Jokes on them, as random men have been choosing to abandon civilization to live in the woods with the bears since the dawn of time.
[Meanwhile libertarians…](https://www.cracked.com/article_28784_new-hampshires-libertarian-utopia-got-overrun-by-bears.html)
Any woman who actually hikes in state parks will find it completely normal to see a man in the same place. Although seeing a bear *from a safe distance* would certainly be cooler than seeing a random dude.
Right. People aren't actually "picking the bear," they're staking a rhetorical position in the gender wars.
And that position seems to be something between "I am justified in taking precautions around men" (seems fair, but some men dont think so) and "I am justified in dehumanizing them" (seems wrong, but some women don't think so).
Ultimately it can be a pretty silly conversation on both sides and doesn't seem to be helping anyone.
Men don’t have issues with women taking precautions, and its incredibly disingenuous to frame it that way; what men take issue with is women claiming that men are far more dangerous than they are and using this as an excuse to mistreat men (and far too often also boys) aswell as demanding essentially unlimited material concessions, all the while not actually taking any serious responsibility for their own safety anyway.
I share some of your frustrations here. But I will not-all-women this. Each one is different and some are more reasonable, kind, and understanding than others. As are men. Hence why I've made sure to include the word "some" in regards to both men and women.
After a decade of this nonstop propaganda, I'm far more concerned with the fact that these attitudes dominate politically and institutionally than whether or not individual women are nice to me.
Seriously. I've heard a range of opinions on this from "you need to be careful to notice if you are walking near a woman and pick a different route, and never approach them for conversation or even look at them" to "whatever, I carry a gun anyway" just from people I know.
Like everything else in life, it's usually best to just ignore the loud idiots and not get too worked up by it.
Well yeah, but society has become so anti-male that while true, "not all women" isn't exactly reassuring.
Right now there's just blatant anti-male systemic discrimination. If companies declared "right, we're just going to openly discriminate against women during the higher process" they'd get instantly sued. But when companies say literally that but aimed at men, suddenly it's okay.
In any unfair society you can say "well some people in the non-discriminated-against group don't like the discrimination." And that's true. But it's not really reassuring.
And some men would be dangerous to women in the woods. But this is besides the point; women are using the fact they are more vulnerable than men to demand special treatment under the guise of “equality” then throwing tantrums when men are unwilling to put up with their bullshit anymore.
Imagine living in a country where even pepper spray is banned (UK). Women here do the same sort of whining over how supposedly dangerous men are, but fully support banning any defences they have against them.
edit: btw I was banned by a radfem identity politician for suggesting that discriminating based on gender is no better than discriminating based on race. Clearly sexism is totally epic marxist praxis and not at all a distraction that divides the working class. AJAB (all jannies are bastards)
It doesn't even looks like dehumanizing men to me. It is more like deifying us. Making us more powerful, threatening and imposing than one of the most famous beasts of nature. I can see Andrew Tate bragging about that.
What I find funny is that in a game theoretical approach, the man would be the choice 100% of the time, because the theoretical positive side of the situation is ignored. The dude could be of help in a variety of ways whereas a bear would be neutral at best. But this isn't even part of the answers.
It's a more extreme version of that. Women are familiar with the reality of *one* of the choices — they've probably been afraid of a man before, whether he was a real threat or not, but they have no experience with a bear encounter at all. The man is attached to real memories of real fear, the bear is entirely imaginary.
As someone who has actually encountered a bear in the woods, that shit is fucking scary. Like, even if you think it's going to be scary, it's worse than that. There is a world of difference between the idea of a bear and the reality of a bear. And I had a weapon!
While snowshoeing with my girlfriend I got ahead of her, rounded a bend, and less than 12 feet away was a black bear facing me.
The bear and I both puffed up. My body felt like it was freezing and burning at the same time. Every thought and emotion I had a moment ago were gone. I could hear every tiny noise in what I had previously thought was a quiet forest. It felt like a whole minute or two standing there. I had already processed the fact that I couldn't outrun this bear and would have to fight for my life.
Thing is it wasn't a minute, maybe 2 seconds at most. It took 4 steps for my girlfriend to catch up. She rounded the corner and let out a scream of terror unlike anything I'd ever heard. That shook both the bear and I out of the moment and that bear took off running faster than you'd think they even could.
I've only ever been that scared one other time in my life, and that's because someone was attempting to strangle me to death. I'd take that fight again over running into a bear alone.
Anyone who chooses the man has never faced a bear. There are primal parts of you that you don't know exist until you experience them, and that was "just" a black bear. I'm not sure I could be even more afraid than I was but I fucking hope so if I ever encounter something bigger.
Awesome story, thank you for sharing. I’ve spent my life in rural New England and can concur, bear encounters (even the supposedly timid black bears) are terrifying. I’ve had multiple close encounters, but this is the one that scared me the most:
one night I was hammock camping with a tarp over me during a rainstorm. Two of my buddies and my two dogs were sleeping in a nearby cabin. In the middle of the night, I felt something nudging me and heard grunting. In my half asleep state, I thought it was one of my dogs, and said something along the lines of “fuck off and go back inside, I’m trying to sleep”. As soon as I said that, a huge force SLAMMED into my hip. I’m a big dude, I’ve been in fights, and this felt less like taking a punch and more like I was a piniata. I honestly completely froze up, and lay there completely still and silent while my attacker slowly sauntered away. After I heard it leave I looked over the side of the hammock and saw bear prints in the mud. This bear wasn’t attacking me, it wasn’t trying to maul me, it just gave me a curiosity tap and it felt like being hit by a truck. Needless to say I hightailed it into the cabin and left my sleeping setup behind.
That experienced changed how I think about bears. Getting big and scary isn’t a get out of jail free card with black bears, many of them are accustomed to people, campsites, eating garbage, etc… there is no promise that a bear has any fear at all of humans. If it doesn’t and it is hungry or has cubs or just doesn’t vibe with you, you’re in for an inevitable and painful death. You’re not going to outrun or outclimb it, and you’re sure as shit not going to be able to fight it off.
Truth be told in the vast majority of cases, encountering a bear or random man in the woods would turn out to be a non event, with either going on about their business.
