Predictability Fallacy?

The Man vs Bear debate has exploded across social media, in particular TikTok over the question of women's safety and violence against women. It's become really popular and it has been argued as a question of probabilities and its being used to say that women are so unsafe now they're rather fight a bear than be with men.

It goes like this in rhetoric form:
"At the end of the day, women can trust a bear to be a bear, but can’t trust a human man to be humane."

And in math form it goes like this:
A: I run into either a bear or a man in the woods.
B: Bears are predictable, violent men are not.
C: Therefore, I rather take the chance with the bear because they're predictable.

What kind of fallacy is there?

The sources are below
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/man-vs-bear-debate-reactions/
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/man-vs-bear-tiktok-question-women-rcna151081
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/us/man-bear-safety-tiktok-question-cec/index.html

"At the end of the day, women can trust a bear to be a bear, but can’t trust a human man to be humane."

In other words, there's a 100% possibility that a bear will be a bear, but a <100% possibility that a man will be humane ('act morally').

The suggestion is that a man being inhumane is harmful, while a bear being a bear carries no harm at all. Given that part of the nature of bears includes viciously killing prey (which may include humans, depending on the context in which they meet), I'd say this is more than a bit misleading.

But this whole 'man vs bear' debate is replete with logical fallacies in general. To use your syllogism:

A: I run into either a bear or a man in the woods.
B: Bears are predictable, violent men are not.
C: Therefore, I rather take the chance with the bear because they're predictable.

'Predictable' here is also misleading, like "being a bear". It's true that men, being capable of higher reasoning rather than being restricted to instinct, have a wider range of possible behaviours than bears. But that doesn't mean the probability of performing those behaviours is evenly distributed. An average man isn't as likely to kill or rape as he is to go out for a peaceful hike out in the woods. If a man does venture into the woods, chances are he's there for the same reasons the woman is. So while men in general are 'less predictable' than bears, this doesn't mean they're totally chaotic agents either.

Other fallacies/misunderstandings include not grasping per capita stats/base rates (the abundance of male attacks against women compared to bear attacks against women does not comment on the relative danger of running into either a bear or a man as a woman - there are far more man-woman encounters than bear-woman encounters), misleading vividness (focusing on a small number of vivid cases of men attacking women instead of trends) and in general, a lack of experience with bears.

I would say this is a statistical fallacy (generic category of fallacies). Put this way:

1) There is say a 25% chance a bear would attack a woman in the woods.
2) There is maybe a 1% chance a male stranger would attack a woman in the woods.
Therefore, a woman is much better off running into a male stranger in the woods.

An argument can be made if the woman can avoid the encounter by knowing if a bear or a man . For example, if the woman would avoid the bear 100% of the time but not avoid the man, then (using my same numbers pulled out of my a**), the woman would never be attacked by a bear and would be attacked by a man 1 out of 100 times. In this case, she would be better off encountering the bear.

Ethically, there is a problem judging all men by the worst of the group (discrimination). But this is independent of the woman's safety. There is a cost to prevention. For example, a woman can hide in closet her whole life and never risk being attacked by a man. On a societal level, this avoidance further perpetuates the fear that men are dangerous and hurts the 99% of men who are not.

This reminds me of the fact that more people fear flying on planes than driving even though, statistically, it is far more likely to be injured and killed in a car accident. We are poor statistical thinkers and focus on examples that stick with us emotionally. Most women are not familiar with examples of bear attacks, but are with stories of abuse from human males, thus, come to the wrong conclusion emotionally, rather than the right conclusion through statistics, logic, and reason.

Whether this is a fallacy or not depends on how you interpret the word choices. The rephrased, and more precise:

A: I run into either a bear or a man in the woods.
B: Bears are predictable, violent men are not.
C: Therefore, I am less likely to be attacked by the bear because they're predictable.

Is making the mistake of confusing standard deviation/distribution spread with the mean/expected value (that said, as many have pointed out in response to this question elsewhere, "attacked" is not the only outcome here - if we're integrating over all possible outcomes rather than just immediate physical violence, it's not clear if E(Harm from Bear) > E(Harm from Man); rather pithily summed up, "the worst the bear can do is kill me").

In this particular statement, though, I think what's really being elided over is what is meant by "predictable". Rephrased:

A: I run into either a bear or a man in the woods.
B: My actions determine whether a bear is violent towards me, while men are violent or not regardless of my actions
C: Therefore, I would rather take the chance with the bear because I won't be an idiot that provokes it

Whether or not (B) is true is of course a matter for debate, but given that as a premise, the phrasing is not actually a fallacy specifically because in this phrasing the same person is making the choices in both A & B. If you replace "I" in A with "some oblivious clown from the suburbs", then the statement becomes more of a problem; I would probably call that a Rational Actor Fallacy (assuming that all people will act reasonably).