“b-but bears are actually dangerous!” Shut the hell up.
You spelled it wrong, the sign should say “Safety is more important than feelings”
elaborate?
Everyone’s safety is more important than anyone’s feelings.
You agree with the post, why change it?
All Safety Matters
To use more inclusive language, of course. That’s what we’re all doing now isn’t it?
Then the post wouldn’t have meaning because that’s a universally agreed upon moral sentiment on its face. The post is targeting people who would rather take offense to recent discourse rather than slowing down and considering how this moral sentiment applies to the situation. Without specifying ‘women’ and ‘men’ the post would not have contextual meaning.
You’re free to make your own ‘inclusive’ meme that states the obvious, but the people this meme is targeted toward would see it as obvious and not consider how it pertains to their behavior.
It has the exact same meaning with the inclusive wording, without being adversarial for absolutely no reason. It would work just as well when said to a man getting butthurt over women choosing the bear.
The wording in the OP is hateful, even if it is saying something morally correct. This is not a “Black Lives Matter” vs “All Lives Matter” situation.
That is exactly the situation. No part of this post is hateful; it’s adversarial because women expressed a justified fear and men just “disagreed” because they don’t like to think about it. The point is to be controversial yet morally correct as a statement. It would absolutely not work just as well if it was inclusive, people would just agree with it and no one would care.
Do you disagree with the statement? It doesn’t sound like you do. What’s the issue? Who is harmed by this post?
You’re being willfully ignorant to peoples points
The “points” you’re referring to dont at all contradict the OP but merely deflect from the issue presented
Imagine if the police brutality movement was called “Black Lives Matter More Than White People’s Need To Oppress”. It’s working a needless insult into the message.
I’d also be okay with other phrases highlighting how safety is a bigger topic for women than men realize, but not one that makes assumptions about “all men”. Even if I was a guy who largely hated the actions of my own gender, you think you’ll get 50% of the world on board by doing that?
Does the sign say “all men”? If it did, would it matter? This is the most engagement I’ve ever seen on Lemmy regarding the issue of women’s safety, sorry you don’t approve of it.
This is it
yeah this is something I can get behind
Why? The sign seems fine to me.
and what do we do if somehow safety becomes intertwined into feelings?
What happens then?
This is specifically about the bear meme though. Way too many men feel personally attacked by women not feeling safe around men they don’t know. Instead of thinking about why that is the men cry and attack the women.
When people justify racism with statistics: That’s stupid and you’re a bigot
When people justify sexism with statistics: Feelings matter! I’m going to post this divisive meme everywhere!1!
This topic keeps coming up because people keep talking past each other. There is a real, measured, evidence backed problem. The victims are saying “I feel this way, and it causes me to behave this way” and those who are neither victims nor perpetrators are upset about the way they are choosing to express that in a general sense. Now this meme itself is not more helpful than the bear, it didn’t give any new information. But it’s a good expression of that general frustration when no one listens. At least on Lemmy, there is a certain defensive response rather than an understanding empathetic one on this topic. This meme in particular seems harsh, but it’s driven by decades of talking about this, or not being able to talk about this, because the response is always so negative. Everything from “why did you dress that way” to “you should have know before you married them” to “not only women” (yes but that’s the topic at hand so). I would hope that some can come to understand this sentiment. I hope that this community improves.
.
can we just drop this stupid joke that many missed the point of? its getting real annoying real fast. people suck, get over yourselves.
it’s definitely not a rhetorically/optically great in-joke for exactly the reasons you state.
that said i would take the man vs bear meme 1 million times over the KAM jokes we had last decade tho, so it is getting better.
I’m a woman and the same way that women feel about men in this whole meme thing, is the exact same way I feel about women…
I don’t trust women within a hairs inch of my life and I would rather be with a bear than a Woman but I bet you I’ll get super downvoted for this opinion.
Have you had some negative experiences that led to this?
I’ve never been downvoted anywhere for expressing that opinion. Lemmy especially there’s a huge disparity where saying you’d rather be with a bear than a man is unacceptable, but saying you’d rather be with a bear than a woman? A-okay. Source? I’ve said both. Only one was I not attacked for. Guess which?
Seriously, I’ve expressed my trauma regarding men countless times and every time been attacked for it. I’ve expressed my trauma at the hands of women and not a single downvote or attack or disparaging remark any time. Lemmy has a very clear bias.
I wouldn’t have a single problem with men getting upset about this bear thing if they got equally upset when somebody says something similar or worse about women, but they don’t.It’s because nobody wants to talk about trauma at the hands of women… everybody goes extremely, extremely quiet when the topic of the capable violence of women enters the room. I have a personal feeling, as a woman, that if we talk about all of the tools and tricks and things that women do to manipulate and abuse, less women will get away with it, and women don’t want that, so they stay silent in order to enable basically a fucking gang, operating with impunity, in a way as a woman, I kind of feel held hostage at the sleepover if you know what I mean…
IRL, sure, but on Lemmy that’s not what’s happening. If you talk about trauma at the hands of women on Lemmy, you get outpourings of support and people sharing their experiences as well. Which is good. That should be happening everywhere.
The problem is you can’t do the same thing on Lemmy if you were traumatized by men. Instead, you get down voted to hell, get statistics quoted at you as if that’ll magically fix it, and when surprise, still traumatized after the stats, now you must be a misandrist so your trauma is invalid anyway.I was just hoping one place would exist on the internet where men’s and women’s issues could get equal screen time and be respected just as much, but no, the genders have to be treated like sports teams and if you support one apparently you have to hate the other. I just don’t get why people are like this.
