A couple minutes of searching the web and you’ll find some variance in the stats, but the common theme is that bears don’t cause a lot of fatalities, the data aggregated here suggests that there were 46 fatalities in North America, in the span of 17 years.
Meanwhile you look at 2019 murder statistics in the US alone: 10,335 murders perpetrated by men in a single year; and that’s strictly murder. Other violent crimes like rape are also tracked, albeit without offender sex, there were 122,822 of those in the same year.
Now obviously, people don’t go traipsing into bear country every day, and we’re constantly around other humans, so those stats are inherently skewed and not a direct comparison.
Nevertheless, what those stats do demonstrate, to me at least, is that people are some selfish, violent, motherfuckers. And unfortunately, men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of that violence. If you take offense to that fact, and aren’t an awful person yourself, then you need to wake the fuck up and take a look around. No one’s accusing you specifically of being a rapist or a murderer, but there’s a non-negligible trend here, and an uncomfortable truth that has yet to be sufficiently addressed; and that’s the whole fucking point of this thought experiment in the first place.
Never made the comparison. As I’ve stated in two other comment threads already, two sets of stats, two distinct conclusions. That third sentence has been there since the inception of this post, the edit was added after two people blatantly ignored it.
Me saying they aren’t comparable isn’t “hiding behind” anything. It’s an acknowledgement that there are far too many variables involved be able to draw anything conclusive between the two. To not acknowledge that would be a disservice to anyone reading and would ultimately feed into confirmation bias in both directions.
Moreover, I could completely nix the info on bears and my point would still stand, the point of the hypothetical isn’t about the god damn bears.
Since we’re crunching numbers, go ahead and normalize these as a percent based on number of direct bear encounters and number of direct man encounters. This will be the real numbers you care about hahaha
Already addressed this in another comment, just read the next sentence I wrote…
They’re not comparable for a variety of reasons, even if you account for population; I kept both in, with that caveat, because they make two distinct points. And my “conclusion” was really only in respect to the violent crime statistics presented.
Now obviously, people don’t go traipsing into bear country every day, and we’re constantly around other humans, among a litany of other differences like population, motivation, or intelligence; so the stats on their own aren’t truly comparable.
Literally just had to read one more sentence, my guy. The point of bringing up the stats wasn’t to compare them directly, rather I looked both up out of curiosity, and individually I think they make distinct points. The first being that bears aren’t necessarily dangerous as we portray them to be, and the second being that men are more dangerous than we’re willing to admit.
As a dude, I used to have the same knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of discussions: “Well I’m not dangerous, and none of the men I’m friends/family with are dangerous, so this must just be some man-hating tirade perpetrated by ignorant people”.
But then you dig into the statistics, and you start talking to the women in your life about their lived experience, and you realize that far too many of us are fucking animals. The prospect of bringing a daughter into a world that not only ignores an obvious issue, but actively shames the people who are victimized and try to speak out against it, is terrifying. Do I always agree with the way women present their criticism? No, a portion of it does veer into senseless hate. But that doesn’t mean that what they’re saying on the whole is bullshit.
you know what they say: never let intellectual honestly get in the way of a pity party about how it’s not all men… but actually it’s all women who are miSAndRisTs
The simplest TL;DR of those statistics is: “Precaution is good when dealing with both stranger humans and bears, demonizing half of the humans because penis is not justified tho.”
I can’t believe that is a sentence that needs to be said, what a time to be alive
Nobody is demonizing “half of humans”. Do you honestly think these women believe that 100% of men are rotten? Of course not.
There are a ton of decent men in the world, and if we’re to take the statistics at face value, that’s most of us.
But there are also a ton of men, all across the world, who are liars and manipulators at best, and monsters who commit unimaginable atrocities at worst. I’ll say it in a slightly different way, men are disproportionately the perpetrators of violent crime, this is a problem.
If we profess to be good men, and the best that most of us can muster is to sit idly by while bad men wreak havoc in the world, or to tell people to pipe down when they point out the obvious, then can we really call ourselves “good”?
Clearly no law in a book, or half-assed enforcement of said laws, is a sufficient deterrent. Our problem is a cultural one, and if we continue to allow it to proliferate, we’re culpable too.
I know and agree. I actually didn’t even specify men, just stranger humans, as women also are way more likely to murder or rape you (statistically) than a bear. Remember we are still comparing to bears.
Edit: to be extra clear; the danger order is human male > human female > bears (i don’t have gendered data for bears, that’d be weird).
But that guy, as other people on this post, seemed concerned about certain communities where men are really demonized. I just added a logical conclusion you get from the numbers and his answer
There’s literally no contest.
A couple minutes of searching the web and you’ll find some variance in the stats, but the common theme is that bears don’t cause a lot of fatalities, the data aggregated here suggests that there were 46 fatalities in North America, in the span of 17 years.
