Man versus Bear

You may have recently heard something more than usual about bears, how it is always the bear, and Team Bear!

This comes from a TikTok video where women are being asked if they would rather encounter a man or a bear, with most women choosing the bear:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/us/man-bear-safety-tiktok-question-cec/index.html 

A different TikTok user, dadchats, has posted two really good, statistically sound comments on that:

https://www.tiktok.com/@dadchats 

You can listen to "Man or Bear" and "Man or Bear... again", and I am posting transcripts at the bottom.

For those responses, I mention they are statistically sound because he focuses on the probability of a woman being attacked (or killed) by a man or a bear, and women have better odds with the bear.

Many men were terribly offended by the initial choice. Based on the responses Dadchats was getting, adding the statistics did not help. 

The responses tend to fall on two sides.

One is sexualization, like drawings of women in their underwear cuddling up with a bear. 

This seems to misunderstand the basic premise: the reason for the choice is that most women know they have better odds of the bear leaving them alone. For the men who ignore that, it makes it easier to then go into the hateful responses hoping that women will get mauled, because those whores deserve it. 

There is also "not all men", and the general unfairness of the being maligned in this way.

This is a great time to look at the transcripts, or watch the videos!

Dadchats Transcripts

"Man or Bear":

Not really sure why this is a debate, but here we are. I've seen a whole lot of comments from people who don't understand women's stories or statistics, so to be clear, the answer is unequivocally a bear and here are the two reasons why:

First, the numbers. In the United States there are 340,000 bears and about 57 million hikers, 26 million of which are female. Since 2020 there have been exactly seven women killed by bears and 151 non fatal attacks on women. In the US there are also 165 million men and 168 million women. Since 2020 there have been 8,000 fatal attacks on women by men and 1.6 million non fatal attacks.

Yeah, but what about adjusting for population size?

Okay, fine, but first, just so we're clear, this is an impossible hypothetical because in the US the departments of Natural Resources in every state regulate the population of bears. They do not regulate the population of men. But sure, for the sake of this, let's do the impossible. In order to adjust for population, the number of bears in the United States we have to increase by a multiplier of 485 in order to equate to the same population of men.

In other words, to get us to 165 million bears, which means you'd have to take that same 485 and make it a multiplier of the incidents. So in this hypothetical, 3395 deaths and 7275 non fatal attacks, which means even in this impossible hypothetical of 165 million bears, you're still greater than two times more likely to be killed by a man than a bear if you're a woman in the United States, and about 220 times more likely to be involved in a non fatal attack by a man than a bear. Also, I should note statistics on bear attacks are not infamously under-reported, unlike the other side of the equation, where statistics show that only about one fifth of violent encounters against women by men are actually reported, and less than one fifth of those actually lead to an arrest, and less than one one hundredth of those leads to a felony conviction, which means that's 1% of the ones that are actually reported, meaning not only that men who perpetrate these acts are much more likely to go free than they are to be punished but also have the opportunity to do it again.

Do you want to know what the punishment is for a bear who kills or even injures a human being? There are no repeat offenders and there is no recidivism. Oh, and not to mention that most states have laws on self defense against bears that are let's just say very favorable to the human beings being attacked, whereas by the way in the United States when a woman brings a legal claim of self defense, they are two times more likely to be found guilty of a crime themselves than when a man brings up a claim of self defense.

It's almost like we like we just don't believe women or something.

You know, speaking of which, the second reason why the answer is bear? It's because women are telling you that it's bear. That's kind of all that matters.

"Man or Bear... again": (Note: SA is used for sexual assault.)

So apparently some people still want more accurate data on an impossible hypothetical, to which I say see reason No. 2, because that is all that matters, but because it apparently is impossible to grasp the qualitative data, despite the fact that its greatest accomplishment is the fact that it reports things from a participant's perspective rather than the potential bias of researchers. Like, what do I know? I only have two degrees n qualitative and quantitative research in two different fields plus a law degree, but you know, fine. Let's get super specific with that data, which -- again -- not the point; see reason number two.

You have to factor in how many encounters people actually have with bears, plus how long the encounters were.