Why does it have to be like this? Because men are constantly vilanized as being the violent, manipulative, and exploitative gender. This man and bear thing sums it up pretty well. Women get a free pass to do a lot of stuff, including women rappers admitting publicly to drugging and stealing from men and not facing any real consequences.
Feminism is used as an excuse to push both transphobia and misandry. Like sure there might be feminists out there who actually want equality, and there are plenty of people who do want equality who aren’t calling themselves feminists. That’s not the majority of people calling themselves feminists though. It’s a shame as feminism started out as seeking equality, or at least pushing back against inequality.
Men being hurt by women is not an excuse for men to hurt women in return. It is possible for both groups to acknowledge they’ve been hurt by each other and work toward a solution. Pushing “they hurt me so they deserve to be hurt” helps nobody, especially when both groups are doing it.
That’s what I’m complaining about. This mindset that being hurt by men/women completely absolves you of the responsibility to allow them to feel safe. Any space dominated by women will be filled with “Well men are responsible for the majority of violence and sexual assault so actually you deserve to feel like shit.” every time a man speaks up. Any space dominated by men will be filled with “Well it makes me feel bad when you discuss the repercussions of your trauma so shut the fuck up.” every time a woman speaks up.
We can have a place where both genders can talk freely about the way these things effect them and the changes we need to make to fix them. The issue is people are only pretending to want such a space. What they really want is the other gender to sit down, shut up, and agree with them uncritically. Because in their head they’re definitely in the right and they’d rather not be confronted with alternate viewpoints from people who have lived experiences they’ll never have.Worse, as a trans woman, you’d think people would be more willing to accept our viewpoints because trans people are some of few people who can have both lived experiences. But no, our experiences are only valid if they 100% allign with the men or women we share them with. Otherwise we’re brushed off like somehow our experience doesn’t count because we had the wrong experience to reaffirm their biases.
On Lemmy, dominated by men, when I say I fear women due to my lived childhood experience as a boy, being taken advantage of while I was still too young to fight back, I’m met with outpourings of support. People talk about why “this is why trans people’s life experience matters.” When I mention later in the same conversation that I also fear men due to my lived experience as a woman and not being able to fight back due the the hormonal muscle loss, suddenly, my experiences don’t count anymore. People think they get to pick and choose which of my experiences were valid and valuable and which aren’t based on whatever reaffirms what they already believe. And of course you can bet the exact same thing happens the other way around when I tell the same story to women.I kind of get what you are saying. People want to defend their in-group when it comes under attack even when it doesn’t deserve that defence.
I think such a space as you describe would need to be built upon the understanding that all genders are capable of shitty things and that no person or group of people is perfect. I don’t think we have that in this world. What we have is a world that’s unfair to everyone, and instead of acknowledging that things need to change for everyone, people are instead bickering over who has it worse and who gets the blame. Blaming this group or that group for all the problems that exist.
What we have at the moment is almost a cold war between different groups of people. Some people who only care about women, others who care only about men, and a select few who care equally about both. I am sure there are other situations where this is the case too. This I think is what people are talking about when they mention the culture wars.
I feel like with men it’s usually more physical and with women it’s more social/mental. And physical is way easier to document and make stats out of
What are we comparing here? Cyberbullying to r*pe? Social exclusion to being thrown down the stairs? Not sure if you’re attempting to draw equivalences or minimize physical harm but that is how I read this
Straight up… it seems like when I tell people that I’m scared of women they want to quantify it or somehow tell me I’m wrong for having the opinion I do it’s fucking hilarious… the same women who would shit on a man for being a man are the same women who couldn’t possibly believe that women are the problem for some folk.
With a bear, really ?
It just sounds like you don’t trust people which doesn’t strike me as particularly controversial lol
Nope I definitely trust men more than I trust women. I don’t know what part of what I said sounds like that when I said I don’t trust women, not people.
sounds like a source of anxiety for you and I hope you can find resolution through therapy or general discussion or whatever healthy means you use. Or if it’s something in your life currently making you feel this way I how it gets resolved as well.
Hey there, I’ve just downvoted you. The reason why is that you would have never told this to a woman who said “I definitely trust [women] more than I trust [men]. I don’t know what part of what I said sounds like that when I said I don’t trust [men], not people.”, therefore you’re patronizing this person, dismissing their claims and experiences and unusual and ultimately unworthy of being taken seriously. Yes, of course it sounds like there’s very likely some trauma behind her position, just as there’s trauma behind the women who say they’d choose the bear, but that is no proper reason to dismiss them when they want to use their experiences as a parting point to discuss social issues.
I don’t really care that you downvoted me, and I am not being patronizing. I am expressing genuine concern for what they’re feeling, and hope they find resolution to it, whether it’s internal or external. I don’t know anything about their situation, I don’t know the cause, and I’m not going to presume I do. They seem to understand I was not being patronizing. You don’t need to pick a fight for somebody who has no issue with what I said - clearly we were on the same page.
Lol I got you my homie. To be fair, I did feel patronized… but we solved it so that’s wonderful and fantastic and we are still having a good end of our weekend, goddammnit are we not.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted nobody has ever actually just acquiesced and listened to me so thank you for listening to me and not arguing with me.
I don’t care about their opinions just yours in this matter. Have a great rest of your weekend!
Thanks back to you
Dismissing someone’s concerns as a mental health issue. That’s actually horrifyingly toxic and completely illogical in this case. This is what people mean when they talk about concern trolling.
I did not dismiss it, I said mental health or environmental. I completely acknowledge that there could be something in their lives that is causing this problem. Did you actually read what I wrote?
People need to talk to a therapist about their fear of airplanes, whether it’s rational or not. People have to talk to a therapist about car crashes, whether it’s rational or not. If you are worried about something and it causes you anxiety, you should talk to a therapist. The source is not my concern, the help you need is.
