You must log in or register to comment.
The bear is honest, either it eats you or it fucks off. The bear would never pretend to be friendly to gain your trust, or pretend to fuck off and instead stalk you for days. I can more accurately surmise a bears intentions than i can for any random man because all the bear could possibly want out of me is a meager amount of food.
Men getting angry about this are being upset by the possibility that they could potentially be considered threatening, by a completely uninformed third party nonetheless. And their chosen recourse is to demonstrate threatening behavior.
Some men are real snowflakes tbh
This is terrible logic to go by.
If you generalise half the population and insult them then of course people are going to be mad at you.
This is like some boomer saying “All feminists are easily offended lesbians that just like to shout out people”
Then smugly being like “haha you proved my point” when a femininst rightly takes issue with that statement.
Also bears can’t type, which introduces a massive bias during data collection.
Nonsense.
Well they did say “smarter than the average”. Technically true, but must have meant something like… ten standard deviations from the mean.
Are you sure? How many bear caves have you been in? They might all have fiber at this point.
I thought we were all dogs using the internet while out humans are at work.
Yall are dogs to right?
reminds me of this somethingawful ancient meme:
This is also an indicator of the world’s best insult as per the comic Basic Instructions:
“I find you argumentative and easily offended.”
Basically no one is allowed to respond to it.
“Noted.”
“How you find me has nothing to do with the conservation. Anyway, conditioner is better.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. I hope you get the therapy you need some day”
Can’t a simple answer be: “You’re wrong” ?
This is like some boomer saying “All feminists are easily offended lesbians that just like to shout out people”
Then smugly being like “haha you proved my point” when a femininst rightly takes issue with that statement.
Worse than that even, as feminists are less than half the population and an ideology you choose to belong to, rather than a demographic you are born into.
If you generalise half the population and insult them then of course people are going to be mad at you.
As a random man I don’t feel insulted by this at all. I would also rather be in the woods with a random bear than a random man. The bear is more predictable in preferring to have nothing to do with me.
I would also rather be in the woods with a random bear than a random man.
Theres literally no way you genuinely believe this right?
I literally expanded on my reasons in the other reply.
There are literally a bunch of posts from other people explaining their reasons for preferring random bear as well.
The fact that a random man can be told multiple times “I don’t know you well enough to be comfortable with this,” with explanations, and they will still respond with “there’s no way you actually mean the words you are saying” is a big contributing factor.
What do you think will happen if you tell the bear you arnt comfortable with being attacked
It’s very possible to communicate to a bear that you aren’t threatening them and that you aren’t prey or worth attacking. I recommend looking up “what to do if you encounter a bear in the woods.”
It seems to be very difficult to communicate to you that I would be uncomfortable encountering you alone in the woods.
So yes, the bear is probably a better listener.
Cool. But I really think your reasons are complete bullshit.
Like take your last paragraph, you actually think that because some men don’t listen to reasonable arguments you would rather be with a violent and wild animal that is physically incapable of listening to reason?
Seriously you’re either actually insane or you’re just bullshiting to try and prove a point that you’ve already committed to without actually thinking it through.
you would rather be with a violent and wild animal that is physically incapable of listening to reason?
No, that’s why I’d rather be with the bear.
You seem to be really angry about some rando’s opinion on a hypothetical situation. That’s not normal.
Bears generally aren’t violent unless you threaten them. People survive seeing bears in the woods all the time, and once they are out of that situation they generally don’t have to worry that the bear is stalking them.
I’m not angry, I’m incredulous that you either think I’m dumb or you’re completely braindead. There’s a difference.
People survive seeing bears in the woods *all the time
I absolutely 1,000,000 guarantee people survive seeing men more often than they survive seeing a bear.
I absolutely 1,000,000 guarantee people survive seeing men more often than they survive seeing a bear.
And we’re moving the goalposts. Note how the article, and my post, specified in the woods and you have changed the situation to include: In public. Places with good lighting. Lots of people around. Easy access to law enforcement. People you personally know (and therefore not random).
I absolutely 1,000,000 guarantee people get attacked by men more often than they get attacked by bears.
i think i would probably be more concerned if i were alone in the woods with a woman honestly, like what the fuck did i do to be put in that situation? Why am i here at all? Is this an act of god?