Meanwhile you look at 2019 murder statistics in the US alone: 10,335 murders perpetrated by men in a single year; and that’s strictly murder. Other violent crimes like rape are also tracked, albeit without offender sex, there were 122,822 of those in the same year.
Now obviously, people don’t go traipsing into bear country every day, and we’re constantly around other humans, so those stats are inherently skewed and not a direct comparison.
Nevertheless, what those stats do demonstrate, to me at least, is that people are some selfish, violent, motherfuckers. And unfortunately, men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of that violence. If you take offense to that fact, and aren’t an awful person yourself, then you need to wake the fuck up and take a look around. No one’s accusing you specifically of being a rapist or a murderer, but there’s a non-negligible trend here, and an uncomfortable truth that has yet to be sufficiently addressed; and that’s the whole fucking point of this thought experiment in the first place.
Never made the comparison. As I’ve stated in two other comment threads already, two sets of stats, two distinct conclusions. That third sentence has been there since the inception of this post, the edit was added after two people blatantly ignored it.
Me saying they aren’t comparable isn’t “hiding behind” anything. It’s an acknowledgement that there are far too many variables involved be able to draw anything conclusive between the two. To not acknowledge that would be a disservice to anyone reading and would ultimately feed into confirmation bias in both directions.
Moreover, I could completely nix the info on bears and my point would still stand, the point of the hypothetical isn’t about the god damn bears.
Since we’re crunching numbers, go ahead and normalize these as a percent based on number of direct bear encounters and number of direct man encounters. This will be the real numbers you care about hahaha
Already addressed this in another comment, just read the next sentence I wrote…
They’re not comparable for a variety of reasons, even if you account for population; I kept both in, with that caveat, because they make two distinct points. And my “conclusion” was really only in respect to the violent crime statistics presented.
Now you have to divide that number by the number of encounters with a strange man and with a bear if you want to be intellectually honest.
1 and 6 women in the United States are victim to rape or attempted rape.
And you want to argue like a 4 year old
Okay. I don’t care enough to argue, so you win. Go hang out with the bears.
Literally just had to read one more sentence, my guy. The point of bringing up the stats wasn’t to compare them directly, rather I looked both up out of curiosity, and individually I think they make distinct points. The first being that bears aren’t necessarily dangerous as we portray them to be, and the second being that men are more dangerous than we’re willing to admit.
As a dude, I used to have the same knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of discussions: “Well I’m not dangerous, and none of the men I’m friends/family with are dangerous, so this must just be some man-hating tirade perpetrated by ignorant people”.
But then you dig into the statistics, and you start talking to the women in your life about their lived experience, and you realize that far too many of us are fucking animals. The prospect of bringing a daughter into a world that not only ignores an obvious issue, but actively shames the people who are victimized and try to speak out against it, is terrifying. Do I always agree with the way women present their criticism? No, a portion of it does veer into senseless hate. But that doesn’t mean that what they’re saying on the whole is bullshit.
you know what they say: never let intellectual honestly get in the way of a pity party about how it’s not all men… but actually it’s all women who are miSAndRisTs
The simplest TL;DR of those statistics is: “Precaution is good when dealing with both stranger humans and bears, demonizing half of the humans because penis is not justified tho.”
I can’t believe that is a sentence that needs to be said, what a time to be alive
Nobody is demonizing “half of humans”. Do you honestly think these women believe that 100% of men are rotten? Of course not.
There are a ton of decent men in the world, and if we’re to take the statistics at face value, that’s most of us.
But there are also a ton of men, all across the world, who are liars and manipulators at best, and monsters who commit unimaginable atrocities at worst. I’ll say it in a slightly different way, men are disproportionately the perpetrators of violent crime, this is a problem.
If we profess to be good men, and the best that most of us can muster is to sit idly by while bad men wreak havoc in the world, or to tell people to pipe down when they point out the obvious, then can we really call ourselves “good”?
Clearly no law in a book, or half-assed enforcement of said laws, is a sufficient deterrent. Our problem is a cultural one, and if we continue to allow it to proliferate, we’re culpable too.
I know and agree. I actually didn’t even specify men, just stranger humans, as women also are way more likely to murder or rape you (statistically) than a bear. Remember we are still comparing to bears.
Edit: to be extra clear; the danger order is human male > human female > bears (i don’t have gendered data for bears, that’d be weird).
But that guy, as other people on this post, seemed concerned about certain communities where men are really demonized. I just added a logical conclusion you get from the numbers and his answer
Gotcha… misinterpretation on my part then. Apologies.
The
Along with
Came off to me as a sort of “not all men” argument.
No worries, i can see why you thought that. This was a pre-nap and just waked up me problem lol
No, you have to divide that number of encounters with a strange man while being alone in the woods.
It is easy to behave if you know you will get stomped the minute you do anything wrong.
I don’t know why the downvotes, you are actually right