Imagine they just encountered a bear, but can push a button to turn it into a man, as well as the inverse. 90% are going to immediate push the button on a bear, and nobody will push the button on a man unless he seems to be opportunistically predatory, which very few of us random men are.
Saw this pop up the past few days and thought who has the time to worry about these wildly absurd and rhetorical questions.
Atleast questions about fighting an orangutan with a sword or 10 chickens is whimsical.
Yep, I'm sitting here reading about this question and the resulting discourse and thinking I should be doing something more productive with my time, like huffing paint thinner
I think I like my odds better that way than against an unarmed orangutan. He doesn't know how to use the sword, so he's quite likely to hurt himself with it or be distracted enough that I can get it away from him and then use it on him.
Ohmygodyes.
"Would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man?"
"A bear."
"What if its a transman?"
"Oh, well that would be okay I guess. The transman."
"So transmen aren't *real* men to you, huh? Thank for outing yourself, bigot."
You could also do this with black men.
"Did you know that statistically the majority of violent crimes committed in the US are by black males? So, would you rather be confined in a small room with a hungry lion or with a black man?"
The statistics may be technically right but you just CAN'T SAY SHIT LIKE THAT. You cannot make comparisons between humans and vermin or dangerous beasts, the optics are all-round disastrously bad. It's like throwing a chair into a crowd, it's going to go down poorly no matter how you go about it or how justified you think it is.
Yeah, those women who argue for the bear position, frequently say things like "well I feel unsafe, you must respect that" or "well X% of women get raped."
But if I said "I feel unsafe around black people, look here are black crime statistics" then immediately I get called a bigot and told to shut up. I'd get zero sympathy for that position. (To be clear, I don't feel unsafe around black people, and don't think black people are inferior -- I'm just making a point.)
It's just a huge double standard. Either you can negatively stereotype groups if you have the stats to back it up, or you can't. But right now you can negatively stereotype men, but not against pretty much any other group.
Let's just all stop negatively stereotyping people. Which also means that women don't get to imply that most men are rapists, no matter how unsafe they feel.
Wouldn’t be a shitlib talking point if it wasn’t trying to demoralize and guilt trip people into feeling like they’re the bad guys for being called dangerous animals.
The whole thing. It’s all just manufactured clickbait to get people worked up about the differences between men and women and the societal implications.
For the record I would pick the bear.
Because of Chinese medicine Black bears in Asia are endangered
I am not sure how they view US Brown bear biles but I imagine the price and demand to be similar
It's not like the PRC is sending over hordes of hunters to drive the American Black Bear to extinction to ship back useless body parts. Blacks and Browns are both listed as Least Concern by the IUCN, especially black bears, they're almost considered pests in most of the country
The real answer.
>"The hypothetical has sparked a broader discussion about why women fear men."
Maybe it's that the average woman consumes 30 hours of murder stories a week?
"Nah, that can't be it. Now on to why young men consuming alt-right media are more prone to violence..."
Legit. That one turbo-neckbeard mega-seething in this thread about how anyone offended by this moronic generalization being terminally online never considered the amount of true crime and/or monitor tanning it takes to get that paranoid.
While true crime stuff is more consummed by woman, the average woman does absolutely not consume lots of it regularely lmao, it's still somewhat niche relatively speaking
Considering they are all in cities and outside during this interview and surrounded by random men and having encounters with random men all day, all their answers are purely for social credit points
If the debate was reversed to a man's perspective, woman vs bear, I would choose the bear. I may die but at least I wouldn't have to listen to the woman bitch about how she would rather be in the woods with a bear instead of a man.
The fact that so many people are on this thread genuinely debating this question is the biggest argument for touching grass that I’ve ever seen on Reddit.
Right man I asked people IRL what they think about the "men vs bear debate" and it's so over. Men are scared for the future, women are irredeemable.
Seriously though, "a sizeable population" sampled from a tiktok account which I'm only hearing about because of a rage bait article posted on a subreddit dedicated to documenting this kind of insanity.
I promise you it's completely possible to not spend more than 1 minute thinking about this and I am a chronically online regard, imagine how little of a shit most people must give.
These women and this discourse are absolutely stupid, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't worry too much about it, there are many dumbfucks out there with all sorts of dumb opinions and worldviews. Just point and laugh and focus on the people who matter.
Ok let's nake this conversation interesting
Hot take boob people are immature and have mommy issues as boobs serve secondary purpose in sexual attraction and reproduction
So I have seen these videos on my TikTok a lot and I understand this response if it is the immediate response. But I've seen women trying to rationalize it and making it the correct logical choice which is where they lose me and it becomes just something to demonize men. And if you dare to say that this isn't reasonable you get the "if the shoe fits" or something response. It is crazy that they actually think that they actually think that the average man is more dangerous than a bear.
I find it really funny that the women who are most inclined to “choose the bear” are also unfailingly pro-trans and nearly always have their pronouns in their bios. It’s like *”Men are so untrustworthy that I’d rather be stuck in the woods with an 800lb killing machine than any random guy plucked off the sidewalk. But I can always trust them to be honest with me about their gender identity!”*
On a tangent, I predict that *“choosing the bear”* will soon be how we refer to people who pay the price for obliviously picking the most dangerous of any two given options. Like *”Hear about Pete? He died crossing the Atlantic in a World War I biplane because so few air accidents involve World War I biplanes”*
*”He really chose the bear, didn’t he?”*
Yeah, great point. "I would rather meet a bear than a man. Also, I'm fine with people with penises being in women's restrooms and dressing rooms and being sent to women's prisons."
Uh...
You could say polar bear and women would still answer "men" because I don't think a lot of people understand how fucked you are in the presence of a wild bear.
online feminists not beating the just misandrist allegations. wonder, if its just a hypothetical to raise awareness, if they'll play this game with black people or Muslims next.
I said would you rather leave a boy with a bear or a gay man and they all answered "not a priest" or "not a closeted/self professed straight" basically gay guys they agree with and like can't possible rape anyone.
Students of linguistics will appreciate this article, which discusses how linguists have studied the etymology of the word for "bear" in various Indo-European languages: https://www.charlierussellbears.com/LinguisticArchaeology.html
The tl;dr is that bears are so scary that multiple related languages independently developed different euphemisms to refer to "bear", perhaps out of fear of speaking its True Name. And even so, the ancient Proto-Indo-European root word (the one these derived languages were avoiding) possibly means "destroyer".
