So, I’m just assuming we’ve all seen the discussions about the bear.
Personally I feel that this is an opportunity for everyone to stop and think a little about it.
The knee-jerk reaction from many men seems to be something along the lines of “You would choose a dangerous animal over me? That makes me feel bad about myself.” which results in endless comments of the “Akchully… according to Bayes theorem you are much more likely to…” kind.
It should be clear by now that it doesn’t lead to good places.
Maybe, and I’m open to being wrong, but maybe the real message is women saying: “We are scared of unknown men.”
Then, if that is the message intended, what do we do next? Maybe the best thing is just to listen. To ask questions. What have you experienced to make you feel that way?
I firmly believe that the empathy we give lays a foundation for other people being willing to have empathy for the things we try to communicate.
It doesn’t mean we should feel bad about ourselves, but just to recognize that someone is trying to say something, and it’s not a technical discussion about bears.
What do you think?
If men were a minority group, this would lead to calls for the male community to police itself and report suspicious behaviour to the authorities.
women aren’t a minority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group
In terms of sociology, economics, and politics, a demographic that takes up the smallest fraction of the population is not necessarily labelled the “minority” if it wields dominant power. In the academic context, the terms “minority” and “majority” are used in terms of hierarchical power structures.
This is why I like the term “marginalised group.” But maybe it has its own definition that I’m not using correctly or something
Made me realize (hyperbole) how literal people are, how ready some are to dig their heels in and not interested in listening at all. If one ever had a conversation with a women (hyperbole), the unsafe feeling is something that comes up pretty often (I guess the women has to feel safe around you - so maybe there is that) and is sadly based on personal negative experiences they had.
I read somewhere and like to mention it to other guys when it comes up in conversation about the difference between a man’s and woman’s greatest fear on a date.
The man is usually scared of being laughed at or rejected. The woman is usually scared of being killed.
It kinda puts things into perspective for me.
I agree, This polarization is something I wish we had a strategy against. Or, at least, the knowledge to identify something as likely to result in heel-digging. The reason I believe we should discuss this meme here is not to figure out the statistics of wildlife, but to gain insights about how certain things affect us, and what type of response is desired and helpful.
At least for me the question is how to talk to people who don’t want to listen. And the easiest answer is obviously not to, but that does not work in long term since it just enforces the existing echo chambers.
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
There was a thing where a woman said that she would feel more safe in a forest with a random bear than with a random man. Then the people who would comment on this type of thing commented, then the kinds of people who comment on the comments did their thing.
Ah.
Thanks.
It might feel something is “known by everyone” when one sees a thing frequently, but usually, it isn’t…
The internet is large and there is no way that everyone sees all of the same things as each other, especially when most of the “conversation” about the topic happens on a different platform.
For those that haven’t seen it, the bear meme is an article some lady wrote. A majority of women would rather be alone in the woods with a random bear, than a random man. Then she posted about getting hate mail for that.
Oh I read it as beer and was confused for a while
I would love to be in the woods with beer.
The “random” part does really take the fun out of it though.
Free beer is my favorite brand.
That’s an interesting assumption.
If your first assumption is wrong then this is just a weird and rambling post. That is somehow about bears.
Just look it up
Yeah I absolutely still don’t understand what this supposed Bear meme thing is… like I guess some girl chose to be in a room with a bear instead of in a room with a man? Was it just a meme? I have no idea what is going on or why everyone is so upset about it it seems like something to just divert attention away from something else
A bear is a known a danger and really doesn’t care about you unless you piss it off. In fact, loud noises might just scare it away even if a brown bear.
While most men are probably safe enough to have around, enough are unsafe or just generally give off that vibe that women don’t want to be alone with them and a loud noise won’t scare them away. You might “know” you’re safe but they have zero reason to trust you.
Sure she might get someone who wants to work together to be mutually safe and will make efforts to leave her be otherwise, but she might also get someone who stands just a bit too close, who starts trying to “help” just a bit physically, or even who starts to get frustrated when they don’t get some kind of reward for just being some minimum level of decent. And if they’re really unlucky they get someone who just sees the isolation of the situation as an opportunity.
The bear is a known quantity. The man could be anything and there are far too many examples of every part of the spectrum. At least the bear won’t sexually assault her even at the worst.
