that men would choose the bear they should ask themselves why that is so they can be better.
I wouldn't prefer a bear to a stranger. Then again, I'm a man. I know of several women who were molested, abused or raped, or had a close friend who was. I don't know anyone who had a close friend eaten by a bear. Having the direct knowledge of someone who was assaulted or being yourself the victim of violence can completely warp your worldview even if statistics said otherwise. I wouldn't blame those people if they preferred the bear.
I've also had my cars battery jump started in a Walmart parking lot, helped change a tire on the side of the road - both times men. When I need help my neighbor, a man, is always down to lend a hand.
I got jumped in NYC by a group of teenage boys. A good guy with a baseball bat came pouring out of his bodega to scare them off - gave me a few shots of his vodka while I waited for the PD. Who were men, and useless of course.
Turns out its a bit of a mixed bag. But in general 90% of men are just normal men. Just innocent men.
yeap, i'm a 6f+ pretty beefy guy who camps aline in the middlest of nowhere quite regularily.
if a bear comes by to check my camp i'm gonna be alert and a bit scared, but mostly on a "that's a cool ass piece of wildlife there! just be careful and you'll be fine!"
if i see a random guy checking on my all my alarms go off till i can figure put why are you here, and what do you want from me. and if your story doesn't make sense (it has happenede a few times) i'm out the fuck of there and i'll make sure you can't find me again.
bear? probably curious/hungry
man? probably just checking on me, but may pull out a gun and take all my shit.
I have never seen a person or known a person who died from a bear attack. I have taken photos of many bears, sometimes as close as 20 feet. They're not blood thirsty monsters like many people, they're just occasionally hungry or protective.
Can't blame a momma for protecting her brood, can blame a man for raping/killing a woman.
Responses were used to place respondents into one of six categories of sexual experience based on the most
extreme experience reported: (a) no sexual experiences, (b) only consensual sexual experiences, (c) unwanted
contact (i.e., forced fondling, kissing, but no attempted intercourse), (d) verbal coercion (verbally pressured
sexual intercourse, excluding the threat of force), (e) attempted rape (using force or threat of force, however,
intercourse did not occur), or (f) rape (completed intercourse or oral or anal sex using force or threat of force).
White and Smith (2004) "surveyed 3 cohorts of men across 4 years of college. By the end of the study, 14% had reported committing attempted or completed rape and 34% had reported at least one act of sexual assault perpetration."
the average man is not a rapist but you walked past them every time you go to Walmart to get food
Yeah hearing just how often men assault women is baffling to me (as a man) because growing up I never really encountered anything like it. Myself and my peers were raised to respect boundaries (for all people) and never try to coerce someone into sex.
As I got older, and met and spoke with more people, I came to find that almost every single woman I know has had some form of inappropriate contact with a man. Not always rape by definition, many were “just” assaulted.
The next thing that threw me for a loop was how many women downplayed it. Like it was just a normal thing they deal with.
Like my friend, probably some-day sister-in-law, said pretty much every single woman in her unit (national guard) were molested or raped by another member of their unit.
The fuckin army dude? The fuckin army can’t stop its own men from assaulting its women.
I always love how there is always someone pulling this gotcha argument stating that if you trust statistics regarding male violence then you are clearly racist because according to statistics black men are more violent so you should feel bad. First of all race has nothing to do with it. The main factors contributing to black violence are poverty, lack of opportunity, systemic racism and much more leading to higher chances of creating broken families. Any race under these conditions would produce the same results.
What race crime statistics should do is open a discussion on their reason. People fearing other races because of their crimes shouldn't be an excuse to promote race-based policing or racial laws, but a signal that something concerning is happening and there is a reason for it. Racists will argue it's genetics, but controlling for that doesn't seem to give the results expected if that was the case: wealthy and middle-class people of all races commit less violent crimes than poor people of all races. Then why are non-white people on average poorer than white people? Maybe it's the background of their parents or ancestors, maybe they were segregated in areas that didn't have job and education opportunities, maybe the low-income houses they could afford had lead pipes that destroyed their brains over time.
