Tap for context
Some woman on the internet said she would feel safer spending a night in the woods with a random bear rather than with a random man
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Yeah, the bear pick is the sneaky way women try to rob the average man of status by implying that we are mindless beasts willing to do the worst at the first chance we get.
The fact that you think the point of this is your status and not someone else’s safety says so much.
Because it is about insulting men. No one’s actually getting trapped with bears because they’re answering either way. It’s there to prove a view, would you rather be stuck with a bear or a black person? A gay person? A trans person? A jew? A Muslim?
It’s there to rile up people about their prejudices and I’m just sad we’re all getting piled on like this.
Look, I’m a man, I’m not feeling insulted by this at all. If you are, maybe it’s time to ask why.
I have no problem being a man while also acknowledging that sexual assault by men is a problem that is big enough that it has created a “caution culture” where people teach their daughters to be vigilant and women will cross the street if someone is walking behind them to stay safe. It isn’t like this is overblown, studies vary but all agree it’s somewhere more than one in ten women are victims of sexual violence in their lifetime. That’s a non-dismissible statistic.
Sure sexual assault by women is a thing too, but men tend to handle it differently than women do. All we are doing here is acknowledging that in our culture “male stranger danger” is a thing that exists and is pervasive and strong enough that many women would be willing to risk the bear because at least it won’t rape them.
Why would you be taking that personally?
personally i’m not insulted, i get it, i understand the problems, but i also don’t understand this at all.
It’s like it’s hyper polarized almost. The second someone says something or asks a question the response is almost verbatim “yeah but bear wont rape me” (incredibly shitty verbatim quoting but this isn’t a fucking PHD paper so dont @ me lol)
Like i get that there’s a problem we should be talking about. Why aren’t we? We’re just reiterating the same statement over and over again, expecting for something to change suddenly.
It’s almost an over abundance of caution, similar to “stranger danger” when in reality, the person most likely to abuse your children, is you or someone you know. Not just a random stranger. Which in it of itself can breed an anti-safety culture, where people aren’t concerned about people they know “because they would never do this” only to find out that, yes, in fact, they would do that.
I think hyper polarization is one of the greatest societal issues we face currently. Whether it be war of genders, politics, etc. We are losing the calm middle ground that should be the majority without outside influence.
It’s so incredibly easy to polarize. We see it in this thread too. The top of this comment thread is a polarization too. Essentially dividing men into 2 distinct set of groups. You’re either good or a villain. This dichotomy is ridiculous and every social community eats it up like crazy, this Lemmy included. These create effects of over abundance, as you mention of caution, fear and hate.
If anyone actually thinks that they’d be better off with an encounter with a wild bear than a man, they’re just stupid and insane. Just walking down the street, I encounter 1000s of men. If there were 1000s of bears, I’m sure no one would go there. But we’re not appealing to logic. We’re appealing to feelings that’s been derived from these polarizations and sadly I see no way for this to end.
It’s so incredibly easy to polarize. We see it in this thread too. The top of this comment thread is a polarization too. Essentially dividing men into 2 distinct set of groups. You’re either good or a villain. This dichotomy is ridiculous and every social community eats it up like crazy, this Lemmy included. These create effects of over abundance, as you mention of caution, fear and hate.
yeah, i just don’t understand how people engage in this and don’t feel even the littlest bit of fascist tinge to it, because this is how fascist power structures come into play. This is literally how they work. You have an in group, and an out group, anybody in the in group is loyal to you, and anybody in the outgroup is fucking dead.
Well, because it’s prejudice being directed and reinforced towards us! I am the average man, and so are you! I am down for all the #metoo movements ya’ll need but it needs to be pointed towards specifics. I won’t allow to be put in the same cage I supportedsome people to get out of.
Incel said what?
https://youtu.be/SSVXbgR4JFs here’s my point better explained. You can reply the moment you feel like actually discussing and not dismissing me based on my gender.
Your gender is incel?
gets called an incel
posts incel shit in response
demands he isn’t dismissed based on gender
Edit. I think people misunderstood. I was pointing out the irony of the incels comments.
Man, I’m so glad I found people like contra points early in my life because you certainly aren’t helping. If you are a lonely man out there, it’s fine to feel alone and isolated. This worlds harsh and changing for the worst. Remember to keep your empathy, even for those that won’t give it to you back.