And again, specifically said if there were something in their lives causing this problem I hope it is also resolved. That is acknowledging it could be a real world thing, an external factor, causing them problems. So please read what I wrote before you give me another unnecessary lecture
People need to talk to a therapist about their fear of airplanes, whether it’s rational or not. People have to talk to a therapist about car crashes, whether it’s rational or not. If you are worried about something and it causes you anxiety, you should talk to a therapist. The source is not my concern, the help you need is.
That’s not what therapy is for. If there is a real life problem causing you anxiety or anger the solution is to fix that problem of to remove yourself from the situation. Talking to a therapist is not a solution to real life problems. Anxiety, fear, and anger all exist for a reason and they can all be productive emotions in the right context. The only time you should see a therapist for a rational concern is if said concern can’t practically be escaped or fixed.
Therapy isn’t for real life problems…? That’s a hell of a take. Go tell that to sexual assault survivors or soldiers with PTSD I guess.
And dude you keep ignoring over and over that I clearly acknowledged something could be happening in their life and I want it resolved if so. Stop ignoring that. Stop telling me what I am saying when I am clearly laying it out for you.
My wife shares the same opinion. It’s not something she can discuss in her social circles, but she feels like she’s been backstabbed in more awful ways by her fellow women.
When she gets in that pattern, I try to remind her that people tend to suck and you have to be choosy regardless of gender.
I hear you, but as a dude, I feel like there’s significantly more risk of bodily harm from men than than women. This doesn’t mean women are Nice, just less likely to try to rape or murder someone in an alley :(
You’re right… a woman would take you home first before she fucking drugged your tea or whatever the Hell she’s going to do to you. Just because women have less muscles don’t mean they’re not just as psychopathic as any dude murderer. The long-term damage that women can cause on the mind and body is fucking creepy and terrifying. Even creepier and more terrifying when you realize how many women utilize manipulative psychopathic actions in regular day-to-day life. Women are total horror shows for me. Unknowable, unsafe, unreliable, unstable. Terrifying.
Don’t disagree with you. It wasn’t the bodily harm she was worried about. In each of those cases, it was more social political harm that was used to take advantage of her. My wife would rather take a fistfight any day. She’s built like the daughter of a titan.
But sure if you’re just talking bodily harm I get you. Absolutely.
It’s so tiring seeing the men coming in and deliberately misunderstanding what’s being discussed. They will do literally anything, appear dumb as rocks, to not recognize rape culture and admit potentially any fault or responsibility towards it’s continued existence. They take everything personally instead of being able to see that societal problems there are also responsible for helping to fix.
Not all men /s
Your comment really hits the nail on the head, esp the dumb as rocks part. I think part of that stupidity is legitimately not being able to see past our own privilege.
Yeah. I give some benefit of the doubt but after seeing plenty of varied and good explanations I’m tired of holding everyone’s hand who’s had plenty of chances to learn. After a while it just becomes men not listening and believing women which is too typical.
It isn’t always deliberate, I can guarantee you that.
Here’s the problem with that statement. I agree that there is a problem with men committing rape. However, I (along with most men) have never raped anybody. Furthermore I have not done anything to perpetuate the actions of the minority of men who do commit sex crimes. Therefore I do NOT take responsibility or admit fault for their actions. Saying that men as a whole are the problem is offensive and unhelpful. It’s how random peaceful Muslims feel when conservatives tell them they need to take responsibility for the actions of terrorists and take action to stop terrorists “in their community” like all Muslims are in one big group chat. I would straight up give my life to prevent a woman I don’t know from being raped. Idk what more you want from me.
the difference is that the patriarchy exists and favors men. there is no systematic structure that puts Muslims above others, at the expense of others, in a way that is parallel to what the patriarchy does.
i get what you are saying, and maybe not too long ago i was professing quite similar feelings, but i encourage you to self interrogate how big of a difference that is. truly hope this is helpful.
So it is the level of “privilege” that does or does not allow the commission of -isms then. The better off the target is, the more acceptable discrimination is? That is also a very Western perspective. It would be ok to tell Muslims in the Middle East that terrorism is their responsibility because their country’s power structure does put Islam firmly above others?
This “some animals are more equal than others” stuff is moral equivocating. If something is wrong if done to a group that isn’t “in power”, then it is also wrong to do it to the group “in power”. This isn’t a zero sum game. We don’t have to weight the guilt by association for a black man when compared with a white man because systemic racism competes with systemic patriarchy. If you do think that the immutable characteristics a person is born with are the most important things about them, I would encourage you to self interrogate how messed up that is.
So it is the level of “privilege” that does or does not allow the commission of -isms then.
No. It is the presence of privelege at all in the first place that holds all of us responsible to address that privelage as a reality when protecting one another.
The better off the target is, the more acceptable discrimination is?
No, I reject that characterization of what intersectionalist feminism is altogether. Read further for more.
That is also a very Western perspective. It would be ok to tell Muslims in the Middle East that terrorism is their responsibility because their country’s power structure does put Islam firmly above others?
No, because you are equivocating two different meanings of “responsibility.” Feminism calls for a brother’s keeper responsibility, not direct culpability responsibility. It is absolutely valid for example, to expect Islamic leaders or followers to speak out against violence — and they absolutely do without you or I even asking. Much similarly, I ask Christians in the U.S. to recognize their position of power and to speak out against christofascist or transphobic violence, and that happens also (though perhaps less frequently than I would like). On the same level, I ask all men to take brother’s keeper responsibility and to hold one another accountable, recognizing their position of privilege while taking steps to protect others, especially when it comes to listening to women expressing their lived experiences rather than talking over them.