Being alone in the woods in it of itself would be fucking weird, but a lot less fucking weird that being alone with someone else for some reason.
You’re walking through the woods and at the end of a clearing you see: either a man, or a bear staring right at you.
Which one makes you more uncomfortable?If I slowly leave the area I’m fairly confident the bear will leave me alone and not follow. I’m spending the rest of my time in the woods wondering if that man is following me.
i would certainly be more perplexed by a human just existing out there, a bear being out there would definitely make a lot of sense, i suppose it matters if either one of them has spotted me.
If neither spots me it doesn’t matter. If one spots me, who’s to fucking say what happens. Could be your local mountain man out there just vibin on his own time, could be your local serial killer up to some shit, who knows!
i would certainly be more perplexed by a human just existing out there
In this scenario you are also “just existing out there.”
Could be your local mountain man out there just vibin on his own time, could be your local serial killer up to some shit, who knows!
And that is the entire point. The article didn’t say “any man” it said “a random man”. Could go either way, who knows? With the bear it’s far more certain it just wants to leave you alone.
In this scenario you are also “just existing out there.”
i mean yeah, but if i was just existing out there alone that would be fucking weird. But only just fucking weird. If i was out there but WITH someone else, i would be REALLY fucking confused.
And that is the entire point. The article didn’t say “any man” it said “a random man”. Could go either way, who knows? With the bear it’s far more certain it just wants to leave you alone.
obviously. I wonder what the statistics would be though. Since it’s a “random” person, i wonder how likely you would actually be to get a shitty person. Bear stats are even harder though. So it’s not even like you could compare it.
people often sight that 1 in 3 woman experience sexual assault (i think that’s the correct phrasing) but that’s a basic collective stat. And given the fact that it’s just a random man. I would have to assume the chances of getting someone who isn’t going to fuck your shit up is pretty good. I’d be surprised if it was less than 50% frankly. Now when it comes to bears, there are a few bears, but assuming black bears, grizzly bears, and brown bears, black bears are pretty chill from what i’ve heard. Grizzly bears tend to be problematic. Brown bears are generally docile, but can be temperamental apparently. So for statistical simplicity we’ll just say you’ve got a 25% chance of getting cocaine bear’d because likewise, the bear doesn’t know why it’s there. I would feel like if you were to select a man at random from society, you’ve probably got equal to marginally better chances. I mean you’d have to get a pretty fucked up individual to just throw them in there and the first thing they decide to do is commit rape, or worse.
And presumably there aren’t any established rules for how you got there, i like to think of it as if you were just teleported there, and i suppose that’s unrealistic, but the alternative is walking into the forest with a fucking bear lmao. Or just being in a forest while a bear is also in the forest, and at that point, i don’t think it would make a difference anymore. Given that you’re likely to be too far away from each other to be an immediate danger. So i’m presuming we’re just dropped within visual/hearing distance of each other.
but naturally, that’s not the point of this thought experiment. The whole point is to make a point, because it’s actually a bit of societal quip more than anything. But i like thinking about this shit like a thought experiment because i prefer to not think about being murdered generally.
Also here’s a fucking nitpick if i’ve ever had one “any” is literally a synonym to “random” Any is quite literally describing “any one of these things that you could possibly select will do the job” and random is quite literally" pick one of them, at random, in a mathematical sense" So from the point of the argument, they mean the same thing.
I havent read the article, but from the heading and the teaser of it it seems to be a personal opinion piece of what she would prefer and asking other women about it.
Where exactly does she actively insult all men?
Where exactly does she actively insult all men?
The part about saying she would prefer being alone in the woods with an animal that would maul and eat her alive than being with [insert trait you were born with].
If you don’t think it’s insulting, switch out the word “men” with gay/jew/trans or any other group of people and ask if those people would feel insulted.
It’s a statement that very likely would be removed by moderators and gotten you banned on certain instances on Lemmy if you did. I honestly don’t believe you’re asking that question in good faith.
I can’t say that I blame her and I’m a guy. Besides, you know she’s just being over the top to make a point. Take five seconds, look at what she’s really saying and stop looking for reasons to be angry at her.
I was merely replying to the other person who seemed to be arguing in bad faith.