Can I dissmis you based on linking this channel with hardcore incel vibes?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/SSVXbgR4JFs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
🤌🏻
Or maybe people don’t like being roped in with terrible people based on a part of them that they have no control over? Just a thought.
In this scenario the woman has limited information. She has no choice but to assume average chances of a man or a bear killing her, regardless of the individual.
When you’re facing down a threat in the woods, how much they enjoy being stereotyped isn’t your problem.
If you believe you’re less likely to be in danger with a bear than a man, you’re just sexist.
That begs quite a few questions.
Which would be?
It’s nonsense. Out of 100 bear encounters about 1 turns violent. Now, how many men does the average women come in contact to daily and how many of them turn violent? I’m pretty sure the numbers are much, much lower than that for a bear encounter.
My Wife walked passed approximately 1’000 just today. No one even talked to her in a weird way. This whole argument is just fear mongering with sociallly acceptable sexism. This doesn’t solve any problems.
Also, statistically, strangers are the last people tk worry about. The overwhelming majority of abuse victims know their abuser or are even related. You should be more afraid to see uncle Frank and aunt Jenny in the woods than any random man.
This is a gish gallop so I’m just going to highlight that the scenario in question is alone in the woods, not walking past men on a busy street.
Please consider that you might be getting defensive, and will misinterpret both the initial premise and any explanations as a result.
Not at all. You said being alone in a forest with a man is more dangerous than a bear, and I said that’s statistically nonsense.
Just because I wrote more than 2 sentences, doesn’t make that a gish gallop.
There are 2 premises:
- Bears are dangerous (I agree)
- A random man in a forest is more dangerous to a woman than that bear (I strongly disagree)
I showed my numbers for that 1 argument and that’s it. I’m happy to be proven wrong, if you have anything more than “it just is”.
I’m not defensive I find this comparison to be simply ridiculous.
i’m just trying to figure out why this is becoming a colloquialism, i mean we’ve had would you rather for a while. But this is a very different format from it, and it’s rather, obtuse. Is the most polite way i can think to explain it.
I hate that i enjoy sociology sometimes, this is one of those times. People suck.
Context: Some woman on the internet said she would feel safer spending a night in the woods with a random bear rather than with a random man
Some woman
Not “some woman” — quite a few women. Lots of women.
I’m a man and even I would pick a bear
Really? What people do you usually hang around with?
Bears are incredibly strong and dangerous and will kill you just for fun.
I would honestly prefer a random man to a fucking moose.
Man is more unpredictable than bear. I know A bear can kill me, but I have no idea what a random man has in mind for me.
Sure. I guess it depends on what odds you are comfortable with. I prefer the very small odds of something worse than death or anything happing at all with Man than the high odds of death with a bear.
Where are you getting these odds from? For how many people live in bear regions, go camping/hunting/biking etc, there have not been that many bear attacks. Source
From this scenario I’m obviously assuming you have to be close to the bear for the entire day.
It’s not like the bear/man is at the other side of the forest.
And as to where I got my odds from? Well out of my ass. There are no statistics on this extremely specific scenario.
This has a strong “at least they’re honest about wanting to kill me!” energy lol.
Or maybe the whole thing is a joke. I honestly can’t tell
The random man probably hasn’t anything in mind for you, just minding his own business.
Bear: Couldn’t tell you what he’s up to even if it wanted to
Men: Can actually listen and talk their intentions.
Why is a man less predictable in this case? You all just claim things without the slightest bit of argument behind it… so please tell my why that would be the case.
Thanks.
The scale is shark > bear > man > moose. Don’t fuck with moose.
Large prey animals in general. I see a hippo im running
Won’t help, those fuckers go 30 mph. Usain bolt only managed 23 dot something for comparison
I mean… on sight doesn’t mean they’re already chasing, the point is to avoid that
Don’t make eye contact, don’t attract attention, get the almighty fuck out.
Because a nice bear is going to ask for consent, and might snuggle you and…wait. What kind of bear are we talking about?
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Why do you feel the need to make this racist
Don’t feed the troll.
“If you change the context, the context changes”
beardown
did… did you make this account just to insert racist bullshit into the bear meme?
Even more surprising is that it’s a reference to a show that makes fun of racism and racist people all the time. ‘Bear down for finals’
*then
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A bear won’t try to convince you that you weren’t really assaulted and accuse you of just wanting attention
Are we talking brown bears or black bears?