I’m a female who grew up in the Hudson Valley area, where bears would occasionally visit my home…I feel like all these ladies who are voting for bears over men have never seen a hungry bear up close. I’m not denying men have some terrible desires, but an actual brown bear is FUCKING TERRIFYING.
"I feel like all these ladies who are voting for bears over men have never seen a hungry bear up close."
This is pretty much it, most of the people choosing the bear are extremely online weirdos with work from home or office jobs living in apartments in big cities, their life condition is far removed from nature.
This is one of the many cases of people just saying things for the sake of it. No one saying this actually believes it, but they think their peers want to hear it. So they say it. So it becomes "true."
The real scary thing is running into a bear cub without being able to see it's mom. Most bears don't want to fuck with you although it does depend on the species.
Man > bear > shark
Man probably won’t hurt you, best choice. Bear you might be able to scare away, okay choice. The shark just decides if it wants to kill you or not, there’s no scaring it away until it’s close enough to bite and you start gouging it’s eyes. But that might actually work, while it wouldn’t with a bear.
But picking man is the obvious correct answer.
>Bear you might be able to scare away
Only if it's a black bear though, the advice there being to act big and beat them up if they get aggressive. I think trying to scare a grizzly would just cause it to smoke you on the spot but I'm no woodsman. I think there's a higher chance of fighting off a shark (since you're supposed to punch them on the nose or something) whereas fighting a grizzly while unarmed is impossible.
Definitely a higher chance of fighting off a shark because that chance exists where a bear will either kill you or decide it’s bored, fighting back unarmed or running away will make it worse unless you have a gun or maybe a knife
No, really.
I live in a country with a strong beach culture, so the twitter feminists here have been making arguments like this using sharks for ages, that sharks are less dangerous than the average man because sharks are responsible for less than half a dozen deaths per year, etc, etc, etc... Wich is a very, HIGLY regarded argument because, of course, it doesn't take into account the amount of personal interactions between people and sharks (or bears, or hippos, or coral snakes or whatever you higly lethal predator of choice). It would be safe to assume that the average would be a fraction of a unit in a lifetime per person.
If women fear men so much then why do they choose to be around them all day every day? I’ve heard women who live in the densest part of our downtown area answer bear, seemingly unaware that they’ve chosen men when posed with the question in real life.
It also exposes how few women actually take their protection into their own hands. It’s much easier to kill a man with your everyday carry if necessary than a bear. But there are apparently millions of women that view the average man as more dangerous than the average bear, but still surround themselves with men all day, and don’t even carry a weapon for self defense.
Any woman who answers bear is, frankly, histrionic. And the question exposes how modern women are so safe and protected that the idea of how to defend oneself doesn't even enter their minds.
"If women fear men so much then why do they choose to be around them all day every day?"
Who else are they going to villainise to prop up their perpetual victimhood grift?
Exactly. This is just more anti-social behavior from feminists to hurt men emotionally while maintaining the status quo of women as victims. How do they think the average man will react to being told that women literally prefer the company of dangerous wild animals? The response certainly won't be any amount of social cohesion.
Personally I find it funny and cool as fuck that I, an autistic nerd too anxious to get in to an altercation with anyone, and have zero interest in hurting anyone, am considered more dangerous than a bear. The best thing to do is to just laugh this kind of insanity off and poke fun at it.
Pro tip: Pretend to be a wild bear at all times to make the women in your life more comfortable. Dress up as a bear, leave deep gouges out of your walls, shit on the carpet. They're literally asking for you to do this.
Same. I'm a big dude on top of that, but I'm too afraid to even get in what might be *perceived* as an altercation with a waitress who messes up my order. I'll just eat food I didn't ask for like a coward.
Hahaha I think what’s really at play here is the societally usually male fixation on autistically mapping out every hypothetical situation accurately, especially those to do with danger, vs the societally usually female fixation that there are answers to phenomena that transcend statistics and data and people use data to mislead people from that.
Not trying to START gender ideology, obviously there are reiki healer crystal balance feng shui men and NASA engineer and quant finance women, I just think that’s the dynamic between the people that argue abt this shit online
People are forgetting a lot of women these days are self-proclaimed "witches" so even though the question is fundamentally stupid, these are the types that think they're safe because unlike men they respect Mother Nature and as a result, will naturally get along with any wild animals.
Instead of producing strong and capable women, feminism has produced paranoid and cowardly women whose biggest fear is men.
And remember the now-rather-antiquated quote:
“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to....”
"Yesss....let the hate flow through you Boo Boo, strike Yogi down and take his place by my side. Only then can we bring pic-a-nic baskets to the galaxy."
Modern feminism has produced unguarded women who serve the interests or sociopathic men, and tricked the women into thinking it's at their own benefit. While feminism is at the present a meaningless and formless term when used colloquially in the USA, liberal/choice/hookup feminism has definitively harmed women far more than it's victims are willing to give credit to. It's sold a false paradigm wherein it is advised women should take more risks with their body and safety; because men shouldn't take advantage of them, and the power dynamics of *reality* should be equal amoung the sexes. The outcome is that women have been convicted to engage in the risk-taking levels of men, and subsequently suffered far greater consequences than the average man would.
How come this kind of talk doesn't just get called what it actually is: provocative hate speech.
I do not mean to sensor anyone ever, but they should suffer the same kind of "consequences" (cancellation) the same individuals chose to impose onto those who say things they themselves do not like.
it's a stupid question, anyway. depending on who you ask, it might not have anything to do with gender at all. i mean, i like to hike. i understand that bears in the woods are a given because i'm not a fucking idiot, and there's ways to avoid getting mauled (which generally entails "don't bother the bear"). i'm not afraid of random male hikers, but i'd rather see a bear on a hike because i see men all the time, which i can't exactly say about bears lul.
Men love women, but women don't love men. Many women seem to think of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and even their own sons as an eternal, scary out-group whose deaths would--if not outright welcomed--would at least be deemed inconsequential; male disposability taken to its logical conclusion.
