StrikerMean world syndrome has reacted a fever pitch.
FluorideMindI’m pretty sure it’s mostly just talk, when actually faced with a 🐻.
bhmnscmmPeople 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.
Shit stirring on the internet? Preposterous!
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.
“Men as a rule are such scum, I’d rather spend the night with a wild animal that routinely kills and eats people given the choice!” -These women
“Why cant I find a good man?!” -Also these women
As a happily married man, I would want nothing to do with a woman that has such overt hatred towards my gender. If my wife started playing the “as a rule, men are subhuman scum more dangerous to me than wild carnivorous animals” game, I would eventually divorce her, regardless of whether she considered me to be one of the good ones.
This is good from an ecological perspective though, if you aren’t on team human at least. Women hating men means less humans, which would be better for most life on earth, including bears.
It’s definitely the women’s fault for preferring the bear. 🐻 /hj
Its literally a hypothetical question being posed.
A hypothetical, by its nature, has no victims.
I also have no doubt that if these same women were abducted by some faceless squid gamey organization and subjected to this premise for real, with some random confused dude abducted from a gas station in one cage, and some random confused bear abducted from the woods in another, the number of them proudly declaring “I choose bear!” would drop to next to none.
This was just presented as yet another roundabout opportunity for the ever popular “ladies? Men are pigs/dogs: yes or no?”
Wait you’re giving out handy j’s? I’m in!
Park bathroom stall 2?
driving_croonerDid you ask your wife about it or are assuming her answer?
“Sweetie pumpkin, do you think most men would murder/rape/eat you in a cannibalistic sense if they could? Like as much or more than a wild bear I mean…”
This question is making the rounds because it’s an overtly ridiculous question to ask. I didn’t ask her to do the cinnamon challenge either.
Ok. I see you didn’t. Pretty sexist of you to assume your wife answer btw.
Obvious troll is obvious.
I respect the game, but you need more subtlety.
It’s supposed to be a knife in the back, not a bludgeon
“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.
Literally the premise of the question, random man or random bear, who do you feel safer, the opposite of in danger, with?
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.
We have a son, why would I ask her a question that heavily infers her infant son is or will inevitably be a dangerous, vicious monster more murderous than a bear that she should feel unsafe around?
Well, judging by your levelheadedness here, she obviously has nothing to worry about. /s
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man”.
The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having refuted or defeated an opponent’s proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., “stand up a straw man”) and the subsequent refutation of that false argument (“knock down a straw man”) instead of the opponent’s proposition. Straw man arguments have been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly regarding highly charged emotional subjects.
snooggumsEven 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.
That’s just a numbers game, we also have way more interactions with bears, you would have to do a whole breakdown of time/incidents for bears and humans both
The point is not the literal number of incidents or ratio, because personal experience impacts that for most people.
Someone who has been in a plane crash don’t care how infrequent they are, the personal experience influences how they estimate the risks.
Oh, you meant personal experience.
Yeah, 100%
I completely misread you somehow.
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?
“it’s totally fine and normal that 1/3rd of all women are sexually abused by men because there are a lot of men, it’s normal!” - you
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.
Yeah, but you’re contrasting 2 bear encounters with hundreds if not thousands of encounters with people. You encounter way more often men than bears and if you want to use the math argument you have to account for this.
You’re over here. That light over there in the distance? That’s their point, you missed it by a mile.
Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Bears tend to avoid women rather than hunt them down.
“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…
I feel bad for this man’s wife
So which made up women have you been talking with? "These women" or your wife?
Women don’t hate men. They’re just doing what society told them to do. Taking precautions to avoid becoming one of the 14% of women who have reported being raped. Probably while they were a teenager.
Why does your brain connect avoidance with hate?
NeatoThe 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.
Almost like that was part of the original article.
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 that without some training and backup but it illustrates just how much normal animals don’t want anything to do with humans.
How often are you near a bear? How many bears have you attacked or wronged? Do you wonder how a bear might react if it understood English and you talked about it like you talk about men?
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.
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.
RoquetteQueenI 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.
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.
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 etc all tend to go crazy easy on men who abuse women.
Republicans want to take away women’s rights/independence, police who assault women are often 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.
It’s also incredibly loaded 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 pretty consistently and easily overpower most women. All women seem to know at least one or more women who have been sexually assaulted, or had their drink spiked etc, so it’s not some obsession with crime shows or scary movies driving this fear.
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?
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.
Although, if you live somewhere that grizzlies are common, and you're out hiking or biking without a bear bell, there will be some judgment on what you were (not) wearing.
/used to live in Alaska
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 putting men against women.
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.
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 it’s 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.
You are conflating all men with the guilty.
“not all men!”
Enough men that most women would choose a fucking bear. Look in the mirror: you’re the problem.
Oh damn, am I?
What with my respecting women’s choices, supporting them and all that?
Do I need to go change everyone’s opinions or is just living my life, doing right, and treating people as equals enough?
Yeah, some of us get sick of hearing how men do this and men do that.
Well guess fucking what, I’m a man who doesn’t do all the bad shit, and still yet I hear about how men are bad.
Shit gets old quick.
Is any of this going to cause me to change my life and how I act?
Not even a bit, my principles don’t require anyone’s input.
It’s like how when men start talking about how all women are bitches, if I was a woman I would get straight pissed at that as well.
That is bullshit behavior no matter who is doing it.
You're conflating what you think argument is with what the article was actually about.