Well that’s just ridiculous… a bear is a wild animal who will fucking maul you to death and eat you and doesn’t care about you at all … a man is a human being, and human beings can be reasoned with… I don’t knoooooowwwwww… this whole thing just, again, sounds like a way to get the masses riled up about something that really doesn’t matter and doesn’t really even make any kind of logical sense really in the grand scheme of things… it just seems like something to argue about for argument’s sake… it’s a good debate topic but that’s about it… be it resolved that men are worse than bears?? LOL I don’t know whole thing is kind of silly to me… but thank you so much for your explanation of it
It’s rage bait. It just a polarizing content meant to rile up the masses and make us argue and bicker. It takes some societal grievances and amplifies them needlessly.
Well it sure worked haha even on Lemmy good old social conditioning
There’s plenty of polarizing content, especially online. I think it’s a good idea to talk about how we react to it. There are reactions which amplify the polarization, but perhaps also reactions that bring people together in understanding each other? At least I hope so. I just don’t know what is best, to ignore suspected bait, to argue a point, to listen, to call out bad faith actors. I don’t know.
I like how they took the time to explain it extremely well as to why us women feel this way, and your response was simply “lol nah that’s bullshit”.
I’d much rather run into a bear in the woods than run into a man like you in the woods.
Wildly enough… get ready for this one… I’m a chick. I took the time to say thank you so much for explaining it. But you can’t honestly genuinely tell me that you would rather be faced with a literal wild bear from actual nature, than another human being… that’s something for a therapist and not for the internet… and if you’re one of those chicks who genuinely feels that terrified of men, you need to speak to somebody because it’s not natural. And if you’re one of those chicks that gets wildly crazily madly offended to the point where they think they’d rather be trapped in a room with a wild animal with teeth and Claws that see you as food then be around another human being with an opinion, you also need a therapist, because it’s the internet. It’s not life or death… which it absolutely would be with a whole actual bear in the room.
A bear wouldn’t possibly beat or torture me or rape me. A bear wouldn’t try to kidnap me and lock me in its basement as its personal sex slave. A man might. A bear would simply try to eat me or run away, it’s predictable. But go off about how it’s totally safe to run into a strange man in the woods as a woman. 🙄
As a guy, I don’t know shit about women, but bears are absolutely famous for being unpredictable. That’s why they’re considered dangerous. Not like moose, which are dangerous for being gigantic and incredibly dumb.
Bears also love in the woods, so it’s pretty normal for bears to be there. There’s a decent chance it’s just minding its business. I wouldn’t want to be around a bear, but I also wouldn’t want to be around a man with bad intentions.
Humans are also absolutely famous for being unpredictable, fwiw
…yikes. Have fun living in your world. So glad I don’t live there.
I see you’re one of the 2/3 of women who haven’t been sexually assaulted by a man. That’s good, I’m glad for you. But, as a man and in view of those statistics, I have to say it’s entirely justified for most women to prefer the bear.
That there is not true as well… I’ve been assaulted more than most. I’ve been a sex worker. But I’ve also been in the woods and seen what an actual bear looks like and did not fucking stick around. It’s a bear… I don’t know what everybody doesn’t get about that it’s a bear.
Alright, so I’m on team “alone in the woods with a bear”, but since you want to talk statistics, let’s talk statistics and the heteronormativity embedded in your statistics.
The figure I’m familiar with is that 1/4 of women have been sexually assaulted. Maybe you have a figure that says 1/3, that’s fine. But crucially, these figures do not say who did it. What you’ve made is an assumption that women only get sexually assaulted by men. Personally, I think that the vast, vast majority of sexual assaults on women are done by men. But not all. I don’t believe you can transfer those two statistics - women sexually assaulted and women sexually assaulted by a man - 1:1.
Let me explain where I’m coming from. Half of transgender and nonbinary people have been sexually assaulted. That’s double the number of women! This factor, double, is consistent across sources I’ve seen that investigate both figures with the same methodology. You might have a source that says 1/3 of women are sexually assaulted, that’s fine, but the ones that investigate rates for both women and trans people say it’s twice as many trans people.
I could go ahead and assume, if I wanted, that half of all trans people have been sexually assaulted by a cis person. That’s the same assumption you made that 1/3 or 1/4 of women have been sexually assaulted by a man. But it’s a bad assumption. I know lots of trans people who’ve been sexually assaulted, and most of the time it was by a fellow trans person. You see, trans people have our own community that’s isolated from the cisgender dating scene as a matter of safety, and that means isolated, lonely people let their guard down around fellow transes and the victims can’t get away from their abusers, nor are trans friends of trans abusers willing to give up a social network in which the abuser is embedded. It’s messy and disgusting and it wouldn’t be a problem if cis people just accepted us, but it’s where we are. I would be wrong to assume all rapists of trans people are cis people.
