I didn’t follow any of this, it was forced down my throat :
Random Twitter woman says she’d rather be with a bear than a man while in the woods.
Some men gets angry that she’d rather be with a dengerous wild beast rather than a man.
the Woman double down. Other women agree with her.
it becomes a meme. Mostly by men making fun of how it would end if she really meets a bear or making jokes about how even the bear wouldn’t want to be near her.
Tl;Dr: a meme went around asking women if they’d rather be stuck on an isolated island with a strange man or a strange bear. Most women chose the bear, largely due to the bear being more predictable and easier to deal with than a man inclined to do them harm, which, based on the experience of most women, is a whole lot of men.
Fragile men took this as an attack on all men everywhere and were offended at being “called a predator”.
There’s a pretty good thread in my comment history where I try to address the issue with one such fellow male and their response is about what you’d expect, confirming all the reasons why women chose the strange bear over the strange man
That gender disputes reached such an explosive level, that women say they’d rather a bear join them than a man and that man get super upset over this. There’s a little truth in everything. Imagine trying your hardest as a man and still being told ppl prefer a wild animal over you. Imagine knowing as a woman you can’t trust men to the point where you’d prefer a wild and dangerous animal keep you company. And also imagine hating another gender with such a deep passion that a meme becomes a toxic war of insult and discrediting.
I think you hit on something that is a pretty big part of the problem: Men taking it personally. As far as I know, no specific man is mentioned, but a lot seem to insert themselves into the situation.
I try to do my best in life to be a good person, to be a good man, but I completely get why a woman would be worried about being in the middle of nowhere with a strange man, even if that man was me, because they don’t know what that person is capable of.
Like, I understand why some people might answer that way. And as a dude, it makes me sad that it’s such an apparently omnipresent societal problem these days.
Oh so if someone says ‘black people are dangerous thugs, I’d rather encounter a bear than a removed’, it’s all good, a black person shouldn’t take it personally? After all, no specific black person is mentioned. Come on, just be a good ally, stfu and nod.
I am willing to bet many, many people wouldn’t be ok with that, and rightfully so. I know I would not.
That is, at least to me, is both a bit of a strawman and an invalid comparison.
First: The statement “black people are” implies it applies to all of them, or at least the average person, whereas the sentiment that I usually see isn’t that all men are dangerous but rather that some are and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know which are beforehand.
Second: Men have not been marginalized, discriminated, and systematically oppressed for centuries. People of color have been, at the very least in the west and the countries they’ve colonized.
There’s an additional point to be made here that I feel is relevant: Ethnicity does not inherently infer a large difference in physical characteristics the same way biological sex does. I don’t imagine the strength of an average person varies as much depending on ethnicity as it does depending on biological sex. The average man is much physically stronger than the average woman, in a physical confrontation she’d be at a distinct disadvantage.
Don't forget it's literally a very slight rewording of a common racist one, but that's different. For reasons. "Rather run into a black man or a bear (or wolf, or other dangerous animal)" has been asked by racists for years.
Punching up and punching down are extremely different and your comparison is deeply disingenuous.
Black men don’t hold positions of power in society simply by being black. Black men don’t get off with nothing but a slap on the wrist for serial sexual assault because “we don’t want to ruin the promising life he has ahead of him”.
Because the stereotype of crossing the street when heading towards a black men isn’t a thing? Just because you don’t believe it don’t make it untrue. I bet if you’d honestly be surprised. But your probably still shocked when a priest molests a child.
You didn’t read his response correctly, and your response comes off as nonsense because of this. Replace black with white, and the comparison is more accurate. Understand the dynamics between oppressor and the oppressed, and the different ways similar rhetorics are used to muddy the waters to create disingenuous conversations. “It’s sexist because women are saying men are scary” is a bad take.
The whole point of it is to show that most women are irrationally afraid of men. So many immediately assume the bear is somehow good and the man is somehow evil when the stats for reality show the complete opposite.
Edit: (Yikes, I feel sorry for all of you. Not sure if it’s white knights, too much death scrolling on the internet, or the weird woke Lemmy culture.)
