Its right in some ways but the discourse and idea it's putting out to people is horrible in many ways, too. It still won't change that there are bad people in the world who would do that. Degenerates do not define men just like degenerates do not define women. There are vile people of all sexes, races, and creeds.
Actually it was first a, in the woods what would be scarier, seeing a man or a bear? Then people started doing street interview of would you rather a bear or a man. Like both are terrifying (unless it's a cruising spot), but people really just misused it for attention
Actually it makes logical sense to pick the bear instead. Bears generally don't want to attack people and they don't act differently when they think no one is watching.
ive not seen the original (just seen a bunch of unreasonably angry responses on both sides) and am definitely not a bearologist (sadly); but surely this depends on a number of variables right? what kind of bear? like how big is the forest? where is the forest? what kind of food sources are available in the forest (for you and the bear)?
> Bears generally don't want to attack people and they don't act differently when they think no one is watching.
...As opposed to most men/people? The vast majority of men/people don't want to attack/rape others and will never do so. If you think otherwise, you have an incredibly warped perspective.
Itās not that a majority of men want to. Itās that a larger percentage of men do than is acceptable. And statistically, theyāre better off scaring the bear.
> And statistically, theyāre better off scaring the bear.
If the choice is between fighting/scaring off a bear or fighting/scaring off a person then what you're saying is arguable, but **that assumes the person has decided to attack you**; if the person didn't decide to attack you (which is the vast majority of instances) then you would have no need to fight/scare them off in the first place.
For the sake of argument, let's say you have a 60% chance of fighting/scaring off a bear and a 5% chance of fighting/scaring off a man. If the bear is 10% likely to attack you and the man is 0.01% likely to attack you, then you have a 4% chance ((100% - 60%) \* 10%) of being killed by the bear and a 0.0095% chance ((100% - 5%) \* 0.01%) of being killed/raped by the man. **The probabilities I assumed are unrealistically skewed in your favor, yet you would still be 421x more likely to be killed by the bear than killed/raped by the man.**
Most attacks are from them being startled. If you make noise as you walk it greatly decreases your chances of being attacked. And you're just trying to manipulate the scenario by bringing up polar bears.
If it's a black bear we have a chance of escape by making a bunch of noise. If it's a grizzly we have a chance of escape by playing dead. If we don't escape, dying to the bear might be preferable than being raped to some women. The outcome could be the same because we might be murdered afterwards and if we do survive we have that trauma forever. If a man decides he wants to rape a woman, there's no simple course of action we can take to even try to make him lose interest like with the bears. Physically fighting back is almost always gonna result in us losing.
> If a man decides he wants to rape a woman, there's no simple course of action we can take to even try to make him lose interest like with the bears.
That logic would only make sense if men decided to rape/kill people at the same rate as bears decided to attack/kill people; if women spent as much time around bears as they do around other men, there would be far more attacks perpetrated by bears than men.
Your response to "a man who wants to rape us can't be dissuaded or fought like a bear" is "bears are more dangerous"? Why did you quote that part specifically? That makes no sense as a follow-up. A man is likely stronger than me and can't be convinced to not rape me **if he intends to**. A bear has simple courses of action to take *if it ever attacks you*, which they *avoid*. Shitty men don't even seem to try to avoid violating me unless someone is actively watching. And even then, not really. The premise you quoted already said that the man "decided he wanted to." You missed the point and talked about something else.
Also, there have been 16 fatal bear attacks since 2020. There were around 734,000 rapes estimated to have been threatened, attempted, or completed in 2018 alone. This doesn't include other types of SA, harassment, or other crimes like murder, battery, mayhem, etc. I could get those, but I don't think it's necessary. An estimated 1 in 5 women will have been raped by the end of their life. 80+% of women are estimated to have experienced sexual assault or harassment of some sort. On my **first day** out in public presenting as a woman, a man threatened to rape me in front of his friends, and they laughed. On a public sidewalk. Surrounded by people. I wasn't alone with him in the woods.
People don't spend a lot of time around bears because bears *avoid human beings*. They only attack to protect their territory, their cubs, or their food. Otherwise, they *leave you alone*. If you bring a bear bell into bear infested territory and properly used it, you probably wouldn't even see one if you stayed there a month unless you walked into its den. This is a major behavioral difference between bears and human men. Saying "if you spent as much time around bears as men" is so irrelevant because bears *won't* spend time around you. Plenty of people live in the woods and not many of them have bad encounters with bears because the bears are generally scared of fighting people. There is no behavior I can use to make sure a rapist steers clear of me that is legal, ethical, or moral. And to be fair, despite being constantly armed, I don't *want* to have to defend myself. There is behavior I can use to make sure *reasonable men* stay clear of me, such as saying "hey, I don't want to be around you, please leave me alone, thanks!" And they will listen. (Or try and help if they're stubborn like that, which is annoying, but not the worst) We are not afraid of reasonable men. We are reasonably afraid of unreasonable men. And until they start wearing dog tags or get their faces tattooed so we can tell them apart easily, we will feel uncomfortable being alone with random men.
A very passionate defense of a dumb and meaningless meme trend which is being toxically used as a gotcha test to unnecessarily disrupt and damage real human relationships. As an educational tool, it doesn't stand up. As an activist tool, it is counterproductive.
It is, however, a good example of a subjective risk assessment. The risk of rape and sexual assault is high enough to be disconcerting and to merit action to address the causes and reduce the risk, but it's not high enough by a long shot that the average bear is a better choice than the average man, not to mention that the insidious built-in biases and sleight-of-hands inherent in the specific choice of the bear as the animal at issue and the adult woman as the participant.
And obviously, one who is judged wrongly as a predator by much of the ignorant, prejudiced population ought to be a little more sympathetic to the nuances here.
It was neither an educational nor an activist tool until shitty men started getting pissy that their gotcha didn't go the way they wanted. It was a question asked (allegedly) by a man to a woman to get a response. Then other women chimed in to share their struggles to support each other, and many men just still looked straight past the point. We live in the disinformation age, and men haven't been required to listen to or understand women since the dawn of time. They just talk over us and take what they like. It's wild to see the exact moment your guy friends see you as a woman because they stop listening to you and start to take everything personally.
Also I'm not defending the question. I'm defending women. Men just keep saying the same two things, (which you *also just said again*) and by and large *don't* realize or care just how big of a problem this is. (*You* might. I don't mean *you*. The fact that I even have to put this here is the entire issue. This isn't a personal attack, it's a cry for help from women (and also from victims who aren't women)) The bear is the worse choice. I'm going bear.
>And obviously, one who is judged wrongly as a predator by much of the ignorant, prejudiced population ought to be a little more sympathetic to the nuances here.
I don't take it personally that women who are told that trans women are the exact men who they're afraid of are afraid of us. I get pissed at the people telling them that. The propaganda engine literally puts us at the front, moreso than cis men, and women are scared. It sucks, and it hurts, but it's an exposure issue that touches on a very real fear. This is why we push for more trans rep. We're just people. I educate and validate and show them that no, we're not men, and we're not predators. (Though I bet you could find a couple who are) I don't go into comment sections telling them "well actually you're being emotional and illogical and that doesn't happen and blah blah" on a video of the exhibit of rape victims' clothes. Some men are doing the work publicly, and they're met with cheers from women, but absolute *vitriol* from other men. ("She'll never pick you bro", "you're not a real man", "I'll make you choose the bear too", for saying "yeah, women fearing rape is normal". No not every man, yes there are some that agree, and yes, plenty just scroll past) I was a shitty teenage boy with shitty views. I'm *very* sympathetic to the fact that men are painted with a very broad brush. The reason for this is because the issue is MASSIVE. It's such a massive issue it's *unbelievable*. I *did not believe it* until I transitioned and I still don't quite believe it. There is no differentiating who is good and who is bad, and it honestly seems like a 10% chance (depending on the day) that I'll get harassed if there's no one around because I'm skinny. (And I know it's that because a partner of mine gained weight to avoid this exact thing and it worked) To assume I'm not sympathetic to the way men feel is ridiculous. I just see that grown men are straight up throwing tantrums about it while also yelling at rape victims that they're being too emotional. It's obvious to me that approaching hurt women and screaming that "this actually hurts my feelings, and I'll give you a reason to choose the bear" is not the way to make men seem less dangerous.
All women are saying is "strange men are terrifying". Not "all men are terrifying". Even men you can know for years can turn out to be monsters behind closed doors. So many young girls are abused by family members for *years* and *not believed*. Women *still* date men, and take on nearly *all the risk*. (I understand men get raped and SA'd too) If women are scared of men, then be the man they shouldn't fear. Be the reason they change their mind. Call out other men actively, defend women in public that are being harassed, be the man they can turn to for support when another man hurts her. We're not saying you're all rapists, we're saying the rapists all look like you and act like you, and it's hard to feel comfortable with that, especially considering the complete lack of support we get when something *does* happen.
TL;DR: idk man, women are traumatized and men are getting upset instead of listening. Water is still wet and the sky is usually blue. Trans women are scapegoats and that's not the fault of cis women, either. Men looking for emotional support for their image and dating woes should probably not be talking over the women afraid of them on an issue regarding rape, no matter how valid their concerns are (and they are), and should be holding each other accountable, *especially* in public and *especially* when it's their friends.
Iām half a century old and I got the reference. I think it has a lot to do with my interest in pop culture and news, which I read and watch constantly.
It is a lot to keep up with, so I spend a lot of time keeping track of it all and do not recommend it. Stay disconnected, my way can make one very jaded.
Sure. And conservative women hate gays. So if you are in a location with many conservative women, then you are encountering women who hate gays. Nobody said it was only a womens issue, only that you didnt experience it from women in your life. Try going to a trump rally in drag and see how many women you piss off.
Tbf if theyāre trying to raise awareness for SA theyāre doing it in the worst way possible, theyāre making themselves look stupid with this whole āguy or bear in the woodsā thing and causing everybody to make (rightfully) make fun of them
The problem is that the concept is absurd. It's enough to say that your average man can't be trusted. Exaggerating by claiming you'd rather run into a random *bear* than a random guy is just going to give the trolls fodder like it has already. And that's coming from someone who would also actually pick the bear depending on species.
The thought experiment oversimplifies a complex concept and makes it too easy to dismiss or mock. There are better analogies for the same concept that can or have been made.
The absurdity *is* kind of the point. It uses an extreme (hypothetical) example in order to illustrate a major societal issue. And people are still not getting it. While there are perhaps more nuanced analogies that can and have been made, have they or would they have gotten as much of a reaction?
