There is a hypothetical question directed at women that’s taking social media by storm.
Maybe you have heard of it, or maybe not, but it goes this:
Would you rather be stuck alone in the woods with a man or a bear?
Being the curious cat I am, when I came across this question on Reddit, I immediately asked the women closest to me what they thought.
Pretty much all of them had this follow-up question before giving their answer:
“What kind of man is it?”
I replied, “He is an average adult male picked randomly from the population.”
Out of the ten women I asked, nine said they would rather chance it with a random man. This is in sharp contrast to the online discourse saying most women are choosing the bear.
Strangely, none of the women in my life even bothered to ask what kind of bear it was. I suppose they just assumed bear = danger.
Granted, the woman I asked had a positive view of men, even though they had their fair share of bad breakups and workplace squabbles with the opposite sex. By and large, they still respect and even look up to their fathers, brothers, and uncles to some degree.
None, as far as I’m aware, have experienced anything significantly traumatic or life-threatening at the hands of a man. And most importantly, most of them have not been raised in the West, so they have only a superficial understanding of the contentious climate surrounding gender roles, identities, and equality.
This is not to say women who choose a bear are wrong per se. Violence against women is a real and present problem.
However, we have to remember that we live in an age where the media we consume is driven by algorithms that can create echo chambers, feeding users a constant stream of content that confirms existing biases. This can further amplify the negative and fuel the idea that the random guy women encounter on the street is instinctively violent.
To put things into perspective, according to this United Nations document, 80% of the total homicide victims are boys or men, with women only accounting for one-tenth of all homicide victims perpetrated in the public sphere.
In private, half of all female homicide victims are killed by an intimate partner or family member — not a strange man you would find in the woods.
There is no denying the number of violent attacks on women by men dwarfs that of bears (more specifically brown bears) on humans, at 39.6 attacks per year globally. And that bears generally do not attack humans unless provoked, in defense, or hungry. If you are going to be stuck in the woods for a prolonged period with no other food source available, I can guarantee you will soon become a snack. The same cannot be said if we replace a bear with most men.
…
Contrary to what you might hear, the average guy is not dangerous.
They might try to portray a tough exterior, but most are as soft as a teddy bear on the inside. They want to be happy and content as much as women do.
If they found themselves stuck alone in the woods with a strange woman, I bet they would do everything in their power to work as a team so you both can find a way home in one piece.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Tee, Good article. The truth is that most men are not dangerous or violent, though a small minority are. And the victims of violent men are most often other men. As a therapist who has worked with violent men for more than fifty years, it helps to have an evolutionary perspective which I offer in an article I recently posted on MenAlive. https://menalive.com/man-or-bear-what-evolutionary-science-can-tell-us-about-male-violence-and-how-to-stay-safe/
“The truth is that most men are not dangerous or violent, though a small minority are.” Yes. I think a problem here is (and I see this with men’s woes with women as well) that the type of people who behave badly toward others (in an extreme fashion, as I understand we’re all imperfect) tend to spread themselves thin. They cast a wide net, burning a lot of bridges along the way, and moving on to take advantage of (whether consciously or unconsciously) more and more victims. They go through so many people, causing so much damage, they cast a… Read more »
well, this was definitely written by a man…
And, if so, what inference ‘should’ be drawn from that? In fact, why should any inference be drawn automatically? What criteria leads you to the conclusion that it is ‘obvious’? Certainly, if a person has strong feelings (and I suspect that you do) then they can speak clearer than that.
I know that a lot of women, especially in female online bubbles, fear men for reasons. And r4peculture is a thing. Women do not get enough support from society in this case. But this debatte is just missing the point. What am i suppossed to do as a man? Feel guilty. I never touched a woman against consent. I never did become aggressive because rejection. Im in controll of my strength as a men. This discourse doesnt feel productive. It reminds me on all those discussion i had years ago with incels and far rights. Is it okay to feel… Read more »
“What am i suppossed to do as a man? Feel guilty.” No. I hope you don’t. Please don’t. It’s okay for women to be wary and fearful of the real dangers that are out there. And it’s vital for you, as a person who is not harming others, to not allow other people’s messed-up ideas of “all men being bad” get to you. For your own sake. I know that’s easier said than done. As a woman, I’ve struggled with men’s unfair ideas about women also. Ultimately, while they might try to tell you who you are, other people can’t… Read more »
“What am i suppossed to do as a man? Feel guilty. I never touched a woman against consent. I never did become aggressive because rejection. Im in controll of my strength as a men… . A person always needs to nurture their own sense of empathy and conscientiousness. Empathy also includes being fair and being insightful to ourselves. It is not wise to surrender one’s own sense of empathy and conscientiousness to the arbitrary judgment of someone else unwarranted, simply because they expect or demand it of you. Just because someone has had more tragedy or injustice or burden (a relative… Read more »
“There is a hypothetical question directed at women that’s taking social media by storm. Maybe you have heard of it, or maybe not, but it goes this: Would you rather be stuck alone in the woods with a man or a bear?” It’s a trick question: Whenever any ‘hypothetical question’ is ‘taking social media by storm’ inanity is what wins as soon as you waste your time getting sucked into the drama storm. God forbid people should pass up a shallow trend that’s trending on the internet. If the question is vapid or odious or contrived, give it the attention… Read more »
Exactly! Engaging with this sorta stuff just amplifies the original messaging more than the response itself. Personally, I believe we’ve been in an internet “Dark Forest” for about the last 8 years or so. There are indeed big personalities and egos that drive behavior like this, and the algorithms shape it all – with the addition of thousands of bots that amplify both geniune and sock-puppet views. In my mind, it’s a fantastic PsyOp to drive polarization. If everyone is seeing cartoonish evil caricatures of their neighbors, of COURSE that drives people into more extreme viewpoints. As for how to… Read more »
Just for myself, I find the less time lived (or rather, expended) online and the more time lived around friends and in the company of others, the more grounding it is. It’s more inefficient to talk to friends one-on-one, be it in person, or over the phone, or in a letter, or over a meal; but it’s invaluable and it gives people perspective and (I believe) our lives more meaning and more value, IMHO. Any technology can overshadow living if we’re too wrapped up in it. I love the maxim ‘don’t try to win the internet’, but, of course, we… Read more »