They are probably pretty rational about men. I think they like bears a bit too much. Bears are the scariest thing on earth. 2/7ths of our continents are named as bear warnings.
So youve never seen a bear in the woods? Hint: if you see a bear, its probably brown, and you’re in a heap of trouble. Best hope you’re in a car or something like that. They will eat you alive if they can get at you.
Gods, it’s like some people never passed 10th grade English. Sometimes the important part of the text isn’t the literal meaning. There’s like metaphor and hyperbole and shit.
When you meet a bear in the woods, there is a 0% chance they will notice how the situation bears a resemblance to the popular meme and proceed to mansplain about how bears are more dangerous.
This is and has always been the one and only reason women choose the bear. But one question yet eludes us: how did the cycle start?
Dude was going around asking if theyd rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. There isnt much hidden meaning behind it, its not a 4deep2me tumblr post
Edit/preface: none of this is intended to diminish the very real and valid sense of fear that women may feel towards unknown/untrusted men. I am in no way trying to gatekeep other people’s emotions, nor saying women should “toughen up” or whatever. If my comment was construed as such, I apologize.
It’s a bit of a silly premise, because I’m willing to bet the VAST majority of answerers have never been in close proximity to an actual, honest to god, “hmmm that meatbag looks tasty imma eat its face” bear.
I have. It’ll bring you a clarity of mind and a knowledge of complete vulnerability that you can’t really find outside of other imminently life-threatening situations.
Sure, random dude could be a psycho. But if there’s not much (or any) food on the island, the bear is definitely going to eat you at some point, and there’s nothing you can do about that.
All that said, as a dude myself, I wish there were less shitty men out there. Why can’t we all just fucking respect other humans?
It’ll bring you a clarity of mind and a knowledge of complete vulnerability that you can’t really find outside of other imminently life-threatening situations.
Thanks to that experience now you know how women feel very often, sometimes multiple times in the same day. It’s something they learn to live with their whole lives.
It’s not hyperbole. They’re not making light of the danger. When women say “I’d rather meet a bear” they really mean it. It’s the same feeling, but it would happen extremely rarely instead of daily.
A) it’s much less about whether the bear is a bigger threat and much more about how fucking awful men must treat women for the average woman to go “hmmm… Maybe the bear, tbh?” The fact that it’s even something women have to think about for more than a split second is a dramatic failure of our society. THAT is the point, and any discussion of “well you don’t know about bears then…” is reply-guy shit that misses the entire point and simply serves to further solidify how blind most men are to what goes on in the day to day life of women.
B) An aggressive bear is a known quantity. Is it a threat? Obviously. But it’s a threat that we understand extremely well. Like, a quick Google search will teach you everything you need to know about what to do if you see a bear. But a strange, unknown man? Who the fuck knows. They might seem perfectly pleasant and reasonable, act like your friend, and then flip the fuck out when the woman refuses to sleep with him that night in return for all that manly protection he provided during the day or whatever. THAT is why women pick the bear: a known problem is often preferable to uncertainty that could lead to being extremely vulnerable against a really smart attacker.
Remember, the question wasn’t “would you rather be in a locked room with a bear or a man?” It was “would you rather be stuck on an island with a strange bear or a strange man?”
And to your final question, why can’t we just respect other humans? Great fucking question, but the misogynists should be the ones facing that inquiry, not the people on the internet trying to point you towards them. It may be more uncomfortable and even dangerous to confront them, but don’t take the easy way out by asking victims and their allies to be “nicer” instead
Considering no one I’ve met so far that I’ve told “a grizzly bear can bend steel bars” knows that - no, most people don’t know much about bears, or how dangerous a bear is. Heck most don’t know how fast a bear can run or swim. Heck there’s people who constantly get injured or killed because they want to pet a wild bear.
This doesn’t negate point A that you made, but the other huge factor is, most women, men, and everything in between don’t really know much about bears, or have been exposed to bears, and that’s a gigantic reason why so many women picked the bear too. Heck, your point B proves that - you clearly don’t understand the threat, or you’d know that it’s not a threat, it’s a death sentence. You are not, in virtually any scenario of being stuck on an island with a ever growingly hungry bear, going to live. You can’t swim away, you can’t climb a tree to escape. You’d have a much better chance of killing an openly hostile man than surviving a wild bear. You basically just said “yeah, I know how missiles work, they fly in the air and go boom when they land - that’s why I can survive a missile”.