Brown bears are violently territorial and will attack you for being in eyeshot.
Black bears are basically giant racoons and will move away from people - especially if you’re making loud noises and making yourself look big - because they don’t want that smoke. They’ll only get aggressive if you surprise them or get anywhere near their younglings.
I’d probably take a black bear over a lot of dudes. As long as we got a good hundred feet or so of distance, Mr Bear and I ain’t gonna bother each other.
Totally agreed, the question is so vague it’s absurd. Are we talking a panda or a grizzly? Is the man a locked-in paraplegic or an violent ex con?
Regardless how you answer there’s always another possibility that makes your decision look stupid.
Yeah but that’s a different scenario all togther. Not all men are dangerous rapists, obviously. But enough are prone to assault and SA that it’s statistically safer to have some random bear (possibly grizzly or teddy) than some random man. If you don’t feel like the random guy walking down the street is dangerous, that’s probably because random men on the street don’t regularly harass you, which is unfortunately still a very common occurance to most women.
While I understand and respect your viewpoint, I’m not quite sure you understand what I’m saying here… The question is designed to be a no win scenario, it’s phrased in such a vague way that no matter how you answer someone else can chime in and say oh no, your not imagining the terrible scenario I’m imagining. There’s literally no way of answering it in a way that someone is going to chime in and tell your wrong.
It’s literally designed to be a test designed to gauge your reaction more than it is to be answered seriously.
Without more info one can’t possibly respond in a legitimate manner. And any responses without additional information is more of a mirror to your own personal disposition and fears than it is a legitimate response to the question.
I was in the smoky mountains with my kids camping, and we heard a bear digging around. My kids started crying, they for sure knew they were dead.
I got out of the tent, stomped my feet so the bear heard me and wasn’t startled, and then went “boogaaboogaaa” and raised my arms. Poor little black bear went running off and kept looking back.
And my kids had a really cool story about when their dad chased away a giant scary bear.
I am unironically bearpilled in this context. Men can be fucking scary with women. At least I’m unlikely to be SA’d before I die, with the bear.
You’re right. A bear wouldn’t sexually assault you, he would simply kill you.
Yes! As opposed to the man, who would SA me and then kill me!
And also possibly eat you.
Look canonically the worst a bear will ever do is two out of three, only men have hit the hat trick
A polar bear likely
A brown bear maybe
A black bear unlikely
or eat you alive.
Oh my fucking god. I think it can’t get any worse for a mother.
Why by default man is a serial killer and sa? What are the odds that dude is a psycho? What are the odds that bear is a killer? Do you understand how hard it is psychologically to murder someone if you are a normal person?
The man is not “by default” a serial killer and sa, its just a possibility I don’t want to entertain.
And yes, hello, I am normal person. I understand how hard it is psychologically to murder someone. I also know how hard it is psychologically to SA someone. And yet…
This is a “this is the option I would take” situation. I didn’t insult anyone, I didn’t say YOU have to take the bear. If you disagree, that’s perfectly okay, but you can’t tell me how I should feel, despite many men thinking that’s acceptable.
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Typical woman
as always, the people most upset about the bear thing just so happen to also be sexists.
Your comment was clearly not from a position of wanting to understand.
And that’s why we pick the bear.
You know what a bear’s gonna do. You never know if a man is gonna turn into an abusive cunt.
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stop, I can only get so bearect
Odds of a sexual abuser need not be high for the man, they’re simply 0% for the bear.
Somebody’s consumed too much tiktok paranoia porn
Are you referring to me? I wouldn’t touch tiktok with a 10 foot pole, or any of the infinite scroll short form video things for that matter. I’m not on twitter either. Or tumblr.
My POV is based on my personal experience and the experiences of women around me. And statistics!
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What the fuck did I say about black men? White men (men, regardless of race, for that matter) scare the fuck out of me my guy
E: You wouldn’t happen to be a… man would you? Would be very fitting with the whole “derailing a conversation about women feeling unsafe” thing.
That’s not a man, that’s a troll.
Yeah I realised after a while. What a sad human.
You’re thinking Emmitt Til and that wasn’t because the white woman was afraid, it was because she was willing to go along with the white men.
I get the sentiment, but realistically I’ll still pick the random man. A man could kill or rape me. A bear is likely to kill me.