No. We don't. And I'll give you the easiest reason why. Since 2000 there have been just under 300 reported attacks on bears by humans, approximately 120 of which were on women and exactly zero of those involved an SA, because as it turns out, and this is a wild statistic, I'll admit, bears don't do that to humans. So it doesn't matter if those 120 attacks came on 120 million encounters at a rate of .0001% or if they came on 120 out of 120 encounters at a rate of 100% because in either scenario, extrapolated over an impossible hypothetical, chances of an SA with a bear are zero because that is how math works whenever the numerator is zero, right?

But the question is about whether you'd rather encounter a man you don't know or a bear you don't know, stranger banner, stranger bears, and most of the attacks on women by men are by men they know, not by strangers.

Do you see, do you see how that makes it worse? Not to mention it ignores the obvious correlation issue fact that most women will do absolutely anything they can to avoid men that they don't know. I wonder why. It's almost like that's the point, you know, the fact that most violence against women is perpetrated by men in their lives that they know, trust, or even have a relationship with isn't something to champion.

Okay, but if there were 165 million bears they get so hungry all the time they start attacking everyone.

First off, again, see reason number two. Second, if you must, the basis of any hypothetical is that it does not happen within a vacuum and all other variables need to be able to keep up with the variable that we've changed, including, for instance, food sources. Telling women they're wrong because the impossible hypothetical there would also be four more even impossible hypotheticals. It's just wild. Not to mention, telling women they're wrong in a literal opinion question is kind of the reason why we're in this situation to being with, and the same reason why in my comment section people say "Yeah, no, I get all that but I'd still choose a man over a bear." You know what I respond with? Nothing, because it's an opinion question and opinion questions are based on both perceived and lived experiences. That is the whole point. And second, to be honest, I doubt the for instance. Look at Alaska, a population of 740,000, 350,000 of which are women and a population of 137,000 bears. That is a ratio of two and a half to one for women to bears. The data set I mentioned in my last video. There's been exactly one death by a bear of a woman in Alaska, and it was a polar bear, was not in the woods. Having more contact with bears is not going to produce the results that you think it will, because bears and humans attack for very different reasons, which is why even when you factor in proximity to bears, in the actual likelihood that you would encounter one, you still get data sets like this one, which accounts for the actual proximity to bears within their range and the likelihood of getting attacked per 500,000 people and it is still 2 to 3 hundred times less than the probability of being attacked by and again that data set only accounts for people that are within the movable range of a bear. In other words, people who are likely to have an encounter with a bear.

But the vast majority of men are good, okay?

You know, that of those 340,000 bears in the United States, 300,000 of them are black bears which are also responsible for the most number of encounters and since 2020 have only been responsible for one death of a woman. So, you know, it's almost like the vast majority of bears are... do you get the point?

No, because you have to include stats on both male and female victims with bears, because bears don't understand the difference when they're attacking a man versus a woman, so that's not fair.

Exactly. See my first point about the number zero.

And also, if you were to do that in order to get the most accurate data possible, you also have to include on the other side of the equation all male victims at the hands of other males, because that's only fair in order to, you know, get the accuracy. 

I don't think you wanna do that.

The numbers are misleading, because it's asking specifically about encountering a bear or a man in the woods, so we can only look at statistics from the woods.

First of all, I assure you that you don't wanna do that, not to mention the fact that if you encounter a bear in the woods, your first thought is probably gonna be "I'm a little scared, but this makes sense because the woods is where bears live" so again, if you really wanna be accurate, what you would actually have to do is compare instances of violence by men against women in the homes of the different types of species that we're looking at, so how many instances of violent attacks by bears on women in the woods versus how many instances of violent attacks by men on women in their homes. And again, I don't think you're gonna wanna do that either. Yeah, of course you could flip it and say "Would you rather wake up in the middle of the night and come downstairs and find a bear in your living room going to the fridge or a man that you don't know sitting at the counter? Oh. That wouldn't work either, would it?

End transcripts.

There is some great ground to go over in why women are in more danger from men, and how that breaks down, and it is good for our exploration of dominator culture, specifically in the area of misogyny/patriarchy.

The other thing worth considering, though, is whether and why a man who would never violently attack or sexually assault a woman might be more upset by women hypothetically choosing the bear than all of the background behind the statistics.

The probability there is also high.