It doesn’t make me angry, but it does make me a little bit sad that “this is why we choose the bear” became this glib statement that was being casually tossed around. It implies that there’s a kind of gender-based fatalism at work. A bear is a bear, and a man is a man, and one must assume that the danger from the platonic concept of a bear is lesser than from the platonic concept of a man. But this isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, a natural, inevitable state of affairs.
Men should make themselves more trustworthy than bears, and if we are being told that we aren’t, then we should be trying to think about why that is the case, and what we can do to get there.
“We choose the bear” makes it sound as if men are no more changeable than bears. It has the same feeling as “boys will be boys,” which is virtually a permission structure. When Timothy Treadwell gets devoured by bears, we can’t fault the bears; devouring people out in the wild is a normal thing for them to do. But men committing acts of unforgivable violence isn’t normal or natural, and we shouldn’t treat it as such.
Euler diagram. Venn diagrams show intersection and exclusion of all intersecting groups - by only showing 100% overlap, it’s no longer a Venn.
As a man, I also choose the bear
it’s objectively the better choice. bears are consistent in their behavior and attitudes. humans are a vast spectrum of unpredictable
Yeah, I grew up around hunters and it was common knowledge that the most dangerous animal you can encounter in the wild is another human.
In fact, when I’m in the woods and see anything other than a bear, I just start shooting first and save the questions for later (like “wtf was I just shooting at?” “did I hit it?” “did I manage to save the people that started screaming right after I started shooting, probably spooking it into running into them?” “I’ve been running for several km now after my magazine ran out, is it still chasing me?” “should I use my potions or save them for when I really need them?”)
I’m just doing what I can to make the woods a safer place.
This is a very sane and Buddhist thing to do
It is Buddhist philosophy to try to make heaven on earth rather than hope for the best in the afterlife, after all.
I always just thought it was silly. The premise itself is just so comically nonsensical.
There’s this one youtube video that talks about a question like this one (but it’s about a math problem) that I’m going to see if I can find it and paste it here later.
But the conclusion is basically: the question itself is wrong.
The question is straightforward at first glance, but if you think about it, it’s actually vague.
- What kind of bear are we talking about? What species? Is it a killing machine like a polar bear or an innocent one like a panda?
- What kind of man are we talking about? Who? A friend? A total stranger? A criminal?
- Which forest? How big is the forest?
- Do I get to bring anything with me?
- etc etc
But the question doesn’t provide these details, so we will by default assume these blank spaces by ourselves.
Which means, each person with their own story and background will assume completely different things. A woman that had bad experiences with men will obviously assume that the man will be the worst kind. A man that never had bad experiences with other men will not assume the same.
So all the arguments about this question are between people that are not starting from the same page in the first place. They are screaming at each other because they are arguing their points from different assumptions.
I’ll try to find the video because the guy explains this much better than me, even though the video is about a completely different question.
edit: found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBJVyCYuu78
Commenting on the math bit, I’ve always found “order of operation” problems to be stupid and not nearly as clever as some treat them. Order of operations is one of the few things in math that seems like math but really isn’t. It’s a convention that says if you see these two operations in the same equation, this is the order you do them in. Math is only useful in context and that context is what determines what order the operations should be in, regardless of any conventions. BEDMAS is only useful because it starts with B (hence the “maaaaybe” above), and B can make all the rest irrelevant.
Like if you are putting together 50 snack packs and originally start with 3 grapes but have a bunch left over and want to see if you can add 2 more grapes to each pack, you gotta add the 3 and 2 before you multiply the 50, otherwise your result will be useless. Understanding that is far more useful than basically knowing math convention trivia.
I did a math-heavy degree (CS) and the only time I can remember any reference to order of operations was in a compiler class, when talking about how to make write the compiler such that it obeys the order of operations and maybe a reference in physics classes, since physics is very heavy on math word problems.
But so many people waste time arguing about it on fb, as if it matters. Though it can be fun to watch and see some of the crazier answers.