I don’t really have much interest the online gender debate. From the few tidbits I’ve seen, it’s not a healthy debate and it doesn’t align with anything I’ve seen in real life in Norway.
You yourself have completely ignored the argument you’re responding to in order to chastise about arguing with a bad take.
It’s looping upon itself and it all starts with one bad take. Maybe you can accept bad faith arguments are bad and move on?
“I don’t feel comfortable being alone at night in the ghetto” = reasonable statement
“I don’t feel comfortable around black people” = being over the top to make a point.
It’s not okay and she should be shunned for saying such things.
“I don’t feel comfortable being alone in the woods with a stranger” = reasonable statement
“I don’t feel comfortable around men in public” = not what was said.
Boo fucking hoo.
It sure is hard being a man, amirite? /s
It’s too big of a group to generalise. Your seemingly utter lack of understanding will only help drive the wedge between the genders even further.
It’s genuinely sad to see how annoyed and bitter some of my older male relatives have become due to people like you acting as if only 1 gender matter. Back in the days they would have called themselves feminists, but now their perception is that that group hates them instead.
Okay, let’s reframe this to be about a different specific group.
Let’s say this woman wrote this exact same opinion piece, but instead of it being about men in general, it was about black men specifically.
And she is just saying that she would rather take her chances with a wild animal than be alone with a black man. Is that perfectly okay and not insulting/demanding to black men in your eyes?
deleted by creator
The issue with your example is that black men are not in a position of power in society
Power by demographic association is bullshit. Cletus in the trailer park does not wield societal power because a majority of members of Congress are the same color and sex as he is, because they don’t work to protect his sex or color - they work to protect their own economic class and that of their donors/owners.
The trick is that you can’t take each demographic axis and declare that there is a hierarchy there where one group is the “oppressor” and thus has power over all members of the other groups who are deemed the “oppressed”. And usually the whole point of doing so is to try to fit it into a model of Marxist class conflict, which is only really a passable model for economic class (and accordingly only works for other demographic axis to the degree that they correlate with economic class). There are lots of areas where reality violates the fuck out of said hierarchies, and it leads to either attempts to excuse it or bullshit around it that I like to liken to the epicycles and deferents once used to shoehorn geocentric models of the solar system back into line with observations.
, while men (as a whole) are the dominant gender in society.
Hell, look at criminal justice - for nearly every measure where the system appears to favor white over blacks and you would probably call it racist, it also appears to favor women over men (usually to a similar or larger degree) but you would likely not call it sexist because that violates the hierarchy by putting women over men.
Education is similar, there are studies suggesting that teachers preferentially grade in favor of girls (specifically showing that girls get better grades for similar work but that difference vanishes in standardized testing where the grader cannot consider the sex of the student). Girls outnumber boys in both entering higher education and getting degrees, and have since something like the early 80s - yet we still maintain preferential scholarships and recruitment opportunities for women as opposed to men - usually by just deciding the only fields worth worrying about are the few that remain male dominated.
I’m in a piss-filled trench! The wealthy have the power! Though I am stronger than the average woman, which I acknowledge is a useful trait. Especially for digging trenches with piss seeping into them. Now that’s wielding social power.
deleted by creator
By what metrics do men dominate society?
But, I mean, are you acquainted with said bear?
Are you on terms with each other’s intentions?
'Cause if you’re in the woods with a stranger, there is a 50 percent chance you’re going to have a bad time. Human or bear.
Stupid city folk. Comparing a BEAR with a honeybear…
A bear predictably would rather have nothing to do with me. If I treat a random bear with respect it will be more likely to treat me with respect than a random man.
I dk, did it have any cocaine or do I have food on me?
Though that would also apply to a human.
See, the difference is that the OP didn’t use the word “all” anywhere. If you’re not one of the untrustworthy men, then it isn’t about you.
Would you accept this logic about any other group like that?
if someone said “Black people are thieves” then when you called them out they said “I didnt say ALL black people are thieves. If you’re one of the good ones, then its not about you.” would you just accept that as a perfectly reasonable statement or would you still call them racist?
Having something stolen from you most likely isn’t going to leave you scarred for life. And men are not, and have never been, an oppressed group. People who say “black people are thieves” say that because they are racist and want to veil their bigotry. Women who say “I’m scared of men” say that because they most likely have had negative experiences with them and understand that they are physically weaker than them.