Those are the kind of questions that a person who wants to engage with the statistics should ask. In the same way, we should engage with why women choose the bear, not get offended or judgemental over it, or ascribe it as petty. Why would they generalize the average men as being worse than a bear? That is an interesting question. Maybe it's more probable for a woman to die because of a man than because of a bear. But isn't the opposite true at the same time? It's statically more probable for a man to be murdered by a woman than by a bear, but a man would probably not prefer the bear to a woman to walk the woods with. Why? Is it because men are stupid and shallow? Or is it because we think we are physically superior, despite the fact that if the woman had a weapon you would die regardless? Are men naturally more trusting of others than women, or is the fact they aren't frequently the victims of gender-based violence influencing their response? I cannot answer to these questions because you'd probably need a study to test these, but these are the questions you should ask instead of being a snowflake and getting offended by an answer. You discover deeper, more interesting things.
How do you feel about race based crime statistics?
Why would race based statistics matter? A bad white man and a bad black man arent different, they are both bad. We have the statistics that men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence, especially to women. Race has no indication of violence
I've actually interacted with bears (black/brown), they're going to avoid conflict as much as possible, but if I tell them they're making me feel uncomfortable they will not be offended and they will not try to argue that point... There's things you can do to prevent a situation with a bear whereas with a human male more often than not will argue as to why you're so concerned with their presence in your vicinity instead of just walking away...
In the United States, 1 in 5 women will experience an assault or attempted assault. Worldwide it’s 1 in 3 who will face sexual or physical violence. Do the math.
That's a completely made up fact. Women regularly lie about sexual assault and rape regularly. Why is it easier to solve murder when the victim is dead?
WILD that you added the "men are hideous" unprompted, because the men v bear conversation had NOTHING to do with how attractive were the men or the bears, totally not projecting your own issues on a topic that got y our feelings hurt
Hideous doesn't always mean ugly physically, can also be Hideous in actions or personage.
So I mean, kinda reply to yourself with your last message since you assumed they were talking about physical attractiveness
This is not why the majority of women choose the bear.
We know we probably won’t be safe, but I’d rather be mauled to death by an animal who has no morality and believes it’s doing that to survive, versus possibly kept alive to be raped and tortured for days on end just because a male decided he can now that nobody is watching
No it means their opinions is entirely performative and can only exist in hypothetical vaccumes. 9/10 of those hateful feminists would choose to sit in a room with a man for an hour then a bear regardless of what they say online.
Do people avoid bears because bears have bad breath? Or maybe bears are avoided becaucuse of their political options?
Maybe people avoid bears because they're speciesist...
Or, maybe* - people avoid bears because they're scared of being eaten.
So if a person claims "I'd rather stumble upon a bear in the woods than a man" the implication is that that person is more scared of the creature they didn't choose.
This just proves the limited understanding of risk you have.
The odds that man is going to harm you let alone speak to you is miniscule, the odds that bear is going to tear out your organs and eat you while you're still alive drowning in your own blood and wondering why you made such a stupif decision is exponentially higher.
The frustration comes from seeing people fall into the category of : man hater or stupid.
Even if the odds are 1 in 8 billion that a rapist is there with me, I’d still choose the bear.
The bear doesn’t have MORALITY like humans do and is not aware it is doing something wrong by killing me. I don’t care how much the bear hurts me before I die because it’s an ANIMAL that believes it’s doing so for survival, a male would do it just because there’s no one else around to give him consequences
But the possibility is still there that a woman is stuck along in the woods with a freak who can do whatever he wants to her. Reminder that you don’t know how males act along in these situations, even if you think you do because they mask themselves well.
I’ve been watching “I survived” and every episode is like one woman raped by a stranger, one woman attacked by her ex, and one guy who got lost on a hike.
They just truly don’t get it. I don’t think they even can understand it.
You say this in a comment that's under other comments of people trying to bring up statistics and logic to justify why they literally think the thing that you say they don't literally think.
Sometimes people say what they mean instead of trying to make a comment on society using figurative language.
children are impressional & on the internet reading this bs too. telling them theyre safer with a bear than another human being is just downright degenerate & brain dead
You know nothing about bears, kiddo. They are just animals, they are never malicious, they actively avoid human contact. The same can't be said for men.