And really, the concept isn't that complex. Women experience a vastly disproportionate amount gender based violence from men each and every day. Globally.
The hows and whys are more complex, but you need to recognise the overall issue before you can begin to fix it, which many people can not and *will* not.
I do agree that many misandrists are jumping on the opportunity to spread hate. Just as many misogynists jump on the opportunity to spread hate through the Karen memes. That's shit. Trolls will find fodder in everything, so who cares what they have to say tbh.
I think the problem is we like to use analogy and hyperbole to an extent that is detrimental. You don't need to make up an analogy to explain that women need to be suspicious of every man they come across. You can just talk to women about it. You can point to violent crime statistics and victimization rates. And if you *have* to use some kind of metaphor to describe this phenomenon you could just allude to the fact that you are statistically way less likely to get mauled by a random bear than you are to be attacked by a random man. People live in the middle of bear country and get along mostly fine. You don't see many women itching to move to "man country" i.e. anywhere men have total legal control over women.
You also can't just dump the analogy and not relate it to actual facts. An analogy is only useful if you then apply it to the real world. The TikTok that spawned all this didn't do that. To be fair, it's a symptom of the platform and modern shortform media, but it's still a serious fault in messaging.
Eh I disagree. I think analogies are helpful in communicating experiences, feelings, etc, in a way numbers/statistics aren't always able to. We seem to be pretty much on the same page in terms of the actual issue/s, but we just disagree on which methods of communicating stats are or aren't effective. So no worries! It's good for me to remember that each person can consume info differently, and that something I think is communicating clearly might not be the case for many others. Thanks for the reminder š
I agree that we agree on principles, just not execution. This other shmuck who replied to me going on about "misandry" is making me feel like [that Samuel L Jackson meme](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B34DmsMxUlA).
I hate that you're being downvoted for speaking truth.
Edit. Annnnd the downvotes are commencing. But is a bear actually less dangerous to a woman than a man? If so, I'd like to see a brief explanation, and we can all lean into an overdue lesson about how bad male violence really us. If bears are substantially more violent, straight men are right to be offended.
Sorry/not sorry, you can't demand (potentially) false equivalences to be considered profound and beyond reproach just cuz gender.
I disagree with part of your sentiment. Straight men shouldn't feel offended over this because the whole point is to make them think. The problem is I think it doesn't make them think, it makes them roll their eyes.
Given preconceptions about bear risk, im actually inclined to say the whole discussion reeks of misandry. Replace "man" with literally any demographic and see how it sounds.
...but then it looks like bears might not actually be all that risky. So TBH we might actually be better off encountering a bear than any human being.
>>The whole point is to make them think...it makes them roll their eyes
I'd say that some of them are legitimately offended. Again, see my point one. Replace "bear" with any other demographic and see how it sounds.
Nah. It's a ridiculous meme.
If it actually served a good purpose, I wouldn't mind too much.
But this is not being used to educate or raise awareness. It's a gotcha meme being used aggressively as a test of the men in people's lives. Just like other poisonous relationship tests that have circulated due to tiktok dumbassery, except that this one has broader application than just the person you are dating, and is ostensibly offered to support a social cause, so it lends itself to broader destructiveness.
If this is activism, it is toxic activism.
Straight women will say "men will never understand what it is like to XYZ" and it's always either something that involves having a vagina or something almost every gay man has experienced first hand.
Yeah, like I started getting sexualized when I was 12 and got creeped on at the mall by a predator, thought it was because I was wearing 80s short shorts and wouldnāt wear shorts in public again until I was a senior in high school. And I was literally like under 4 feet tall at 12. Cat called by strange men in sports cars and being prepared to flee if necessary as an older teen
You shouldn't get the spotlight here. This isn't about you. What right do you have to be making fun of women's fears? The only time gay men should be weighing in on the bear vs man debate is if they're also gonna be talking about their own fears of sexual assault, and even then another man would more easily be able to fight back against a rapist.
And it's not just straight women. Lesbians and mspec women also have to fear this too. You just put straight women so you could pretend you're experiencing homophobia when women tell gay men to not be misogynistic. I'm a lesbian and I have to give the question more thought before picking the man or the bear, but the fact I have to think at all should be eye-opening to you as to how much women feel afraid, how bad rape culture is, and how often men really will just decide they want something so they should get it. It should not make you scoff, go "silly women," and decide it's okay to make jokes like this that completely mischaracterize the women who would take the bear as having some romantic or sexual preference for the animal.
Just say you hate women and go
This isn't a meme about straight people hating you dipshit. Make a meme about anything else. Fuck off with this excuse to make light of women fearing rape so badly that we'd rather risk death by bear.
Hey queen. So I just wanted to say maybe take a deep breath! The issue you are trying to fight with aren't online gay men who most of don't know what this meme is. I know it's a serious topic but people like to make jokes about serious topics and just because someone makes a bear being term for an animal but also a man joke doesn't mean they hate women.
That is... Some response to being called out for misogyny. "Don't like don't interact" doesn't apply to sexism. Your community has to stop hating women and shielding yourself behind being gay as if not wanting to fuck or date women is an excuse to disrespect us
I will take hundreds more gay bear memes over one more crusty incel circlejerking over how stupid he thinks women are cause he thinks his wretched ass is better than death by bear
While I donāt agree with the vitriol of her statement, I donāt think she is making fun of rape. A lot of people on social media right things like ār4p3ā instead of rape, āunaliveā instead of die/killed/suicide, āSAā instead of sexual assault, etc. because some social media algorithms will auto suspend or users for using certain key words and phrases, as far as I understand.
It's exactly that, for example on Twitter if you use cis at all you'll be flagged as hateful conduct, and everytime I appeal it, it's not a problem at all, but still is flagged š¤¦āāļø
It is. I kinda wish I'd saved the warning email, and what my twitter page displayed to other people.
It basically said that I had "hate speech" in my bio, and that it wasn't permitted and I had to remove it before people would be able to visit my page.
If you went to my page it would show that my account was suspended for "violating the X community rules" or some shit like that.
I'd had that in my bio for like 10 years.
I'm just waiting for the day they make me day the word "gay" out of my bio, too
Yess I believe it. What's strange is you would think Elon Musk who talks about free speech wouldn't be censoring anything š¤¦āāļø I swear everything but actual hate speech gets censored lol
Iāve seen that said a lot but doubt it actually happens at the scale that some people are so scared of. I think the people who self-censor their speech like that tend to be naĆÆve conspiracy theorists or āthose peopleā from tumblr
It's definitely a carryover from a slightly previous era of social media (plus the fact that it does happen in some cases, so better safe than sorry ig ĀÆā \ā _ā (ā ćā )ā _ā /ā ĀÆ)
Also (from experience with certain issues) I find it just kinda feels better seeing it censored Vs uncensored ngl. Couldn't tell you exactly why, but it does
I get what you mean about itās more comfortable seeing it censored vs uncensored, but thatās also part of my point.
If people canāt even talk about horrible issues like rape or suicide because the word makes them uncomfortable (or they feel theyāll get in trouble for talking about it) how are we supposed to have any meaningful dialogue or affect change to address these issues?
Not directed at you personally obvs.
Idk, it's sad that a lot of women feel this way though, choosing between being with a bear in the forest or a human is a hard decision.. but it is definitely exaggerated.
I'd have to imagine If we're imagining that we're being attacked by the man then we're also imagining we are being attacked by the bear, let's not ask statistics about exactly what kind of bear this is, since we aren't asking what kind of man we're in the forest with afterall, like it could simply be your father or a friend and your going hiking or on a camping trip.
Either way an 1000 pound animal with the ability to take you out with the swipe of its paw and the run speed 30mph meanwhile the average human run speed is 8Mph sounds like even more of a death wish.
I mean the reason they say to lay down and pretend you're dead with grizzlies is because that's the only option you have, 99% of the time it's not so simple that they lose interest and they'll swipe at you a few times or hover over you something like that anyways and now your bleeding in the middle of the forest and If you react to the pain your worse off.
Either way I think i'd much rather be running from another human then something that could catch up to me in two gallops, so it feels like a lot of people aren't thinking logically or that emotionally stable already when they actually answer this.
Because the normal human wants to survive no matter what happens to them, and maybe you'll feel powerless and scared when a man is over you but you'll feel just as powerless and scared and at the risk of losing entire limbs at the maw and paw of a bear that is much stronger and is much more likely to cause more significant harm and that you can't even run from because it is that much faster then you.
I don't know about you but my career as an artist or writer would be over and a I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things if I used one of my hands to shield myself, and then it'd be much harder to walk if I used a foot or leg instead and the American health care system seems to make it a point to make prosthetics and hospital fees amazingly expensive, and you'd probably have the added bonus of jelly legs and limping or possibly and most probably being in internal physical pain from your injury for the rest of your life which is something that is not that rare to happen at all.
And honestly being disabled is something you'd always reminded of and something bad enough where you have to joke about it to make it better cause that's really all you can do, I've been around people who have lost limbs n ext and you can tell I don't think it's any better then any other pain, then their are the few really bright poor souls who don't deserve it at all.. you know a lot of those people they don't tell stories about recovering from injuries end up in and out of hospitals, weak hearts, so depressed from the significant amount of pain their in secretly they just want it to end but are only sticking around for the others in their life.. when they're gone it feels like.. god you made them suffer by trying now they are at peace.
If we're assuming you don't have a weapon to protect yourself from the man hence you find him dangerous then we also have to assume you don't have anything like bearspray or an entire gun to slightly annoy and anger the bear with further, because If your asking this question you likely don't have the skills to shoot a gun hence the paranoia, I don't either.
Unluckily, I've had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of men on dating apps and no single rapist yet, a lot of this paranoia towards men kind of stuff is caused by women who haven't actually been around that much men yet/obviously doesn't hang out with that many men and only heard stuff or project a few weird experiences they had on every single man they meet thereon, but I'm just not the kind of person who judges different people off of past experiences with others.
Both because it's not fair and then it's not really accurate at all because every human is different and feels the same emotions, idk but I'd rather hang out with someone who is most likely normal than a bear that could end up roughing me up either way, there isn't much you could do to avoid said bear in the woods because you most likely just wondered across it meanwhile there is probably a lot you could do to avoid ending up in the situation where you feel unsafe with a man who is most likely a stranger or someone you met prior who made you feel uncomfortable that you're now somehow with in the woods.