Having something stolen from you most likely isn’t going to leave you scarred for life.
Okay change it to mugged or beaten then? You know the point I’m making and purposely focusing on minor details instead of that actual point doesn’t make your case any stronger.
and have never been, an oppressed group
I’m not claiming they are. If you’re going to argue with me, then please argue against what I’m actually saying, nit whatever strawman you need to construct.
Women who say “I’m scared of men” say that because they most likely have had negative experiences with them and understand that they are physically weaker than them.
Imma trust you’re an intelligent person and let you work out what’s wrong with this one yourself.
If someone has been frequently harassed and endangered only by black people, I’m not going to tell them they can’t be cautious of black people.
so you believe racism is/can be justified?
No. But I’m also not going to undermine other people’s lived experience like that.
Bruh
Some men feel the need to prove their masculinity to this woman who’s obviously rage baiting, the rest of us are thanking the bear for taking one for the team.
To be fair, usually women don’t have to be rage baiting at all and still get the same toxic responses. We still have a loooong way to go for real equality. But we’ve also come a fair ways, so keep up the good work! ❤️
I don’t see why you think the author is rage-baiting, rather than stating a simple truth.
Posts bait. Catches idiots. Stays relevant.
Words to live by
I’d generally pick a bear too, most of the time you could just walk away. A human might try to talk to me or something.
Maybe it’s because i’m a man, but this trend saddens me. I don’t often see what the other gender thinks of us, but the fact that a big part of us are a bother that all off us should be seen as more dangerous than a bear. Damn…
Men in real life (in my experience) are mostly lovely folks. Men in places like Lemmy and Reddit can be pretty decent too, depending on the thread. But honestly, at what point has it been ‘safe’ to self identify as a woman on the wider Internet? Like to have a female voice in a game chat? Or in a random chat room? Between a lot of online harassment (which only needs a small slice of men participating in to be felt much more broadly) and the political and cultural attempts to strip women of power, I get this kind of outlook happening. It just really fucking sucks.
It’s because casual misandry is socially acceptable.
Not entirely. It’s also because men have historically been bad about telling creepy and misogynistic men to back off and shut the fuck up.
I would sooner see men step up and call out the bad actors – and I say that as a man who’s done so. Don’t teach your daughters that they need to be wary about what they wear, teach your sons to respect and not rape women.
I would sooner see men step up and call out the bad actors
And I would be happy to join you in doing this, but this is not the company I keep. In my life I can barely count the number of times I have, or could have, on one hand. Meanwhile, when talking to women about this sort of thing, everyone has awful stories but they all involve people that simply are not a part of their social sphere (and by extension mine) anymore.
I fear that we, as a society, have done such a good job of pushing bad actors out to the margins that we no longer have eyes on the problem.
It’s not even just that they’re at the margins, it’s also a math problem. One bad actor can sexually harass hundreds, perhaps even thousands of women over the course of many years. Now make that thousands of men, and see how it’s very reasonable that 1 in 2 women or whatever it is have been sexually harassed or assaulted - and that can still be less than 1% of the male population doing it. Anyone who doubts women get harassed or even assaulted often needs to have their head examined. There is a guy in my neighborhood currently who has not been caught who is following women while in his car. The neighborhood listservs are awash with women who have noticed this guy. There was another guy who was groping women on the trail who affected multiple women before they caught him.
And this is not just sex crimes. Recently, they arrested a group of car thieves/car jackers in my area. The four of them were responsible for over two hundred car thefts, and possibly up to three hundred additional unaccounted for crimes. And that’s for a very visible crime like stealing a car - imagine the numbers for something like groping someone on a crowded train or bus.
This is why people who say stuff like, “just teach men not to rape” are as insane as saying “just teach minorities not to steal cars”. It is a tiny portion of the population having an outsized influence because they can harm multiple people. When you start blaming a group for the actions of a tiny portion of that group, you’re just lost.
I mean sure, call out crime in general when you see it, but I have seen this type of harassment probably a dozen times in my life. And it happens all around, dozens of times a day.
This is also the same kind of unintuitive math that makes it likely that your friends will be more popular than you… because popular friends are more likely to know you than unpopular friends.
Your neighborhood has a listserv? I haven’t seen one in ages.