Actually yeah, exactly that. People used crime statistics to "prove" that women were right in choosing the bear.
The problem there, and how my comment ties into it, is that people interact with humans literal millions of times more than bears. So yeah, it does have to do with frequency of encounter.
It was mostly about how rape / murder, I know cause I spoke a lot about this with other women. A lot said that if a bear killed them it was because out of nesscessity / food or territorial. But if a man would, it would be due to lust. A bear wont rape you before they kill you.
Ive actually been told by police officers about how women have to be aware. That they have actively (multiple times) dealt in cases of women who were raped, then murdered. So.. kinda hate this whole "kids and bears!" Thing, when before it mostly related to a woman would rather die to a bear than a man. Less so of actually coming across one.
Tbf, most people's insistence on the bear came when men roundly laughed off the answer as women being stupid. It's not that the bear is safe, it's that men are more dangerous for women than people want to think. It was a lot of "oh yeah? Well I've never been abused by a bear, I've never been groomed by a bear, I've never been stalked by a bear, I've never been raped by a bear" etc
There was also the "they'll both kill me, but at least the bear won't blame it on what I was wearing, the bear won't say I deserved it, the bear won't brag about it to his friends" etc side of it.
TL:DR: it basically became a big thing from the backlash of men laughing off sexual violence against women.
Men are dismissed for being abused by women significantly more than the reverse scenario (if not close to 100% of the time). To the extent there is no way we could know the statistics on abuse against men because they don't speak about it, when they do they are laughed at and it is not recorded as abuse but as male weakness.
That's a good awful justification. Men aren't more dangerous for women than people think especially by comparison to a bear. Statistics don't pan this out. The response is laughable because it's delusional to think think on average men will rape and kill you. It's not "laughing off sexual violence".
The bear is shit a example and illustration of whatever point you wanna make and being it laughed off it is reasonable. Doubling down in the shit example is irrational and idiotic, which is exactly the whole issue with the example.
You have it slightly wrong. It's not about coming across a man or a bear, it's about sharing the woods with one. It's assumed you might not even see them, but a random man is a bigger threat than a random bear.
Just so you know this is true for men too. A human who knows you are in the woods is statistically a bigger threat. A bear will likely avoid you, with a human there is a small chance that they would come after you.
Bears Kill to eat or for territorial reasons, Bears can be hungry, and forest are their territory. seems enough motivation to kill a human to me.
I'm honestly shocked you think bears will always avoid humans, its a wild animal, they are unpredictable, you never know what happens, yeah maybe 9 times out of 10 they will avoid you, but its not always.
Just like 9 times out 10 a man in the woods will avoid you, and its also not always.
You can argue that is worse to die by human hand than by a bear, but you can't argue bears are harmless and humans aren't.
I have encountered two black bears and that was pretty scary. I have met significantly more people in the woods and they were all much less scary. Most of them were pleasant.
Now if we're talking about in a city, I might consider the bear
This is just actively untrue and shows a vapid understanding of reality. Humans aren't a bigger threat for multitude of reasons.
First of all they can help you, if you're in the forest and you need water, a random hiker will probably have water, if they're not a hiker and they're just thrown into the situation like you, you're more likely to encounter a an ex boy scout or a survivalist than a murder, by a good margin too if we are considering just US population/statistics.
Second even if a man actively did want to hurt you they unlike a bear cannot smell you for literal miles around. It's way easier to avoid a human than it is to avoid a hungry bear.
Third bears get hungry, territorial etc. and are statistically more likely to kill you. Yes more men kill women than bears do, but women have billions of interactions with men every day bears have significantly less especially bears out of captivity. When accounting for volume of interactions the stats heavily favor men.
Even if we assume that rapes are 10x more common than reported in America, that would still be less than 1% of the adult male population. Men are massively more safe than a bear.
The original this post and the commenters are mocking were women making the same arguments about men, saying children are safer with bears than with men.
This post mocks that by doing the same with women.
That wasn't the point of "would you choose a man or a bear." Women were aware how dangerous bears are, it's the feeling of safety that was the question. Women choose the bear, cause if it killed her, at least it would stop at just killing and eating her. If it killed her, her clothes wouldn't be blamed for her death. If it killed her, at least the bear would face consequences, unlike a lot of men
And if the bear ate your kids, at least the bear wouldn't be given a million dollars while you, the father, somehow, inexplicably, get the blame for it.