It’s a subtle difference but so incredibly important, so read it again if needed. Brothers keeper responsibility, not direct culpability.
Your tiny bit of discomfort is clearly more important than rape culture that, yes you too, are contributing to. This is contribution to ignoring rape culture.
Your willful ignorance and not listening to women is enabling rapists.
this comment section has been so enlightening about the makeup of this side of the fediverse. and all i can say is i am so sorry. i always guessed it was a male-heavy makeup but i never thought it would precipitate this badly.
this community usually veers leftist and toward respecting human dignity, but it appears as soon as women express the pain and fear that is forced upon them for merely existing all of that is lost and their comments are getting 30/70 downvoted, even in conversations where folks have already acknowledged the caveat of the importance of non-alienating.
it’s clear there is a lot of work to be done when one of the most progressive communities i have ever followed is so packed with malinformed spite as soon as the subject comes to humans asking for the basic privilege of safety.
Agreed and well said. It’s very disheartening. For me it’s just another example of how pervasive and ingrained the patriarchy and misogyny is.
❤️
Are we also going to tolerate the same with Islam and terrorism? POC and safety because “crime statistics”? If those are not acceptable because it’s not anyone’s individual responsibility for others in an involuntarily assigned group, why is this ok?
see my comment here if you would
Same arguments, still wrong. Fuck off misogynist.
So if men are statistically safer than bears and women’s safety is most important, then you agree “bear” is the incorrect choice?
I’m just trying to figure out all these incoherent memes.
Do you have those stats? I would love to actually see a comparison, instead of a slap-fight
You’re asking for statistics in bad faith of the argument. Seems like you’re the one slap-fighting here - if you wanted to actually engage in logical discourse, you’d have presented statistics yourself, which you have not.
There’s obviously no statistics on the rate of how many bear-human and male-female interactions happen. One rarely happens, the other happens billions of times per day. We can prove that bears are more aggressive and dangerous than humans though.
In one black bear study 88% of fatal attacks were a result of the bear being the aggressor. Note that black bears are known to be timid of humans, and notoriously not aggressive.
- https://sapl.ucalgary.ca/evds_info/content/black-bears
- https://bear.org/bear-facts/how-dangerous-are-black-bears
So, statistically even the more timid bear species are wildly more aggressive to humans than humans to bears. Unless you have data that proves that men are more aggressive to women than bears are to humans, this is the closest we get to proving men are statistically safer than bears.
Forgot to include this in my post
In one black bear study 88% of fatal attacks were a result of the bear being the aggressor.
Lmfao what a useless fact.
How many rapes or instances of physical assault on a woman were a result of the man being the aggressor?
It’s almost like there’s more men than bears.
I would love to know how you went from percentages, which you quoted and I replied to, to overall numbers. You realize that’s not what you were talking about, right?
“Logical discourse” lmfao ok
The stats are irrelevant. He’s not concerned with the truth of the matter. No one should be, that’s not what the meme is about. It’s about how women do not feel safe. That’s the entire discussion and all this dross about risk assessment or whatever is missing the point.
So what people are meaning to say is women’s feelings are more important than men’s? I think the statistics should matter xD. But I don’t think bears attack people as often as people are trying to make out.
When it comes to how unsafe women in feel in public yes women’s opinions and feelings matter more than men’s. Just like my feelings and opinions as a white male about what it’s like to live as a black male in America is less relevant/important than black Americans’ feelings and opinions.
Wait, you’re saying the meme, instead of saying “women’s safety”, could say “women’s feelings” and still be accurate? That’s quite the take…
I honestly don’t understand what you’re saying so I’m going to say: no, that is not what I’m saying
Do you think is the nature of males or is this learned behavior?
Very few people someone gets near enough to be grabbed by want to rape them. Nearly every bear someone gets near enough to be grabbed by wants to kill them. A large number of women feel it is better to be killed by a bear than live with their irrational fear that every man they get near shall rape them. The fear not being rational is irrelevant as the fear is based upon a more than likely chance, approx. 25% is reported, that at some point the fear was justified and not irrational. However those numbers are screwy as folks that get raped are more likely to get raped again.
I’d give percentage chances of each occurring, (the National Park Service estimates the odds of being attacked by a bear are about one in 2.1 million.), but the media seems to only report percentage of gender raped not chance of rape.
What percentage of women do you suppose have had a man threaten to rape or kill them? Get violently angry at them? Sexually assault them or a friend? I reckon it’s near 100%.
The fear isn’t that all men will assault them, it’s that any man might. It’s not irrational, it’s based on experience. There are men in this thread arguing that women should be arming themselves to stay safe, right alongside men arguing that fear is irrational.
Fuck the men with hurt feelings. Your fellow men have proved themselves dangerous, time and again. Women will treat you like dangerous predators until men as a group start policing their own and building a world where women don’t have reason to fear.
Not relevant to my statement.
Ok. If you don’t want to discuss why post?
I’d happily discussed what I posted. I have no interest in discussing your imaginary post which you chose to address rather than my post. I also have no interest in discussing anything with someone that wishes to pretend I posted anything other than I did.
What aspect of your post are you interested in discussing? I found your assertion that the fear was irrational interesting, but if that’s off-limits we can talk about some other part…
Bears do not want to kill you. They want to be left alone. You’re hinging this on proximity but a bear won’t approach you and a person will. People don’t magically teleport next to a bear den, hence why the average is about 1 death nationwide annually.
Ultimately, none of this matters though. It’s not about the actual risk assessment. And every comment we get bogged down with in that debate is a distraction from the thrust of the meme.