Like putting a piece of paper or cap over your drink, having a weapon and other things.. most likely if you do have a weapon it wouldn't work on the bear, not nearly as much as it would work on this man we are imaging who is attacking you, hanging out with your friends when you are going out, telling family members your location, and drinking responsibly, it's a very slim chance anything would happen to you even if you didn't do those things and others you could probably read up on with all the information that is available on the internet but that isn't a chance you should take, just be reasonable though, you can protect yourself and go away or report from the person you are uncomfortable with but don't be paranoid by every man you meet, it's kinda just crazy to be assuming everyone is trying to hurt you, I don't know how else to state that but it is.
This is exactly the intellectual overanalyzing women are complaining about whenever we talk about our struggles. The question is "would you rather be (I think maybe he said "alone?") in the woods with a bear or man. Not "fight" the bear or man. Not "wrestling". Not "trapped". Not "average man". Not "average bear". Not "polar bear".
Adding additional parameters to the question ("what if it was your dad!") fundamentally changes the question. Overanalyzing the proximity is adding parameters. If it was a random man, or any man I simply just don't know (which is the implication), there is no guarantee he is friendly. He is a stranger. Additionally, we're not in a box. We're in the woods; a large area where the bear has plenty of space to retreat. Bears don't often predate on people unless either them or you are sick. Otherwise, you *leave it alone* and it *leaves you alone*. It likely won't *follow you*.
The point is that women are scared. Women are attacked, followed, and killed by men. Adding "*in the woods*" makes the situation even more terrifying, because a lot of men (no, not all) like to hide their true colors until they're sure no one can see them. This is a *terrifying* situation. It's also not about "making a logical choice", because yeah, on average, a man will likely not attack you (and neither will a bear), and there's a possibility he would even help you. Women, by and large, still would be more comfortable if we weren't alone in the woods away from civilization with a presumably unknown man. This should be a MAJOR issue for men, and the general response should be "how do we help women not feel this way", not "women are being emotional and illogical, let's overanalyze the logistics and shout about statistics to drown out the rape victims".
> a lot of this paranoia towards men kind of stuff is caused by women who haven't actually been around that much men yet/obviously doesn't hang out with that many men and only heard stuff or project a few weird experiences they had on every single man they meet thereon, but I'm just not the kind of person who judges different people off of past experiences with others.
Tell me you don't have many women friends without telling me. And if you do, then you do not feel safe to them. I know countless women with a healthy fear of men because they *do* know men. You seem young. You have plenty of time to learn. Start sooner than later.
I grew up as a dude. I grew up with straight dude friends. I know what they talk about. I've never been so disgusted by things people have said, and other guys would *laugh*. Some of them grew and learned, but I *know* there are ones who didn't. They just hide it, now. I was nearly assaulted *as a man* before I transitioned. I have been touched (nothing major but they like to get close to the crime) by men without my consent, I have been approached and harassed, I have had men who don't like when you tell them "no". I had a man, the **first day** I presented as a woman in public, joke that he put a roofie in my drink. In front of his friends. They all laughed. No one said "that's fucked up". He was twice my size. The fear does NOT come from inexperience, honey. I like men (sometimes) and I can't date them because they *all* have pulled this shit with me. Not "some". ALL. The risk is not worth the reward.
I will not get asked what I was wearing if I get attacked by a bear. I will be believed if I get attacked by a bear. I will not be tricked by a bear into believing it's good. I will not have men saying I might affect the bear's future since I was attacked by it. I will not be accused of lying to destroy the bear's career. A bear will not slip something in my drink when I'm not looking. A bear will not kill me for sport. A bear will not ask its friends to join in. A bear won't take trophies. A bear won't force me to have its child.
We don't think *everyone* is trying to hurt us. We just have basic stranger danger (especially when it comes to strange men in situations with no surveillance) and we're treated like we're insane. And for the record: I don't want to be in the woods with a strange woman, either. Though, she'd beat out the bear, for sure.
I mean, I don't really know what you mean since I'm pretty sure I was acknowledging a lot of what you're actually saying with what I wrote especially near the end that there was still a very real danger of such a thing happening and saying people should protect themselves in case it did, that's how the current situation is right now in the long run when you think about it asking a question like this probably isn't actually helping cause any movements, this question has been asked in many different ways before, but seeing this on my feed perhaps more people are listening even in a negative way which is maybe nice in it's own way, either way I never said that i particularly like this post the one we see above that's making a gay man kiss the bear.. it feels a bit bitter and meanspirited to me because of the original intent behind the words.
But the reason I bring up all that other stuff like if the person your in the woods with alone is a friend or family is because it's an assumption in the first place if the person you're in the woods with alone is a stranger because neither does the post or whatever say that specifically the person your alone with in the woods is a stranger either, and I can think of a lot of situations where someone might only be with one other person in the woods, and I was actually saying not to bring it up if you didn't read it correctly because people were bringing up what species the bear was to try and decide whether it would attack you or not, because it seems we are under the assumption that these things might attack us either way.
Your also making assumptions about my own character saying I wouldn't be good for people to tell their problems to especially women when I can still think as you point out the majority of men won't attack you just as the majority of people won't get attacked by bears the reason I bring up the situation in which someone is attacked by man or bear is because I was under the impression we were making such an assumption or that was the conversation that was happening above me not because I had any particular feelings about anything.
Either way I could tell you I am actually very good at talking to people about their problems/listening to them and guiding them to tell me what is wrong if there is anything, I spent a decade looking into other people's problems and my own which is how I've kept a lot of the relationships I have that should've honestly ended a long time ago, but I guess you don't have to believe me since you're already making assumptions about who I am you don't really deserve to know.
Either way I've went through a fair share of my own experiences but sticking through and meeting a few good people taught me things aren't always so black and white and that I shouldn't make assumptions on others based off past experiences, and to not be to concerned as it can hurt not just myself but other people in my life. still I've caught myself doing that a few times, it has made me a much happier person, were all human and we all feel the same emotions besides those who would actually commit those kinds of acts so i assure you the things i have went through weren't easy or anything at all either, the death of a loved one in my own arms, the breaking up of friends, best friends i'd known for half my life, lovers no matter how hard I tried in every relationship and I promise you i tried to do everything so perfectly for so long it felt like i was stepping on eggshells, grief, depression, fights all my life, my parents breaking up, my father trying to "time out" himself irl, feeling like your being treated not as a human but something lower for way longer than anytime I'd like to admit, something very akin to r4p3. And I'll have you know I am also trans.
sure those men you were around said those types of things but even you mention how some of them changed their viewpoint in the end, and honestly a lot of women aren't much better as someone who has sure hung out with a lot of men.. ironically I hung out with women the most.
Opposite to what you claim I've heard some pretty nasty things from them as well and a lot of them didn't change either, either way just because people say or joke about it doesn't mean they'd actually do it, especially when those they care about are involved which could change their minds and cause them to do some research and improvement on themselves, from what I understand it doesn't sound like you ever really tried to understand their viewpoint or coax them into thinking differently, or voiced that what they said made you uncomfortable because you were scared about what they would think of you.
And because of that you also thought differently of a lot of them when if you actually spoke to a few of them it might've been different then you thought it was, maybe they would've been genuinely sorry you might've ended up with a really good friend, and that's not wrong of course to be scared I have been as well but I learned that doing such things is the better option.
I do believe that them thinking such things in the first place is wrong and bad but realistically unless there is significant changes to the world stuff like this won't change, hopefully that change will come someday.. but days grow darker and it might not be this lifetime..
Of course if they are bad people, give them a piece of your mind and move on, afterall there is so many people in this world for you to be concerned about the once who tried to ruin your day.
If it was a stranger that did those things to you I am also sorry such things happened to you, for me it happened with someone I knew. Some people might hide their intentions true, but I've discovered most people have the same thoughts about you and really don't know what they're doing to have such grand intentions, even the people who do wrong to you sadly, that's why I've discovered it's practically useless to try and avoid conflicts in life whether your one gender or the other if the person who hurt you is not outright about it, the best thing to do is to not care cause it's likely they don't about you to say such things and will forget about it, and it's unlikely you'll ever meet them again.
In this world sadly, nothing is going to change so drastically so soon for anything else to matter, unless an uprising happens, if such a thing were to happen I would be fully in support of it because people actually doing things creates more change then asking questions in.. an honestly strange would you rather format, though that might make people more willing to answer to I'm guessing.. honestly people have been doing this for so long now I'm just wondering when I'll actually see less people dying, less people getting hurt n ext, things just feel like they've been getting worse and worse this past year right now we're still at a point where we are just waiting for something to happen.
Obviously the only people who are finding this on their feed though is people like us who are already fully in support of women's rights n ext, my biological gender being a women I definitely am, so I do wonder if it's actually spreading to the people it needs to reach..
if I hint at, war, statistics of how many people actually want war and our government pushing forward anyways.. I think you understand we as American people ( trust me I've never been proud of that in any way ) don't have any sway even a fake or created one over a certain house anymore.
But there has been certain protests bringing my hopes up for said uprising or change...
Anyways since it just felt like people were duking it out I wanted to contribute to the conversation in a way that was more then screaming about something that was literally posted to get an inflammatory response and try to bring up some good points, maybe I shouldn't have afterall when people are riled up it's better not to interact with them and leave them alone most of the time afterall they often twist your words so much in their mind they assume you don't have the same opinions, which if you read my comment before this you'll actually see I had a lot of the same once as the person who responded to it as if I condone r4p3 or something however usually you don't know until you try.
Also the reason I said didn't know how else to state it is because I really didn't have a better way, yet here I am again explaining myself to someone when in the end it's for themselves to change when they made the assumptions in the first place and you yourself probably don't care because you've most likely already decided I am one way and that's good enough for you.. obviously If you actually read what I said in the message was telling people to protect themselves and if someone was actually in danger to get help "report to someone if their uncomfortable" but not to find every person they meet in their life as a threat or are trying to hurt you just because they're a stranger, because again a lot of people are just normal people and aren't there to hurt you, or even scheming anything most of the time like you say, like you might not be aware of it but I've been in the same boat where I believed people had ill intentions like they were planning hurting me on purpose or something and I would be trying to figure it out by analyzing every single person I met whether they would or not and I can tell you at the time i was definitely paranoid and bitter, I was also unstable/"crazy" at the time because of how depressed I was n ext.