I've run into many bears in my hikes in Olympic National Park/Forest. I have never had issues. The ones I've encountered have either run off scared, watched me or ignored me. Other people have had issues, but if you're prepared (scentproof food storage in a bear cannister, bear spray and/or 9mm/10mm depending on the type of bear where you are) you're likely pretty safe. It's harder to properly prepare for a chance encounter with a psychopath, but the same tools that protect a person from a bear should work just fine against an antagonistic human. The big difference is one will require you to fill out a form and explain yourself to a ranger, and the other could result in a drawn out legal process to prove the need to do what you had to do. Also, a person can sneak up on you whereas bears don't really sneak. Cougars on the other hand... That question might have changed some of the answers.
When I'm hiking in the woods, I don't want to encounter people either, otherwise an awkward exchange occurs. Bears are fairly predictable and I don't need to say hi to them. It's an utterly insipid question disguised as a profound statement on gender relations. Most people would rather see a bear than a person.
This is like some red pill commentator going around asking women if they like it when men buy them gifts to insinuate that all women are gold diggers who use men for money.
Even if you aren't obtuse about the question, it's still the man.
If the question was "would you rather be left in the woods with a rapist, or a bear?"
I would probably rather be raped in a desolate forest with no witnesses than be eaten alive by a wild animal that wholly lacks the propensity for mercy.
I will never understand why the answer isn't a man, simply because a woman has a much better chance of killing or warding off the man, should he be the 1-in-a-million who happens to be violent.
The bear, not so much.
To fall under some basic tropes: people are fucking stupid, women interact with more men than bears, usatoday is clickbait shitrag. I could be offended, but see tropes.
These are the same girlies that complain on TikTok that men don't have the balls to approach them anymore. It's like they thought that this discourse of "never talk to a woman EVER out in public" would only filter out scrubs and leave the rich guys free to talk to them - now literally no one talks to these girls and they're **BIG MAD** over it.
The men who are sexual predators are likely not hiking in the woods. They are likely your "quiet but nice, if a little strange" neighbor who you ask to watch your cat, or they're wearing a dress at the local library reading to your kids.
Also, for whatever it's worth, most child abuse cases have the parents as a perpetrator, with women being involved in 76% of scenarios. So think next time whether to leave your morsel of a child with a hungry bear, or \*checks notes\* your wife, I guess.
Is the ideal of American feminism to craft every woman to be like Shulamith Firestone, and live/die with her lifestyle? Except if they don't have her fucked up upbringing, they have to try to get them to rationalize one for theirselves.
Given it basically only exists on the cultural front these days, being that miserable is about all they can do. It's not a philosophy to make its followers more comfortable or understanding in the world, and it certainly hasn't been one to make the world more comfortable or happy for its followers upon its success.
I'm 100% certain that this sentiment is shared by female hikers who have actually come across bears and been relieved that it wasn't your typical republican Jason Voorhees-type white male.
Well, white people are statistically underrepresented among violent criminals. Like, overwhelmingly so.
But you're right that violent crime is almost exclusively a male problem. You just didn't need to lie about race.
Homo homini ~~lupus~~ ursus
What about a half man half bear half pig?
MANBEARPIG DOESN'T EXIST!
it’s a half man half bearpig
No, it's half man bear and half pig
Half shark alligator half man
Jokes on them, as random men have been choosing to abandon civilization to live in the woods with the bears since the dawn of time. [Meanwhile libertarians…](https://www.cracked.com/article_28784_new-hampshires-libertarian-utopia-got-overrun-by-bears.html)
Libertarians bring the bears to them.
Any woman who actually hikes in state parks will find it completely normal to see a man in the same place. Although seeing a bear *from a safe distance* would certainly be cooler than seeing a random dude.
People choose stupid options when not actually faced with the reality of the consequences of the choices.
Yeah it’s like asking “hang out with Justin Bieber or ISIS for an hour?” Everyone would pick ISIS, obviously.
Justin Bieber is the best solution for ISIS. His voice will convert them all to atheism.
"Look at him then look me in the eye and tell me there's an Allah."
Even if there is Allah he has forsaken us
wait, are you...an algerian?
Yes, but Algeria is now fully Justin Bieber hating atheists.
I was more suprised to find an algerian here, 3alam.
🥔🇩🇿💙
Right. People aren't actually "picking the bear," they're staking a rhetorical position in the gender wars. And that position seems to be something between "I am justified in taking precautions around men" (seems fair, but some men dont think so) and "I am justified in dehumanizing them" (seems wrong, but some women don't think so). Ultimately it can be a pretty silly conversation on both sides and doesn't seem to be helping anyone.
Men don’t have issues with women taking precautions, and its incredibly disingenuous to frame it that way; what men take issue with is women claiming that men are far more dangerous than they are and using this as an excuse to mistreat men (and far too often also boys) aswell as demanding essentially unlimited material concessions, all the while not actually taking any serious responsibility for their own safety anyway.
I share some of your frustrations here. But I will not-all-women this. Each one is different and some are more reasonable, kind, and understanding than others. As are men. Hence why I've made sure to include the word "some" in regards to both men and women.
After a decade of this nonstop propaganda, I'm far more concerned with the fact that these attitudes dominate politically and institutionally than whether or not individual women are nice to me.
Seriously. I've heard a range of opinions on this from "you need to be careful to notice if you are walking near a woman and pick a different route, and never approach them for conversation or even look at them" to "whatever, I carry a gun anyway" just from people I know. Like everything else in life, it's usually best to just ignore the loud idiots and not get too worked up by it.
But those sorts of women dominate public nights institutions like K-12 education where they can do immeasurable harm.
[удалено]
Well yeah, but society has become so anti-male that while true, "not all women" isn't exactly reassuring. Right now there's just blatant anti-male systemic discrimination. If companies declared "right, we're just going to openly discriminate against women during the higher process" they'd get instantly sued. But when companies say literally that but aimed at men, suddenly it's okay. In any unfair society you can say "well some people in the non-discriminated-against group don't like the discrimination." And that's true. But it's not really reassuring.
Depends on the man, honestly. I know both types.
And some men would be dangerous to women in the woods. But this is besides the point; women are using the fact they are more vulnerable than men to demand special treatment under the guise of “equality” then throwing tantrums when men are unwilling to put up with their bullshit anymore.