Please show where I stated anything of the desires of the bear. I’m hinging nothing on proximity. You are simply assuming things I did not state. I covered that it wasn’t a risk assessment. Only thing bogged down is so bogged with your assumptions.
I responded to what you wrote. Yes there was some inference based on your words. I’m not getting bogged down in prescriptive nonsense.
No, you did not. You wrote in response to what you pretended I posted. You again are only bogged by your choice to pretend I posted something very different than I posted.
👍
Bears do not want to kill you. They want to be left alone.
I’m not a bear, but same.
Bruh, it’s not even about rape. A dude negatively impacting a woman’s physical or emotional well being compromises their safety.
The odds you mentioned of bear attacks seem a lot lower than the odds of a woman having to deal with shit from men. I say this as a man who worked in the boreal for 10 years and with a pile of construction folks (men and women).
None of which is relevant to my statement.
Here’s the thing…if you get upset that a random woman that you don’t know would take the hyperbolic position that they would rather be in the same room as a bear than with you, you’re likely the exact type of man that these memes are talking about. They are meant to expose fragile egos that don’t understand how intimidating they are to women. They know how dangerous a bear is. They don’t know how dangerous you are. That’s the point…
Here’s the thing…if you get upset that a random woman that you don’t know would take the hyperbolic position that they would rather be in the same room as a bear than with you, you’re likely the exact type of man that these memes are talking about.
What the heck? Expressing resentment at the implication that you are more threatening than a bear based solely on gender is evidence that you are, in fact, more threatening than a bear? How does that follow? You don’t need to have a fragile ego to recognize the unfairness of it.
They know how dangerous a bear is.
If they would rather be alone with a bear than a random stranger of any gender I’m going to say they don’t.
The original post was a bad-faith engagement farm that became much more popular than it ever should have been. It ended up bringing up a bit of good discussion and a lot of insane takes.
Once again, it’s a hyperbolic statement. They don’t really want to be alone with a bear. They are merely pointing out that they trust you less than a bear. A bear would simply kill them. What a man could do to them is far worse than anything a bear could do. If you can’t understand that, that’s the entire problem.
IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.
Why is this so difficult to understand? Strangers are unknown quantities. A woman does not know who you are and the decades of stats we have on violence against women tells a troubling story. So yeah, she’s going to probably default to a defensive posture if she runs into you in the woods and for good reason. Not because you are a bad person who is a threat to them, but because they do not know who you are or what risk you do or don’t pose. If you are not someone who puts them at risk, then the meme is not fucking about you! You are not assaulting women, congrats! So be an ally for the women who are victims. Listen to them instead of looking for any way their critique is about you specifically.
Some men are dangerous. Women worry about them. If you are not dangerous then there’s nothing for you to be defensive about! An indictment of some men is not an indictment of all men. Some of you really have a hard time grasping this.
The issue is how much energy fragile men spend getting all defensive about a dumb bear meme meant to illustrate how women feel instead of asking “why do women feel this way and how can I help with that?”
If you aren’t listening and exploring how to improve the situation and instead spend your time going “hey that’s not fair I’m not like that” and dropping flippant faux-innocent “I’m totally just curious” comments about how it’s “incoherent” (it’s not incoherent at all) you’re missing the entire point. It’s not about you.
Also it’s probably a safe bet that more women are hurt in encounters with men than bears (yes per capita) as bears generally don’t want to be around you in the first place. The entire dynamic is one of avoidance by both parties.
You’re just discarding every opinion as “toxic masculinity” which is actually worse than engaging in logical discourse.
I’ll do everything in my power to empower women and make them feel safe. This thought experiment has unfortunately been detrimental and used to attack men.
“It’s not you” - yes, and nothing I said made it about me at all. See how fast you went on the offense on a completely neutral comment? You should listen to your own advice and listen the points being made equally as much as you’re lobbying others to do.
Where did I do that? I’m talking about the people who do what I described. I did not say there is literally no other opinion. Show me where I said that.
“Logical discourse” please. The amount of “men aren’t bad it’s actually women” in this thread is absurd.
I read some of these, more to get insight into how other people think, but often I come to the conclusion that there is very little I can do to help and that people who behave that way aren’t people I want to help. My ego is just fine, thanks, but blind hostility isn’t something I welcome into my life.
i am not like that
Congrats, you pass the bare minimum for human decency, dudes. Accept that part and you won’t spend time having to ‘defend’ yourself.
I’m not like that, so I don’t need to worry about it, type of thinking
That’s quite the universal statement. I think first and foremost, men need to learn that they might not be part of the problem, but that there are many very problematic ones among us.
The feeling of general suspicion is what we need to tackle. If you don’t grasp the problems and their magnitude, you will naturally take offense in being suspected.
We need to take this feeling and turn it into anger towards the disgraceful people that are the reason for the suspicion.
So on the contrary, I think men’s feelings actually matter a lot, if you want to reach a world free of misogyny and violence against women.
Sometimes things aren’t your fault but are your problem. And men making excuses like “just locker room talk” and not confronting other men in their lives who do or say toxic things or espouse ideas or personalities that generally make women uncomfortable are our problems, whether or not they are our fault.
I mean, it depends. I am not my own gender police, I don’t see my life with my peers as “shaping the culture of manhood” because having gender in common is basically irrelevant and there is absolute no sense of belonging for me into “manhood” as a gender. We are not talking about contributing to shape the culture of your organization, or club or something, where there are (or should be) some form of shared values.
In fact, I find this whole idea between silly and sexist, where by sexist I mean rigid attributes applied based on gender.
The way I see it is that I - as a man - have absolutely nothing to do to help with the overall problem and the only way that I can help improve is by not being part of it (in this case, not assault, rape, stalk, harass etc.). That’s pretty much the end of it.