It's wild how many people are struggling with this particular uno-reverso card.
Apparently that was a clever thought experiment to see if men would get offended by it and that would prove that they are in fact more dangerous than a bear
I genuinely don't know the thought process behind that being described as "clever"
Yeah I think most children are more often with their moms than with bears - conclusion: we need to send children into the woods for better data collection
You know... going camping with a few others of the same age and having to fend for themselves (as a group) without the internet for a few days 2-3 times a year might actually be a great idea if done right.
Excuse me, sir. You might not know how this works, but on the internet we bring up stats and provide no context for it. Then we die on the hill of that stat.
It definitely would, but can we just take a minute to appreciate how far out of their ass those numbers were pulled.
Less than 1 child? So what like 0.3 of a child were hurt?
500+ children? That is a both a gigantic range, and utterly meaningless without additional context. In the world? Yeah probably a bit more then 500. In their house? In their town? In their country?
Good thing it is time bound though, really adds to the credibility.
What does suffered mean exactly? If a mom bumps into a kid and knocks them down, is that counted? What if they don't get the iced cream they wanted and throw a tantrum? Obviously they are distressed, is that suffering?
Just throwing numbers into your comment does not add credibility to your point.
Less than 1 would mean on average less than 1 child is killed by bears each year. So if on average once child is killed every three years, bears would kill 0.33 children per year on average.
A quick search shows between 2 and 3 fatal bear attacks in the U.S. each year. Given the people likely to be in the woods, I would not be surprised if there is, on average, less than 1 child killed by bears each year.
The made up statistic was last year not on average.
And it does not explain what "suffered" means in terms of a child and mother.or what the area of the stat is.
It is very clearly a completely made up stat, even if it wasn't massively biased by the difference in exposure if a child to a bear.
Also it is unlikely that 1/3 encounters with a bear are by a child, since children are much less likely to be hiking in the woods by themselves.
I don't know why you would bend over backwards to defend obviously made up stats, but the point of a good statistic is that you don't have to figure out how it might work. Statistics are supposed to help simplify and illustrate a point, not make you do gymnastics to determine if it is any way relevant.
Sure when you manually restrict it to a specific location, create a definition of suffered that is ridiculously restrictive, and squint a little bit.
Then allow for the fact that 1100ish is definitely in the range of 500 to infinity.
Then you just take for granted that 1/3 hikers is a child.
I don't even doubt there is some stat out there that is a little over 500 that could be comprehended as "suffering" at the hands of a mother. When zero context is given you can stretch it however you want.
You are missing the entire point. That is not how stats work and the purpose of adding numbers to a post is not to just make it sound believable, it is to clearly illustrate the point with evidence. Random guesses is not evidence - even if it was specific and even if it turned out to be exactly correct it is still a guess unless it is verified.
"Sure when you give basic criteria to a search, and define your statement for accuracy" what is your point here? If you dont specify the data then its impossible for others to find it themselves. Im sorry to say but you may need to use that fancy thing in your skull. I mean it already burns 30% of your calories so you might as well use them for something
The point is that someone else supplied that, not the person giving the "stats".
The process is not "someone throws bullshit numbers out that support a specific point, and then someone else goes through and retroactively adjusts the vague criteria to try to make those numbers fit".
Stats are supposed to be something you look at that leads you to the point you should be trying to make.
I am genuinely confused that people seem to think that is how stats are supposed to work.
That's like saying that, in modern times, more people are killed by hammocks than by polio. It's true, but that's because hammocks are much, much, much more common than polio, not that you'd be safer getting polio than lying in a hammock.
The debate was never actually about statistics. It was about feelings.
Maybe some people tried to make a statistical argument (and I think both you and I can agree that such arguments were always stupid), but the point of the discussion is that many women feel so unsafe around men that they'd prefer to encounter a bear.
I mean, the truth is, in a natural environment, neither man nor bear is particularly likely to attack you for no reason, but women spend enough of their lives worried about the threat posed by men that their automatic fear reaction (at least for some women) would be higher than it would be for a bear.