You know I didn’t think about it like this. It does make sense though. I think as well it’s good to point out that the main recipients of violence and murder are other men, not women. Therefore I am suspicious when women talk about these things and being afraid but men don’t. It seems like a double standard.
Part of the problem is that men are simply not on alert for bad behavior. They have the luxury of being unaware. When my friend’s dad groped me at a party, I was in a conversation circle with him and 3 of my male friends. None of them noticed him doing it, none of them noticed me going stiff and pale. None of them questioned why I suddenly felt sick and immediately called an Uber to leave.
The dad felt totally comfortable to do that literally less than 2 feet from three other men because you guys aren’t looking out for it in a way that women are. Alternatively, I’ve had stranger women come up to me in public to ask me if I’m uncomfortable because a guy at a gas station is talking to me while I pump my gas. We’re looking out for each other.
“We all a society” have absolutely not pushed out bad actors. If anything, women have closed ranks, but in my experience the men have not, without explicit instruction, called out bad behavior.
This is not the good thing you think it is. Women shouldn’t be hyper-alert about all men, and should use words when being made uncomfortable (or literally sexually assaulted).
If I see a woman go pale and then leave a party, I will assume “oof, must have really had to poop”. I refuse to assume every facial tick on a woman is a sign of sexual assault. That’s a toxic, paranoid way to live.
I agree that women shouldn’t have to be hyper alert, but with our culture the way it is, we have to be to keep ourselves safe.
How about instead of saying I should have spoken up about a man groping me, you say, “he shouldn’t have groped you.” There’s no reason my friend’s old married father should have thought I would be comfortable with his hands on me in a bathing suit area.
I’m saying men with opinions like yours put the entire onus of safety solely on women’s shoulders forcing us to live that toxic paranoid way, as you put it. If you guys would start doing your part to police one another, women wouldn’t have to be so scared all the time.
What makes you think me speaking up would have stopped that man? He clearly had no respect for my personal space, my autonomy, or my comfort. He has already proven he is willing to break social rules and norms. The safest thing for me to do was get away, because confronting a person who does not respect or care about you, who is not bound by the social contract will more likely lead to them hurting you.
How about instead of saying I should have spoken up about a man groping me, you say, “he shouldn’t have groped you.”
How about both? It’s infantilizing for you to suggest I don’t understand a basic principle like “assault is bad”. Of course he shouldn’t have groped you. That was bad. That’s just a baseline, floor-level understanding that we should both agree on.
If you guys would start doing your part to police one another
Well, for one thing, we don’t know which guys are doing this. Even if, as you suggest, the burden should fall solely on men to stop other men (a bit of a problematic viewpoint in itself), we can’t stop it if we don’t know it’s happening. Guys don’t brag to each other about sexual assault. We just don’t talk about sex in general. “Locker room talk” is and always has been a myth. Women talk with each other. Men don’t.
We cannot read your mind and know that any particular guy has done anything bad to you. You have to say something. And if you don’t, the only other option is for everyone to constantly be asking every woman if they’re being assaulted. Like that old Verizon commercial: “are you being assaulted now? Are you being assaulted now?” which is just toxic and awful and paranoid and massively damaging to everyone’s mental health.
I can 100% understand just not wanting to deal with it. Running away and then never speaking about it, and avoiding that guy for the rest of your life is much easier than opening a can of worms.
But if you do that, you have to take responsibility for doing that. Don’t pretend “not my problem, Men should be fixing everything”.
Thank you for this insight. We all really need more of this kind of dialogue to build awareness around what to look for.
Men expect you to communicate if you have an issue, that is how we communicate. We’re busy looking for the next tough guy, suckerpuncher, or knife-wielding psycho because those are the kinds of scars we bear. We’re not going to be looking at subtle changes in the color of your skin in a dark bar.
That’s a really good point. The men who could call out this behavior are usually in exclusive circles from the bad actors.
As I think about it, I really haven’t had many opportunities either. There’s only one that really stands out to me, and it’s when I was out with some friends drinking and we were getting some food to end the night. A stranger was moving to grope a friend of mine, and I shut that down quickly.
But that’s it. This is actually a bit of a difficult question. How exactly do we chastise the bad actors? Maybe the best we can do is teach the next generation, and just call it out when we do see it.