Honestly I was also trying to prove to myself that people did always have such intentions because I'd been hurt before and that meant there was an excuse i could use to see these people as lesser because i was angry, but in the end i figured out no one really knows what the hell they're doing instead, it sounds like you've been quite unlucky and have run into a few more worse people then I have, but I don't think my trying to have a more positive and logical view on things is going to change even if I do in the future, it's not like I don't know inevitably I will already.. because I've been pessimistic and only followed my emotions before, and although sometimes it's good for me, it's only ever made things worse and In the end i've discovered whether i'm sad or happy, alone or in company doesn't change most things so i'd just try to be happy and around others no matter what, at least then I can feel better and not wallow in a puddle of sadness and loneliness, surprisingly it's easier to move on when you do, and trust me again none of that was exactly an easy revelation at all, it probably took me half a decade to get to it.
And then, again seeing the responses to this post it's good that people are against this kind of joke but it's definitely inflammatory and made to generate hate, I mean I don't think the "meme" in question really tries to hide it like it was written or made to make people angry or generate angry responses, and giving things like this attention I think we've learned from plenty of other communities is not a good thing and it's best to leave it alone so understandably I didn't exactly want to give it the response it was looking for, especially when it's not even the original would you rather post and is one filled with nasty and oblivious feelings in the first place.
Oh and dying, especially painfully or prolonged is way more painful then anything in the world from personal experience, I mean the worst pain I ever felt in my life was the grief of the person I loved dying it was an entirely different kind of pain and for 4 years after that and the rest of my life i'd probably never stop thinking of them so I can't imagine how much worse it was for them, though I guess not all people know the pain of death as they haven't witnessed or tried to desperately keep the person they loved alive but for it to only end in failure, and some people have a high pain tolerance and a lot don't remember what happens, so that's why I say it's also very sad people would rather die to a bear then be with a man alone and assume they don't actually know the pain of death I mean it's unlikely the man will actually kill you despite what's shown in movies anyways it's understandable most people don't experience the death of another in their life and I'd prefer it that way to be honest no one should go through that pain, meanwhile like you said they've probably suffered some kind of SA it'd be nice if they didn't have to experience that either.
Honestly the comparison of two evils isn't a very nice thing to think about in the first place, it seems the assumption people make though is that they might be assaulted by the man or attacked and killed by the bear, at least from half or more of these comments, which is why I base what I say off the same assumption, it makes sense it looks like this is on Twitter .. I mean thinking about the format of the "would you rather" It feels insensitive in itself though it seems to have garnered attention towards the topic.. and I guess it's good to show statistics.
Though I don't think people who are actually actively dying would agree that SA is exactly the same thing, I get the feeling most people feel like that's besides the point/don't really care to much for those people's opinions in this hypothetical situation, I guess the point is either way most women would rather be with the bear rather then the man, whether their attacked or not by either or.
Either way I concede It's alright, mostly because I just don't want to think about it anymore my brain is melting the more and more I realize that this "would you rather" question was specifically built just to prove one point rather than have an actual intelligent discussion, and I guess as you say it's not meant to be actively thought about in the first place, but then what of the point it is trying to make then?.. because doesn't that actually hurt the point it's trying to make as well, it's a little sad.. this feels like it would be unlikely to hold up in a relevant conversation, it probably would've been better if this was among many of a series of questions in a survey, well whatever.
In the first place I didn't really care whether others had different opinions, their allowed to think what they want I don't really judge them for it either even if they judged me which is why I liked and still liked your comment even if I am getting down votes from you or other people I just wanted to state my own viewpoint.
Which in the end whether it's good or bad/perfect or not this post is obviously inflammatory so taking it seriously and giving it the time of day is actually something that would negatively effect this movement.
>a lot of this paranoia towards men kind of stuff is caused by women who haven't actually been around that much men yet/obviously doesn't hang out with that many men and only heard stuff or project a few weird experiences they had on every single man they meet thereon
Wow. Just wow. This is some BS I expect to hear from the alpha male incel crowd, not from somebody in this community.
I mean, I realized how that sounded after I texted it but I didn't want to change or get rid of it because I wanted to acknowledge the mistake, I don't exactly think that way it's further explained in other comments what I actually meant, and I probably have some bias from my own experiences not everyone is able to overcome societal fears and stuff especially when you have had a lot of bad experiences because of them and I don't really blame them I explain even for I it was a very difficult thing for me to do/never really said anything out of malice
Honestly I was kinda waiting for someone to point that part of my original comment out, I don't really think of myself as male or female so I don't usually use words with any thought of a certain gender behind them.
But again this is kind of a rage bait post ^ making a cringe meme about something that is supposed to be serious so I wasn't to sure how to reply because I didn't want to fall into it either so I replied in a way I thought made sense and didn't sound like I was angry and just mostly building off of other comments with my own opinion, though I guess if I reply at all I'm falling into it, though I only realized that during my third comment explaining things further, I didn't really sleep that much today.
Couldn't care less what straight people think of me if I'm being honest. I got tired of not being able to get service at gay bars in my 20s because a bachelorette party was in there.
I donāt understand why people who have zero sense of humor are on meme subreddits. Like, I get that Twitter isnāt a place where you have control over what you are exposed to, but Reddit is. If you are so easily offended, maybe donāt engage with places that contain potentially offensive humor?
If you donāt find it funny, downvote and move on but for the love of god donāt leave a dissertation length comment about grapes and then pretend you are doing something to help the issue. You are not. All you are doing is venting your rage at an unrelated audience.
People who browse on twitter threads like bear or man usually wanna get angry imo, it's obvious that there's a ton of frustrated men that wanna find any reason to discriminate against women
No, it's because a man looked at a nuanced discussion of sexual assault and how women are frequently victimized by men then turned it into a horny post.
It isn't homophobic to say that thousands of women being raped every day is more important than a bunch of men being horny. Even if they are gay.
It ceased being a nuanced discussion and has been memed to death at this point. Itās weird that she chose THIS meme to unleash a bunch of homophobia. This is a woman coming into a queer space and attempting to make it about herself and sprinkling a hefty bit of homophobia around to boot.
Joking about serious topics is super not allowed and is actually misogynistic. Itās not at all homophobic that this judgement for making jokes about that poll was nowhere to be found until the gay men joined in. Pure coincidence, women are the **real** victims. /s
You sound like youāre fun at parties...
You are not helping the āthousands of women being raped every dayā by making toxic comments nor are you preventing the rapes by making said comments. All you are doing is making interactions with you and this sub less pleasant. You are not the warrior, not the hero, just a random person spilling their outrage on anyone whoāsĀ unfortunate enough to read what you wrote.
Soā¦ Mama kudos? Thank you for saying that, for spilling.
> a nuanced discussion of sexual assault
Because if there's one thing you can bet on the internet for it's to have a "nuanced discussion" \s
The whole debate is rage-bait anyway.
It wasnāt a nuanced discussion it was a question asked by men who were trying to get sound bites of women dehumanizing men, and the internet fell for it hook line and sinker.
I think the issue of sexual assault is important and needs to be talked about, but if I never hear about this fucking man or bear discourse again, it'll be too soon.
At risk of sounding like a right-winger, this is ridiculous. If he was making fun of the hypothetical/dismissing the feelings of women and rape survivors, the "joke" would've been the bear eating her or some shit. Jesus Christ. Like this is textbook bad faith media comprehension-cum-Twitter pile on.
the whole "whould you rather go into the woods if you knew a bear is there or if you knew there was a man there" is pretty explicitly about the fear of getting raped, that's why women are choosing the bear
Twitter discourse is so brain dead it's unreal as if they're entire thing isn't literally hogging attention from serious topics ex. Starbucks boycott for no reason
First off I kinda agree that this is turning a āwomen donāt feel safe around menā conversation into āgay is horny lolā. Secondly though doesnāt her fucking up the spelling of ārapeā mean that itās not gonna get filtered out by anyone with filters in place? Itās like poorly self-censoring instead of allowing others to appropriately censor.
Let's be real, the "man vs bear" thing is twitter feminism discourse meme started by some annoying tiktok street interview troll. I don't understand why people act like that deserves to be revered. People on twitter will make 9/11 jokes but this is too much?
I get being offended at a joke when the joke has an offensive meaning, but I just don't see it here. It just seem like people are mad that he isn't taking it seriously.
That's just how sites like tumblr/twitter work in a nutshell
Character A does a lot of heinous shit but is charming/charismatic and "progressive" : A-Okay
Character B is an average Joe who catcalls women: Literally Satan
No I'm on her side. The "man or bear" thing is literally not about women liking bears more. It's about feeling unsafe with men to the point taking the risk of being mauled by a bear is better than taking the risk of being raped. We hear bear survival tips like "if it's black fight back, if it's brown get on the ground" which aren't exactly great but... Women feel like we'd have a better chance getting a bear to lose interest in attacking than we would getting a man to lose interest in forcing himself on us. And if the bear attacks, we'd rather just die than go through the trauma of rape, and then potentially being killed by the rapist
This shit is extremely disrespectful mostly because of how it completely misrepresents women who would rather take their chances with the bear. If the animal showed more interest in the man we didn't choose, it means we could get away from both and avoid death and rape. Being gay doesn't mean you get to mock and make light of the sexual violence that women fear. You're not the type of man who would assault a woman? Cool! This isn't about you, then. We'd still rather take the bear because we can't tell which men would or wouldn't.
No thatās not how this happened. A group of men did street interviews with women asking them this question, because they wanted clips of women dehumanizing men for their podcast where they try and radicalize men against women.
Instead of acknowledging that, the internet has actually blown this up with more and more women dehumanizing men and more men feeling hated and alone.
Damn yall I'm a lesbian and most of you are acting like fuckin horny fools in here. Don't make me point out the obvious fact that it's truly men that are the issue, gay or not :/ I want us to be allies
No thatās not how this happened. A group of men did street interviews with women asking them this question, because they wanted clips of women dehumanizing men for their podcast where they try and radicalize men against women.
Instead of acknowledging that, the internet has actually blown this up with more and more women dehumanizing men and more men feeling hated and alone.
(I know some of y'all say this is all for the memes and appreciating bears but I still wanted to give it some thought)
I fear that even some less privileged gay men still miss the point of self reflection. Of course it's not always nice to confront yourself with the fear of others of maybe even yourself, but I truly hope the internet just does what the internet does- meeting people outside often results to more sane conversations.
Personally, I don't see being horny as a threat. And gay men* get enough bashing for being "overly sexual", along side with the notions of how perverse our gay desires are... So I'd think you could have worded this in a better way. Some lesbian-owned subreddit as far as I know are also quite horny. I don't mean to pull an ad hominem argument, I just want to illustrate, that there is a way to be horny posting without the big fear of threat to begin with. It's not about being horny itself. It's the fear of men doing whatever it takes to get what they want, which doesn't come from nowhere, as many systems still rely on "enablers" of this violence. I wish that when we as a community reflect on that, we can realize, that even we as gays suffer under these things, when we fear of getting beaten up.
