"Carry a whistle to let your man know a bear came by"

... I heard that advice for women about camping in the (American, bear infested) wilderness.

Does the bear turn around and say "oh, sorry, I didn't mean to freak you out to the point that you're whistling, so I'll be off then."?

So the bloke is expected to run along and rescue the woman like tarzan?

What if the man is incapacitated?

Is it his fault if he doesn't know where you are or you are too far away to be reached?

What would happen if all men carried a whistle too, and didn't bother to take any precautions other than a whistle to summon somebody else to deal with the problem?

If you're really worried about bears, surely the responsible thing is to be vigilant and trained to deal with the danger? - not simply offloading the problem on a man.

I hate this kind of presumption. Wonder off to somewhere risky with a tool to summon a rescuer when the self-inflicted risk goes bad. I _hate_ that attitude.

Bears are cowards, it's probably a way to trick women into using something that'll actually scare the bear off since there are a lot of people who probably wouldn't believe that loud noises will send grizzlies running for the hills.

My sympathy is with the bear. It just goes around minding it's own business and then this woman starts screaming and whistling. Then a man with a gun shows up and tries to kill it.

Penn and Teller do have an interesting gun safety idea though: