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There is a recent trend on TikTok and social media where people are asked if they would rather be stuck in a forest with a bear or a man. Surprisingly, (or perhaps unsurprisingly to some of you), many people, especially women, are saying they would rather be stuck with a bear than a man. When men are asked this question and the script is flipped to "would you rather your daughter be stuck in a forest with a bear or a man", a lot of men seem to respond with bear rather than a man as well.
Here is a link to a Today.com article about this topic: https://www.today.com/news/bear-or-man-woods-tiktok-trend-rcna149611
It has a live poll, and at the moment the split is 28% with a man, 65% with a bear, and 7% in between.
That's 68% of respondents that would be more comfortable being stuck with a bear than a man. 68%! Unfortunately, there is no breakdown of who the respondents are, the best I could do is look at the average demographics for people who go to Today.com, which is 61.39% female and 38.61% male. Assuming the readers of this article has a similar demographic breakdown as the average person going to the website, and that all female readers chose a bear, that means that a solid chunk of men also are more comfortable being stuck with a bear than another man in the forest.
I found another poll on a women's forum asking the same question - the split there is 15% male, 85% bear at the moment.
So all the evidence seems to point that your average woman would rather be stuck with a bear than a man.
Here are some general arguments for why women are choosing bear over men, trying to not strawman to the best of my ability:
The way news and social media are spinning this is that this reveals just how dangerous the world is for women, that women live their day-to-day lives in constant fear of the men around them because of how dangerous the world is to them. Frankly, I cannot relate to this view, perhaps because I am a man, but I also think this view can only develop when society, social media, entertainment, and the news are constantly bombarding you with all these negative notions about men. Your average woman is safer, far more liberated, has more rights, and meets more people than at any point in history (and especially compared to the entire scope of human history), and yet fear and hatred of men are more prevalent than ever before.
If anything, what this question reveals is just how warped women's views of men are and how negatively men are depicted in society.
It also reveals how people poorly use statistics to rationalize their stances. They will look at the raw number of bear attacks to the number of assaults/rape/sexual on women and then assume the two can be directly compared without any adjustment. Oh, only 1 person dies to a black bear each year in the US but but 5000 women are murdered each year, that means I'm 5000 times more likely to be killed if I were in a forest with a man than with a bear. Nearly everyone encounters at least several if not hundreds of men per day, and most people won't even encounter a bear in their lifetime. If women encountered the same number of bears as the same number of random men they encountered in their day-to-day lives, those numbers would be very different.
In reality, women encounter hundreds of men every day and not a single one of them rapes or assaults them. I'm not saying their fears have no basis in reality, or that they don't take actions that increase their safety, but do they have any idea what percentage of men would actually attack them?
The average man is far more likely to be of help if you're stuck in a forest because they would likely help you get out of the forest. No doubt women have received plenty of help for free throughout their lives on the basis of being a woman, and yet they still fear the idea of a man more than a bear. I'm going to try to put some estimates on the likely outcome for each scenario:
You may disagree on the percentage, but even if you were extremely generous to both ends for the other perspective it would be extremely difficult to justify the percent chance of the negative outcome being better for the bear instead of the man. So in all situations, you are far more likely to get a better result with a man than a bear.
It would be interesting to see how people would respond if you asked them would you rather be stuck in a forest with a bear or a black man. Would the fear of being thought of as a racist overcome the fear of men?
A "man" obviously parses to anti-feminism. A "bear" can be anything, because it doesn't exist. That's the context in which the poll exists and is shared. You can't interpret the question facially, because it was linked to you (and you, and you, and you) as a referendum on feminism. Look, men are dangerous and bad, here's proof! Nobody voting has met a bear. Nobody in this discussion has met a bear. (I challenge anybody reading to name an occasion on which they met a bear they weren't actively going out of their way to meet. Zoos and national parks don't count! I'm sure there's somebody here, and I bet it makes for an interesting story.)
This comment is not intended as bear slander. They are fun creatures, and a few of them even parse as something magnificent. They can be dangerous, but they're really not a good avatar for the abstract platonified category of dangerous things. I've met bears, what do you want? They're not especially interested in us. They like food and protecting their children. Actually, it could be fun to meet a strange bear. I'm not especially sure I want to meet a strange man, and all the social entanglements that come with returning to baseline.
How many people will give an obviously ridiculous answer to a question when they have no skin in the game? Looks like at least 85%.
It’s not terribly interesting. The fact that it was a black bear sans cubs and not too close in distance took away a good amount of the excitement. After I kept yelling “Go away, bear!” it ran back off, and I was surprised by just how fast that thing was; it felt like a marvel of biomechanics. Anyway, now I tell people “I got into a fight with a bear and won”, refraining from elaborating (until pressed) that the fight didn’t go beyond a shouting match, and I was the only one participating.
Regarding the actual thrust of your comment, I couldn’t be more in agreement. The point of the poll isn’t actually to rationally dissect the probability of bear attack versus assault by a human male; it’s to create the very soundbite “Women prefer to be alone in the wild with a bear than a man” being discussed by this comment chain in the first place.
Also effective: "I need you to go now. I hope you enjoyed my yard." and "PERKELE!!!1!"
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