Beyond that, the question itself is fundamentally misandrist. Or rather, the fundamental question is prejudiced and this particular version is misandrist.
Bigotry is often obvious and easy to call out, but it can also be subtle at times and sneak up on us. Any time something isolated a particular protected trait (ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc) and tries to make generalizations about then, I find it’s often handy to swap things around to see if it is still okay.
Imagine a similar question posed to JK Rowling: would you rather be alone in the woods with a trans woman or a bear? I would fully expect her to answer “the best” and fully expect progressive people to call her transphobic for that, and I would agree.
Not to mention how this question really breaks down on the borders of gender identity and sex. What happens in the bear vs trans-man case? Is it the gender identity that’s the “problem” with men or is it the chromosomes?
Imagine a racist asked whether they would rather be alone in the woods with a black person or a bear. The racist might start citing statistics about violent crime and crafting a narrative about how they are rationally correct for fearing black people more than bears. That doesn’t make it any less racist or any less wrong. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t make it any less dehumanizing.
You can do the same with bear vs a lot of things. Bear vs nonbinary person, bear vs Muslim bear vs jew, etc. It’s all fucked.
Responding with “not all men” is equally misandrist. It says “yeah sure most men are monsters, but not me! I’m #notlikeothermen”.
For me equality is not something we can afford to just pick and choose when to apply or withhold. Prejudice is not some tool that can be used for good or evil depending on whether it’s in the right hands or not, but a fundamentally evil part of human nature we all need to fight against for the betterment of the world. Things like this “bear vs man” meme may do a slight bit of good: it might bring some awareness to a tiny subset of uninformed men of the problems that women face and the fear they live their lives with. However, it does a lot more bad to society by perpetuating fear, portraying half of the population as monstrous and sub-human, and sowing division within society. There are better ways of educating and raising awareness without stooping to the tactics of bigots.
i feel like the point is that you have to take the uncertainty into consideration. you are gambling on what kind of bear or what kind of man and so the question is, which one, of unspecified danger, would you rather choose?
and so, since there is uncertainty baked in, it’s basically demonstrating that women are, generally, more familiar or wary about the dangers of men than bears (there’s a lot more one could say here, but this is basically the point i wanted to make)
That’s a fair way to look at it.
For me it’s just that not answering (because the question is vague) OR asking for clarification are also valid responses.
For example, your rewritten question - between an unspecified man or unspecified bear, which would you choose? - is already more clarifying than the original.
You are specifying that it’s a gamble, so the gamble is part of the question. The original question doesn’t say that, so assuming it’s a gamble is yet another assumption that we would need to make to answer it
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It is silly, it’s the reaction from misogynists that’s made it noteworthy.
I never got the rage. If women are scared of men then that’s how it is. The question always seemed to me to be more illustrative than literal but either way you’re not going to change the answer so why spend time arguing about it?
If you angrily argue “not all men”, those nervous women will surely fawn at your feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_fear_of_crime
Women fear is reverse correlated to likelihood of it happening (lower chance = more feared)
Some studies suggest a fucked up reasoning behind it: “if rape is rare, then they [women] feel more disgust to victims of the rape than if it was common”.
Some scholars tie that reverse correlation to perceived lowering of social standing and attractiveness (as in the victims of crime stand out negatively compared to other gals). (Tbh this makes more sense).
(And other reasons but those two are most likely to have people click on the Wiki article to read more)
Ha one of my first lemmy interactions was this ‘debate’, honestly still makes me want to throw my phone in a lake
Don’t throw your phone, throw your debate opponents
What if I chose the bear over my debate opponent?
Getting mauled by a grizzly genuinely seemed like a better choice
Sir if you can thrown a bear in the lake you can do whatever you want.
This may explain a lot.
If you can throw a bear into a lake can I be next?
I don’t understand
There was this meme some time ago about women being asked whethe they’d prefer to meet a bear or a man they don’t know in the woods. Some men didn’t take the answers too gracefully.
