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.
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.
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.
Thank you for demonstrating healthy masculinity. The rest of this thread is a trainwreck of victim blaming.
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.
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 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.
The media is bad but the sexual assault and harassment statistics are sobering. And they’re highly under reported because enforcement is often a joke.
It’s not an exaggeration to say most women either know someone who was assaulted or harassed, or they were themselves. And it was likely while they were a teenager. That kind of lesson doesn’t come from MTV.
I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t been at the very least harrassed by men they don’t know. I know so, so many who have been assaulted, and that’s just the women who have chosen to share their experience. Thinking your couple college classes means you know more about women’s experiences than women themselves is ridiculous.
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.
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.
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.
You are conflating all men with the guilty.
You’re conflating what you think argument is with what the article was actually about.
“not all men!”
Enough men that most women would choose a fucking bear. Look in the mirror: you’re the problem.
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.
As man, all the men getting offended or angry over the women picking the bear are the exact reason the bear is the correct choice.
I’d be a little disturbed to find out some stranger picked me to roam around the woods lost with. The fuck are you planning?
They pull out the bag of Cheetos and you’re ready to go though.
Excuse me sir, we are strictly a French Onion kind of bear, thank you very much.
The question is designed to be as divisive as possible. It categorizes large swathes of people into just 2 groups - man or bear. The man group contains mansplainers, but it also contains regular people who simply view humanity as naturally altruistic. The bear group contains people with concerns about men overpowering women, but also contains people who earnestly believe that most if not all men will try to do it if given the chance.
The problem is that people either are unable to or unwilling to acknowledge that these categories are not monolithic. And in claiming that all people in the man group are incels, you are inadvertently insulting everyone in that group. Likewise, in claiming that all people in the bear group are misandrists, you are inadvertently dismissing everyone in that group.
It is not productive to make claims about people based only on their answer to the question. In fact, it appears to be entirely the intention of the question to divide even rational people by exploiting the general human inability to see subgroups within larger categories
I thought it was from the woman’s perspective. She doesn’t know if the man is an incel or a regular, well behaved person.
The point is: do you roll the dice on the man, who could be anything, or the bear, who is a bear.
The known potential bad is better than the unknown potential bad. At least a bear won’t rape you before/while killing you.
IMO, the answer given exposes more about the life experiences of the women answerers, and the result seems to be that their experiences have been bad.
My only issue with that mentality is it completely ignores reality. I understand that most women have had a bad experience with a guy here or there. What they don’t seem to understand is that the types of guys that are doing these things are a small percentage of the population.
The guys that are pulling this crap aren’t even gonna get offended by this whole “man or bear” thing in the first place. At the end of the day it just makes the rest of us feel even more dejected and apathetic about it all. Why should I champion for any woman when I’m going to be seen as a predator regardless?
The fact that treating someone as a person hinges on what you get out of it is a huge problem.
That’s a fair assumption from what I said though that’s not how I meant it.
I treat everyone equally regardless of what is or isn’t between their legs. I’m generally just that helpful guy that’s always offering help to people even if they don’t outright ask for it. I just try my best to make sure everything is going smoothly for everyone around me.
But I bet not a single woman I’ve interacted with would ever remember me helping them. They’d never remember me going out of my way to make sure they felt safe and were having as good of a time as possible. But they’ll never forget that guy that made them uncomfortable. And that’s all they’ll think about. They’ll ignore every single man they interacted with. They’ll ignore all the men that didn’t do anything to them. The men that treated them like normal human beings.
I’m not gonna change how I treat everyone. But it’s really fuckin annoying to constantly hear “all men” when I’m actively going out of my way to be as helpful as possible.
Feels sisyphean.
The only people I’ve seen saying “all men” are men who are butthurt that women calculate the risk of being in the woods with a bear as less risky. None of the women who are choosing the bear say that.
Society is made of the stories we tell ourselves.
Our stories have been pretty bad lately and selling fear and power fantasy still works as well as it always did.
I know it feels like bullshit and we all just say that people should just know and act better but they don’t and they won’t. They operate on what they think in their head is right.
I dunno. Maybe we need less stories maybe we need to tell better ones to inspire better. Maybe we do just need to BE better. I don’t see it happening. We love the bad just way to much. Far more interesting.
Society is made of the stories we tell ourselves.
this is so true, any the reason I am a good DM
The true solution is to be single. It’s great, I suggest everyone try it.
Being single and sticking to your guns i.e standards when it comes to dating. Don’t be flexible. Don’t be lenient. Don’t compromise. Showing either means exploitation and people will want you to do things that’ll undermine your standards.
i think you are better off single
Single away from shitbags like you, yes, I agree being better off single than trying to chance being with people like you thanks.
Can the woman choose which kind of bear?
Is it a black bear or polar bear? What kind of bear are we talking about here? If she can choose the bear, can she also choose the man?
Is it random bear and random man? Random bear gives a rather high chance of polar bear. Random man gives a rather low chance of violent man.
We need a random bear man simulator to run the data. We deserve answers!
I don’t care for the debate. I care for statistics.
Do you live above the Arctic circle or something? The most common bear is a black bear.
I live rather far north yes. I’ve seen polar bears before when traveling in the deep arctic. I have never seen any other bear.
Black bears are pretty scared of people as far as I’ve seen online. Polar bears are afraid of missing a meal.
I’d choose a brown bear because “If it’s brown, lay down.” All I have to do is pretend to sleep and he goes away. No murder, no rape. Just a nap & peace & quiet. Sounds ideal to me!
I know more about polar bears than the others. But I’ve heard the saying; if it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s white, good night.
