I’m pretty sure it’s mostly just talk, when actually faced with a 🐻.
People are taking this way too literally. It’s just a goofy meme that’s expressing a general sentiment.
Memes are propaganda in the modern age. For women, this question is essentially “man bad, amirite?” And for men, it’s essentially “woman dumb, amirite?”
There is no right side of this hypothetical argument. It’s designed to stir shit and nothing else.
It’s not the women who are spreading the “man bad, amirite?” part. It was originally just meant to provoke thought, and the person who wrote the article wasn’t actually intending on spending time in the woods with a bear any time soon.
It’s always interesting how people take trying to provoke thought as “stir shit” thought. Really shows how desperate people are to get any kind of intelligent thought from people on the internet.
I dunno, I’ve seen a few bears in forests, and mostly they wandered off annoyed that they couldn’t reach the food, or just sat around minding their own business.
I’ve had zero issues with every bear I’ve ever seen.
Obviously, I’ve seen more humans than bears, but the score is wildly in the bears favour.
Ok. I see you didn’t. Pretty sexist of you to assume your wife answer btw.
“as a rule, men are subhuman scum more dangerous to me than wild carnivorous animals”
Lol. No one said that. But the fact that you hear that when women say they feel threatened is very telling of who you are as a person. I hope your wife finds freedom eventually.
It’s clear you are choosing not to understand the difference between what you said and what the question said. I can’t save you from your willful ignorance.
Even if 99% of men were not abusers, the 1% that are also tend to hide their malice and pretend to be decent until alone and the woman is vulnerable. So as women interact with hundreds or thousands of men over their lifetimes they will come across these abusers or know someone who was abused and that the system blames victims and the fear is not just about percentage chance of a horrible outcome, but that society continues the abuse.
A bear is a known factor, dangerous but never in a deceptive way and society doesn’t tend to blame victims of animal attacks.
Also the percentage of abusers is way higher than 1%. Everyone knows multiple rape and abuse victims, but few people know someone who was mauled by a bear. That is the context for this question.
As a happily married woman in her mid-30s, let me explain.
1 in 3 women are victims of violence, and I’m pretty sure the number is actually quite a bit higher. Only a few hundred women have ever been mauled by bears.
As a woman, there are very few certain methods to avoid being assaulted or harassed by humans. But bears are relatively uncomplicated and there are simple steps to avoid getting mauled that almost always work.
Now, let me get this really really clear. The question is “if you have to be in a forest with a random man or a bear”. The bear is predictable, the man is not. The bear will always mind its own business and will almost always avoid you. The man might not. The man might be super nice, quite a lot of men are, but you can’t know that, it’s a random man. The bear is a bear, a known factor.
Almost every woman will have a story, first or second hand, where an otherwise good and trustworthy man suddenly does something unwanted. Again, most men won’t, but you can’t know that in advance. The bear, on the other hand, will remain a bear in all cases.
The question is not “would you prefer to be locked in a tiny cell with a man or a hungry bear”. It’s not “who would you rather fight?”. The question is, “do you prefer a known-but-dangerous animal, or an unknown man?”. And women are choosing a known and controllable quantity, over a human male they don’t know and can’t control for.
Only a few hundred women have ever been mauled by bears.
Don’t you think this is subject to sampling bias? How much time do women spend with bears versus men?
My wife was recently in a forest with a random bear. The bear walked away.
My mother and sister told a story of meeting a bear on a trail. The bear walked away.
A large percentage of women I have met have a story about a problem with an aggressive man at some point.
“As a happily married man I’m got so triggered by an internet meme that I started ranting to strangers about divorcing my wife.”
Healthy and normal…
The number of people either too dense or too willfully misogynistic to understand what this is about is depressing.
If you’re arguing bear statistics or saying “not all men” or decrying misandry, then you’ve totally missed the point. If you are doing it intentionally, you’re the type of men women would choose the bear over.
The fact that anyone would choose a dangerous animal over a random man is an indictment against the culture surrounding male privilege and should spark introspection and change. Arguments against this is just ignoring women and solidifies the decision that the bear is better.
Are people arguing statistics about it? Like how many women are killed by bears every year compared to men? Lmao, they’re not even close.
I’ve seen one video on the subject that my wife showed me, then I had a conversation with my wife about it.
When you’re looking at statistics, women attacked by bears per year vs women attacked by men per year, it’s not taking into account the fact that 99% of women don’t get into situations where they are near bears. Most women (and men) don’t go hiking in bear populated woods frequently. Like how the overall odds of getting struck by lightning is low, but some people are struck 8 times are survive.