Well no, the real root cause is a lot of women are afraid of creepy men. Your point is tertiary at best is people are actually picking the bear.
You’re missing the definition of root cause-why are women afraid of creepy men?
But that wasn’t the question.
perfectly balanced, as all things should be, which is a really fucking weird statement, considering that most thing should not be balanced, but then again, maybe the state of non balance is the equivalent to balanced. Which would then equate everything to be perfectly balanced at all times on account of the self balancing dichotomy.
(for those wondering, the comment im replying to has 5 upvotes, and 5 downvotes, and same for the one reply to this comment, at the time of writing at least.)
Please keep in mind that this is one columnist writing clickbait, not the entirety of women.
The majority of my friends also stupidly said bear
They’re all single though lol
It’s sad how many women respond to it though.
Female Andrew Tates. Just gross.
You’re seriously drawing a parallel between women who try to avoid danger and a man who perpetuates it?
That this thought crossed your mind is a manifestation of privilege.
Yeah. Misandry, misogyny. Both are disgusting.
This is like saying a buddy who doesn’t want to hang out with you is the same as one who shoots and kills you. Neither activity is great, but there isn’t really a similarity.
They’re identical ideologies, in your analogy the only difference is that one has a gun and the other doesn’t. Both are happy to shoot, one just doesn’t have to power to.
Both are disgusting and I want no part of either.
If you think they are identical ideologies, you have much bigger issues than avoiding people who don’t like you.
The people complaining that she is being derogatory to men are the same people who would say “what do you expect going into the woods alone with a strange man? What did you think would happen?”
What species of bear? Because that makes a lot of difference.
Imagine the stupid Pence Rule (never be alone with a woman who isn’t your wife). And framing it as you’d rather be alone with a velociraptor than a strange woman because a velociraptor is less likely to falsely accuse you of something.
I get that the point of the joke is that women think men are dangerous, but any nuance or discussion is completely out the window due to how stupid and inflammatory the framing is
I would also like to add, actually educating people about average bear behaviour would help.
Most bears will flee if given a choice, and are very unlikely to attack. Globally, there’s only around 40 bear attacks a year, and less than 5% are deadly. A lot of how they react is driven by how the encounter starts, if you’re within 60m before it notices you, you’re significantly more likely to be attacked.
Meaning that seeing a bear from a distance off is basically always just going to be neat and maybe a nice photo.
They are huge dangerous creatures, but so are people, and they’d rather not take the risk.
Knowing that makes the argument a bit more reasonable than just pointing out how bad/unpredictable men are
Bear-havior.
Puns away, I take my kids hiking from time to time and the conversation of bears comes up naturally (I bring it up), and I try to tell them about what to do, what to look for, this and that. It’s almost like literally everything else, education is a key to understanding.
And bears, for all intents and purposes, are robots, they tend to do what bears do. Now people, on the other hand, they’re a mystery.
tending to do something is not being a robot, a robot does what it is programmed to do, theres no might in that equation.
there is no IF DISTANCE > 60m DO NOT CHARGE or IF CHILD(WITH[BERRIES]) (EAT)
Are you a robot?
Soo many people in the tread showing their true colours.
i mean, to be clear, you don’t post some shit like that without expecting to piss off some less than favorable people. I would certainly know about that.
Sometimes a little bait is a good bit of fun.
Just once I would like to open one of these threads and not see a bunch of lemmites embarrassing themselves by deliberately misinterpreting something.
Yeah, I was kinda hoping for better when I posted. Seems like many of the sons who need this talk are on here.
The sad part is, you can tell some of them understand the point being made. But are either over reacting and making this about gender warfare. Or taking the scenario seriously, and trying to mock it that way.
Its disparaging to an entire gender. I would argue lots of people need many talks. Lots of evil out there and many of it goes unnoticed or is accepted due to current cultural climate. Including passive aggressive disparaging questions meant to vilify men.
I’d say we’re right to be disparaged against, up until we get our collective act together as men. Women should be wary of us for the simple fact that it aids in their survival. A comment like hers is at the very bottom of my list of things to change.
Honestly, I know you mean we’ll but I find statements like this extremely dangerous and damaging.
