# The Male Inequality Problem **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 27, 2025, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440 "2025-09-27T21:57:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/441 "2025-10-24T19:16:43Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And they regard men as worse than animals, thus the whole man/bear thing. No, I think you’re still kind of missing the point here. The central idea is that in the bear’s natural environment out in the woods, like most other wild animals, it is far more likely to leave you alone if you leave it alone than to try to harm you. [As I’ve pointed out before](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-bear-woman-whats-the-meme-im-missing/1001284/92), in a different environment such as an office building elevator, most woman would (rightly) be far more afraid of the presence of a random bear than of a random man. > [@Kimstu](#): > > ISTM that a lot of the subtext in this discussion involves respondents’ making unspoken assumptions about _ **why** _ **the man is out there in the woods.** > > Everybody knows that the bear is wandering around in the woods because that’s just where bears live. (And shit, natch, and do all the rest of their bear business.) > > But there is a popular perception, stoked (and not just among women) by centuries of sensationalist crime reporting and fiction, that if a lone man is out in the woods then there’s a significantly heightened probability that he’s some kind of crazy predator. Of _course_ you’d rather encounter a bear just going about his/her bear business than run that kind of risk. > > I’m willing to bet that almost all of the women who responded that they’d rather encounter a bear than a man when alone in the woods would switch their answer if instead the context was, say, alone in an elevator in a busy office building during the workday. > > That’s a situation in which a man is presumed by default to be going about normal man business rather than acts of crazy predation. A bear in an elevator, in the other hand, is far more likely to be distressed and aggressive rather than just doing normal bear business. (Although maybe the bear came into town to see her lawyer or something, I don’t know her bear life.) ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/442 "2025-10-24T19:19:23Z")
Once again: The problem is that our society encourages or tolerates, to varying degrees, toxic and dangerous attitudes and behavior in men, and there’s no good way for women to determine which men are dangerous without a lot of time and effort. Thus finding oneself alone with a strange man can be as frightening as being alone in the wilderness with predators. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/443 "2025-10-24T19:34:10Z")
In other words, men are monsters. Hell, it’s the same logic as the US uses when it randomly drone strikes “military age men”; they are _men,_ therefore they are both a threat and their lives are of no value. As for toxic attitudes, men growing up being constantly lectured how their gender is brutal and evil is a great way of both creating and excusing them. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/444 "2025-10-24T19:39:08Z")
You’re just setting up straw men and not addressing my actual words. I remember discussing this with you before, years ago, and multiple times, I believe. I’ll try to say this as kindly as I can - I think you should consider some very long, very deep, and very serious thinking about how you view women in your deepest self, and I’d highly encourage you to ask for the views of women. The words you’re using remind me of inceldom and worse. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/445 "2025-10-24T19:43:13Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Thus finding oneself alone with a strange man can be as frightening as being alone in the wilderness with predators. There are also multiple confounding factors in play, including: - A lot of women have no experience with hiking and wilderness culture, so their mental picture of _“a lone man out in the woods”_ is a lot more skewed towards the popular-media-fueled crazy-predator stereotype that I mentioned in my previous post than toward the more mundane and realistic scenario of some perfectly harmless dude with a heavy backpack and dirty socks just trying to get to his next camping site before sundown. - A lot of women have no or little knowledge about the relative dangers of various types of animal predators, and this is also skewing their choices. Personally, if the bear in the woods is an ordinary black bear then yeah, I’d probably choose the bear encounter as safest, even though I’m aware that the lone man is extremely likely to be just a harmless hiker. If it’s a grizzly, on the other hand, I’m thinking more carefully about my options. I have been out in the woods with a (very distant) grizzly bear and it was fine, but I was definitely aware of the situation. If it’s a polar bear up in a far northern forest somewhere, then fuck it, I’m definitely going with the lone-man encounter instead. Actually, even if I know for sure that the lone man in question **is** a crazy predator, I’m probably choosing to encounter him rather than the polar bear. A polar bear will seriously fuck your shit up, usually before you even know that it’s stalking you. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/446 "2025-10-24T19:49:47Z")
I think focusing on the bear misses the point. The point is that, in our society, women have good reason to feel fear of being alone around strange men. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/447 "2025-10-24T19:52:23Z")