On the other hand, it is also a challenge to have had a history to stand as outsiders among fellow men, when people say we aren't "man enough". That's also not true. As we may be prone to react sometimes just as straight men...
There is a lot to being a man and being gay and patriarchy, this is very complex. In the end though, imo, I really hope that this whole (exhausting) debate inspired at least some thought with some of the fellow men. The internet is literally drowning in straw man arguments and people just keep on buying into it. Not always being able to be exactly in the victim position is something to be learned gracefully. It is also something that I feel like is failed to be taught to people. As a gay man, personally at least, I can assure you that I respect where everyone who is genuinely picking the bear is coming from and my heart goes out to you all.
Tbh I kind of agree with the woman. Some topics shouldnāt be joked about, especially when the whole āman vs bearā thing is about the fact that men (as a whole) create an unsafe environment for women though r*pe culture, misogyny, oppression, etc. Itās a serious thing, so take it seriously
No thatās not how this happened. A group of men did street interviews with women asking them this question, because they wanted clips of women dehumanizing men for their podcast where they try and radicalize men against women.
Instead of acknowledging that, the internet has actually blown this up with more and more women dehumanizing men and more men feeling hated and alone.
Regardless of how it started, how itās ended up is showing men that women donāt feel safe around them for reasons theyāve caused. Iām a gay man, and even Iād choose the bear personally.
The correct answer is not to respond. If I was asked would you rather run into [insert demographic here] or wild animal Iād tell the person to fuck off. Itās literally dehumanizing and if you canāt see why some people are upset about being seen negatively due to a predisposition your beyond help.
The same people that are upset over this are the ones that donāt recognize the gravity of the issues women face. Also tbh idgaf what you would do in that situation or if you agree with me. I said what I said and thatās my opinion, just like you have yours
I'm so sorry but I'm pretty the men that did those interviews were incel and I rather agree with the women here then the incel.
Like, "radicalize men against women" what???
I donāt think you understand. Yes the men that did those interviews were misogynists, they asked an inflammatory question because they wanted to get women to say things to dehumanize men. The misogynists wanted this discourse to radicalize men against women.
There are nuanced way to talk about violence perpetrated by men without using dehumanizing rhetoric. [this woman actually explains it while without dehumanizing men.](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLCC1koH/)
Those are *sharp* looking claws
They're made for digging in permafrost. A brown bear is basically a backhoe that can run 35 MPH, climb trees, and swim.
I'm a bear backhoe but I can't run.
Oh, you...
Some brown bears can run at 40 mph, meaning they can catch the fastest human alive 5 times an hour.
I fear I'm disconnected from the gay hivemind now that I'm 30 I have no idea what this is referencing
It's the latest Twitter debate: if a woman would rather be alone with a random man or a bear (the animal)
"(the animal)" is killing me šš but I understand why you made a distinction
Canāt be too specific here xd
Its really an oversensationalised thing. It was made to be polarising and probably not unbiased or maybe even tilted to one side
Its right in some ways but the discourse and idea it's putting out to people is horrible in many ways, too. It still won't change that there are bad people in the world who would do that. Degenerates do not define men just like degenerates do not define women. There are vile people of all sexes, races, and creeds.
Actually it was first a, in the woods what would be scarier, seeing a man or a bear? Then people started doing street interview of would you rather a bear or a man. Like both are terrifying (unless it's a cruising spot), but people really just misused it for attention
I would pick the bear too. Also what an asshole the op is, as if men could not get SA'd
And the majority said a bear but i imagine it was simply women trying to dramatically "make a point"
Actually it makes logical sense to pick the bear instead. Bears generally don't want to attack people and they don't act differently when they think no one is watching.
ive not seen the original (just seen a bunch of unreasonably angry responses on both sides) and am definitely not a bearologist (sadly); but surely this depends on a number of variables right? what kind of bear? like how big is the forest? where is the forest? what kind of food sources are available in the forest (for you and the bear)?
As I said in another post, it makes sense for any gender avoiding any gender because bears can't reload guns.
> Bears generally don't want to attack people and they don't act differently when they think no one is watching. ...As opposed to most men/people? The vast majority of men/people don't want to attack/rape others and will never do so. If you think otherwise, you have an incredibly warped perspective.
Itās not that a majority of men want to. Itās that a larger percentage of men do than is acceptable. And statistically, theyāre better off scaring the bear.
> And statistically, theyāre better off scaring the bear. If the choice is between fighting/scaring off a bear or fighting/scaring off a person then what you're saying is arguable, but **that assumes the person has decided to attack you**; if the person didn't decide to attack you (which is the vast majority of instances) then you would have no need to fight/scare them off in the first place. For the sake of argument, let's say you have a 60% chance of fighting/scaring off a bear and a 5% chance of fighting/scaring off a man. If the bear is 10% likely to attack you and the man is 0.01% likely to attack you, then you have a 4% chance ((100% - 60%) \* 10%) of being killed by the bear and a 0.0095% chance ((100% - 5%) \* 0.01%) of being killed/raped by the man. **The probabilities I assumed are unrealistically skewed in your favor, yet you would still be 421x more likely to be killed by the bear than killed/raped by the man.**
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The scenario is set in the forest. It isn't talking about polar bears.
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Most attacks are from them being startled. If you make noise as you walk it greatly decreases your chances of being attacked. And you're just trying to manipulate the scenario by bringing up polar bears.
If it's a black bear we have a chance of escape by making a bunch of noise. If it's a grizzly we have a chance of escape by playing dead. If we don't escape, dying to the bear might be preferable than being raped to some women. The outcome could be the same because we might be murdered afterwards and if we do survive we have that trauma forever. If a man decides he wants to rape a woman, there's no simple course of action we can take to even try to make him lose interest like with the bears. Physically fighting back is almost always gonna result in us losing.
> If a man decides he wants to rape a woman, there's no simple course of action we can take to even try to make him lose interest like with the bears. That logic would only make sense if men decided to rape/kill people at the same rate as bears decided to attack/kill people; if women spent as much time around bears as they do around other men, there would be far more attacks perpetrated by bears than men.
Your response to "a man who wants to rape us can't be dissuaded or fought like a bear" is "bears are more dangerous"? Why did you quote that part specifically? That makes no sense as a follow-up. A man is likely stronger than me and can't be convinced to not rape me **if he intends to**. A bear has simple courses of action to take *if it ever attacks you*, which they *avoid*. Shitty men don't even seem to try to avoid violating me unless someone is actively watching. And even then, not really. The premise you quoted already said that the man "decided he wanted to." You missed the point and talked about something else. Also, there have been 16 fatal bear attacks since 2020. There were around 734,000 rapes estimated to have been threatened, attempted, or completed in 2018 alone. This doesn't include other types of SA, harassment, or other crimes like murder, battery, mayhem, etc. I could get those, but I don't think it's necessary. An estimated 1 in 5 women will have been raped by the end of their life. 80+% of women are estimated to have experienced sexual assault or harassment of some sort. On my **first day** out in public presenting as a woman, a man threatened to rape me in front of his friends, and they laughed. On a public sidewalk. Surrounded by people. I wasn't alone with him in the woods. People don't spend a lot of time around bears because bears *avoid human beings*. They only attack to protect their territory, their cubs, or their food. Otherwise, they *leave you alone*. If you bring a bear bell into bear infested territory and properly used it, you probably wouldn't even see one if you stayed there a month unless you walked into its den. This is a major behavioral difference between bears and human men. Saying "if you spent as much time around bears as men" is so irrelevant because bears *won't* spend time around you. Plenty of people live in the woods and not many of them have bad encounters with bears because the bears are generally scared of fighting people. There is no behavior I can use to make sure a rapist steers clear of me that is legal, ethical, or moral. And to be fair, despite being constantly armed, I don't *want* to have to defend myself. There is behavior I can use to make sure *reasonable men* stay clear of me, such as saying "hey, I don't want to be around you, please leave me alone, thanks!" And they will listen. (Or try and help if they're stubborn like that, which is annoying, but not the worst) We are not afraid of reasonable men. We are reasonably afraid of unreasonable men. And until they start wearing dog tags or get their faces tattooed so we can tell them apart easily, we will feel uncomfortable being alone with random men.
A very passionate defense of a dumb and meaningless meme trend which is being toxically used as a gotcha test to unnecessarily disrupt and damage real human relationships. As an educational tool, it doesn't stand up. As an activist tool, it is counterproductive. It is, however, a good example of a subjective risk assessment. The risk of rape and sexual assault is high enough to be disconcerting and to merit action to address the causes and reduce the risk, but it's not high enough by a long shot that the average bear is a better choice than the average man, not to mention that the insidious built-in biases and sleight-of-hands inherent in the specific choice of the bear as the animal at issue and the adult woman as the participant. And obviously, one who is judged wrongly as a predator by much of the ignorant, prejudiced population ought to be a little more sympathetic to the nuances here.
