Wait. What?
Did we read the same article?
Yeah, that article didn’t strike me as advocating “hermit” or “heavily armed single-gender enclave” existence for anybody. ISTM that its basic admonitions were these:
All sounds pretty eminently reasonable to me, neither paranoid nor misandrist.
Was that public domain? Because I believe you greatly exceeded the fair use.
I removed the non-attributed quote in the meantime.
Whoa! Sorry about that, didn’t intend any fair-use violation. I don’t know whether this text is in fact freely distributable.
That was my reaction too. Since @Der_Trihs said “I read it years ago,” it may not be the same article.
I confess I find this entire discussion very confusing. It seems to overlook the obvious.
Bears kill hardly any women statistically. Whereas men are a major cause of death for women.
How is that not enough to explain why so many opted for the bear?
Because men don’t want that to be the explanation.
The article linked in the OP was written years ago. It’s a good explanation of why women tend to choose “bear” in the much more recent hypothetical.
As pointed out in the previous, closed thread, there is the base rate to consider. T-rexes kill even fewer women statistically. Which would you rather meet: a bear or a T-rex?
That’s if you’re asking why a dry, emotionless statistical analysis doesn’t easily settle the question in favor of the bear. But of course people are responding to the question from points of view other than a dry statistical analysis.
If we’re going just by raw numbers, women kill far more men per year than bears. Therefore, if a man is asked “If you’re walking through the woods alone, would you rather encounter a woman or a bear” then a sensible man should choose the bear because (again, going purely by raw numbers), bears are safer than women.
Unless the woman in question lives with, works with and dates bears, it’s not a good comparison at all. Of course the thing they are around vastly more often kills more of them. Many, many things kill more people of both genders than bears do. Bears would have to be incredibly aggressive to catch up to, say, car accidents or death by choking due to the simple fact that they and humans seldom interact at all.
I don’t understand that reaction. It seemed to me that she gave practical advice with the goal of successful romantic relationships between men and women. I am not especially fearful of men, and I’m gregarious, so I’m the woman that you might find yourself chatting with in a long line, or at the airport. I’m married to a man, and i have lots of male friends. But yeah, what she said all sounded good to me.
What did she say that suggests to you that i should avoid men?
Well, FWIW, I hated it. I thought it was condescending as hell. Something about the tone was really off-putting. Not to mention the way the author invokes “we” as if women are a monolithic entity who agree with her.
I do not live my life sizing up whether any given man is a threat to me. She cannot speak for me.
I take a reasonable amount of precaution to avoid ending up in a true crime special. I listen to my intuition if someone seems like they don’t respect my boundaries. I pay attention to my environment.
Beyond those basics, no, I don’t really worry about rape and death every time I leave my house.
Of course, the conclusion made by Der Trihs, “Stay away from all women” does not follow, unless he’s trying to be ironic.
No, I remember him from years and years ago, and this seems to be a foundational belief.
Because “statistically,” that’s likely the wrong conclusion given the parameters of the scenario (e.g., assuming a bear encounter and the fact that the man is a stranger).
But also because there are numerous responses declaring that rational or statistical risk assessment is an inappropriate way to look at the discussion.
So what you view as an adequate explanation (while likely wrong) is apparently the wrong type of explanation or approach.
Because it’s about perception, not statistics.
Apparently a lot of women feel that if they found themselves alone in the woods with a random man, there is a better than average (or at least better than bear) chance that he will rape and/or murder her.
The bear OTOH, may or may not attack her, but at least will presumably due so in a manner consistent with how a bear is expected to behave and not out of a fit of sexual frustration-driven rage.
Also bears are cool AF.
Somebody linked to bear.org further upthread. I was reading an account there of a rare black bear attack of a human.
A woman in northern Minnesota went into her garage and happened upon an adult fremale bear. This prompted a little tussle.
Dig what she (Kim Heil-Smith) said after the fact:
Heil-Smith had been on the phone at the time with her friend, Debby Nelson. The phone was knocked out of her hand during the attack. But instead of yelling for help, Heil-Smith was yelling, “It’s only a bear” to avoid scaring her friend. “I didn’t want her to think it was a man with a gun or anything,” Heil-Smith joked.
But what if the bear had a gun?
After all, doesn’t the Constitution guarantee the right to arm bears?
I meant to mention in my above quoted post that that incident happened in 2003, long before the “bear or man” thing.
I thought it interesting that 20 years ago a woman told her friend, essentially, she’d think it far more dangerous to encounter a strange man in her home than a bear.
Thus presaging Man/Bear 2024.