And the question was designed to create this divide, because had this question instead been with something that IS perceived as more dangerous (like, would you rather be stuck in the middle of a large pool with a shark of a man), it wouldn’t have received the same amount of replies, since sharks are seen and portrayed as scarier than bears. It wasn’t designed to actually improve society, it was designed to drive another wedge and make us forget that the real danger is the wealthy and corporations that literally kill and poison us daily.
Does the question say “with a bear, in an enclosed space, where the bear only has you as a source of food?” No, it didn’t. Your entire argument is based on “women - and people like you - are dumb and don’t know what they’re talking about if they think men are less scary than bears.” But the truth is, YOU don’t understand the question being posed. You are literally doing the thing that people have a problem with. You aren’t asking questions. You aren’t seeking clarification. You aren’t giving the benefit of the doubt. You aren’t trying to understand. You aren’t doing anything to indicate that you aren’t exactly the reason why so many women picked the bear.
You could have said all of this in a way that wasn’t being an ass. But you chose not to. Thank you for self-identifying as part of the problem.
Does the question also say “on an island, the size of Ireland”? If you’re going to argue in bad faith, we can be here all day, because if it’s just you and some man in Madagascar, you’re equally as safe as sharing that island as with a bear or much anything really.
But then, you knew that and are being purposefully obtuse, since “island” type questions are usually about being in a limited amount of space (btw - bears hunt in forests, known not enclosed spaces, so kinda still proving my point most people really don’t understand the danger a bear poses).
Either way, you’re falling for the trap I just mentioned. It’s not to further discussion on the problem, because it doesn’t actually address the problem. Secondly, there’s no reason I need to prove I’m the “reason” so many women picked the bear. That’s a logical fallacy designed to inflame, not unite. And at it’s core, you’re proving what some have said, and showing how this question is malicious - it’s designed to paint men as bad by default, rather that what the real problem is - statistically more likely to be abusive than the other sex. And before you misinterpret that, statistically significant ≠ everyone. It means to practice caution, of course, because the problem is there. It doesn’t mean assume every single man will be evil, because then you won’t be able to have healthy relationships (and I’m not even talking romantic ones here, but familial, social, professional) if by default you assume you will be in danger. That is, after all, the only logical conclusion to thinking a random man is more dangerous than one of the strongest predatory mammals on earth.
That you then dismiss someone simply because they didn’t tow some now created narrative is exactly what identity politics also wants. Because then you’re not open to dialogue that might fix the problem, and you’re also preventing focus from the true root of virtually all modern societal issues: the wealthy ruling class. They are, end of the day, the ones that tip the scales of power so that things are the way they are.
Just as one example - does roe v Wade being overturned help in any way with the current fear many women have of men? No, it doesn’t, because now rape becomes even more horrific without access to abortion. So why would Republicans appoint members to a supreme court that would do such a thing?
Well, we don’t have to guess, because they’ve even said the quiet part out loud - to create more cheap human labor for the economy. And that’s not the only thing it does - it’s harder for a worker taking care of a child to quit a job where she’s being mistreated or underpaid. It’s harder for her to risk her job to join a union.
And that’s just one part of the multifaceted issue that is (especially American) women being afraid of men in general, regardless of the bear or not. And it, like most societal issues, come back to the wealthy ruling class. But instead of that, they’ve managed to get people like you to play identity politics. Solve the real problem - an oligarchy that wants people divided - and most of the other issues go away.
This furthering of a perception of men being more dangerous than a bear is just another scheme to prevent us from working together.
Yikes. That’s a while lot of words just to show exactly how much you are part of the problem.
This isn’t about you. It was never about you. Your desire to pivot this to a class issue is some hardcore mansplaining. Get over yourself and listen to victims instead of thinking you know better than everyone.
I’m pretty sure that almost none of the men who were offended have spent time in an enclosed area with an angry human who is a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than they are.
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