We're doing this. It's technically not "Crap from Facebook" this time because I saw it crop up through various internet media. Because I have apparently not learned to leave well enough alone after all this time, I was lured into finding this stupid article (written by one Kate Lister). Well, here we go...
There is a fascinating theoretical discussion currently playing out across social media: would you rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear? Overwhelmingly, women have chosen the bear. They didn’t have to take their time with it either, just said “bear” straight away.
The first thought that came to mind when I first heard this stupid meme was, "Well yeah, you'd get the same answer if you reversed the gender." Ask men whether they'd rather be stuck in the forest with a woman or with a bear. You'd get similar results. Neither result is really meaningful, by the way.
I'll just say this part now because I need to get it out of the way early on in my rebuttal. The reason that the result is "overwhelmingly" bear for women, and it would also be for men, is because the question itself is inherently silly, and most people pick up on that right away. It's a bizarre, vague, hypothetical scenario. The respondents do not seriously believe that they'll ever be in this situation. The whole thing is a joke, even to the people taking it seriously.
Of course "bear" is the better joke answer! By its nature, the question is setting things up for that. Also, some feminists hate men so much that they'd answer "bear" and truly mean it, with venom behind the answer. But even non-misandrists are primed to answer "bear" in a whimsical sort of way. Hell, I'd probably render such an answer myself.
The answer came as quickly as if they were asked if they would rather have a basket full of kittens or a swift kick in the teeth. “Men are scary,” one woman said. “I said bear because the advice to stay safe is to play dead, but that won’t always work with a man,” said another.
I somehow doubt that the woman in question has ever successfully foiled a bear attack by playing dead.
I’ve been asking myself the same viral question again and again for most of the last week. Man or bear? Bear or man? I still can’t make my mind up and that troubles me. This should be a very easy question!
Yes and no. On the one hand, the question offers no specifics. What does it mean to be "stuck in the forest"? Why would one be "stuck"? What kind of forest is it? How long is one "stuck"? The question doesn't mention things like hypothermia, dehydration, shelter, distance traveled, etc. There are plenty of relevant variables to consider if we're to take the scenario seriously. Under some conditions, having another human with you in a forest could provide safety in numbers and dramatically improve your odds of survival. In other conditions, having two human mouths to feed could rapidly worsen your odds of survival. Even if we ignore the bear entirely and even if we ignore the gender issue entirely, there's not a definitive right answer for whether you want another person with you when you're "stuck in the forest."
On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that the right (non-joke) answer is "man."
I want to say the man, I really do, but I can’t shake the idea that I would be safer with the bear. I am not sure if it is men or bears that are being most maligned in all of this, but there is no denying that is this a very revealing question.
No, that's just stupid.
I have put this thought experiment to most of my female friends now, and the response is always the same: there’s a pause and then they ask, “what kind of bear?”
I'd have thought that at least one of them asked, "What kind of man?"
That’s not good. Even if they eventually chose the man, the fact they wanted more information on the bear first is concerning. Watching my mum weighing up her options of surviving a polar bear attack before finally settling on “man” was a sobering experience.
Polar bears don't live in the forest, you fucking moron.
The experiment doesn’t work as well if you change the parameters with specifics. If you identify the man or the bear, for example, then it becomes a much easier question to answer. “Would you rather be stuck in the woods with Tom Hardy or a panda?” Tom Hardy.
Wait, what?
“Would you rather be stuck in the woods with Boris Johnson or a grizzly bear?” Then it’s the grizzly, obviously.
Shouldn't the panda and the grizzly be switched in order to make this point? From what I can gather, the author is citing Boris Johnson as a repulsive man, and presumably finds Tom Hardy attractive. But in that case it would be easy to make the comparison with the pairings of attractive man vs. scary bear and repulsive man vs. innocuous bear.
At this point I'm legitimately questioning whether the author simply messed up and switched the two bears in the example, or whether there's something else I'm missing.
The beauty of the question lies in its vagueness because that forces you to work with averages. On average, is a woman safer in the woods with a man or a bear?
Man. Easy.
Let’s start with the bears. Bear attacks are highly sensationalised but rare. According to research published in the Nature journal, there are around 40 brown bear attacks on humans worldwide each year and most of these are when the bear feels threatened. Of these 40 attacks, 14.3 per cent were fatal. Between 1870 and 2014, there were 73 attacks worldwide on humans by wild polar bears, 20 of which were fatal. Black bears attack and kill around one human per year in America, and because of humans encroaching on their territories, black bear attacks are on the rise in Japan.
Statistics like this aren't really helpful for your scenario. To illustrate this, consider a different hypothetical: one in which you are tossed into a large tank with a shark swimming around inside it. It's pretty obvious that your danger from a shark attack before you were thrown into the tank was zero, and the danger now that you're in there with a shark is much higher. Real-world statistics on animal attacks aren't pertinent here because the scenario, by its very nature, establishes that you're "stuck in the forest with a bear."
It would be patently idiotic to be forced into this bizarre hypothetical, to be stuck in a forested location with a black bear staring you down and to think, "Black bears only kill around one human per year in America. Seems like the odds are pretty good that it's not me!"
Bears generally leave humans alone and will alter their behaviour to avoid us where possible. In fact, we pose a far greater danger to them than the other way around. According to Western Wildlife Outreach, 50,000 black bears are legally hunted in North America each year alone, while over 800 polar bears are killed by humans every year. I don’t know if anyone is asking the bears who they would rather be stuck in the forest with, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t choose the man either.
Oh yeah. I didn't even cover the "do you have a gun in this hypothetical?" issue.
Now for the men. Male violence against women is incredibly common and not sensationalised nearly enough.