Yes, but I maintain that the _bear-vs.-man-in-woods_ debate is also somewhat severely skewed by widespread ignorance, and sensationalist media misinformation, about the sort of behavior that can be realistically expected from the average lone male stranger out in the woods. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/448 "2025-10-24T19:59:41Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > In other words, men are monsters. Some men are monsters. All bears are animals. With an animal, you can take precautions, and choose to act in a way that will encourage the animal to leave you alone. The vast majority of time, they won’t see you as prey, they might see you as a threat, but you’re not prey. With a monster, you are prey. They see you, they identify you as prey, and now their goal is to get you, and you can’t just encourage them to leave you alone. As noted, it’s not all men, it’s quite a small number, but you don’t know until it’s too late when you’ve stumbled on one. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/449 "2025-10-24T20:01:13Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I remember discussing this with you before, years ago, and multiple times, I believe. I’ll try to say this as kindly as I can - I think you should consider some very long, very deep, and very serious thinking about how you view women in your deepest self, and I’d highly encourage you to ask for the views of women. The words you’re using remind me of inceldom and worse. You demonstrate my point; I’m a man, therefore I _must_ be a monster. You’re just picking a particular sort of monster to accuse me of being. As a man I can’t _possibly_ be human enough to resent being called worse than an animal, after all. I must have some sort of nefarious agenda. And, what exactly are men supposed to _do_ about it? Kill themselves? I’ve never harmed a woman or molested a child, but that doesn’t matter; I’m evil because I was born evil. What a man does doesn’t matter; women will fear and hate them no matter what. Also, this is an example of people enforcing the same toxicity they complain of. If a man expresses unhappiness at being hated, he’s accused of being evil for it. And then people wonder why men don’t express their feelings more. ---
**Author:** ![Gordon\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3da27b/32.png) [@Gordon\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gordon_G)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/450 "2025-10-24T20:06:48Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > > [@Gordon\_G](#): > > > > > [@Someone else](#): > > > > > > The root of the problem is the idea that “feminine” and “masculine” have any inherent value. They don’t. Trying to find some general attribute that is applicable to men, but not women, or vice versa, is not useful. > > > > I disagree 100%. \*\* > > > > ### Males and females in Homininae have had different roles, different emotions and different strengths and weaknesses for millions of years. > > > > \*\* > > That’s a pretty sweeping statement that’s more speculation than fact, at least as far as it concerns **innate** and/or **invariable** differences between males and females. I’ve enlarged part of my text to refute your claim that differences are not **innate**. (Unless your claim is that human culture affected hominins 6 million years ago.) The alleged claim about **invariable** is one I never made. > [@](#): > > But do those differences tell us anything about the extent to which **cultural** norms of “femininity” and “masculinity” are **innate or necessary** to humans? Nope, not really. You phrase a truism. I made carefully phrased claims which you implicitly exaggerate to be “absolutist.” Just to trivialize sexual differences to make a point clear: – Do both males and females produce testosterone and estrogen? Yes. – **On average** do the sexes produce those hormones in the same proportions? No. – Does ACKNOWLEDGING such differences aid understanding? Yes. – Is insisting that these differences should be ignored or suppressed just “politically correct” malarkey? Yes. Often facts are inconvenient. I am NOT any sort of misogynist, and generally ally politically with “progressive liberals.” But I prefer **truth** over falsities, however convenient those falsities may be. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/451 "2025-10-24T20:09:09Z")
I’m a man too, and this is not remotely what I’m saying, at all. You’re missing the point so widely that all I can say is “please reconsider how you think about women”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/452 "2025-10-24T20:09:35Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You demonstrate my point; I’m a man, therefore I _must_ be a monster. Nah, this is about behavior exhibited by _you personally_. I don’t think @iiandyiiii would be suggesting to many if any other male Dopers that they give off a comparable kind of simmering grievance vibe. Personally, I just tend to chalk it up to the usual @Der_Trihs pattern of qualifier deprivation. _“Most women recognize that they have good cause to be afraid of a small subset of men, but can’t tell which male strangers are in that subset and which aren’t”_ translates into **D\_T** -speak as _“All women are convinced that all men are born evil.”_ Uh-huh, whatever, dude. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/453 "2025-10-24T20:09:56Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You demonstrate my point; I’m a man, therefore I _must_ be a monster. You’re just picking a particular sort of monster to accuse me of being. As a man I can’t _possibly_ be human enough to resent being called worse than an animal, after all. I must have some sort of nefarious agenda. As a man… get over yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/454 "2025-10-24T20:12:43Z")