There isn’t some ‘international council of men’ that could collectively sort anything out. Ideas like blaming the whole gender is part of the reason why we have a rise in far-right sentiment among young men, as it’s easy to feel like the world is against you for things that you personally have no say in. Young men (just like anyone else) need support, and not to be blamed for bad-behavior of others!
Instead it’s up to those of us (the vast majority) who don’t represent toxic masculinity to set a compassionate example
Women are going to be wary for as long as they have reason to. You’re essentially just stating that we shouldn’t talk about this fact because it hurts the feelings of men who were probably part of the problem to begin with. It’s on those men to listen to the feedback and internalize it, not on women to keep their opinions to themselves.
They didn’t say that at all. What they are trying to express is that stereotypes, such as “men are usually dangerous to women”, or “women should fear men just in case”, are disingenuous ideas that harm both sides.
Some men are good people and some are bad. Some women are good people and some are bad.
Condemning either group for the actions of a few perpetuates the stereotype by making impressionable indiviuals on both sides of the equation start accepting the “complimentary” stereotypes just because they observe a few correlations from time to time.
Before long, critical thinking goes out the window, correlation is assumed to be causation and you’ve got men reacting aggressively to posts that say they are dangerous and women saying “I chose the bear!” even though they know that is staticallyess safe because it aligns with the message they think they need to share because they buy into the same stereotype the men did and vice versa.
It runs parallel to the same sort of thing playing out in politics around the world though it’s certainly more pronounced in the US thanks to the two party system and volume of communication.
Talking about the issue is fine but this discourse is flawed. Imagine how it would play out if the question was “white people, would you rather be stranded on a island with a black person or an alligator?”
And now your argument would be “white people should be afraid of black people until they are given a reason not to be.”
Doesn’t that sound really messed up to say? I hope so because it felt bad just to type out for the purpose of this comparison.
Each person is an individual unto themselves and I think if you can agree with that, then there is no rationale that can support group stereotypes in human psychology.
I do understand the point you’re making, but the example in the OP has more layers to me than strictly speaking about a bear vs. a man.
It shouldn’t take an incredible leap in logic to ascertain that the comparison is meant to present simply that “men are dangerous to women”. Actually picking the bear is evocative hyperbole. All any man would need to take from this is “I should strive not to make women feel this way”.
If a man takes this sentiment personally and then becomes a threat to a woman, that man is interpreting in bad faith and in fact wants to threaten women. We have a system of patriarchy precisely because men feel superior to women, and women have little they can do about it. I’d wager these angry men were going to find their excuse to exercise their superiority regardless of what a woman says. This rift exists without anyone else’s help, regardless of if you want to accept that’s what it is. We need more clueless yet compassionate men to understand a woman’s struggle, not less. If we pretend that there aren’t a worrying number of dangerous men, we are those dangerous men.
I could write excessively about how a white person describing a black person as dangerous is far and away a completely different conversation from this, but I don’t want to expend the characters. Tiniest tl;dr, the power dynamics and history are not the same (they’re roughly inversed, in fact), and your example has a legitimately sinister reason to happen. It’s far from a 1:1 comparison.
Condemning either group for the actions of a few
Is not what Kate Lister or feminist in general are doing. They’re saying that they are afraid of being alone with a man, this is just how they feel.
they observe a few correlations from time to time
Here in France, 96% of sexual assaults are performed by men. I don’t think you could find a country where the statistic goes the other way. “a few correlations from time to time” really doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation. It’s not some correlation, it’s a systemic issue in our society.
Before long, critical thinking goes out the window, correlation is assumed to be causation and you’ve got men reacting aggressively to posts that say they are dangerous and women saying “I chose the bear!” even though they know that is staticallyess safe because it aligns with the message they think they need to share because they buy into the same stereotype the men did and vice versa.
I actually agree that critical thinking goes out the window ! “I chose the bear!” is meant to express that women are afraid of men. The fact that most women would actually be terrified of an encounter with a bear or that they are statistically safer with a man than with a bear is irrelevant. Women want to send a message and instead of listening, you are correcting them on a technicality.
Talking about the issue is fine but this discourse is flawed.
The fact that you are only talking about the discourse and not the actual problem makes me wonder if you really want the issue to be resolved
Imagine how it would play out if the question was “white people, would you rather be stranded on a island with a black person or an alligator?”