I wish I could do this at work. The most inappropriate things I hear in a regular basis are from my own leadership.
I have no heard a man express what you would call a toxic opinion in like twenty years. And yet women are still just as afraid. Crime rates are at an all-time low, yet women are more afraid than ever.
Whether it’s my problem is my decision. Primarily, it is women’s problem. And they have practical steps they can take to fix that problem. I refuse to make someone else’s problem my own problem, if that other person is ignoring steps they themselves can take to fix it.
I’m all for helping out, but only people who have done the first step themselves.
Women’s general attitude toward this is “It’s my problem but it’s your responsibility to solve it” and I say fuck that. I have my own problems to solve. My life is, in fact, absolutely full of problems that take all my energy to solve.
I have no heard a man express what you would call a toxic opinion in like twenty years.
Your personal experience is not representative of the experience of the rest of the world. Though I am very glad that this has been your experience!
You’d think that it would appear on video maybe once, somewhere on the internet, if it were happening. Can you link to a place where men are saying these things? If not, does that indicate something about the rate at which it’s happening?
I can link to videos of UFOs and videos of dogs walking on their hind legs. Are these defining our culture? If not, what does that imply about something you can’t find a video of?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html
I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.
Or for another example, see Andrew Tate and all the idiots who follow him.
The feeling of general suspicion is what we need to tackle.
I agree. This general suspicion is not good. As Bruce Lee says, “Do not be tense, but ready”.
I recommend women take concrete steps to protect their own safety, so they don’t have to be constantly on high alert. That’s a terrible way to live.
This, except that shouldn’t be anger, really.
Anger is a feeling that leads to alienation, and an alienated beast is the most dangerous one.
We should be on a watch for potentially dangerous behaviors and offer help so that people gently unlearn their ways.
That’s not to say people who have already committed some form of abuse shouldn’t be punished, but that we should fight for those who can become dangers and support those who recognize their mistakes and genuinely strive to do better.
It’s this sexist statement still being made? Cool, cool, cool… I mean it’s not actually, but here we are with this crap still being said.
Plus like a lot of semi recent sexist analogies it’s a rephrasing of an older racist one with the same logic but proponents are like “that’s different for reasons”, ‘rather a black man or a dangerous animal’ is pretty common in racist circles, just like the ‘you have a bowl of M&Ms, 1/10 are poison. That’s what it’s like to deal with men’ analogy from a few years back grew from the ‘you have a package of Skittles. 1/10 are poison. That’s what it’s like to deal with Muslims’ analogy
Stop noticing things.
My edge-case where I run into something semi-related to this issue is when I go on my daily walks and get caught walking behind women. I’m a fast walker, it pains me to have to slow down for people and I don’t like having to walk awkwardly around other people walking too slow (especially if they’re just barely slow but not too slow). I realize that the Flash is trapped in a living hell walking behind all these goddamn slow walkers.
I dislike walking behind women especially, nothing that’s their fault, they’re just living life, but because then I get extra self-conscious, like, “Oh geez, what if they think I’m following them or that I’m trying took at their butt or what if I’m making them uncomfortable.” It’s about the implication. Walking slowly isn’t an option because it extends the whole thing out and makes it worse, so then I have to re-route my whole walking routine on the off-chance my very existence might make somebody else uncomfortable.
I’ve tried saying things to them to try to put them at ease like, “I wasn’t planning on raping you,” or “Hey, it’s ok, I’m not a rapist,” but nothing seems to work, if anything, it makes them more uncomfortable. I honestly don’t know what women want from men.
Is your name Michael Jr?
i prefer screaming from a significant distance behind them while rapidly approaching to show that i have something to inform them about.
That’s why I got a shirt that says “^^^not ^^^a RAPIST”. Then when they look back they can tell.
It’s just common sense in this day and age.
Each of those women whose method of self defense is to be tense and walk faster has made the conscious decision not to carry a weapon for her own safety “because she shouldn’t have to”.
Instead of them taking practical steps, they are asking you to reroute around them. To literally bend your day, every day, around their needs so that they don’t have to take any practical steps for their own safety.
You are not forcing those feelings on them. They are taking them on as a form of protest against the nature of reality itself. Women refusing to carry weapons and make themselves safe is like a prisoner on hunger strike against their conditions.
We all dream of a society where women don’t have to be afraid. But if you, a 100% harmless man simply walking to work and giving zero signals of violence, are enough to make them “have to be afraid”, can we really achieve a society where women are unafraid?
It’s a question worth asking. How much effort are you willing to put in for someone who will not help herself?
As soon as I encountered street violence for the first time, I developed the fear. I then solved the fear by starting to carry a weapon. I don’t require all men bigger than me (who can hurt me just like they can hurt a woman, and who are statistically far more likely to to hurt me than they are to hurt a woman) to alter their routes so they never walk behind me. I don’t cower in fear at home either. I didn’t have either of those options in the situation where I developed the fear — living on the streets of Boston. Instead, I got a weapon. It’s my companion. It’s my tool for being safe. It’s my self-regulated solution to the problem of danger.
Women refuse this solution. I have little sympathy for that attitude. Ever since I developed the fear myself, and moved to the obvious solution, I regard women’s fear of me as their own problem. I have a life to live here. I’m not going to add fifteen minutes of walking to my day just so they can feel safer for two minutes without having to lift a finger for it.
I can smell this comment
Uh, you could literally just go around them and not say anything, or say excuse me or something. Happens all the time, and presumably these walks aren’t at 3am, so most people wouldn’t even question it. Saying, “I’m not a rapist,” is such a weird choice that I’d immediately be on edge.
woosh
Uh, maybe say something that doesn’t include the word “rape” in a sentence?