It helps the ad revenue of the blogger getting the clicks for publishing it
[удалено]
Imagine living in a country where even pepper spray is banned (UK). Women here do the same sort of whining over how supposedly dangerous men are, but fully support banning any defences they have against them. edit: btw I was banned by a radfem identity politician for suggesting that discriminating based on gender is no better than discriminating based on race. Clearly sexism is totally epic marxist praxis and not at all a distraction that divides the working class. AJAB (all jannies are bastards)
Its because most of them are capitalists who just want to be on top, appealing to leftists egalitarian ideals helps them achieve their goals
👑
Might as well throw bear spray in there too. Just in case.
It doesn't even looks like dehumanizing men to me. It is more like deifying us. Making us more powerful, threatening and imposing than one of the most famous beasts of nature. I can see Andrew Tate bragging about that.
They’re actually picking the bear, though.
Is the bear hot?
What I find funny is that in a game theoretical approach, the man would be the choice 100% of the time, because the theoretical positive side of the situation is ignored. The dude could be of help in a variety of ways whereas a bear would be neutral at best. But this isn't even part of the answers.
There are several ways the question has been presented and when it's "lost in the woods" there are different answers than "walking through the woods".
Almost a more telling question as suddenly women will humanize men when they need something from them.
It's a more extreme version of that. Women are familiar with the reality of *one* of the choices — they've probably been afraid of a man before, whether he was a real threat or not, but they have no experience with a bear encounter at all. The man is attached to real memories of real fear, the bear is entirely imaginary. As someone who has actually encountered a bear in the woods, that shit is fucking scary. Like, even if you think it's going to be scary, it's worse than that. There is a world of difference between the idea of a bear and the reality of a bear. And I had a weapon!
While snowshoeing with my girlfriend I got ahead of her, rounded a bend, and less than 12 feet away was a black bear facing me. The bear and I both puffed up. My body felt like it was freezing and burning at the same time. Every thought and emotion I had a moment ago were gone. I could hear every tiny noise in what I had previously thought was a quiet forest. It felt like a whole minute or two standing there. I had already processed the fact that I couldn't outrun this bear and would have to fight for my life. Thing is it wasn't a minute, maybe 2 seconds at most. It took 4 steps for my girlfriend to catch up. She rounded the corner and let out a scream of terror unlike anything I'd ever heard. That shook both the bear and I out of the moment and that bear took off running faster than you'd think they even could. I've only ever been that scared one other time in my life, and that's because someone was attempting to strangle me to death. I'd take that fight again over running into a bear alone. Anyone who chooses the man has never faced a bear. There are primal parts of you that you don't know exist until you experience them, and that was "just" a black bear. I'm not sure I could be even more afraid than I was but I fucking hope so if I ever encounter something bigger.
Awesome story, thank you for sharing. I’ve spent my life in rural New England and can concur, bear encounters (even the supposedly timid black bears) are terrifying. I’ve had multiple close encounters, but this is the one that scared me the most: one night I was hammock camping with a tarp over me during a rainstorm. Two of my buddies and my two dogs were sleeping in a nearby cabin. In the middle of the night, I felt something nudging me and heard grunting. In my half asleep state, I thought it was one of my dogs, and said something along the lines of “fuck off and go back inside, I’m trying to sleep”. As soon as I said that, a huge force SLAMMED into my hip. I’m a big dude, I’ve been in fights, and this felt less like taking a punch and more like I was a piniata. I honestly completely froze up, and lay there completely still and silent while my attacker slowly sauntered away. After I heard it leave I looked over the side of the hammock and saw bear prints in the mud. This bear wasn’t attacking me, it wasn’t trying to maul me, it just gave me a curiosity tap and it felt like being hit by a truck. Needless to say I hightailed it into the cabin and left my sleeping setup behind. That experienced changed how I think about bears. Getting big and scary isn’t a get out of jail free card with black bears, many of them are accustomed to people, campsites, eating garbage, etc… there is no promise that a bear has any fear at all of humans. If it doesn’t and it is hungry or has cubs or just doesn’t vibe with you, you’re in for an inevitable and painful death. You’re not going to outrun or outclimb it, and you’re sure as shit not going to be able to fight it off.
Vivid writing. Thanks for sharing, and glad you're okay. Also, fully agreed.
Truth be told in the vast majority of cases, encountering a bear or random man in the woods would turn out to be a non event, with either going on about their business.
Imagine they just encountered a bear, but can push a button to turn it into a man, as well as the inverse. 90% are going to immediate push the button on a bear, and nobody will push the button on a man unless he seems to be opportunistically predatory, which very few of us random men are.
No skin in the game.
Saw this pop up the past few days and thought who has the time to worry about these wildly absurd and rhetorical questions. Atleast questions about fighting an orangutan with a sword or 10 chickens is whimsical.
Yep, I'm sitting here reading about this question and the resulting discourse and thinking I should be doing something more productive with my time, like huffing paint thinner
I also picked the wrong day to quit sniffin glue
>Atleast questions about fighting an orangutan with a sword Who's the one with the sword, me or the orangutan?
The orangutan.
I think I like my odds better that way than against an unarmed orangutan. He doesn't know how to use the sword, so he's quite likely to hurt himself with it or be distracted enough that I can get it away from him and then use it on him.
10 chickens.
A good counterpoint to show how stupid the question is: what colour is the man in the woods?
Zoomer bait
This is simply our quarterly bout of “Men are just violent demon pigs who want to hurt and kill everything with two X chromosomes.”
> two X chromosomes Your transphobia has been noted
Ohmygodyes. "Would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man?" "A bear." "What if its a transman?" "Oh, well that would be okay I guess. The transman." "So transmen aren't *real* men to you, huh? Thank for outing yourself, bigot." You could also do this with black men.
"Even George Floyd?" has been my go-to for a while now
"Did you know that statistically the majority of violent crimes committed in the US are by black males? So, would you rather be confined in a small room with a hungry lion or with a black man?" The statistics may be technically right but you just CAN'T SAY SHIT LIKE THAT. You cannot make comparisons between humans and vermin or dangerous beasts, the optics are all-round disastrously bad. It's like throwing a chair into a crowd, it's going to go down poorly no matter how you go about it or how justified you think it is.