> [@Gordon\_G](#): > > I’ve enlarged part of my text to refute your claim that differences are not **innate**. It doesn’t refute my claim. We don’t know what emotional differences may have existed between male and female hominids millions of years ago, for example. We don’t know what aspects of their different social roles (other than the **directly** biological ones, such as birthing children versus not birthing children) were biologically innate rather than culturally evolved. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/455 "2025-10-24T20:18:39Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > A lot of women have no experience with hiking and wilderness culture, so their mental picture of _“a lone man out in the woods”_ is a lot more skewed towards the popular-media-fueled crazy-predator stereotype that I mentioned in my previous post than toward the more mundane and realistic scenario of some perfectly harmless dude with a heavy backpack and dirty socks just trying to get to his next camping site before sundown. And then some of us see it as a romantic opportunity! My book got started by a scene where a man and woman encounter each other in the woods, and get in a fight! Enemies to lovers! Of course he kidnaps her, but all is fair in love and war! I’m not really afraid of men. I’m aware that some men are dangerous but as a game of statistics the probability seems pretty low that some random guy will be my undoing. Of course if women blindly trusted every stranger they met and end up being raped, they absolutely will be blamed for not being more careful. It’s no win for women. Which is why we’re taught not to go out at night, or drink at parties, or hike alone, and most of us just avoid these things as a matter of safety because we don’t want to be blamed for our own victimization. You don’t even have to say it’s to avoid men. It’s to avoid _predators_. Men may do the same for all I know. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/456 "2025-10-24T20:19:52Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > My book got started by a scene where a man and woman encounter each other in the woods, and get in a fight! Enemies to lovers! Of course he kidnaps her, but all is fair in love and war! But at least his socks are clean, I hope? 🤣 ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/457 "2025-10-24T20:28:02Z")
Oh, heavens no, he’s a mess. A beautiful mess. I guess a metaphor I would use is Las Ramblas, I think that’s what it’s called. A major throughway in Spain where pickpocketing is relatively common. In fact it’s relatively common in tourist areas - my husband when we were in college was pickpocketed in Pamplona. Anyway, they tell you when you walk down Las Ramblas to hide your wallet and valuables, to make it so they can’t easily be snatched. If I follow that advice, am I saying all people who use Las Ramblas are dirty thieves? No, of course not. I’m taking reasonable precautions based on statistical risk. Especially knowing that if someone steals from me, as a foreigner I will be at a disadvantage. I’ll have little recourse. The cops can’t do anything about it. Rape is several orders or magnitude more traumatizing than getting pickpocketed, but many of us will also have little recourse if we are victimized. So we follow our little rules. Does it make a difference? I don’t know. But following the rules makes me feel safer anyhow. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/458 "2025-10-24T20:36:39Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You demonstrate my point; I’m a man, therefore I _must_ be a monster. You’re just picking a particular sort of monster to accuse me of being. As a man I can’t _possibly_ be human enough to resent being called worse than an animal, after all. I must have some sort of nefarious agenda. You frequently refer to Republicans as evil monsters who want to rape, subjugate and enslave women. How many Republicans do you think are men? So how many men do you really think are a threat to women? Your positions are logically inconsistent. I have seen you double down on this countless times - including thread shitting in a thread asking women about their experiences of sexual assault - so I’m not going to argue with you about it any further. But on its face your positions are incompatible. You frequently call a huge subset of men evil but get the vapors whenever women take sensible precautions to protect themselves. Give me a break! ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/459 "2025-10-24T20:37:38Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > _“Most women recognize that they have good cause to be afraid of a small subset of men, but can’t tell which male strangers are in that subset and which aren’t”_ translates into **D\_T** -speak as _“All women are convinced that all men are born evil.”_ This. There is a small minority of men who _are_ monsters. And those men are usually bigger and stronger than women. So women fear them. The vast majority of men are not monsters. You can’t tell by looking, so women are a little cautious of all unknown men. But that’s certainly not because all men are monsters. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/460 "2025-10-24T20:45:04Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > You frequently refer to Republicans as evil monsters who want to rape, subjugate and enslave women. How many Republicans do you think are men? People aren’t born Republican. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Some men are monsters. All bears are animals. > > With an animal, you can take precautions, and choose to act in a way that will encourage the animal to leave you alone. The vast majority of time, they won’t see you as prey, they might see you as a threat, but you’re not prey. > > With a monster, you are prey. They see you, they identify you as prey, and now their goal is to get you, and you can’t just encourage them to leave you alone. As noted, it’s not all men, it’s quite a small number, but you don’t know until it’s too late when you’ve stumbled on one. Yet, somehow, most men manage to go throughout life without treating every man they meet as a threat. And I note that people re carefully ignoring the question: What _are_ men supposed to do about it? Kill themselves? Sit around flagellating themselves? > [@Kimstu](#): > > Nah, this is about behavior exhibited by _you personally_. No, it’s not; you compared me to incels, who aren’t anything like me. You’re just demonizing me, for failing to demonstrate enoguh self-hate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440.md?page=22) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440.md?page=24)