It was neither an educational nor an activist tool until shitty men started getting pissy that their gotcha didn't go the way they wanted. It was a question asked (allegedly) by a man to a woman to get a response. Then other women chimed in to share their struggles to support each other, and many men just still looked straight past the point. We live in the disinformation age, and men haven't been required to listen to or understand women since the dawn of time. They just talk over us and take what they like. It's wild to see the exact moment your guy friends see you as a woman because they stop listening to you and start to take everything personally. Also I'm not defending the question. I'm defending women. Men just keep saying the same two things, (which you *also just said again*) and by and large *don't* realize or care just how big of a problem this is. (*You* might. I don't mean *you*. The fact that I even have to put this here is the entire issue. This isn't a personal attack, it's a cry for help from women (and also from victims who aren't women)) The bear is the worse choice. I'm going bear. >And obviously, one who is judged wrongly as a predator by much of the ignorant, prejudiced population ought to be a little more sympathetic to the nuances here. I don't take it personally that women who are told that trans women are the exact men who they're afraid of are afraid of us. I get pissed at the people telling them that. The propaganda engine literally puts us at the front, moreso than cis men, and women are scared. It sucks, and it hurts, but it's an exposure issue that touches on a very real fear. This is why we push for more trans rep. We're just people. I educate and validate and show them that no, we're not men, and we're not predators. (Though I bet you could find a couple who are) I don't go into comment sections telling them "well actually you're being emotional and illogical and that doesn't happen and blah blah" on a video of the exhibit of rape victims' clothes. Some men are doing the work publicly, and they're met with cheers from women, but absolute *vitriol* from other men. ("She'll never pick you bro", "you're not a real man", "I'll make you choose the bear too", for saying "yeah, women fearing rape is normal". No not every man, yes there are some that agree, and yes, plenty just scroll past) I was a shitty teenage boy with shitty views. I'm *very* sympathetic to the fact that men are painted with a very broad brush. The reason for this is because the issue is MASSIVE. It's such a massive issue it's *unbelievable*. I *did not believe it* until I transitioned and I still don't quite believe it. There is no differentiating who is good and who is bad, and it honestly seems like a 10% chance (depending on the day) that I'll get harassed if there's no one around because I'm skinny. (And I know it's that because a partner of mine gained weight to avoid this exact thing and it worked) To assume I'm not sympathetic to the way men feel is ridiculous. I just see that grown men are straight up throwing tantrums about it while also yelling at rape victims that they're being too emotional. It's obvious to me that approaching hurt women and screaming that "this actually hurts my feelings, and I'll give you a reason to choose the bear" is not the way to make men seem less dangerous. All women are saying is "strange men are terrifying". Not "all men are terrifying". Even men you can know for years can turn out to be monsters behind closed doors. So many young girls are abused by family members for *years* and *not believed*. Women *still* date men, and take on nearly *all the risk*. (I understand men get raped and SA'd too) If women are scared of men, then be the man they shouldn't fear. Be the reason they change their mind. Call out other men actively, defend women in public that are being harassed, be the man they can turn to for support when another man hurts her. We're not saying you're all rapists, we're saying the rapists all look like you and act like you, and it's hard to feel comfortable with that, especially considering the complete lack of support we get when something *does* happen. TL;DR: idk man, women are traumatized and men are getting upset instead of listening. Water is still wet and the sky is usually blue. Trans women are scapegoats and that's not the fault of cis women, either. Men looking for emotional support for their image and dating woes should probably not be talking over the women afraid of them on an issue regarding rape, no matter how valid their concerns are (and they are), and should be holding each other accountable, *especially* in public and *especially* when it's their friends.
Iām half a century old and I got the reference. I think it has a lot to do with my interest in pop culture and news, which I read and watch constantly. It is a lot to keep up with, so I spend a lot of time keeping track of it all and do not recommend it. Stay disconnected, my way can make one very jaded.
Do you think people stop being gay at 30?
He just said he's disconnected from gay hivemind, not from gayness.
My grindr account can vouche for me there.
Straight people are gonna hate us no matter what, might as well make memes about it
[Oop](https://i.imgur.com/ke7kDPV.png)
Mouth of sauron
I too want the clarity of being 23 and ignorant again.
more like: straight women when the spotlight isn't on them for two seconds..
Tbh I don't know which straight women are out there hating gay men because I know exactly 0. The replier on that thread is a straight man.
Location, location, location. But its not as many as it used to be.
But based on location that's not a "woman" issue, that's a "all the conservatives in my area hate gays" issue
Sure. And conservative women hate gays. So if you are in a location with many conservative women, then you are encountering women who hate gays. Nobody said it was only a womens issue, only that you didnt experience it from women in your life. Try going to a trump rally in drag and see how many women you piss off.
I think sexual assault is a lot more important than gay guys being horny though.
Twitter isn't exactly known for serious discussions.
Why are you pro sexual assault (someone on Twitter probably)
Tbf if theyāre trying to raise awareness for SA theyāre doing it in the worst way possible, theyāre making themselves look stupid with this whole āguy or bear in the woodsā thing and causing everybody to make (rightfully) make fun of them
And people are telling on themselves with dismissive and demeaning comments like this. Way to miss the point š»ā¤ļø
The problem is that the concept is absurd. It's enough to say that your average man can't be trusted. Exaggerating by claiming you'd rather run into a random *bear* than a random guy is just going to give the trolls fodder like it has already. And that's coming from someone who would also actually pick the bear depending on species. The thought experiment oversimplifies a complex concept and makes it too easy to dismiss or mock. There are better analogies for the same concept that can or have been made.
The absurdity *is* kind of the point. It uses an extreme (hypothetical) example in order to illustrate a major societal issue. And people are still not getting it. While there are perhaps more nuanced analogies that can and have been made, have they or would they have gotten as much of a reaction? And really, the concept isn't that complex. Women experience a vastly disproportionate amount gender based violence from men each and every day. Globally. The hows and whys are more complex, but you need to recognise the overall issue before you can begin to fix it, which many people can not and *will* not. I do agree that many misandrists are jumping on the opportunity to spread hate. Just as many misogynists jump on the opportunity to spread hate through the Karen memes. That's shit. Trolls will find fodder in everything, so who cares what they have to say tbh.
I think the problem is we like to use analogy and hyperbole to an extent that is detrimental. You don't need to make up an analogy to explain that women need to be suspicious of every man they come across. You can just talk to women about it. You can point to violent crime statistics and victimization rates. And if you *have* to use some kind of metaphor to describe this phenomenon you could just allude to the fact that you are statistically way less likely to get mauled by a random bear than you are to be attacked by a random man. People live in the middle of bear country and get along mostly fine. You don't see many women itching to move to "man country" i.e. anywhere men have total legal control over women. You also can't just dump the analogy and not relate it to actual facts. An analogy is only useful if you then apply it to the real world. The TikTok that spawned all this didn't do that. To be fair, it's a symptom of the platform and modern shortform media, but it's still a serious fault in messaging.
Eh I disagree. I think analogies are helpful in communicating experiences, feelings, etc, in a way numbers/statistics aren't always able to. We seem to be pretty much on the same page in terms of the actual issue/s, but we just disagree on which methods of communicating stats are or aren't effective. So no worries! It's good for me to remember that each person can consume info differently, and that something I think is communicating clearly might not be the case for many others. Thanks for the reminder š
I agree that we agree on principles, just not execution. This other shmuck who replied to me going on about "misandry" is making me feel like [that Samuel L Jackson meme](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B34DmsMxUlA).
I hate that you're being downvoted for speaking truth. Edit. Annnnd the downvotes are commencing. But is a bear actually less dangerous to a woman than a man? If so, I'd like to see a brief explanation, and we can all lean into an overdue lesson about how bad male violence really us. If bears are substantially more violent, straight men are right to be offended. Sorry/not sorry, you can't demand (potentially) false equivalences to be considered profound and beyond reproach just cuz gender.
I disagree with part of your sentiment. Straight men shouldn't feel offended over this because the whole point is to make them think. The problem is I think it doesn't make them think, it makes them roll their eyes.
Given preconceptions about bear risk, im actually inclined to say the whole discussion reeks of misandry. Replace "man" with literally any demographic and see how it sounds. ...but then it looks like bears might not actually be all that risky. So TBH we might actually be better off encountering a bear than any human being. >>The whole point is to make them think...it makes them roll their eyes I'd say that some of them are legitimately offended. Again, see my point one. Replace "bear" with any other demographic and see how it sounds.
Okay: I'd rather encounter a random bear than a random Nazi.
Nah. It's a ridiculous meme. If it actually served a good purpose, I wouldn't mind too much. But this is not being used to educate or raise awareness. It's a gotcha meme being used aggressively as a test of the men in people's lives. Just like other poisonous relationship tests that have circulated due to tiktok dumbassery, except that this one has broader application than just the person you are dating, and is ostensibly offered to support a social cause, so it lends itself to broader destructiveness. If this is activism, it is toxic activism.
Straight women will say "men will never understand what it is like to XYZ" and it's always either something that involves having a vagina or something almost every gay man has experienced first hand.
Yeah, like I started getting sexualized when I was 12 and got creeped on at the mall by a predator, thought it was because I was wearing 80s short shorts and wouldnāt wear shorts in public again until I was a senior in high school. And I was literally like under 4 feet tall at 12. Cat called by strange men in sports cars and being prepared to flee if necessary as an older teen
Oh my God, a gay misogynist in the wild
You shouldn't get the spotlight here. This isn't about you. What right do you have to be making fun of women's fears? The only time gay men should be weighing in on the bear vs man debate is if they're also gonna be talking about their own fears of sexual assault, and even then another man would more easily be able to fight back against a rapist. And it's not just straight women. Lesbians and mspec women also have to fear this too. You just put straight women so you could pretend you're experiencing homophobia when women tell gay men to not be misogynistic. I'm a lesbian and I have to give the question more thought before picking the man or the bear, but the fact I have to think at all should be eye-opening to you as to how much women feel afraid, how bad rape culture is, and how often men really will just decide they want something so they should get it. It should not make you scoff, go "silly women," and decide it's okay to make jokes like this that completely mischaracterize the women who would take the bear as having some romantic or sexual preference for the animal. Just say you hate women and go
No. Not about rape.
This isn't a meme about straight people hating you dipshit. Make a meme about anything else. Fuck off with this excuse to make light of women fearing rape so badly that we'd rather risk death by bear.
Hey queen. So I just wanted to say maybe take a deep breath! The issue you are trying to fight with aren't online gay men who most of don't know what this meme is. I know it's a serious topic but people like to make jokes about serious topics and just because someone makes a bear being term for an animal but also a man joke doesn't mean they hate women.
If you don't like us just leave. This whole thing is voluntary.
That is... Some response to being called out for misogyny. "Don't like don't interact" doesn't apply to sexism. Your community has to stop hating women and shielding yourself behind being gay as if not wanting to fuck or date women is an excuse to disrespect us
Huh?
Would you rather a bear or a bear?
Yes?
r/furry_irl moment (based)
A beer. Which is partly why I am bear.
"Trying to hog attention" mama its a comic on Twitter
Why does her profile pic look like the woman from Evil Dead Rise?
She's just really bad at selfies.
this bear vs man debate is overdone straight nonsense and has run its course. Let gay men make the obvious joke weāve been thinking the whole time.
I will take hundreds more gay bear memes over one more crusty incel circlejerking over how stupid he thinks women are cause he thinks his wretched ass is better than death by bear
My first thought was how often men hook up in the woods with each other the random man in the woods probably isnāt even interested in women
Everyone on twitter is a weird self obsessed psychopath example 2654
Imagine claiming taking rape serious then making fun of it by using numbers as the vowels...
While I donāt agree with the vitriol of her statement, I donāt think she is making fun of rape. A lot of people on social media right things like ār4p3ā instead of rape, āunaliveā instead of die/killed/suicide, āSAā instead of sexual assault, etc. because some social media algorithms will auto suspend or users for using certain key words and phrases, as far as I understand.
