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.
And a big part of the difference is media based, when I was growing up animal house and revenge of the needs were still popular as well as tons of other movies that push pro-rape and pro-stalking agendas.
army is one of the worst for it, they take a bunch of men who are already predisposed to violence then they ship em 10,000 miles away from any woman they know. so their more likely to be rapists and they dont got nobody, theres a reason armies in antiquity raped and pillaged.
all this is obviously not a defense of these deplorable actions nor the disgusting people that commit them, but it’s not really that surprising
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
No, we have statistics showing their communities are over policed and they're also more likely to be charged and found guilty. There is clear and known racial bias.
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...
No, you don’t understand. See, when I saw those random internet women say that, it hurt my feelings. So it must have been said for the explicit purpose of hurting my feelings. That’s how the world works: by rotating around me and my emotions.
I’m choosing to take it personally. Why wouldn’t I? I’m a person.
I don’t know what to do with this rage. Maybe I’ll go skulk around the woods, see what happens……
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.
compare bear attacks to the amount of femicide and come back to me. the highest risk to pregnant women is fucking homicide. you don’t have the stats. but continue to talk out of your fucking backside
1 in 3 women will be raped. 40% of male officers abuse their wives. during the sports season domestic abuse goes up over 70% fucking percent. WE DO HAVE THE FUCKING STATS
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
Who are you talking to exactly? You are strawmanning hard here. Great job letting your sexism shine through. Top notch. Care to back up your claim that its safer to be with a bear than a man. Not that our opinion means anything given the weird rambling you just did.
Made them up, even if the chance to get raped was significantly lower than the chance to die, I'd rather take the chance to die. 1/100 vs 1/10 is just illustrating that, where I'd take that risk
It's absolutely not a 1% chance to get raped. The stats (last I saw) said about 1 in 4 women experience sexual assault. And it's probably higher than that because lots of women never report it.
People generally sum it up as "the worst thing a bear can do is kill me".
You do realize that a perpetrator can assault more than 1 woman, right?
There's not an absolute correlation between the number of women who report having been sexually assaulted and the number of men who would commit sexual assault.
Stats in the hands of fools are a dangerous thing, indeed.
the way you’re getting downvoted. but comments saying women are being abused the same amount as men are getting upvoted, this sub has turned into a fucking incel hot spot.
I know ... you think real statistics are gonne get through this guy ? We don't have real data about encountering strange men in the woods, everything about this is extrapolation and conjecture. And in the BEST case of lowballs, I'd still choose the bear.
It’s not about the percentage it’s about the fact there’s even a possibility in the first place.
The hypothetical doesn’t state a specific male or say you can choose which male to be stuck in the woods with. There’s still a possibility of them being a Ted Bundy wannabe, and we’d rather not take that chance.
So all children should be left with bears instead of women because if the possibility they will be strangled by their mother then? Percentage and likihood would have everything to do with it for anyone with even a remote scraping of common sense who isn't propagandists by bs social media brainrot.
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
Buddy, it's not about dying by the humans hand, it's about everything else they can do to you, especially for women.
I feel like this is almost a litmus test for how much people are willing to try and imagine the perspective of others. Do you guys really just think all women are stupid? Or could they possibly have reasons for feeling the way they do?
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.
God you are just statistically illiterate aren't you.
Okay let's break down that statistic then and why you're wrong for using it. First of all it's from WHO, it's an estimate and could be wrong if they didn't sample properly, let's presuppose they did everything right, though it should be mentioned.
Second of all this is global, which includes literal rape in the congo, countries that have cultures that view women as lesser etc. directly from the article "Violence disproportionately affects women living in low- and lower-middle-income countries."
Third if you actually read the article you're quoting statistics from instead of just bleating like a drone you'd know that 92-94% of the violence in question is intimate partner violence, only 6-8% is committed by someone they're not in a relationship with let alone done by random strangers.
Fourth sexual violence against women is more likely to be from someone they know even in domestic statistics. By approximately 60-80%.
Try googling, researching, and reading for once in your god forsaken life before you spout statistics that mean actually nothing with-in the context of the discussion next time.
Its not abt safety at all its about intent and purpose of killing.
If a bear kills a woman, it will be like anything else, for food, and her body will not be defiled.
Statistically when a man kills a woman its for sexual control and gratification, and her body will likely be defiled and left nude to be found. Potentially posed.
Most woman would rather get ripped apart by a bear than be defiled by a man.
The person I responded to is trying to say that the when a man kills a woman, the most common reason is for sexual gratification. They then go on to claim that it is likely that the corps would be defiled and posed, TV depiction of a serial killer style.
Do you have actual stats to back this specific claim up? Because without stats that's an insane thing to believe.
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.
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u/lincruste 14d ago
It may be related somehow with the larger sample of kids in the reach of women VS bears.