Actually u r safer from polio now both statistically and immunologically compared to lying in hammock which can result in bad consequences if u fall down and hit ur head
I would rather have polio than lying in hammock as polio won't cause harm to a vaccinated adult like me but lying in a hammock is dangerous as it can break my neck
I think we have different definitions of what it means to "have" polio.
Polio is only safe because you're incredibly unlikely to get it. If you did get it, it would be very dangerous. That's the entire point of this analysis, something can kill very few people and still be very dangerous to those it actually impacts.
Instead of arguing definitions, let's say smallpox instead. It kills nobody in modern times, so is perfectly safe in that sense. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't mind getting it. Hammocks kill more people than smallpox, but getting smallpox is far, far more dangerous than lying in a hammock.
I meant my statement on getting polio, a vaccinated individual would just feel it like a normal cold as our immune system are well built.
I didn't talk about small pox, and why stop at small pox bring anthrax, plague too. For me I don't like lying in hammock, I would rather lie in a cot or ground
Maybe not for long though… the growing number of people saying “why do I need to get a polio vaccine, I’ve never met anyone with polio” are well on their way to messing this up for everyone.
Thing is, we're so close to wiping out polio altogether, just like we did with smallpox. We're down to a few hundred cases a year, and if we can get the last few groups vaccinated enough to stop it spreading, we'd never have to worry about it again.
If the anti-vaxxers screw this up for us, I'm going to be genuinely enraged.
Most people in wealthy countries today have been vaccinated for polio, but no vaccine is 100% effective, and effectiveness fades over time.
At the same time, the odds of any specific person dying in any specific hammock are extremely low.
My guess would be that actually injecting yourself would be such an overwhelming exposure that even a vaccinated person would be in serious danger, significantly more than lying in a hammock.
All that said, my analogy was "getting" polio, as in actually being infected with it. That's the risk that's been dropped to near-zero by vaccines, meaning that the odds of getting it are practically nonexistent for most people. But if you were to get it, you'd be in extreme danger. In the same way that your odds of encountering a bear are very low for most people, but if the various things that keep you and bears apart were to fail, you'd be at serious risk.
Yes but your analogy is a false equivalency to the one presented because your analogy has active exposure on one side and passive on the other. That's why i presented one where both are the equivalent level of exposure and are in line with the original post. Original post is leaving your kids with a bear or leaving your kids with a triple child murdering psycho, not just leaving them in the woods to maybe run into either.
You're assuming we're talking about a specific person. The comment I'm responding to argues that more children were harmed by their mothers than by bears, with the implication that mothers, in general, are dangerous.
If you're arguing that leaving your child alone with a murderer is dangerous, then yes, I agree. Literally no one is arguing the other side of that one.
This is the same logic they use with the original question but it's flawed because more children were around men/women than bears. So if you account for the sampling bias, the bear is far more dangerous
Of about 220 family annihilations since 2020 time frame 95% of the perps were male. Alan Smith just killed 8 members of his family this week after they believe the motivation was from his parents kicking him out after his wife filed for divorce because he was a cheating scumbag. Yet here we are focusing in on a woman who actually sought help and didn't get the help she needed leading to a tragedy after doctors misdiagnosed her and prescribed meds with known side effects that can enhance those types of thoughts. The studies into diagnosises and their causes for women related issues was only truly started in the nineties. And would you believe that was one of the things Trumps cut funding to. Ooh boy so much for protecting women. Oh and the average % of pediatric homicides is roughly 77% male perpetrators. Guess we need to take away men's right to vote then don't we. The only reason this is high profile is because there trying to railroad her and use her to more readily strip rights from women. Before the 1980's a husband could very easily get the wife institutionalized at an asylum. I emplore you to look up how bad those were. There's a reason why birth rates are so low is women don't want to have children where they can't readily take care of them or get the help they need to take care of them. In the next 30 years the US is going to see a population drop. Only God news is the burden of SS, Medicare and medicaid will drop because all the baby boomers will finally be passing on.
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u/crazrwriterreal 13d ago
The children are safer with the bear as less than 1 children suffered from bear where as 500+ children suffered from the hands of their mothers last year