If the bear analogy was about statistics, they’d choose the human because statistically speaking, many, many more people are helpful than harmful. Especially compared to a dangerous wild animal.

By its nature, there can’t be an “if.” Any conversation based around assessed probability of violence will at some point necessarily revolve around violence statistics. One cannot make an accurate decision otherwise, and it would cease to be any sort of statement at all. Would you rather choose between gleeps or glorps.

You’re not incorrect in the other points you’re making. I highly appreciate them, they’re well said, and you come off like you’ve given this considerable thought and attention. But the perception is there because it’s also a reality. The stories everyone has or knows someone who has are not fairy tales far away wherever they film the news and, statistically speaking, a random bear in the vicinity is leagues more predictable than a human, less aggressive as a result, and less dangerous should it become aggressive on account of the possibility of rape and torture.

Given the choice – while it isn’t nearly as likely from an animal that doesn’t know what humans are and mostly wants to avoid the whole mess as much as I do if allowed – I would also elect to be killed by the bear. That should be giving people pause and encourage them to reflect on the current dynamic and what can be done to fix it, and I would charitably like to think that it does. I’ve also met people before and they tend to dig in when they hear things they don’t already agree with instead of becoming as curious as they should, but I’d like to think that it does, at least for one person.

The way one deals with bears does not work for men, because there IS no reliable way to deal with men should they turn aggressive. Not even pepper spray, if they’ve experienced it before or are just particularly plucky that day. You’re supposed to run afterwards because your assailant can and will fight through it in much the same way a bear will not. I learned both these facts at about the same age, and I’m angry about that, and I’m angrier that there’s not a women in my family, or even a woman that I know, that hasn’t been assaulted at least once and/or subsequently murdered.

Your standing argument about the whole deal, if I understand it, boils down to, “Yes, but how many men didn’t rape you when they could have? Talking about your experiences is making them more likely to choose that path themselves out of insult, but probably if you’re nice enough they’ll rape you less.” …And I’m hoping you can see how that thought process sounds insultingly unhinged as well as being a little bit to the left of the point.

In painting it as only an overactive perception, you don’t sound in my opinion like you think it’s as pervasive as it actually is, or that it should be the center of the problem. Your trick of the light is my maternal grandmother, who responded unfavorably to some group’s catcall when she was walking back home, whose crime scene got me interested in forensics. My mom. Her friend, killed after the divorce went through. My best friend when she was eight. Me.

I already know the risks, and I usually don’t get a say in whether I’m going to experience them. And yet, whenever I or anyone else ask why we as a society consider it completely normal to sell and carry Man Spray, more men than one would hope are going, “Violence? What violence? What you need to do is let your guard down around me specifically. I don’t like it. You wouldn’t want to keep making me upset.”