The better statistic for this argument is that a man is more likely going to kill you in an encounter, should it escalate. I didn’t fact check this, but I’ll take this video at it’s word.
Part of the reason many people never see a bear is because they actively stay away from humans. Everything being equal, (the bear is healthy, it’s not near hibernation, and there’s no cubs nearby) you could quite easily do the animal version of hanging out with them. (Animals are fine paralleling each other by something like 50 meters)
Same thing with wolves. They’re so naturally adverse to human contact that handlers at wolf rescue operations just literally walk into the enclosure, drop their food and walk away. For vet stuff they come in with cushioned sticks and just gently pin them to the ground.
Now I don’t suggest trying any of this (bear or wolf) without some training and backup but it illustrates just how much normal animals don’t want anything to do with humans.
Honestly, no matter what side of the debate you are on its still dystopian to think that women would actually think to go to a bear over a random man when faced with the choice.
I am being introspective about this though. We created a culture of fear. A lot of it is through the consequences of rape culture and I think a large part is through an unhealthy about of true crime that’s being made. Constantly blasting worse case scenarios into people’s heads. I dunno, I just despise how we all just accepted not to trust one another and it seems like we’ve all just accepted that this to way to be about it. I just see it as a example of the alienation being pushed by capitalism.
It’s makes me a little mad tbh. Being perfectly honest it should make everyone mad. Like tbh I still think going with a random guy is the correct answer to this but we all should come together, look at this whole situation and realise the dystopian implications of this.
Yes! Thank you!
Does it hurt that women feel that way? Of course it does, so let’s work to be better so that random people can trust each other!
Angrily lashing out at the women who are pondering the benefits of a bear isn’t gonna help.
Be someone a woman would feel safe to be around. Call it out when those around you fail that test.
Create that safer environment. It isn’t impossible.
I agree totally with the first sentiment but I don’t think the recent prevalence of True Crime media really plays into it at all. This is not a new thing. Women have been making these risk assessment decisions for generations in the modern age. Girls are taught this kind of thing with how to protect themselves at a young age.
This is primarily a cultural issue and it won’t change unless the majority of people propagating (intentionally or not) realize what’s happening and work to change.
I dunno, the media and its relationship to crime is well documented. Many people accept that old people that panic about inner city crime despite it being at a record low since the 1970s are victims of this phenomenon. Why is it difficult to believe that young women who consume a lot of true crime content aren’t also effected by this phenomenon in some way. I have studied psychology and I did do a journalism course which, admittedly, I dropped out of. I just don’t like how fear based society has become. People are just too quick to assume the absolute worst and I kinda view this bear question as a reflection on that.
no, true crime definitely plays into this, because the question is not asking “what is safer”, but “what feels safer”, and while it’s not inherently wrong for anyone to mistrust random people, especially women in decently large parts of society, this is a feeling question, and like it or not, but Society does consist of the stories we tell ourselves and others, and while we still have a long way to go, you can not argue that women are less safe now than during the 50s - 60s - 70s - 80s, yet the perception of many people is that it has scarcely ever been more dangerous, and that also has a reason.
I totally understand why women would pick bear, as bear society doesn’t bend over backwards to victimize women.
Most power structures cater to the people who abuse power. Police, church, courts, military, etc all tend to go crazy easy on men who abuse women.
Republicans want to take away women’s rights/independence, limit/eliminate divorce, force birth for rape/incest. Police who assault women are protected and don’t face consequences, and most religions literally view women as a subspecies that serve men.
Maybe the average man is totally normal and helpful, but the history of violence between men and women is like 98% men killing women with heaps of Rape, confinement, physical/mental abuse etc.
The worst any Bear could do is kill someone in 1-2 minutes, maybe longer.
It’s also an incredibly loaded situation in that being alone in the woods with a bear is “natural” and being alone in the woods with a strange man already sounds like a horror movie plot/murder news story.
There’s also the constant “stranger danger” fear women will pretty much always experience because men can consistently and easily overpower most women. All women I have met seem to know at least one or more women who have been sexually assaulted, had their drink spiked etc, so it’s not some obsession with crime shows or scary movies driving this fear. It’s actual rapists prevalent in society and emboldened enough by lack of consequences to act.
Even in cases where it seems obvious Rape happened, it’s a brutal gauntlet of gas lighting, victim blaming, “can’t ruin their life for a mistake”, etc that stop a huge amount of reporting and convictions.
Going back to the question itself, answer ratios would probably change depending on the area, would women be less inclined to pick bear if they were in a library instead of the woods because it’s unnatural for a bear to be in that environment?