And I read way too deep into your comment and got a vibe that you were making the assumption that all sexual abusers of women are men. You probably don’t actually think that and didn’t mean to make any kind of implication along those lines. So I’m just leaving this comment as a general reminder not to use heteronormativity to inform our statistical analyses.
and it’s entirely justified for a devout religious person to avoid sin.
and i will think they are an asshole if they go around telling me how sinful and awful i am for not believing what they believe.
It’s just a way to illustrate how a lot of women feel around men. No one is actually going into the woods to meet a bear.
It’s not a maybe, that’s literally the entire point of the message. Unknown men are all too often kinda shitty because we have zero systems in place to teach men how to be good people and many systemic ways in which we’re told that we’re automatically better. We’re generally physically bigger, generally stronger, and, for the most part, taught to be entitled to a woman we happen to fancy.
But yes, you’ve read it correctly and we shouldn’t be getting upset but instead working on making ourselves more trustworthy. And it won’t happen in our lifetimes but it’ll be progress.
Who teaches you that you’re entitled to a woman you fancy?
Andrew Tate
Traditional Western media. The hero always gets the girl?
Le Roman de la Rose, a mediaeval French poem that informed the tropes of western heterosexual media for the last thousand years.
I think a lot of men believe “I’m one of the good ones” and don’t stop to think that a random woman on the street (or in the woods, in this case) has no way of determining that.
I had a pretty pivotal experience around this realization when I was in my late teens. A buddy of mine and I were driving around town running errands, and we ended up driving past this same woman a couple of times like miles apart. At one point, I rolled down my window and asked if she needed a ride. The look on her face broke part of me. She was terrified of me. I’d never been looked at like that before.
I was so nieve at that point in my life. It never even occurred to me how horrifying 2 guys you don’t know rolling up and trying to get you in their car might be. Neither of had any bad intentions…it was hot as hell out, and we figured she’d been walking for miles at that point. But none of that matters…we were like clumsy giants destroying a village we wanted to visit because we never considered the fact that we were just too big.
I still feel bad when I think about it and that was 20 years ago.
I went on a date with a woman many years ago and we had dinner. It’s was clear we weren’t vibing but we had a polite dinner and chatted and on the way out insisted I could drive her home instead of her taking an Uber like she did to get there. I offered a couple times and she agreed. I dropped her off and watched from the car to make sure she made it inside. I had good intentions and didn’t intended to do anything more than drop her off. But man looking back, I wish I would have just waited with her for the Uber to show up. I bet that was uncomfortable for her.
I think you might be right in that idea. One time I was out with my wife at a club show. She got a little too drunk and stumbling. I was walking her out of the club to pick up the metro and go home, when some chick stopped us (her) and whispered something in my wife’s ear.
My wife responded “No, it’s good. He’s my husband.” When I asked my wife what was that about and she told me that she was “checking to make sure I knew you.” My first response was “oh yeah that makes sense. Men suck.” I was low-key glad they checked on my wife though. They had no way of knowing if “I’m one of the good ones.”
Did they apologize to you afterwards? If not then that’s what’s fucked up about this whole situation in society. You can’t treat a person that you just suspected was a harasser like wind after you do it, and excuse it with “men are shitty, so I’m forgiven for my own shitty behaviour towards the good ones”.
It’s worth to know that nobody is ever infallible. I’ve always thought that same thing, “I’m a good guy.”. But I’ve learned that it’s better to think, “i may think I’m a good guy, but I need to be careful about how I come off,” because I have said some fucked up things without realizing it.
Like, I have genuinely made some people uncomfortable without me realizing it, and I’ve been trying hard to be more aware of not only the situation I’m putting someone in, but the vibes I’m giving off.
You get it
and plenty of women who think they are ‘the good ones’ are an abusive psycho. and men have no way of knowing until they are abused by her.
