There was a flash in the internet pan a few weeks ago, regarding the answer women gave to the question whether they would rather encounter a man or a bear on a forest path. Much was made of the anecdotally apparent fact that most women said that they would rather meet a bear than a man.
Thing is, the problem is ill posed. It supposes that a woman would be walking along a forest path, and encounter either a man or a bear. That’s not the right way to think about the choice.
The right way is to suppose that the woman is walking up a path that cannot be left – a narrow canyon of the American Southwest, say – and that she cannot go back the way she has come – say, because a flash flood has cut off her retreat. So she keeps going up a side canyon, away from the flood. She arrives at a confluence, and must choose which fork of the side canyon to take upstream. On one narrow fork, closed in by canyon walls, she sees a bear. On the other equally narrow fork, she sees a man.
Which path does she choose?
Well, obviously – I say this as one who has traversed many such canyons, *and also encountered bears deep in the wilderness,* many miles from any human help – she chooses the path with the man.
There is of course a high likelihood that any man a woman might thus encounter could strike her as icky. But the likelihood that any such man, howsoever icky, would pose a greater danger to her than a bear – any bear – is just madness.
*Any* strange human – no matter how strange – is a better bet for any human than any strange bear.
Indeed, running to the man is likely to improve the odds for both the woman *and the man,* vis-a-vis the bear. Come to think of it, running to the man will improve the odds for the bear, too, insofar as it encourages the bear to veer off. For, humans are lethal to bears. Sane and prudent bears know this quite well: attacking a human is tantamount to suicide.
Or think of it this way. The woman has survived a shipwreck and managed to drag herself ashore, exhausted and hypothermic to the point of death. Which would she rather found her there: a fellow human, or a member of some other species of apex predator? The question answers itself.
Or it should, anyway.
We may extend the gedanken experiment. Say that the woman hiking up the deep narrow canyon comes to the confluence of 3 others. Up one is a bear. Up another is a nerdy guy, skinny and nervous and obviously weak, but therefore also not at all threatening. Up the third is an extremely dangerous looking, muscular guy, obviously extremely fit and – judging by his movements – physically competent. And he wears a sword. Which canyon does the woman choose?
This question, too, should answer itself.
Women who answer these questions wrong can have no experience of the wilderness; can have no notion of its hazards. They can never have found themselves deep in the woods and all alone, far from any man. They must rather have seen too many TV dramas that rely for dramatic effect on conflict with bad men, and confused those fantasies with reality.
The Orthosphere 
Your point is of course correct. Women have been conditioned, either to perceive men as libidinous beasts, or to understand that professing a perception of men as libidinous beasts is status-enhancing. But I would fault the thought experiment for failing to specify the exact nature of the path on which the woman is to imagine herself walking. If it is a path on which she would also probably encounter a bear, every man on that path is probably too shy and inhibited to look her in the eye. If it is, on the other hand, a path through the shrubbery of an inner-city park at two in the morning, no man she encounters would be up to any good.
Much folly comes from the modern fallacy that human types are sprinkled in space at random, so that rapists are just as numerous in art galleries as they are in biker bars.
Knowing what I do about bears, I’d opt for a Hell’s Angel instead, any day.
The answer is based on a lifetime of having met more men than bears, and thus having more negative experiences with them. One might say that they have more positive experiences with them as well, but the way that the question is posed puts the idea of fear in front of them.
The experiment could be run another way, in which a short narrative is written about a woman hiking by herself and sees a man presented in a neutrally- described situation, about a pleasant walk on a warm, partly-cloudy day, thinking about whether it will rain and then introducing new elements such as “She sees a man slightly older than herself who is sitting on a rock at a trail junction” versus “she comes up to a trail junction and sees a bear.”
I think it would be even more pronounced in negative scenarios such as very cold weather or downpour, as you note in your own posing of the question. The sight of another human being would be at least a slight positive.
Researchers might prompt an even greater negative response if the scenario was one where men might well be dangerous, such as during an armed invasion or riot. Initial conditions matter for this question.
Women have no experience of bears. They have lots of experience with men, and a lot of it has been suboptimal. So, yeah, the description of the man matters a lot. “Which would you rather encounter in the woods, a bear or Brad Pitt?” “Which would you rather encounter in the woods, a bear or Harvey Weinstein?”
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I think the more difficult question is whether you would rather encounter a bear or a feminist on a forest path.
Hah! LOL.
Well, feminists are utterly harmless, qua threats to life or limb. So, I’ll choose the feminist.
She won’t like it, though …
In so doing, I shall reassure myself – perhaps quixotically – that, her concerns being by nature far more abstract and less immediate than those of any bear, I may deal with the particular sorts of hazards she portends to my person later, and more deliberately.
God help me.