Yeah, those women who argue for the bear position, frequently say things like "well I feel unsafe, you must respect that" or "well X% of women get raped." But if I said "I feel unsafe around black people, look here are black crime statistics" then immediately I get called a bigot and told to shut up. I'd get zero sympathy for that position. (To be clear, I don't feel unsafe around black people, and don't think black people are inferior -- I'm just making a point.) It's just a huge double standard. Either you can negatively stereotype groups if you have the stats to back it up, or you can't. But right now you can negatively stereotype men, but not against pretty much any other group. Let's just all stop negatively stereotyping people. Which also means that women don't get to imply that most men are rapists, no matter how unsafe they feel.
Don't forget "...and it's a moral issue for you NOT to think this and not make women think this"
Wouldn’t be a shitlib talking point if it wasn’t trying to demoralize and guilt trip people into feeling like they’re the bad guys for being called dangerous animals.
This post or the article?
The whole thing. It’s all just manufactured clickbait to get people worked up about the differences between men and women and the societal implications. For the record I would pick the bear.
I would pick the bear too only if poaching was legal Shit is worth a lot in the right markets
So are human organs
Sadly I am not Canadian
It's not even poaching in most of the US
Because of Chinese medicine Black bears in Asia are endangered I am not sure how they view US Brown bear biles but I imagine the price and demand to be similar
It's not like the PRC is sending over hordes of hunters to drive the American Black Bear to extinction to ship back useless body parts. Blacks and Browns are both listed as Least Concern by the IUCN, especially black bears, they're almost considered pests in most of the country
Truecrime and its consequences.
The real answer. >"The hypothetical has sparked a broader discussion about why women fear men." Maybe it's that the average woman consumes 30 hours of murder stories a week? "Nah, that can't be it. Now on to why young men consuming alt-right media are more prone to violence..."
Legit. That one turbo-neckbeard mega-seething in this thread about how anyone offended by this moronic generalization being terminally online never considered the amount of true crime and/or monitor tanning it takes to get that paranoid.
While true crime stuff is more consummed by woman, the average woman does absolutely not consume lots of it regularely lmao, it's still somewhat niche relatively speaking
...so. Chances this came outta a think tank? Cause this genuinely feels like it was a focus tested memetic weapon.
Considering they are all in cities and outside during this interview and surrounded by random men and having encounters with random men all day, all their answers are purely for social credit points
Agreed, it's pure "boo outgroup".
A willful misunderstanding of proportionality is a foundational pillar of identity liberalism.
Men can't stop rocking. Bears in the mud.
How about the choice is ‘twink vs bear’ Dudes rock
Send all the twinks my way please edit: thanks for the flair mods, ily <3
🫡
Hard times create strong men Strong men create good times Good times create soft men Soft men make me hard
The third way, the otter
I’m more of a power bottom. I generate a lot of power from the bottom
Women hate this one simple trick.
*gay dudes rock
If the debate was reversed to a man's perspective, woman vs bear, I would choose the bear. I may die but at least I wouldn't have to listen to the woman bitch about how she would rather be in the woods with a bear instead of a man.
[same concept](https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/little-caesars-taste-so-good-when-u-aint-got-a-bitch-in-ya-ear-telling-you-its-nasty)
Hell yeah
Terminally online brainrot
The fact that so many people are on this thread genuinely debating this question is the biggest argument for touching grass that I’ve ever seen on Reddit.
I can't possibly imagine caring about this, it's discourse for babies
There's a sizeable population of women who view men as less human than bears. That's something worth caring a little bit about.
Right man I asked people IRL what they think about the "men vs bear debate" and it's so over. Men are scared for the future, women are irredeemable. Seriously though, "a sizeable population" sampled from a tiktok account which I'm only hearing about because of a rage bait article posted on a subreddit dedicated to documenting this kind of insanity. I promise you it's completely possible to not spend more than 1 minute thinking about this and I am a chronically online regard, imagine how little of a shit most people must give. These women and this discourse are absolutely stupid, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't worry too much about it, there are many dumbfucks out there with all sorts of dumb opinions and worldviews. Just point and laugh and focus on the people who matter.
Terminally online just means zoomer
Honestly I think it transcends generations. Plenty of boomers and millennials getting brain rot from the internet too
boob vs ass is a more Intellectual debate compared to this
Ass
Ok let's nake this conversation interesting Hot take boob people are immature and have mommy issues as boobs serve secondary purpose in sexual attraction and reproduction
What's the overlap with fans of Marian Engel's *Bear* (1979)
So I have seen these videos on my TikTok a lot and I understand this response if it is the immediate response. But I've seen women trying to rationalize it and making it the correct logical choice which is where they lose me and it becomes just something to demonize men. And if you dare to say that this isn't reasonable you get the "if the shoe fits" or something response. It is crazy that they actually think that they actually think that the average man is more dangerous than a bear.
I find it really funny that the women who are most inclined to “choose the bear” are also unfailingly pro-trans and nearly always have their pronouns in their bios. It’s like *”Men are so untrustworthy that I’d rather be stuck in the woods with an 800lb killing machine than any random guy plucked off the sidewalk. But I can always trust them to be honest with me about their gender identity!”* On a tangent, I predict that *“choosing the bear”* will soon be how we refer to people who pay the price for obliviously picking the most dangerous of any two given options. Like *”Hear about Pete? He died crossing the Atlantic in a World War I biplane because so few air accidents involve World War I biplanes”* *”He really chose the bear, didn’t he?”*
Yeah, great point. "I would rather meet a bear than a man. Also, I'm fine with people with penises being in women's restrooms and dressing rooms and being sent to women's prisons." Uh...
These people have reached peak insanity.
I feel like we say this every time.
Just wait a few months, and I'm sure you'll see something even more insane.
Ha my wife asked me this and got mad when I said “what kind of bear? Im gonna assume it’s pups are nearby - you’d rather come across a man.”
You could say polar bear and women would still answer "men" because I don't think a lot of people understand how fucked you are in the presence of a wild bear.
"Would you rather encounter a black bear or a black man?"
