Man, bear, woman, camera, TV…
That’s where I thought this was going, and I wondered if the trend going around right now is to combine the bear controversy with the Trump meme.
For anyone, would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or Kristi Noem?
There’s a companion question–not a better one, but an illustrative companion question–that I’ve been thinking about.
There’s a woman alone in the woods. She can encounter either a black bear, or a certain man that you know, like your dad, or husband, or brother. Choose the man, and then decide: would it be better for her to encounter the man, or the bear?
If you still choose the bear, then one of four things is probably true:
- You, like my family, think bears are awesome, and want to give her the experience of encountering one in the wild, because how cool would that be? You might be missing the point of the question though.
- You want to see the woman attacked by a bear. You suck.
- You don’t trust the dude you picked not to be somewhere on the spectrum between “really creepy” and “violent.” Pick a different dude maybe, both for the hypothetical and for real life?
- The question isn’t about whether you trust the guys you know, because they might be great. It’s about whether encountering an unknown guy in an isolated place is a fraught situation for a woman, so fraught that the stress of it would be worse than the stress of encountering a bear.
It really depends. If they want to attack, if, the bear can do more damage.
Does that statistic apply here? Domestic violence, by definition, is going to exclude violence committed by strangers encountered in the woods.
I think in a lot of ways it might be better to ask, “Would you rather encounter a bear in the woods or a man you know?” I suspect women are much more likely to be assaulted by someone they know rather than a complete stranger.
I guarantee the bear won’t sexually assault you, though.
thank you! I would add:
unless you are completely unaware of male privilege, are incapable of learning or even listening.
I am 62 years old and have learned there is literally NOTHING a woman can say that some man won’t immediately “explain” she is wrong about.
YOU I like. 
Most of those men will do the same to other men. If you notice when a man does that to other men he’s not a sexist jerk, just a regular jerk. It is a pointless distinction because you don’t want to be alone in the woods with either of them.
You’re hitting on a truth here that I think women might be responding in terms of how it would make them feel as opposed to highest actual likelihood of violence.
When I was a teen I encountered a fair amount of harassment from men as well as abuse. I’m 41 now and when I leave the house to walk around my well-populated neighborhood I pretty much expect to be harassed, even though it happened such a long time ago and hasn’t happened in years. It’s hard for me to leave the house sometimes because of the discomfort that engenders, not because of what any person actually does but because of how I feel when I see that person and anticipate harassment and how very much I don’t like to experience that feeling.
I worry sometimes that we (humans) too often make decisions based on how it makes us feel rather than what the better choice actually is. Clearly the better choice in my case is to go for a walk.
I saw this explanation this morning. Unfortunately I saw it copied from somewhere that copied it from somewhere, and every source I find online appears also to be a copy so I can’t attribute it. But maybe it will give some insight:
There is a question going around the internet, the original question is would you rather have your daughter in the woods with a random unknown man or a random bear. Its been morphed a bit now that its been shared to would you as a woman rather be in the woods with a random unknown man OR a bear.
Almost without fail posed this question the answer of the women/mothers have been a bear and it has men feeling some type of way that women almost universally trust a bear more then a strange man. But here are the top 10 reasons woman have given for choosing a bear over a man:
10- No one would question me about what I was wearing if the bear attacked me.
9- No one would accuse me of liking the bear attack
8- A bears motives are easier to understand.
7- A bear won’t accuse me of leading them on by being nice to them.
6- I would not be forced to carry the bears babies to term in 27 states.
5- The bear will either kill me or leave me alone there are not 400 other horrible ways a bear can hurt me.
4- Bears do not traffic women.
3- A bears friends won’t come out to say how nice the bear is and how attacking me is ruining its life.
2- No one will question if the bear attack really happened.
1- The bear sees me as a human being.
But here are a few others that are sad but true:
If I survive the bear attack I will not have to see the bear at family reunions.
The bear did not torture me for years.
A bear would not film it and send it to his friends.
A bear would not apologize to me and promise never to do it again.
NOW lets talk. Soooo many males are mad about this. I have seen some comments replying to a woman choosing the bear that make my skin crawl. Most of them give off vibes that tell me they are literally part of sect of men that are the reason we chose the bear. When this question was posed, man or bear, to woman 9 out of every 10 chose the bear. 9 out of every 10. We cannot agree about hair color, makeup, or Taylor Swift but we almost entirely as a gender agree about this. In fact when asked 7 out of 10 did not even take time to think the answer was instantly bear.
We understand the bear may kill us. We understand there are fates worse then dying. A bear will simply kill us or ignore us.
Statistically women are safer with bears then men sorry not sorry. In the last 4 years 7 women were killed by bears and 15 were attacked and survived. Do you wanna know the rape/murder statistics for the same time range of men killing/raping women?
We are safer with the bear.
Sorry, not sorry.
Not in the slightest. Nothing dangerous about a rattlesnake either as long as you leave it the hell alone. Just not true of men.
Here’s the problem with that comparison. We don’t encounter bears as often as we encounter men. To make a true statistical risk comparison we’d have to know how many bear encounters occur and what the likelihood of getting killed by a bear is if you actually encounter one. Because in the hypothetical there is a 100% chance of encountering a bear, not a 7 out of whatever million chance.
The demonstrable fact on this very thread, that some men cannot admit what a menace the male human is, to women, is one part of why they are a menace.
This isn’t about statistics.
When you encounter a bear in the woods you can tell when it is friendly, and when it is angry.
When you encounter a man in the woods, how the man acts doesn’t tell you jack about whether he is dangerous or not.
I was responding to a statistical claim. It’s about statistics to me. That’s how I assess risk.
When asked this question I very much want to know the statistical probability of harm in either case.
Did you read @ZipperJJ’s latest post?
I not only read it, I responded to it with a critique of the statistical justification within it.