This is a terrible comparison. When woman say they are afraid of men, it’s a dominated group being afraid of its dominators. With your black perso/alligator question, it’s a case of dominators being afraid of a group its dominating.
deleted by creator
We have to keep trying. Speaking as a black American who knows America’s history with black people, it’s important that we don’t give up just because we haven’t succeeded yet. Change of this magnitude takes a proportional amount of time.
Yep. “Not all _____” just sidesteps the point and tries to make it all about you. When someone not of my demographic says people in my demographic are hurting them, it’s time for me to shut up and listen. It’s not about me.
Seriously OP, what did you expect by posting the textbook a example of a clickbait article?
That at least one comment would get that men need to start challenging other men to get this problem solved?
How does hyperbole help foster an open conversation?
I’m male, though I consider myself non-conforming, for context. I’ve ridden home on the metro with coworkers in their thirties because it’s 8 PM and they don’t feel safe - and I have friends that are SA survivors. The difference in perception is absolutely something to be aware of and if you think most women can enjoy a nice 3 AM walk without massive anxiety you’re clearly out of touch.
This is an important conversation to have and it’s important to be more aware of what gestures we might make that can be perceived as threatening, however, this article was posed with such a hyperbolic title that it won’t ever spur those conversations. Were the misogynistic assholes that responded with “You’re gonna wish you had a man” to the author assholes? Absolutely. But even a charitable reading of the title doesn’t yield a helpful place to start a conversation.
If you don’t fuck with the bear, the bear probably won’t fuck with you. Just steer clear of it you’ll be fine.
Humans on the other hand, could do anything.
You don’t hike in bear country obviously
I mean is the bear hungry or the man horny? These are critical questions.
I mean is the bear hungry or the man horny? These are critical questions.
The fact that those two are given equal weight in your post speaks volumes.
A bear won’t eat you unless it’s a polar bear or almost starving to death.
I’m a strange man and I’d rather be with the bear too
The bear is more predictable and would rather have nothing to do with me.
Well…I’m a strange bear, so… What’re we gonna do about it?
Probably not your user name, for starters.
I’m a strange man. I think I would quickly leave this baggage behind to increase my chances of survival.
I mean, do I know if the bear is hungry? What type of bear? I’d take a well fed black bear over a random person, they ain’t gonna fuck with you. Pretty much any other scenario and I ain’t messing with the bear.
Thank you to the men in the comments who react like humans with empathy!
But god damn there are a lot of people on this thread that are taking this VERY personally.
-
Nobody is denying that men in our society deserve to be respected, nobody is saying IF YOU’RE A MAN FUCK YOU ID RATHER BE MAULED, and nobody is saying that women are always right no matter what.
-
Of course the man could be weaker/not a threat. Of course he should be assumed safe. Of course everyone should respect all genders. And, OF COURSE, some women lie about rape! Yes! You do in fact have valid concerns!
HOWEVER, It is really shitty some people commenting decide to take a clear example with obvious intentions and then make it about themselves, and then abuse women in the comments… you are proving the point, and in fact, you are a huge red flag already.
This question already sets the scene, you are alone in the woods: there is a strange man OR you are alone in the woods: there is a strange bear. The man’s intentions (AND the bear’s intentions) is not clear, we only know that he is there, and he is strange. No need to make up reasons why the guy is OK, minding his business, etc. Because in the situation given, the point of the question was to ask people how they would feel lost in the woods with a man or a bear, with such a small amount of information!
The question is trying to shed light on WHY the women asked said they prefer the bear. Do they think every man -at all- is a threat? Do they think that all men will overpower and harm them"because all men want to use their strength to rape/hurt women" because they are "biologically meant to*?* and, then, where do the fears come from and what can we do to change that? Why assume the worst when everything could be just fine?
I wish people would react more like “this is very depressing, and I understand why women are sometimes afraid of men in situations out of their control” or "I am doing my part to be a safe man ". But ask yourself, “do I know someone that would clearly make a woman feel unsafe to be around?” You might know more than one person like this, and they are why we talk about this in the first place.
The best way I’ve ever heard to describe this fear women live with is this: "when I approach a bees nest, it is highly unlikely they will attack me, they are usually docile!. That does not mean I won’t try to avoid being stung. "
-