Actually a bear is very unlikely to come after you. I come from an extremely rural part of Alberta, Canada, and large bears would sometimes wander in and near town. They wouldn’t run around swiping people up and murdering them, they would just basically wander around eating garbage and looking for food. The reality is that if you were in the woods with a random bear, unless it was starving or you were near its Cubs, it likely wouldn’t see you as important.
I’ll tell you what though. The bodies of indigenous women would get found in the woods sometimes. Bears didn’t put them there, men did.
As my wife put it, if the bear kill me, nobody would ask how I was dressed.
Yeah, if I get attacked by a bear the police won’t blame, interrogate, and shame me. I won’t be looked down on as broken or used.
That’s a good point, but I value my life more than my postmortem dignity.
I saw a bear in Canada, it just ran off.
I saw a man there once. Same thing happened.
Unless you are Lady Gaga in a meat dress.
“…for the first time in history, we can blame the attack on how someone was dressed.”
Actually statistics show that an encounter with a bear is orders of magnitude more dangerous than an encounter with a man. Obviously. I encounter 1000s of men as I was down the street and I’m not dead yet.
Yes, it’s very unlikely to run into a bear. But if that’s the point you’re making, you’re missing the predicate of the question where the encounter is already assumed.
Statistical error. Unlikely to encounter a bear; but per bear encounter, less likely to survive than per men encounter.
Serial killers and rapists are very clever and because there exist serial killers who want to kill indigenous women in the woods, they will likely succeed. Bears have no such desire, and because indigenous women are clever they will avoid the bears.
But I’m willing to bet that the odds of a random man being a rapist/murderer are much lower than a random bear deciding to kill me.
It’s hard thing to think about because our brains want to rephrase the situation into taking account how likely it is to encounter men vs bears in the first place. That’s why this isn’t very applicable to, say, staying safe at night or in bars.
…except it is. This is why, if you have to take a ride home with a strange man, it’s much safer to go with an arbitrary man of your choosing than the one who offers.
The bear discourse is the true measure of whether a given man is a red or green flag.
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You’ll often hear smart-alec martial arts masters say that the best self-defence technique is the 400m sprint, but they couldn’t be more wrong. In truth it’s the 1km parcour.
i like this one, this one is good.
A colored flag means a sign giving a clue on something. It doesn’t define a person, and can only be used to describe some abstract fact. You can say “getting angry when talking about the bear discourse” is a redflag, but saying “a man is a red flag” is not correct
Yes, that’s my point. The response to the bear discourse reveals red or green flags.
Just saying you didn’t know how to use those words
Syntactically they should have used ‘displays’ not ‘is’ a green or red flag, but everyone divined the meaning of the damned sentence and the internet is garbage so who gives a rats
I do, lol.
I don t think thats right , I think everyone just underestimate the danger of a bear .
Have you spoken to women about it?
i’m aro/ace and have an intense aversion from interacting with people. I’m pretty sure that’s a green flag?
Bear seeing a lone person in the woods:
That post frustrated the fuck out of me. Like I get and agree with the point you’re trying to make. But no, if you were actually given that choice no reasonable person is actually going to pick the bear.
yeah, they would
You share your world with random men you don’t know every single day. How often do you walk through a bear encloser at a zoo?
yeah, but nobody asks what you were wearing when you’re attacked by a bear :)
The bear isn’t likely to want to screw with you.
I’m not trying to make a point tbh. It’s one of those questions where there is no right answer due to many details not being said in the question
Sorry, by “you” I mean the original OP
I have had bears violently coming towards me, I would not pick an apex predator any day, but yeah, pick the bear, sure lol.
Aren’t both choices technically apex predators?
No, because humans hunt bears and bears will kill humans
I m losing faith in humanity any time this conversation resurfaces and I believe it would be a massive benefit to everyone involved if it never happened
“Question. What kind of bear is best?”
Identity theft is not a joke, Jim.
For survival: black bear
For dying: polar bear
If you want a surprise: brown bear (although they also won’t kill you if you stay away from them)
Ice bear best bear
Idk Pan-Pan is pretty cute. Ice Bear is cool though.
Not the bear market
Do Giant Pandas count?
Men seriously feeling the need to convince the world that they are not as dangerous as a wild bear.
well, after having thought about it for hours. And i really mean hours (please help me, also don’t mind me, i’m just autistic as fuck and think about these sorts of things a lot)
I have finally put together my ultimate conclusion on this topic. And it is as follows:
For starters, why am i in the woods? Presumably in this example i was just teleported out there at random, with one other entity, either a human or a bear. Now idk much about bear psychology, but if i were a bear, and a human popped up out of nowhere in front of me, i would lose my shit. So chances are im probably going to die.