“Just passing by, in a hurry… sorry to bother you” has always worked just fine for me.
Hey just so you know, I’m totally not going to rape you 😏 Jesus man, that’d creep me out, too.
Got wooshed
Ah, no shame in that. But I admit, I could have at least looked at what community I was trying to make a serious comment in - this one is on me.
Lol you had me for a moment and then you got to the end. Good trolling
People’s safety is more important than people’s feelings.
Physical safety or psychological safety?
all lives matter amirite /s
BLM, no sarcasm.
the bureau of land management is on some shit istg
Are you really all lives mattering this post rn? God damn dude. I hope every person in your life belittles every problem you personally have by telling you that tons of people have that problem.
BLM, no sarcasm.
Indeed. It strikes me as pointlessly gendered. All people, safety is more important than feelings.
The whole thing was meant to be rage bait.
Yeah this meme as well as the original bear one were meant to be divisive and make people angry. That’s the point of these kinds of memes, they’re not really meant to be intelligent, they’re meant to stir up drama and make people fight.
or it’s purposefully gendered in response to the man vs bear thing
Which is also rage bait
Even then it’s contradictory. Men wouldn’t be upset about being chosen over a bear and women wouldn’t be safe if the bear was chosen, so in that specific context it’s nonsensical.
What wat? What do you want to know?
Most bears don’t seek out and attack women, but many men do. One of those happens far more often than the other, and you’re either uninformed or willfully ignorant about that fact.
Yet another exhibit of people not knowing anything about bears. If bears and women had anywhere near the same amount of interactions as men and women, maulings would be up by a percentage with an alarming number of zeroes. This is like the literal equivalent to the Face Eating Leopard Party supporters being surprised that the Leopards are eating their faces.
If this weren’t gendered I’m not sure I would connect that this was posted as result of people’s reaction to the bears vs men thing.
Ah, good point! None of us would be here in that case.
you know what else is pointlessly gendered? the patriarchy
feminism is for everybody. liberating women from oppressive structures by nature does the same for men.
If it’s not gendered and is for everybody, that isn’t that just the original statement? That safety is for everybody? That seems rather circular.
But I think I get what you’re saying. We focus on lifting up women, and everyone benefits.
yeah i see how my comment was a little confusing let me try to edit :p thanks for the good faith question tho
Hey no worries. More people should act in good faith in my opinion. We don’t even have to agree with everyone but we should have mutual respect for each other and want a better world.
And all lives matter, right? How else can we commandeer this conversation?
BLM, no sarcasm.
That gives me feelings of “All lives matter” which minimized the issues of black people. Can you explain why this is different?
BLM, no sarcasm.
Except one has built in meaning and the other is a simple meme made by one person with an oversimplified idea used likely to stir up people considering all the discussions happening about bears or whatever.
It’s telling who is “stirred up” about this. That’s what you should be paying attention to.
It’s disingenuous all the way down
It’s not, this tread is filled with Incels.
Some people seriously can’t hold any conversation about sexism without introducing the word “incel” for the sake of it.
I wonder, can that be cured?
Found the incel
Got his ass
alright that’s enough for today
There is nothing about this meme that remotely indicates people think safety is less important than feelings. This is bordering on a strawman in its most generous interpretation.
this statement is funny to me, because linguistically, safety is a relatively “felt” concept. We “feel” exposed in a massive open field, and we “feel” safe inside of a building, because we are no longer exposed in a massive wide open field.
In some aspects, physical safety is a thing, but given the context of this thread here, i think it’s probably appropriate to say that it’s actually the feeling of safety here, that matters more than anything. And as a result, this makes the statement a non starter.
Because to some degree, that feeling of safety, is based on well… Feelings, and if feelings are somehow less important than the safety that those feelings are capable of deriving, than how are you supposed to experience safety?
How many female teachers have been caught fucking their barely pubescent students this year alone so far?
It isn’t a men-women problem. People just suck.
“Instead of critically assessing this issue I’m going to find the most vaguely relevant and shocking example possible in the hopes it distracts from a very real issue I refuse to acknowledge.”
Yeah I kind of feel where the both of you are coming from, but statistically it is a men-women issue across the world.
Would you rather be in the wood with a bear rather than a woman because you fear she could rape you? No? Then what the fuck are you even talking about?
I don’t disagree that both men and women do heinous things, but women
don’talmost never physically attack or kill a man when he shuns her advances, but men absolutely attack women every day for shunning a man’s advances, and sometimes women get straight up murdered for it.#NotAllMen, but enough men that many women choose the bear.
This isn’t the 1950s, Scooter. Women aren’t viewed as fragile incapable little things anymore because they never really were.
Just so we’re clear here: you are aware that - yes even in 2024 - there is a massive gulf between the number of men assaulting (physically and sexually) women vs. women assaulting men? Do we at least agree on this clear and obvious statement based on decades of stats and studies?
This isn’t about the capability of women. That’s a red herring if I’ve ever seen one.
yes 80+% of violent crime is perpetrated by men. 95% of murders are done by men. 95% of all sexual violence is done by men, and this comes with the caveat that it is highly under reported.
men absolutely attack women every day for shunning a man’s advances
This is a completely weightless statement, considering that it’s true if as few as 365 men a year do this, out of ~4,000,000,000. In other words, 0.000009125%.
Pretty low bar for shitting on half the world, no?
I’m not shitting on half the population, I’m highlighting the reality of men reacting violently at women to being rejected or ignored. It’s every day. It’s constant. Walk a mile in a young woman’s shoes and you’ll get to experience it firsthand.