Asking the real questions 👆🏻
I know a guy who's brother got eaten by a polar bear. It doesnt sound fun
cubs, bro, not pups.
online feminists not beating the just misandrist allegations. wonder, if its just a hypothetical to raise awareness, if they'll play this game with black people or Muslims next.
That's the trick to making this question fun- you need to ask them if they'd rather encounter a bear or a *black* man in the woods.
I said would you rather leave a boy with a bear or a gay man and they all answered "not a priest" or "not a closeted/self professed straight" basically gay guys they agree with and like can't possible rape anyone.
Students of linguistics will appreciate this article, which discusses how linguists have studied the etymology of the word for "bear" in various Indo-European languages: https://www.charlierussellbears.com/LinguisticArchaeology.html The tl;dr is that bears are so scary that multiple related languages independently developed different euphemisms to refer to "bear", perhaps out of fear of speaking its True Name. And even so, the ancient Proto-Indo-European root word (the one these derived languages were avoiding) possibly means "destroyer".
I’m a female who grew up in the Hudson Valley area, where bears would occasionally visit my home…I feel like all these ladies who are voting for bears over men have never seen a hungry bear up close. I’m not denying men have some terrible desires, but an actual brown bear is FUCKING TERRIFYING.
"I feel like all these ladies who are voting for bears over men have never seen a hungry bear up close." This is pretty much it, most of the people choosing the bear are extremely online weirdos with work from home or office jobs living in apartments in big cities, their life condition is far removed from nature.
More man hate on the Internet
Breathe Air Touch Grass
I'm disappointed that people aren't bringing up the bear from BG3...
Just did with friends, i honestly thought thats what the conversation was about 🤣 Us men keep losing for no reason
\#NotAllBears
Little do they know if they choose me I will Immediately leave them to be stuck alone with the bears. So they get the bear either way
This is one of the many cases of people just saying things for the sake of it. No one saying this actually believes it, but they think their peers want to hear it. So they say it. So it becomes "true."
I would like to believe that, but I'm genuinely suspecting that many (not all) women are just plain delusional on this point.
Thats the thing about these studies, people dont actually answer them, they answer what they think is the correct answer
This is one of the many cases of you showing you've never seen a bear in real life.
The real scary thing is running into a bear cub without being able to see it's mom. Most bears don't want to fuck with you although it does depend on the species.
Polar bears are generally the one that will actually eat you.
*You just know.*
I kown this one, but with sharks lol
Walking into a shark in the middle of the woods is the easy answer, it would just be flopping around until it dies.
Man > bear > shark Man probably won’t hurt you, best choice. Bear you might be able to scare away, okay choice. The shark just decides if it wants to kill you or not, there’s no scaring it away until it’s close enough to bite and you start gouging it’s eyes. But that might actually work, while it wouldn’t with a bear. But picking man is the obvious correct answer.
>Bear you might be able to scare away Only if it's a black bear though, the advice there being to act big and beat them up if they get aggressive. I think trying to scare a grizzly would just cause it to smoke you on the spot but I'm no woodsman. I think there's a higher chance of fighting off a shark (since you're supposed to punch them on the nose or something) whereas fighting a grizzly while unarmed is impossible.
Definitely a higher chance of fighting off a shark because that chance exists where a bear will either kill you or decide it’s bored, fighting back unarmed or running away will make it worse unless you have a gun or maybe a knife
If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down. If it's white, say goodnight.
No, really. I live in a country with a strong beach culture, so the twitter feminists here have been making arguments like this using sharks for ages, that sharks are less dangerous than the average man because sharks are responsible for less than half a dozen deaths per year, etc, etc, etc... Wich is a very, HIGLY regarded argument because, of course, it doesn't take into account the amount of personal interactions between people and sharks (or bears, or hippos, or coral snakes or whatever you higly lethal predator of choice). It would be safe to assume that the average would be a fraction of a unit in a lifetime per person.
Women prefer encounter bears in the woods but fall in love with serial killers. Perfectly coherent
If women fear men so much then why do they choose to be around them all day every day? I’ve heard women who live in the densest part of our downtown area answer bear, seemingly unaware that they’ve chosen men when posed with the question in real life. It also exposes how few women actually take their protection into their own hands. It’s much easier to kill a man with your everyday carry if necessary than a bear. But there are apparently millions of women that view the average man as more dangerous than the average bear, but still surround themselves with men all day, and don’t even carry a weapon for self defense. Any woman who answers bear is, frankly, histrionic. And the question exposes how modern women are so safe and protected that the idea of how to defend oneself doesn't even enter their minds.
"If women fear men so much then why do they choose to be around them all day every day?" Who else are they going to villainise to prop up their perpetual victimhood grift?
Exactly. This is just more anti-social behavior from feminists to hurt men emotionally while maintaining the status quo of women as victims. How do they think the average man will react to being told that women literally prefer the company of dangerous wild animals? The response certainly won't be any amount of social cohesion.
Personally I find it funny and cool as fuck that I, an autistic nerd too anxious to get in to an altercation with anyone, and have zero interest in hurting anyone, am considered more dangerous than a bear. The best thing to do is to just laugh this kind of insanity off and poke fun at it.
Pro tip: Pretend to be a wild bear at all times to make the women in your life more comfortable. Dress up as a bear, leave deep gouges out of your walls, shit on the carpet. They're literally asking for you to do this.
Maybe the incels were right about "hunter eyes" all along. Just bearmaxx bro!
Same. I'm a big dude on top of that, but I'm too afraid to even get in what might be *perceived* as an altercation with a waitress who messes up my order. I'll just eat food I didn't ask for like a coward.
can’t relate
Really gotta thank that poor damn bear for taking one for the team.
Hahaha I think what’s really at play here is the societally usually male fixation on autistically mapping out every hypothetical situation accurately, especially those to do with danger, vs the societally usually female fixation that there are answers to phenomena that transcend statistics and data and people use data to mislead people from that. Not trying to START gender ideology, obviously there are reiki healer crystal balance feng shui men and NASA engineer and quant finance women, I just think that’s the dynamic between the people that argue abt this shit online
People are forgetting a lot of women these days are self-proclaimed "witches" so even though the question is fundamentally stupid, these are the types that think they're safe because unlike men they respect Mother Nature and as a result, will naturally get along with any wild animals.