As for a human, assuming a statistically random sample from the world, lets assume for the sake of this example, someone from within the same geographical area that i am in, because it makes logical sense for the statement here. The chances of them being 1. significant deviant enough that the second they see me, and decide they want to be a problem, is low enough that i’m willing to take it. Paired with the fact that often times abusers and rapists tend to be people you already know (it’s just a basic fun fact about being around people) and in this case, it’s probably someone i’ve never seen before, much less interacted with. I’m assuming the chances of me getting my shit fucked up are probably between 0-5% i feel like that’s pretty reasonable. i can’t imagine much more than like 10% of any given western population are active rapists. So we’ll go with that. And like i said the bear? Probably going to flip it’s shit. And even if it doesn’t it’s still gotta be higher than 10% i would assume.
Now, moving on to the secondary factors, we’re lost in a forest. The very obvious factor here is that being there with another individual greatly increases your odds of being found/getting out, both due to collective knowledge accumulation between the two of you, and the likelihood that other people realize you’re gone being twice as high (roughly) but we won’t consider that aspect significant. So moving back to the productive aspects of having two people. Assuming we’re the female in this case, and the other person is a male, as per the statement rules. That means we have someone who is more likely to be stronger, and more capable of exerting themselves, which could prove useful in a situation like this. However more people is still more better, so we’ll say about a 100% productivity bonus just to be safe here. As aforementioned, we have a secondary source of knowledge here, so we can collectively decide on things, as well as think about them, which often leads to more correct/better solutions/outcomes. As well as the obvious benefit of having someone to socialize with, this is a natural morale booster. Humans are social creatures. Nuff said.
One more thing though, since we’ve established that there are potential benefits to this situation, we must now compare those benefits to the downsides of the other situation, so let’s do that
- being alone (having no additional help, assuming we aren’t immediately mauled and eaten by the bear)
- not being alone (the likely potential that you DO get help, and quite significant amounts of it, with the small additional chance of being raped and killed) Ok i think that pretty much sums it up.
Alright, now moving on to the tertiary aspects of this, let’s modify the original statement. And say that we didn’t just randomly teleport, and that we walked into the woods with someone else (we aren’t counting kidnapping because then this statement wouldn’t really apply would it?) Anyway, now that we’ve pulled foul play off of the table. You’re walking into the forest with someone you probably already know, or someone who you’ve gotten to know thus far. They aren’t a stranger or at the very least, not a complete stranger, presumably you don’t just wander into the forest randomly for no reason, so lets assume you’re going on a hike or something. It’s good exercise after all, so for one thing, you’ve got some level of equipment with you. Probably some level of self defense capability (depending on where you are and how much you care) you did not come into this with the intent of being lost, and you are with someone that you know.
I feel like i don’t have to expand on why picking the bear in this option would be a bad choice…
alright, that concludes my lengthy essay on my opinion of this “thought experiment” feel free to yell at me or whatever, or engage with this, i probably missed something. New information always adds to the fun :) The whole point of a thought experiment is trying out new thoughts and weird ideas after all. Also just for the record, since some of you are probably curious. I have no opinion about these sorts of situations what so ever, because they aren’t real, and don’t exist, so the only valuable thing i can glean from them is through stats and situational analysis.
This was one of those toxic questions designed to cause people to argue. That’s really its ONLY purpose. It really only has 2 answers, and both can be interpreted as toxic.
My 2 cents though, here in Australia, you’ll occasionally get a question about staying safe when hiking as women.
You’ll have a huge majority of women saying its safe to hike in Australia, and then 1 or 2 women encouraging women to bring knives or weapons. The ones who claim this then get a huge negative response by both women and guys pointing out it makes things more dangerous for everyone and that nobody needs them.
As a male guide also, I’ve actually found it difficult to find other guys to hike with, but it is incredibly trivial for me to find women to join me (in fact, doing one this upcoming weekend).
So, interpret that as you will, but, honestly, the people who are incredibly invested in either of these answers, in my opinion, nobody would want to hike with regardless (bears, other women or men), so the answer doesn’t affect them.
Genuine question: How can you not always carry some kind of weapon in Australia ?