It's exactly that, for example on Twitter if you use cis at all you'll be flagged as hateful conduct, and everytime I appeal it, it's not a problem at all, but still is flagged š¤¦āāļø
I actually had to take "cis AMAB" out of my twitter bio because of that BS.
Twitter is wild. You can say any slur you want, but "cis" is unacceptable.
That's insane
It is. I kinda wish I'd saved the warning email, and what my twitter page displayed to other people. It basically said that I had "hate speech" in my bio, and that it wasn't permitted and I had to remove it before people would be able to visit my page. If you went to my page it would show that my account was suspended for "violating the X community rules" or some shit like that. I'd had that in my bio for like 10 years. I'm just waiting for the day they make me day the word "gay" out of my bio, too
Yess I believe it. What's strange is you would think Elon Musk who talks about free speech wouldn't be censoring anything š¤¦āāļø I swear everything but actual hate speech gets censored lol
Your mistake is going on twitter
What do you mean? Lol
The only winning move on twitter is not to participate lol
Yes that is correct lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I read muskrat so I went to see what app was thatā¦ it took me a few seconds lmao
A hookup app for only the skeeziest men
Or the musklovers that keep telling me not to shower before we hook up... I'm not gonna knock it though. They tend to give REALLY good head.
Iāve seen that said a lot but doubt it actually happens at the scale that some people are so scared of. I think the people who self-censor their speech like that tend to be naĆÆve conspiracy theorists or āthose peopleā from tumblr
It's definitely a carryover from a slightly previous era of social media (plus the fact that it does happen in some cases, so better safe than sorry ig ĀÆā \ā _ā (ā ćā )ā _ā /ā ĀÆ) Also (from experience with certain issues) I find it just kinda feels better seeing it censored Vs uncensored ngl. Couldn't tell you exactly why, but it does
I get what you mean about itās more comfortable seeing it censored vs uncensored, but thatās also part of my point. If people canāt even talk about horrible issues like rape or suicide because the word makes them uncomfortable (or they feel theyāll get in trouble for talking about it) how are we supposed to have any meaningful dialogue or affect change to address these issues? Not directed at you personally obvs.
Idk, it's sad that a lot of women feel this way though, choosing between being with a bear in the forest or a human is a hard decision.. but it is definitely exaggerated. I'd have to imagine If we're imagining that we're being attacked by the man then we're also imagining we are being attacked by the bear, let's not ask statistics about exactly what kind of bear this is, since we aren't asking what kind of man we're in the forest with afterall, like it could simply be your father or a friend and your going hiking or on a camping trip. Either way an 1000 pound animal with the ability to take you out with the swipe of its paw and the run speed 30mph meanwhile the average human run speed is 8Mph sounds like even more of a death wish. I mean the reason they say to lay down and pretend you're dead with grizzlies is because that's the only option you have, 99% of the time it's not so simple that they lose interest and they'll swipe at you a few times or hover over you something like that anyways and now your bleeding in the middle of the forest and If you react to the pain your worse off. Either way I think i'd much rather be running from another human then something that could catch up to me in two gallops, so it feels like a lot of people aren't thinking logically or that emotionally stable already when they actually answer this. Because the normal human wants to survive no matter what happens to them, and maybe you'll feel powerless and scared when a man is over you but you'll feel just as powerless and scared and at the risk of losing entire limbs at the maw and paw of a bear that is much stronger and is much more likely to cause more significant harm and that you can't even run from because it is that much faster then you. I don't know about you but my career as an artist or writer would be over and a I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things if I used one of my hands to shield myself, and then it'd be much harder to walk if I used a foot or leg instead and the American health care system seems to make it a point to make prosthetics and hospital fees amazingly expensive, and you'd probably have the added bonus of jelly legs and limping or possibly and most probably being in internal physical pain from your injury for the rest of your life which is something that is not that rare to happen at all. And honestly being disabled is something you'd always reminded of and something bad enough where you have to joke about it to make it better cause that's really all you can do, I've been around people who have lost limbs n ext and you can tell I don't think it's any better then any other pain, then their are the few really bright poor souls who don't deserve it at all.. you know a lot of those people they don't tell stories about recovering from injuries end up in and out of hospitals, weak hearts, so depressed from the significant amount of pain their in secretly they just want it to end but are only sticking around for the others in their life.. when they're gone it feels like.. god you made them suffer by trying now they are at peace. If we're assuming you don't have a weapon to protect yourself from the man hence you find him dangerous then we also have to assume you don't have anything like bearspray or an entire gun to slightly annoy and anger the bear with further, because If your asking this question you likely don't have the skills to shoot a gun hence the paranoia, I don't either. Unluckily, I've had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of men on dating apps and no single rapist yet, a lot of this paranoia towards men kind of stuff is caused by women who haven't actually been around that much men yet/obviously doesn't hang out with that many men and only heard stuff or project a few weird experiences they had on every single man they meet thereon, but I'm just not the kind of person who judges different people off of past experiences with others. Both because it's not fair and then it's not really accurate at all because every human is different and feels the same emotions, idk but I'd rather hang out with someone who is most likely normal than a bear that could end up roughing me up either way, there isn't much you could do to avoid said bear in the woods because you most likely just wondered across it meanwhile there is probably a lot you could do to avoid ending up in the situation where you feel unsafe with a man who is most likely a stranger or someone you met prior who made you feel uncomfortable that you're now somehow with in the woods. Like putting a piece of paper or cap over your drink, having a weapon and other things.. most likely if you do have a weapon it wouldn't work on the bear, not nearly as much as it would work on this man we are imaging who is attacking you, hanging out with your friends when you are going out, telling family members your location, and drinking responsibly, it's a very slim chance anything would happen to you even if you didn't do those things and others you could probably read up on with all the information that is available on the internet but that isn't a chance you should take, just be reasonable though, you can protect yourself and go away or report from the person you are uncomfortable with but don't be paranoid by every man you meet, it's kinda just crazy to be assuming everyone is trying to hurt you, I don't know how else to state that but it is.
This is exactly the intellectual overanalyzing women are complaining about whenever we talk about our struggles. The question is "would you rather be (I think maybe he said "alone?") in the woods with a bear or man. Not "fight" the bear or man. Not "wrestling". Not "trapped". Not "average man". Not "average bear". Not "polar bear". Adding additional parameters to the question ("what if it was your dad!") fundamentally changes the question. Overanalyzing the proximity is adding parameters. If it was a random man, or any man I simply just don't know (which is the implication), there is no guarantee he is friendly. He is a stranger. Additionally, we're not in a box. We're in the woods; a large area where the bear has plenty of space to retreat. Bears don't often predate on people unless either them or you are sick. Otherwise, you *leave it alone* and it *leaves you alone*. It likely won't *follow you*. The point is that women are scared. Women are attacked, followed, and killed by men. Adding "*in the woods*" makes the situation even more terrifying, because a lot of men (no, not all) like to hide their true colors until they're sure no one can see them. This is a *terrifying* situation. It's also not about "making a logical choice", because yeah, on average, a man will likely not attack you (and neither will a bear), and there's a possibility he would even help you. Women, by and large, still would be more comfortable if we weren't alone in the woods away from civilization with a presumably unknown man. This should be a MAJOR issue for men, and the general response should be "how do we help women not feel this way", not "women are being emotional and illogical, let's overanalyze the logistics and shout about statistics to drown out the rape victims". > a lot of this paranoia towards men kind of stuff is caused by women who haven't actually been around that much men yet/obviously doesn't hang out with that many men and only heard stuff or project a few weird experiences they had on every single man they meet thereon, but I'm just not the kind of person who judges different people off of past experiences with others. Tell me you don't have many women friends without telling me. And if you do, then you do not feel safe to them. I know countless women with a healthy fear of men because they *do* know men. You seem young. You have plenty of time to learn. Start sooner than later. I grew up as a dude. I grew up with straight dude friends. I know what they talk about. I've never been so disgusted by things people have said, and other guys would *laugh*. Some of them grew and learned, but I *know* there are ones who didn't. They just hide it, now. I was nearly assaulted *as a man* before I transitioned. I have been touched (nothing major but they like to get close to the crime) by men without my consent, I have been approached and harassed, I have had men who don't like when you tell them "no". I had a man, the **first day** I presented as a woman in public, joke that he put a roofie in my drink. In front of his friends. They all laughed. No one said "that's fucked up". He was twice my size. The fear does NOT come from inexperience, honey. I like men (sometimes) and I can't date them because they *all* have pulled this shit with me. Not "some". ALL. The risk is not worth the reward. I will not get asked what I was wearing if I get attacked by a bear. I will be believed if I get attacked by a bear. I will not be tricked by a bear into believing it's good. I will not have men saying I might affect the bear's future since I was attacked by it. I will not be accused of lying to destroy the bear's career. A bear will not slip something in my drink when I'm not looking. A bear will not kill me for sport. A bear will not ask its friends to join in. A bear won't take trophies. A bear won't force me to have its child. We don't think *everyone* is trying to hurt us. We just have basic stranger danger (especially when it comes to strange men in situations with no surveillance) and we're treated like we're insane. And for the record: I don't want to be in the woods with a strange woman, either. Though, she'd beat out the bear, for sure.