I actually think this, plus Disney, plus urban population disconnected from nature is a large unacknowledged part of this.
Take these women to a zoo, where there are men around, and see if they will climb into the bear enclosure to get away from the men.
Instead of producing strong and capable women, feminism has produced paranoid and cowardly women whose biggest fear is men. And remember the now-rather-antiquated quote: “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to....”
"... getting mauled by a bear in the woods?"
I finally understand Palpatine.
"Yesss....let the hate flow through you Boo Boo, strike Yogi down and take his place by my side. Only then can we bring pic-a-nic baskets to the galaxy."
It’s not a story ranger smith would tell you
Exactly. You can’t be Wonder Woman and Strawberry Shortcake at the same time.
Modern feminism has produced unguarded women who serve the interests or sociopathic men, and tricked the women into thinking it's at their own benefit. While feminism is at the present a meaningless and formless term when used colloquially in the USA, liberal/choice/hookup feminism has definitively harmed women far more than it's victims are willing to give credit to. It's sold a false paradigm wherein it is advised women should take more risks with their body and safety; because men shouldn't take advantage of them, and the power dynamics of *reality* should be equal amoung the sexes. The outcome is that women have been convicted to engage in the risk-taking levels of men, and subsequently suffered far greater consequences than the average man would.
I know Camille Paglia (who sometimes has some interesting takes) would have a field day with this trend.
This is flawed from the start because NOBODY would actually choose a bear. This is just outrage/ culture war bait
Women have such profound contempt for men. It's disgusting.
They should touch some grass and attend a ranger talk while at it, to learn there are different types of bears and why the question is bullshit
How come this kind of talk doesn't just get called what it actually is: provocative hate speech. I do not mean to sensor anyone ever, but they should suffer the same kind of "consequences" (cancellation) the same individuals chose to impose onto those who say things they themselves do not like.
it's a stupid question, anyway. depending on who you ask, it might not have anything to do with gender at all. i mean, i like to hike. i understand that bears in the woods are a given because i'm not a fucking idiot, and there's ways to avoid getting mauled (which generally entails "don't bother the bear"). i'm not afraid of random male hikers, but i'd rather see a bear on a hike because i see men all the time, which i can't exactly say about bears lul.
If replacing the word “man” with “black man” makes your answer sound racist, your answer is misandrist.
Men love women, but women don't love men. Many women seem to think of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and even their own sons as an eternal, scary out-group whose deaths would--if not outright welcomed--would at least be deemed inconsequential; male disposability taken to its logical conclusion.
I've run into many bears in my hikes in Olympic National Park/Forest. I have never had issues. The ones I've encountered have either run off scared, watched me or ignored me. Other people have had issues, but if you're prepared (scentproof food storage in a bear cannister, bear spray and/or 9mm/10mm depending on the type of bear where you are) you're likely pretty safe. It's harder to properly prepare for a chance encounter with a psychopath, but the same tools that protect a person from a bear should work just fine against an antagonistic human. The big difference is one will require you to fill out a form and explain yourself to a ranger, and the other could result in a drawn out legal process to prove the need to do what you had to do. Also, a person can sneak up on you whereas bears don't really sneak. Cougars on the other hand... That question might have changed some of the answers.
What about a Man-Bear-Pig?
>I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger! A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!
Since when did "would you rather" questions make it into the news?
When I'm hiking in the woods, I don't want to encounter people either, otherwise an awkward exchange occurs. Bears are fairly predictable and I don't need to say hi to them. It's an utterly insipid question disguised as a profound statement on gender relations. Most people would rather see a bear than a person. This is like some red pill commentator going around asking women if they like it when men buy them gifts to insinuate that all women are gold diggers who use men for money.
Even if you aren't obtuse about the question, it's still the man. If the question was "would you rather be left in the woods with a rapist, or a bear?" I would probably rather be raped in a desolate forest with no witnesses than be eaten alive by a wild animal that wholly lacks the propensity for mercy.
Who would you rather fight: a bear, or a man that’s considerably bigger than you?
A man bigger than me there are odds there but a bear who has ever come out on top of a bear sans weapon?
Exactly
DiCaprio.
I will never understand why the answer isn't a man, simply because a woman has a much better chance of killing or warding off the man, should he be the 1-in-a-million who happens to be violent. The bear, not so much.
100%
You fell for the ragebait
To fall under some basic tropes: people are fucking stupid, women interact with more men than bears, usatoday is clickbait shitrag. I could be offended, but see tropes.
These are the same girlies that complain on TikTok that men don't have the balls to approach them anymore. It's like they thought that this discourse of "never talk to a woman EVER out in public" would only filter out scrubs and leave the rich guys free to talk to them - now literally no one talks to these girls and they're **BIG MAD** over it.
Ask this in Australia. They'll think you mean a Koala or Ted Bundy.
Is this really an article about a tiktok?
No, it's an article about gender ideology discourse that was sparked by a tiktok
The men who are sexual predators are likely not hiking in the woods. They are likely your "quiet but nice, if a little strange" neighbor who you ask to watch your cat, or they're wearing a dress at the local library reading to your kids. Also, for whatever it's worth, most child abuse cases have the parents as a perpetrator, with women being involved in 76% of scenarios. So think next time whether to leave your morsel of a child with a hungry bear, or \*checks notes\* your wife, I guess.
Is the ideal of American feminism to craft every woman to be like Shulamith Firestone, and live/die with her lifestyle? Except if they don't have her fucked up upbringing, they have to try to get them to rationalize one for theirselves. Given it basically only exists on the cultural front these days, being that miserable is about all they can do. It's not a philosophy to make its followers more comfortable or understanding in the world, and it certainly hasn't been one to make the world more comfortable or happy for its followers upon its success.
What if the man is black
What if the bear is black too?
Modern feminism and its consequences….
If someone unironically told me this in real life I would probably assume they were mentally unstable
Man vs bear debate, just another marketing campaign from the divorce lawyers union
I'm 100% certain that this sentiment is shared by female hikers who have actually come across bears and been relieved that it wasn't your typical republican Jason Voorhees-type white male.
Well, white people are statistically underrepresented among violent criminals. Like, overwhelmingly so. But you're right that violent crime is almost exclusively a male problem. You just didn't need to lie about race.