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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
This whole scenario makes total sense to me. Try to put yourself in the role of the woman:
Man vs bear, random encounter alone in the woods. Both can easily overpower and harm you.
With the bear, you know it’s one or the other, it either is going to be scared off by you yelling at it, or it’s not and it will very quickly kill you.
The man, if he intends no harm, cool. But if he does intend harm, it can be impossible to tell. He can lie to you, appear friendly and helpful, all the while plotting to harm you horrifically. The bear can have no such malice.
The bear will not target you because of your race, sex, political views, gender identity, sexuality, or nationality.
The bear won’t pretend to be your friend to lure you into a sense of false security. The bear won’t become enraged at something you say and all of a sudden turn on you.
The bear has no fragile sense of ego that it will attempt to assert if it feels you “wounded” it in some trivial way.
A bear cannot be brainwashed by toxic propaganda or cultural norms about gender roles. A bear will never have any sense of sexual entitlement.
A bear won’t drug you and assault you, a bear won’t call its friends to join in when you are vulnerable. A bear won’t hold blackmail against you after getting you drunk and manipulating you.
If all women had to do 99.99% of the time to scare away dangerous men was stand up tall, puff our their chests, and yell loudly, I doubt we would be having this conversation.
It would probably be pretty effective on men too, tho XD
If all women had to do 99.99% of the time to scare away dangerous men was stand up tall, puff our their chests, and yell loudly, I doubt we would be having this conversation.
Not a joke, actually. By and large, predatory men prey upon weak women. Women who are afraid of conflict, afraid of drawing attention to themselves. Gavin DeBecker, author of The Gift of Fear, wrote that one of the greatest things you can do in the case of being attacked is to very loudly and boldly reject their advances. “I TOLD YOU NO, LEAVE ME ALONE.” The vast majority will run away because they can’t be stealthy.
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
If you’ve spent any time alone in the woods, any gender would fear running into a sketchy person. I’ve had bear encounters. Only humans have made me wish I had a firearm to protect myself alone in the woods. I’m a man that can handle himself, and I still treat strange men as a threat.
I know more than one of these men that women would rather not take a chance with… The JR/AT/JP/TradWife/dudebro types. When I asked my girlfriend about the choices, she chose ‘bear’ immediately, and specifically called out someone we knew, saying, “Would YOU want me to encounter <dudebro> in the forest if I didn’t know him?” And she was right – I’d prefer she choose the bear…
And that’s tragically fucking sad that someone I know is so far down the ‘dudebro’ rabbit hole that I wouldn’t leave my GF alone with him in a compromised position.
Locker rooms have taught me a sizeable percent of men are literal monsters. Like maybe 1 in 10, if even a fraction of the shit I over hear is true.
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
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.
Bluntly, I wouldn’t want to have some lady I’ve never met, trapped in the forest with me either. Not because I’m a bad person, far from it.
I feel like I’d be rather handy if I was lost in a forest, but she wouldn’t know that.
Fact is, any lady weighing in on the discussion doesn’t have any reasonable guarantee or even a reasonable probability of getting someone half as helpful as me, and a nontrivial chance of getting a date rapist, so I get it. The worst that a bear would do is kill and eat them, and if they’re lucky, it’ll happen in that order. There are fates worse than death.
I don’t take any offense at someone answering “bear”. At all. It’s an age old question, of the devil that you know, versus the devil that you don’t. Sure, there’s a non-zero chance you’ll end up in the woods with bear grylls (or someone with a similar skillset), or Mr. Rogers (or similarly kind person), but the far more likely scenario is not that.
It’s not a statement against me personally as a male, it’s a statement about the average man. If that offends you, there’s a good chance that you’re part of the problem.
I’m not here to judge. So I’ll let you decide for yourself.
The fact is, unknown men is basically a gamble most aren’t willing to make. What can we do about it? Probably somewhere between Jack and squat. Unless we can “fix” the socially inept and creepy men, as well as the rapists, would-be (opportunistic) rapists, date rapists, and just all around shitty men, pretty much all at once, this stereotype isn’t going anywhere. Just be the change you want to see in the world, and try to encourage your brothers to be better.
There is a book I will mention that will get me downvoted to oblivion, but it is very relevant to this discussion. It is called “White Fragility” and it discusses the following phenomenon: When vulnerable groups express criticism of societal problems, individuals will take that criticism personally and redirect the conversation towards their feelings. This has the effect, whether intended or otherwise, of shutting out the voice of the vulnerable group and forestalling any meaningful change. The book identifies this phenomenon in discussions of race, but I hope you can identify the parallels.
Does it suggest any solutions? I totally see the parallel
I’m a cis het man, and I’d rather be stuck in a forest with a bear than a strange man.
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.
As someone who has suffered heavy physical and verbal abuse [including threats of false rape and even an instance where she said she’d hurt herself and tell everyone including the police I was the one who did it to her] from a female for 3 years and has since developed severe mental and trauma issues from it, if I said:
“If I was given a choice to be stranded in the woods with either a bear or a woman, I would choose the bear, because the bear wouldn’t accuse me of raping it if I ignored it.”
How would you feel? See, I’ve said this before, and I just got downvoted to oblivion because guys can’t be abused! It’s discrimination against women! It’s sexist. How dare you not support women! It invalidates their feelings and experience with abuse! Statistically, its more likely to happen to females, so we’re more understanding with their situations! HOWEVER, these same people are 100% all in on dogpiling any male with the audacity to say, “This is offensive. Not all men are like that!”, and they’re all too happy and eager to invalidate male experiences simply because it’s “Not as common.”
Which makes it pretty obvious at this point, to me at least, that comments like this stupid “bear” comment serve only one purpose: to shit on men, simply to shit in them. It’s MISANDRY but nobody wants to talk about it, because fuck men, we don’t deserve support, we don’t deserve validation and we don’t deserve any rights. As men, we are BIG and STRONG and TOUGH and SCARY. How DARE we want to be met equally when it comes to being abused. Just shake it off!
And there they are. The downvotes. Thanks for literally proving my point, folks.
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It’s a hill I will fucking die on.
“If I was given a choice to be stranded in the woods with either a bear or a woman, I would choose the bear, because the bear wouldn’t accuse me of raping it if I ignored it.”
Seem like you are actually in a place to understand from your own experience what women are trying to communicate with that whole bear thing. Next step would be to try to have an empathic connection instead of a defensive one. The anger and frustration are not directed at you as an individual but are an expression of experiences, those nuances are often lost in online, non personal communication. What helps is to have more personal communication, better in an offline environment.
I also have a similar experience, I was mugged at knife point and spit on by two adolescents. After that I was jumpy around groups of teens.
That said , I do not think my fear of teens was rational, neither was it healthy. Only a small minority of teens will mug people. Fearing a whole group for the actions of the few is in human nature, but it is something we must fight against.
I mean what is the end goal if women are in fear of men ? You can probably reduce violent crime even more, but it remains a rare event. Only 31 out of 1000 people were victims of a violent crime in the UK in 2010. If that doesn’t work, what remains? Sex segregation ?
So you think it will help to just tell folks to not be afraid? How did you overcame your fear? What if similar experiences happened to your and your friends more than once?
On personal level, in my experience it’s best to validate someones emotions and then help them work through them if they wish so and are ready. On societal level it’s another question on how to teach people more empathy and to respect for others - and at least in my opinion we already came quite a way.