It’s every day.
Already established to be a pretty much meaningless statement. It’s also a fact that mothers abuse children every day, on average, too.
Do you think it’s fair to say mothers “constantly” abuse children, based on the above technically-correct fact?
I’ll bet you don’t. But you’re happy to do it about a demo you’re biased against.
It’s constant.
That’s bullshit. You’re just bad at statistics, and/or letting things like social media warp your perception of reality.
A tiny minority of men react violently to rejection.
Walk a mile in a young woman’s shoes and you’ll get to experience it firsthand.
I was raped by a woman, but you won’t find me making dumbass statements implying all women are rapists because of it, because I’m capable of logical, rational thought.
How’s this for “reality” when it comes to gendered violence: research out of Harvard showed that, among male/female relationships where one of the two ‘members’ is domestically violent and the other isn’t, the violent one is the woman over 70% of the time.
Do we need to start throwing out the stats for how many rapist are men compared to women?
Spoiler alert, most rapist are men and it’s not even close.
Yeah, those are very helpful, minority victims don’t deserve help as we all know.
Please show us where they said that.
Highly unreported numbers when it comes to female rapists, so your numbers might be skewed
Highly unreported numbers for male rapists too, especially since most male victims were raped by men.
but those are likely to be repeat offenders, so i’m not actually sure that how that would effect it.
The raw number of rapes will go up, but rapists will probably rise quite a bit less.
Statistics is hard >:(
Yes, but divided people == profit?
True.
Statistically the disparity is significant.
It’s a drastic disparity. Men do 80%+ of violent crime, 95% of murders, and 95% of sexual violence, with the caveat that we know, for sure, is severely under reported.
Yet people are entitled to not be prejudiced against for their immutable qualities.
Correct.
Every time a woman gets attacked there is a large contingent of the population who start to blame the fact that they weren’t living under the assumption of being in danger from men. In this post’s comment section you can see people making comments about not carrying a gun, not taking self defense seriously, etc. These are also often people who are in the “not all men” crowd. So women are shit on both for treating men like a danger, while also being shit on for not doing just that. People will also demand that women, in any social environment, discuss the subject in a dispassionate, and clinical, manner, or in a warm and friendly manner, in which the subject, men, are treated with kid gloves. Who gives a shit that this has left the person speaking with life long trauma issues, you better be nice about it, or it’s your fault nothing changes. This is the type of thing that is the problem here. This isn’t the only commonly seen way women are forced into a catch 22 situation. Society has pushed them into an impossible situation where, no matter what they do, they are wrong. I think society, especially men, have to come to terms with just how insanely prolific harassment, and violence, directed at women, primarily from men, is.
Another trend you commonly see, when this topic comes up, is people doing any mental gymnastics possible, to either claim it’s way blown out of proportion, while all people who work in, or study, this subject are pretty much in universal agreement that the reality of it is actually far worse than what we have on record. That, or they cry “but men too” ignoring that men are far less likely to be on the receiving end of this behavior, and also primarily victimized by other men when they are. When I was doing data analysis for the corrections system I found out (through experts on the subject, I didn’t discover this) that, while disparities in antisocial behaviors within different demographics of people based on things like, race/ethnicity/culture/etc., narrow as the economic, and societal status, disparity of that demographic narrows, the same cannot be said for the disparity between men and women. While men of good economic, and societal, standing are less likely to act in antisocial ways over-all, the disparity between them, and women in similar standing, stays roughly the same.
Without society, men in particular, coming to an understanding about this, rather than too just knee-jerk reject it, claiming so many reasons, that seem logical on a very surface level, to “prove” their position, we will never be able to truly begin to tackle the issue at hand. The deepest rooted, worst issues, are between men and women, but men are also the reason for that proportion of violence, and other antisocial behavior, towards men. Where men are more often the victim than women, such as murder, men are also responsible for the vast majority of it. The societal structures that encourage, at least on the environment side, this at a systemic level are also the product of men being largely in control. We have greatest control over the creation of an array of cultures, the most prevalent of which, at the very least, create an environment that allows this continue, sometimes even promoting aspects of it. In order for this to happen men, collectively, are going to have come to terms that the women’s side of this conversation will often have hostility, and many other negative emotions, woven into it, because they are relaying their trauma. While speaking about deeply, personally, emotional things, It is not realistic to expect anything else.
love how this post is turning this fascinating thought experiment (which a lot of people don’t seem to understand very well)
and turning it into correlation, not even causation of correlation, this is literally just taking two random things and smashing them together lmao.
there are so many variables to how this can be interpreted that make this a very difficult to comprehend statement.
However, women’s feelings does not equal women’s safety.
But bears are just so cute and fluffy! They could never hurt a fly.
but safety is to some degree also derived from feelings, because human psychology for some reason.
There is no winning here, i think.
The perception of safety, maybe. But not actual safety. It’s an important distinction.
This.
I’m a woman (a trans one if that matters to you) and have experienced sexual assault and domestic violence from both men and women.
I know the point that people are trying to make with the whole bear thing.
But I think the friction comes from women talk about this as a theoretical to make a point, where men are thinking more literally.
And I do belive that no one in there, if actually given this option in real life, would pick a bear (unless maybe it was definitely one of the more harmless species).
Each and every one of us, even those of us that have served SA, have had countless uneventful interactions with men you don’t know. Even when it’s just one on one. And its mostly normal biases that makes us remember the shitty ones more. And something a lot of people forget is that the vast majority of SA victims already know their assailant, so the idea of a rando assaulting you s even less likely. So yes I would much rather be in the woods with a man, than a wild fucking animal. And if you’re a reasonable person, then you would too.
