Who would you rather be alone with in a forest, an unfamiliar man, or a bear? This question seems to make many of you extremely angry for reasons I cannot understand.

A bear will either leave you alone, maul you, or kill you. Yes, it’s not great, but the alternative is something many women see as a fate worse than death.

1 in 5 women experience sexual violence since the age of 15 in Australia alone. This statistic changes to 1 in 3 when taking into account the entire world. 9 out of 10 rape victims are female. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male, against both female and male victims.

The 750,000 black bears of North America kill less than one person per year on the average, while men ages 18-24 are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear. Since 1970, there have been 21 fatalities from grizzly bear attacks in Canada.

There are 40 bear attacks around the world every year. Contrary to the almost 89,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2022 across the globe, purely for being female, and the 463,634 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States alone.

Now, not all men are capable of harming you, or want to harm you, and I fully acknowledge that. I know some amazing men in my life who have been there for me and supported me while suffering through the very violence against women I have spoken about here.

When we say we’d pick the bear, we would pick the bear because death is the lesser of two evils. You may not understand it, but living after sexual assault can be an even more traumatic experience, it can be hard, and it can be so impossible it leads to long term mental health issues or depression.

If we picked the man, we aren’t picking our father, our teacher, our boyfriend, our brother, our cousin, we’re picking a stranger.

An unpredictable stranger.

We don’t pick the bear because we hate men. We pick the bear because we hate what some men (and indeed, some women) are capable of.

If the question were simply “would you rather be stuck in a forest with a bear or a stranger” I would still pick the bear. Gender doesn’t really matter here, yes, anyone could harm you, but being trapped with a man makes a woman more wary.

I would also like to acknowledge that there are negative and indeed toxic/manhating aspects to certain subcultures of feminism. But even so, aren’t there certain groups of men’s rights activists who hate and want to harm women?

Any group can have toxic subgroups within it. I’m here to tell you that all women DO NOT hate all men. I’m bringing this here because this Subreddit seems to be a toxic echo chamber of anti-female sentiments. I don’t blame that on you, it’s what’s being reinforced around you, you aren’t hearing other sides to these things.

Please take the time to think about what I’ve said. Don’t hate me for this, and don’t hate women for my words. Thank you.