And George Washington Carver was genius with peanuts. Whats that got to do with the topic at hand?
i had to google this because i am not a tiktok-er, and apparently women (? sample size?) are commonly stating that they would rather encounter a bear than a man if they were alone in the woods
interesting point that men often also chose the bear for the question of if they would rather have their wife / daughter stuck in the woods with a bear or a man, so that says a lot about men, as well, i think
we can derive some other mildly interesting points from this, like viewing sexual violence as potentially worse than non-sexual but fatal violence. or like, that one might have to live with societal judgement of having been sexually assaulted because there’s still a lot of assumptions that you initiated it somehow (rape culture) vs people universally having sympathy for the victim of an animal attack
overall, the unfortunate reality is that women generally view men or people who look like men as dangerous. i’m a transgender man and i’ve observed this phenomenon in a very real way as women have gone from generally friendly or neutral to detached. it sucks, but it’s not personal
however, if this really bothers you, there are actually some things you can do to help women feel more comfortable around you. this is not like… a guarantee. at the end of the day, you’re gonna have to live with jumpscaring some women if you round a corner too quick at them. that’s how life is. but, if you want to give them some signs you are not a violent person, not as a way to trick them into trusting you, but as a genuine attempt to help them feel safe:
if you change your style to be more feminine, even in subtle ways, like wearing a pink shirt or pink shoes. if you have a man purse. you don’t really need to go full femme but if you express yourself in a way that makes you look like someone secure in your masculinity (actual), it will help women understand you’re not really a threat
which i think, generally, reflects that women understand that patriarchy isn’t about men as a whole, but rather that most men haven’t confronted the ideas they were raised with in order to “be a man”, and those are the dangerous ideas they need to avoid to be safe
i think there is also an idea that expressing yourself as a softer or more feminine man will make it harder for you to get laid, and i think this may be true. however, i would suggest that women who only wanna fuck you because you’re traditionally masculine are not really the women you wanna be fucking, because they’re (probably) going to bring their own ideas of toxic masculinity to enforce on you. those are the women who are more concerned with whether or not e.g. you can change the oil on their car, that you are a “real man”, and hopefully it goes without saying that those are the ideas you want to avoid reinforcing / internalizing, even if that means turning down a sexual partner
You also have a much better chance of scaring off a pursuing bear than a pursuing man.
Then, if that is the message intended, what do we do next?
Fuck off.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. - Maya Angelou
If a woman tells you you threaten her more than a wild bear does, fucking listen, then fuck off. She is actively telling you you frighten her more than a fucking polar or grizzly. Why would you stick around? Do you enjoy terrifying people? Show some fucking respect and leave her alone forever, like she literally just asked you to. As a free bonus, you’ll never have to hear her say it to you again.
Maybe it depends on the type of bear.
If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s white, say good night (RIP).
On the other side of things, there’s probably the context. Some women would never go into the woods at all, so if they’re there with a strange man, things are probably going to get bad.
But if there’s a bear, they’re probably alone, and just need to leave the area. The bear lives in the woods (unless it’s a polar bear), and it’s probably minding its own business.
Maybe what depends on the type of bear? Because the context is what a man should do when a woman tells him she’d rather be near a bear than him.
I’d love to hang out with a sun bear.
Sun bears are shy and reclusive animals, and usually do not attack humans unless provoked to do so, or if they are injured or with their cubs; their timid nature led these bears to be often tamed and kept as pets in the past
Definitely would rather be in the woods with a strange sun bear than a strange man. What if he tries to get me into Magic The Gathering?
But she’s not telling me, is she? She’s telling every man everywhere, forever. I can’t do anything with that information, except wonder if she’s calling for all men and women to be strictly segregated for women’s safety. At which point you’ve gone so far into nth-wave feminism that you’ve arrived at Saudi society as as model.
It’s woman specific, because she can’t speak for any woman but her, and her rights matter no more than yours do, if you’re concerned about situations where you both want or need to be in the same space.
IME the women who do this are the one who are the predators.
so yeah, if a unhinged lady goes off on me how i’m a huge threat to her, i do fuck off, because she’s probably a psycho. normal, well adjusting folks don’t go off on random strangers minding their own business.
I hike all the time. Nobody says more than a polite hi, or a wave or nod. men and women, solo, or in groups.
My take is that the people that would benefit the most from the introspection this hypothetical is meant to illicit are the furthest from being able to take it to heart. It works better as a way to make the worst people around you out themselves, so now you know to avoid them.
My grandparents would say something similar to this TikToker about certain “kinds” of people, and I rightfully consider them fucking abhorrent for it. I consider someone who would unironically say this kind of shit to be the same kind of abhorrent.
Okay so what you’re getting at is that this kind of speech is violent. It acknowledges a conflict and seeks to further a particular side through the adoption of defensive behaviours and attitudes. And you’re taking a position that all violence is bad. But you’re wrong. Violence, as you and I are defining it here, is a necessary part of self defence. Violence in self defence can put a stop to violence in aggression. A pacifist who is concerned with all violence, rather than just their own, has a moral obligation to defend the weak, using violence if necessary.
