The number of people either too dense or too willfully misogynistic to understand what this is about is depressing.
If you're arguing bear statistics or saying "not all men" or decrying misandry, then you've totally missed the point. If you are doing it intentionally, you're the type of men women would choose the bear over.
The fact that anyone would choose a dangerous animal over a random man is an indictment against the culture surrounding male privilege and should spark introspection and change. Arguments against this is just ignoring women and solidifies the decision that the bear is better.
The question is designed to be as divisive as possible. It categorizes large swathes of people into just 2 groups - man or bear. The man group contains mansplainers, but it also contains regular people who simply view humanity as naturally altruistic. The bear group contains people with concerns about men overpowering women, but also contains people who earnestly believe that most if not all men will try to do it if given the chance.
The problem is that people either are unable to or unwilling to acknowledge that these categories are not monolithic. And in claiming that all people in the man group are incels, you are inadvertently insulting everyone in that group. Likewise, in claiming that all people in the bear group are misandrists, you are inadvertently dismissing everyone in that group.
It is not productive to make claims about people based only on their answer to the question. In fact, it appears to be entirely the intention of the question to divide even rational people by exploiting the general human inability to see subgroups within larger categories
Louis CK has a bit about how women have to take a terrible risk when dating, since men very often can be aggressive to the point of violent. In the 70s and 80s this was just accepted as a thing (and there was still a debate whether wife-rape was a thing). Since then, we've been trying to push the notion that romantic relationships should be consensual, not something that women should just have to weather, like it's an act of nature. And we're seeing the pushback from the Christian nationalist movement / transnational white power movement, to the point where rolling back women's suffrage is on the table.
This is that dominance hierarchy thing again. It seems our society likes men with prowess, especially sports chops, though money chops or political chops are also enjoyed. Our school administrators favor schoolyard bullies over their victims, which is only one example out of dozens how we favor men who are more bestial than civil.
So yeah, having to contend with a bear in the woods may not be worse than having to contend with a man in the woods.
Although, this is about the choice between a strange man and a strange bear, and the scenario comes down to hoping the beastie doesn't get too hungry / horny or otherwise is willing to respect you and your personhood. If not, it's a problem of escaping, and while the bear is way faster and stronger (we're assuming one of the larger ursine species) the man is smarter and may have tools. Given a strange man in the woods, we cannot automatically assume he has the manners of a New York family man with a robust office-clerk résumé.
A related question can be applied to a lot of our elected officials. Would the public be served better if we replaced our current official with a bear? There are a lot of them -- people who are allegedly exemplary citizens of our society to which our kids can aspire -- who behave worse than a bear might in their position.
It could be a good place for introspection. If you are a guy, and ended up stuck in a survival situation with a woman, would she be lucky she encountered you and not a bear? Similarly, if a woman drank to much at a social gathering and was too inebriated to think clearly, or even needed a place to rest, would your presence improve her safety or pose an additional risk? Not being a threat to our fellow humans is a very low bar, but it is a bar that a lot of people fail to clear.
I opine this is not fully their doing. US society really resents its teenagers and young adults, and did so even when I was a kid in the 1970s-1980s, which drove a lot of guys towards the alt-right even before Steve Bannon worked to turn it into a voting bloc. Here in the States we have a longstanding tradition of letting our young men turn into War Boys, join up with Immorten Joe, ever looking for an opportunity to go out in glory all shiny and chrome. ( Witness me! ) I got out by pure luck in the early 1990s, never quite finding my divine wind moment.
Society is made of the stories we tell ourselves.
Our stories have been pretty bad lately and selling fear and power fantasy still works as well as it always did.
I know it feels like bullshit and we all just say that people should just know and act better but they don't and they won't. They operate on what they think in their head is right.
I dunno. Maybe we need less stories maybe we need to tell better ones to inspire better. Maybe we do just need to BE better. I don't see it happening. We love the bad just way to much. Far more interesting.
Yeah this is gonna be a whole measured and productive comments section
I’m so sick of hearing about this bear thing. I don’t care. It’s a thought experiment. A reminder that humans are easily controlled by the internet. Everyone has an opinion about this stupid shit.
So wonderful that Joseph Allen is here to tell us what women think. This is the kind of investigative journalism the world needs more of!
When people play no-win games it is better to never play.
If you want relationships you work on your social skills.
If you want to go bear-hunting, well you go after bears.
If you want peace of mind just ignore these type of games.
Can the woman choose which kind of bear?
Is it a black bear or polar bear? What kind of bear are we talking about here? If she can choose the bear, can she also choose the man?
Is it random bear and random man? Random bear gives a rather high chance of polar bear. Random man gives a rather low chance of violent man.
We need a random bear man simulator to run the data. We deserve answers!
I don't care for the debate. I care for statistics.