People need to relax, and focus on the real story. Women have an incredibly long and valid list of reasons to be afraid of men and society needs to do better to make women feel safe
Ultimately, bear is the less complicated decision, not entirely because it is without danger, but because it is not subject to gaslighting. Most people understand that a bear attack is bad and won’t raise concerns about how you led the bear on or that what you were wearing was to blame.
Yeah I’m probably more comfortable with strange men in a library than strange bears. The woods are where strange bears go. The library is where strange people go.
Now if I have them making advances towards me, bear in a library 100%. My local bears are black bears and they can be scared off easier than some men.
This whole thing is just another way of pitting men and women against each other.
Men having to listen to women and be confronted with reality and the harms their gender and society are actively causing is NOT pitting people against each other. Women don’t want to fight and ostracize men. They want to be safe FROM men.
If you see this discussion and feel defensive, that’s your brain trying to tell you something’s wrong and you should probably analyze why you feel like you are being attacked.
See, this is what I mean. Stupid arguments. We immediately go to pitting gender experiences against each other.
You’re not confronting reality when you compare men to animals. You’re literally projecting your insecurities onto me by assuming I’m defensive over this topic. I’m not defending either man or woman or bear in this argument. I’m saying this whole topic is a stupid hypothetical and all it does is lead people to argue, like you literally did with me. You’re not confronting reality by saying your safe with a bear, because reality is, you’ll never go be with a bear.
If you want to have a real discussion about the very real and serious harms that women have to deal with, I’m happy to discuss that. That’s a topic worth discussing. This isn’t that discussion. This is a bad faith hypothetical designed to frame a conversation against men for the sake of stirring more shit. And honestly this’ll be the last I engage with this thread because its really already consumed too much of my time.
I hope you understand, I’m not trying to fight or belittle your opinion or attack you. If you wanna frame this as me being defensive, that’s your prerogative, but I just found this whole question to be dumb when I first heard about it a few days ago, and this article just once again reinforced how dumb I found it.
That’s funny. I’m finding it brings me closer to the women to understand them better.
It’s also amazing how people can have this argument in one thread and then go to another thread and leave a comment that just says “ACAB”.
You don’t trust cops? Why not? Because of a few bad apples?
Sounds like you get it…
That argument doesn’t hold water. One is an immutable characteristic, and the other is a career choice. A career that filters for certain personalities.
Well first off, being a man is not an immutable characteristic, because transgender people exist.
Second, the difference between the two groups you bring up isn’t relevant in this comparison, because pointing out the differences between them doesn’t negate the similarities. Both are groups with an inordinate amount of power (physical or legal) over any outgroup and are supported by cultural norms that allow them to exercise that power largely without repercussions. Both groups are also protected from consequences by others within the group, regardless if the others agree with their questionable decisions. And most importantly, both groups are human, meaning the individuals vary widely within the group along the moral spectrum. Even if most within the group are good, bad actors will always exist and there’s no way to know which one you’re dealing with at face value.
Even if it’s not a perfect comparison, it’s apt enough to support my point.
Nah, the choice is between a being that will likely leave you alone and one that likely won’t. Most people who aren’t seeking contact want to be left alone. Interestingly enough, most bears want to be left alone too. As people, we need to allow others the distance and boundaries they want. The best way to befriend someone is to make them feel comfortable around you. Space and respect are important.
If a woman prefers the bear, maybe consider treating her like one. Treat her with respect, don’t make sudden movements, give her space, don’t mess with her cubs, and don’t pressure her into going to a local bar with a really neat vibe.
Wow, y’all cannot handle a little trolling huh. Are incels really taking this whole thing seriously? Just remember guys, it is personal, hahaha
Trolling might have been where it started, but this is the natural amplification process of reactionary media.
The question is bull shit, the answers don’t really matter, and the articles generated from it are just there to capture your time and attention. This whole article and the social media posts that started it are all pointless.
It didn’t start with trolling, it started with an article trying to get people to think for once instead of just react.
It’s just people are dumb, so they thought it was trolling.
Yep. Just try and logic people to death instead of wondering why they feel that way and taking it to heart to try and not be part of the problem.
If people actually had this choice, we all know most would choose a person over a bear. But it does speak to the fact that people have mostly good experiences with wild animals that are supposed to be a danger to them and lots of bad experiences with random men. They’ve felt threatened and have actually been assaulted by men, and not by bears.
Your chances of being killed by a bear are slim to none. Meanwhile the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide. These are the kind of things people think about when weighing these kinds of problems in the abstract.
So the real question is why wouldn’t women fear those that have actually harmed them vs a group that honestly just wants to keep to themselves and has no interest in you unless you’re a threat?
Yeah this is gonna be a whole measured and productive comments section