Your racist grandparents were members of the oppressor class, seeking to do violence against the oppressed, and were therefore contributing to the cycle of violence. But the woman who wrote this article, is trying to stop the cycle of violence by engaging in a defensive form of violence against an oppressor class in response to violence by that class. That’s not the same thing.
If you took it personally, you might be part of the problem
I take it personally because I hate that this is the world we’re living in. I’ve been all too aware my whole life of the concern women can have around men, including me, and I’ve always done my best to mitigate that, and try and make other men understand too.
I take it personally because I’ve been living with this knowledge for decades and nothing seems to be getting better, and this conversation makes me sad because I wish, I wish with all my heart that it wasn’t the case.
I take it personally because I hate that this is the world we’re living in
Literally not personal. It’s not about you, specifically.
So am I not allowed to have feelings of sadness because I am personally painted with the same brush as people who make the world a worse place, and their actions lead me to be judged by the bar they set?
You can feel sad. I’m also unhappy about how I’m often viewed as a threat.
But it’s not personal. They’re not looking at me, jjj, and saying I specifically scare them.
Maybe you meant something else by “take it personally”?
Like there’s a difference between not being allowed into the bar because it’s full and because you got drunk and smashed a chair last time. The second is personal.
no, it’s just not personal. unless the Q was “would you rather be with kat_angstrom or bear”
depends - as a related question - do you feel sad about locking your door because thieves exist and people didn’t lock their doors until about 80-90 years ago?
would you and do you leave your door unlocked as a sign of solidarity with the victims of theft?
like with the original question I’m not literally asking you - I’m saying there are accepted norms in society that change.
I dont think this question really explores a lot of global or historical context either. Do women in the 1890s in Africa feel safe alone with men? What about women in 1620s France? 1200 Roman empire? 200 BC Jordan?
It does make me feel sad that I need to lock my doors. I wish we lived in a world with more empathy and compassion, where all people could live with unlocked doors, or wander around at night without fear.
The historical context is fascinating, because it really shows how far we’ve come. We’ve still got a long way to go; but we really have made great strides. Here’s to a world where bears aren’t the preferred option, maybe in a century.or two we can get there. :)
Yeah, it seems the guys that heard this and just said “yeah, that tracks” have already done the thought process/critical analysis that this movement is trying to evoke
Or just gay? You’re being an ass.
As one commenter stated perfectly well, the problem with “man or bear” posts is that in subtext it introduces the hostility and division towards men.
It’s not just women discussing their fears, it’s women signaling “men are more dangerous than bears”.
And this rightfully insults and angers many men, as it is a direct attack based on a wide immutable identity that omits any nuance.
Such posts do not promote any understanding of the situation, do not explore any root causes, and, from what I’ve gathered, comment threads are full of people telling men to shut up, either because “it’s not about them” or because “women’s safety are more important than men’s feelings” (as if those posts promote women safety).
This is not alright.
Seeing all these comments that actually get it gives me hope for us dudes. I interact with so many dudebro types at work, and only have so much energy. And then coming onto Lemmy and seeing the same shit - it gets demoralizing real quick.
We gotta get dudes out of their own heads somehow - make them actually think about how they’re affecting those around them, and get them to expand the number of ways they positively affect their local sphere and minimize the negative ways.
There is hope, I think. I wanted to have sort of a meta-discussion about the question from a mens lib point of view. Like, this thing is circulating, it seems to be making many people upset, what is a healthy way to interpret or react to it?
I think it’s to have the conversation with those close to us that felt offended in a measured, methodical fashion. I find that it often seems completely foreign for some of the guys I’ve talked to put themselves into someone else’s shoes.
It is a slog quite often, and I think that there is some kind of training out there for having these kinds of conversations.
As always, it’s about talking to these people without getting them offended. I agree with other leftists that it’s absolutely exhausting - it honestly feels like some of these dudes want nothing but to feel like the victim of the situation sometimes. I still try and talk them through it when I can.
it honestly feels like some of these dudes want nothing but to feel like the victim of the situation sometimes.
A part of this could be to recognize that they too might be trying to communicate something, wanting people to listen. The stalemate of mutual lack of listening. It’s really a tricky, circular thing, and probably it’s hard to just say “shut up and listen” to either side, when a precondition for listening is having trust that the other one will listen too.
I’m interested in increasing this trust between people. I also recognize that there is a level of feeling dismissed within me that makes me care less about others, and I assume that others could have that too.
If we could figure out a way to be at least a net positive in building trust and listening, then, well, step by small step, reinforcing the mutual feeling of trust, that would be good.
But sometimes it just feels impossible.