Considering that it's just about the most sensationalized thing on the entire planet, I'm wondering when enough will finally be enough.
On average, two women per week are murdered by their partner or ex-partner in the UK.
Hold up. You can't make the hypothetical just use some random bear but then immediately bait-and-switch a random man for "my murderous ex."
According to the UN, 55 per cent of all female homicides worldwide are committed by intimate partners or other family members, at a rate of five deaths every single hour. Their research also found that “most violence against women is perpetrated by current or former husbands or intimate partners. More than 640 million or 26 per cent of women aged 15 and older have been subjected to intimate partner violence.”
If more women were dating bears, then I bet the bears would overtake the men pretty easily on the whole intimate partner violence thing.
According to an investigation by UN Women UK, “71 per cent of women of all ages in the UK have experienced some form of sexual harassment in a public space – this number rises to 86 per cent among 18-24-year-olds.”
How many of those instances of sexual harassment took place in a forest?
An estimated 41 per cent of women have been cyber-flashed online.
Oh, come on.
While one in four UK women will experience a physical sexual assault during their lifetimes. (That rises to one in three globally.)
What does this have to do with being stuck in a forest?
Now can you see why the bear is the obvious answer for so many women? When all’s said and done, no bear has ever followed me home or sent me a photo of his penis.
What are the statistics on men seeking out isolated women lost alone in forests and forcing them to look at dick pics? How often does that happen?
If we are looking at averages, the plain truth is that women are safer in the woods with a bear than they are with a man, and that is just incredibly sad.
Well, it's wrong and you're an idiot. So there's that.
A bear will act like a bear. It’s predictable and it’s going to avoid you if it can.
What if the bear is hungry and you're made of meat?
It’s not going to pester you for a date and then monologue about the Godfather trilogy.
Uh, that example sounds rather specific.
It’s not going to try and have sex with you or get violent if you turn it down.
If the bear tries to have sex with you and you do turn it down, then you can be sure it will get violent.
The bear won’t stalk you if you break up with it.
Will too!
Bears are not killing five women every hour and if they were, action would be taken to stop it immediately.
What? That's not how statistics work, even if they were relevant here.
Then there is the fact that if I was attacked by a bear, no one would tell me I was making it up.
I would.
I wouldn’t be asked what I was wearing, if I was drunk, or what I had done to provoke the bear.
Actually, yes, you would probably get asked those questions too.
It wouldn’t matter if I had seen the bear before in the past, or if I am the kind of woman who likes seeing a lot of bears.
Again, all of those would also matter! You're remarkably bad at this.
No one would say I was asking for it, and as far as I am aware, #NotAllBears has never trended on Twitter.
I don't know anything about Twitter, but considering the author's track record, I'm going to guess that this is, somehow, also wrong.
The online response from men has largely been one of bafflement and confusion. “Why on earth would you choose to be around an apex predator that could overpower and kill you in seconds if it wanted to? Don’t you know how dangerous that is? You can’t reason with a bear or ask it to leave you alone if it becomes aggressive. This is madness!”
The only response I've seen from men has been making fun of how stupid this is.
I hate to tell you this lads, but for many women, this is the same risk that comes with dating a man.
Dating them while stuck in a forest?
Is it all men?
It had damn well better be. Or else shut up.
No, of course it’s not, but when 71 per cent of women have been sexually harassed by men and 26 per cent of women will experience intimate partner violence, how can you tell which man will hurt you and which one will not? You can’t.
You usually can.
There is no way of knowing who is dangerous until it’s too late, so women have to play the odds and assume all men are a threat. In much the same way as you should assume all bears could hurt you in the woods.
Whenever this topic comes up, I see women concoct this twisted fantasy in which men are not merely stronger than they are, but are invincible killing machines. If a woman stabs me in the neck with a knife, I'm just as dead as if a man had done it.
Men are statistically more prone to employ direct, violent attacks and are statistically more likely to have physicality that could make such attacks successful. We can acknowledge this. But when this particular topic comes up, I see women, as a whole, portrayed as utterly harmless, always victims, never attackers. And I see men portrayed as unpredictable whirlwinds of destruction.
In fact, quite a lot of the bear safety advice is applicable to a woman trying to get away from a creepy man in the pub. Keep calm, talk to it in a low tone so it recognises you are not a threat, and no sudden movements. Don’t feed it, leave the area as soon as you can, and never travel alone. Oh, and always remember your pepper spray.
What?
As a group, men pose a far greater threat to women than bears do, and humans kill far more bears every year than the other way around. The thought experiment is fun but flawed as it sets up a false dichotomy. Humans don’t live in close proximity with bears like we do with each other. If we did, we might have far more incidents of violence.
Congratulations, you got there! Better late than never.
I’m no zoologist but I imagine bear attacks on humans would rocket if we tried to move in with them and have their kids.
OK, so I can't believe I have to say this, but bears and humans are not genetically compatible. They cannot produce offspring with each other.
But what the question does is expose is the fact for many women, a strange man in the woods is still an obvious threat. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is.
That cuts both ways. A strange woman in the woods could be an obvious threat to a man. She could stab him or hit him on the head with a rock. She could wait until he falls asleep and then steal all of his supplies or whatever. Yeah, if she's simply going to give him warning, unleash a battle cry, and charge in with her bare hands, then most men would have an advantage. But unless she does that specific thing, the differences between the sexes aren't really a big consideration here.
I hope that we are collectively working towards a world where gender-based violence is a thing of the past, but we are not there yet, not by a long shot. Maybe future generations will look back and laugh at the absurdity of anyone choosing the bear, but for now, give me Yogi and BooBoo any day of the week.
Ooh, I didn't realize that "What kind of bear?" extended to cartoon bears.
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