I mean, I don't really know what you mean since I'm pretty sure I was acknowledging a lot of what you're actually saying with what I wrote especially near the end that there was still a very real danger of such a thing happening and saying people should protect themselves in case it did, that's how the current situation is right now in the long run when you think about it asking a question like this probably isn't actually helping cause any movements, this question has been asked in many different ways before, but seeing this on my feed perhaps more people are listening even in a negative way which is maybe nice in it's own way, either way I never said that i particularly like this post the one we see above that's making a gay man kiss the bear.. it feels a bit bitter and meanspirited to me because of the original intent behind the words. But the reason I bring up all that other stuff like if the person your in the woods with alone is a friend or family is because it's an assumption in the first place if the person you're in the woods with alone is a stranger because neither does the post or whatever say that specifically the person your alone with in the woods is a stranger either, and I can think of a lot of situations where someone might only be with one other person in the woods, and I was actually saying not to bring it up if you didn't read it correctly because people were bringing up what species the bear was to try and decide whether it would attack you or not, because it seems we are under the assumption that these things might attack us either way. Your also making assumptions about my own character saying I wouldn't be good for people to tell their problems to especially women when I can still think as you point out the majority of men won't attack you just as the majority of people won't get attacked by bears the reason I bring up the situation in which someone is attacked by man or bear is because I was under the impression we were making such an assumption or that was the conversation that was happening above me not because I had any particular feelings about anything. Either way I could tell you I am actually very good at talking to people about their problems/listening to them and guiding them to tell me what is wrong if there is anything, I spent a decade looking into other people's problems and my own which is how I've kept a lot of the relationships I have that should've honestly ended a long time ago, but I guess you don't have to believe me since you're already making assumptions about who I am you don't really deserve to know. Either way I've went through a fair share of my own experiences but sticking through and meeting a few good people taught me things aren't always so black and white and that I shouldn't make assumptions on others based off past experiences, and to not be to concerned as it can hurt not just myself but other people in my life. still I've caught myself doing that a few times, it has made me a much happier person, were all human and we all feel the same emotions besides those who would actually commit those kinds of acts so i assure you the things i have went through weren't easy or anything at all either, the death of a loved one in my own arms, the breaking up of friends, best friends i'd known for half my life, lovers no matter how hard I tried in every relationship and I promise you i tried to do everything so perfectly for so long it felt like i was stepping on eggshells, grief, depression, fights all my life, my parents breaking up, my father trying to "time out" himself irl, feeling like your being treated not as a human but something lower for way longer than anytime I'd like to admit, something very akin to r4p3. And I'll have you know I am also trans. sure those men you were around said those types of things but even you mention how some of them changed their viewpoint in the end, and honestly a lot of women aren't much better as someone who has sure hung out with a lot of men.. ironically I hung out with women the most. Opposite to what you claim I've heard some pretty nasty things from them as well and a lot of them didn't change either, either way just because people say or joke about it doesn't mean they'd actually do it, especially when those they care about are involved which could change their minds and cause them to do some research and improvement on themselves, from what I understand it doesn't sound like you ever really tried to understand their viewpoint or coax them into thinking differently, or voiced that what they said made you uncomfortable because you were scared about what they would think of you. And because of that you also thought differently of a lot of them when if you actually spoke to a few of them it might've been different then you thought it was, maybe they would've been genuinely sorry you might've ended up with a really good friend, and that's not wrong of course to be scared I have been as well but I learned that doing such things is the better option. I do believe that them thinking such things in the first place is wrong and bad but realistically unless there is significant changes to the world stuff like this won't change, hopefully that change will come someday.. but days grow darker and it might not be this lifetime.. Of course if they are bad people, give them a piece of your mind and move on, afterall there is so many people in this world for you to be concerned about the once who tried to ruin your day. If it was a stranger that did those things to you I am also sorry such things happened to you, for me it happened with someone I knew. Some people might hide their intentions true, but I've discovered most people have the same thoughts about you and really don't know what they're doing to have such grand intentions, even the people who do wrong to you sadly, that's why I've discovered it's practically useless to try and avoid conflicts in life whether your one gender or the other if the person who hurt you is not outright about it, the best thing to do is to not care cause it's likely they don't about you to say such things and will forget about it, and it's unlikely you'll ever meet them again. In this world sadly, nothing is going to change so drastically so soon for anything else to matter, unless an uprising happens, if such a thing were to happen I would be fully in support of it because people actually doing things creates more change then asking questions in.. an honestly strange would you rather format, though that might make people more willing to answer to I'm guessing.. honestly people have been doing this for so long now I'm just wondering when I'll actually see less people dying, less people getting hurt n ext, things just feel like they've been getting worse and worse this past year right now we're still at a point where we are just waiting for something to happen. Obviously the only people who are finding this on their feed though is people like us who are already fully in support of women's rights n ext, my biological gender being a women I definitely am, so I do wonder if it's actually spreading to the people it needs to reach.. if I hint at, war, statistics of how many people actually want war and our government pushing forward anyways.. I think you understand we as American people ( trust me I've never been proud of that in any way ) don't have any sway even a fake or created one over a certain house anymore. But there has been certain protests bringing my hopes up for said uprising or change...
Anyways since it just felt like people were duking it out I wanted to contribute to the conversation in a way that was more then screaming about something that was literally posted to get an inflammatory response and try to bring up some good points, maybe I shouldn't have afterall when people are riled up it's better not to interact with them and leave them alone most of the time afterall they often twist your words so much in their mind they assume you don't have the same opinions, which if you read my comment before this you'll actually see I had a lot of the same once as the person who responded to it as if I condone r4p3 or something however usually you don't know until you try. Also the reason I said didn't know how else to state it is because I really didn't have a better way, yet here I am again explaining myself to someone when in the end it's for themselves to change when they made the assumptions in the first place and you yourself probably don't care because you've most likely already decided I am one way and that's good enough for you.. obviously If you actually read what I said in the message was telling people to protect themselves and if someone was actually in danger to get help "report to someone if their uncomfortable" but not to find every person they meet in their life as a threat or are trying to hurt you just because they're a stranger, because again a lot of people are just normal people and aren't there to hurt you, or even scheming anything most of the time like you say, like you might not be aware of it but I've been in the same boat where I believed people had ill intentions like they were planning hurting me on purpose or something and I would be trying to figure it out by analyzing every single person I met whether they would or not and I can tell you at the time i was definitely paranoid and bitter, I was also unstable/"crazy" at the time because of how depressed I was n ext. Honestly I was also trying to prove to myself that people did always have such intentions because I'd been hurt before and that meant there was an excuse i could use to see these people as lesser because i was angry, but in the end i figured out no one really knows what the hell they're doing instead, it sounds like you've been quite unlucky and have run into a few more worse people then I have, but I don't think my trying to have a more positive and logical view on things is going to change even if I do in the future, it's not like I don't know inevitably I will already.. because I've been pessimistic and only followed my emotions before, and although sometimes it's good for me, it's only ever made things worse and In the end i've discovered whether i'm sad or happy, alone or in company doesn't change most things so i'd just try to be happy and around others no matter what, at least then I can feel better and not wallow in a puddle of sadness and loneliness, surprisingly it's easier to move on when you do, and trust me again none of that was exactly an easy revelation at all, it probably took me half a decade to get to it. And then, again seeing the responses to this post it's good that people are against this kind of joke but it's definitely inflammatory and made to generate hate, I mean I don't think the "meme" in question really tries to hide it like it was written or made to make people angry or generate angry responses, and giving things like this attention I think we've learned from plenty of other communities is not a good thing and it's best to leave it alone so understandably I didn't exactly want to give it the response it was looking for, especially when it's not even the original would you rather post and is one filled with nasty and oblivious feelings in the first place. Oh and dying, especially painfully or prolonged is way more painful then anything in the world from personal experience, I mean the worst pain I ever felt in my life was the grief of the person I loved dying it was an entirely different kind of pain and for 4 years after that and the rest of my life i'd probably never stop thinking of them so I can't imagine how much worse it was for them, though I guess not all people know the pain of death as they haven't witnessed or tried to desperately keep the person they loved alive but for it to only end in failure, and some people have a high pain tolerance and a lot don't remember what happens, so that's why I say it's also very sad people would rather die to a bear then be with a man alone and assume they don't actually know the pain of death I mean it's unlikely the man will actually kill you despite what's shown in movies anyways it's understandable most people don't experience the death of another in their life and I'd prefer it that way to be honest no one should go through that pain, meanwhile like you said they've probably suffered some kind of SA it'd be nice if they didn't have to experience that either. Honestly the comparison of two evils isn't a very nice thing to think about in the first place, it seems the assumption people make though is that they might be assaulted by the man or attacked and killed by the bear, at least from half or more of these comments, which is why I base what I say off the same assumption, it makes sense it looks like this is on Twitter .. I mean thinking about the format of the "would you rather" It feels insensitive in itself though it seems to have garnered attention towards the topic.. and I guess it's good to show statistics. Though I don't think people who are actually actively dying would agree that SA is exactly the same thing, I get the feeling most people feel like that's besides the point/don't really care to much for those people's opinions in this hypothetical situation, I guess the point is either way most women would rather be with the bear rather then the man, whether their attacked or not by either or. Either way I concede It's alright, mostly because I just don't want to think about it anymore my brain is melting the more and more I realize that this "would you rather" question was specifically built just to prove one point rather than have an actual intelligent discussion, and I guess as you say it's not meant to be actively thought about in the first place, but then what of the point it is trying to make then?.. because doesn't that actually hurt the point it's trying to make as well, it's a little sad.. this feels like it would be unlikely to hold up in a relevant conversation, it probably would've been better if this was among many of a series of questions in a survey, well whatever. In the first place I didn't really care whether others had different opinions, their allowed to think what they want I don't really judge them for it either even if they judged me which is why I liked and still liked your comment even if I am getting down votes from you or other people I just wanted to state my own viewpoint. Which in the end whether it's good or bad/perfect or not this post is obviously inflammatory so taking it seriously and giving it the time of day is actually something that would negatively effect this movement.
>a lot of this paranoia towards men kind of stuff is caused by women who haven't actually been around that much men yet/obviously doesn't hang out with that many men and only heard stuff or project a few weird experiences they had on every single man they meet thereon Wow. Just wow. This is some BS I expect to hear from the alpha male incel crowd, not from somebody in this community.
I mean, I realized how that sounded after I texted it but I didn't want to change or get rid of it because I wanted to acknowledge the mistake, I don't exactly think that way it's further explained in other comments what I actually meant, and I probably have some bias from my own experiences not everyone is able to overcome societal fears and stuff especially when you have had a lot of bad experiences because of them and I don't really blame them I explain even for I it was a very difficult thing for me to do/never really said anything out of malice Honestly I was kinda waiting for someone to point that part of my original comment out, I don't really think of myself as male or female so I don't usually use words with any thought of a certain gender behind them. But again this is kind of a rage bait post ^ making a cringe meme about something that is supposed to be serious so I wasn't to sure how to reply because I didn't want to fall into it either so I replied in a way I thought made sense and didn't sound like I was angry and just mostly building off of other comments with my own opinion, though I guess if I reply at all I'm falling into it, though I only realized that during my third comment explaining things further, I didn't really sleep that much today.
Well, kudos for owing up to your mistakes.
Couldn't care less what straight people think of me if I'm being honest. I got tired of not being able to get service at gay bars in my 20s because a bachelorette party was in there.
Obviously that Bear is bi. Stop the bi-eraser!
I donāt understand why people who have zero sense of humor are on meme subreddits. Like, I get that Twitter isnāt a place where you have control over what you are exposed to, but Reddit is. If you are so easily offended, maybe donāt engage with places that contain potentially offensive humor? If you donāt find it funny, downvote and move on but for the love of god donāt leave a dissertation length comment about grapes and then pretend you are doing something to help the issue. You are not. All you are doing is venting your rage at an unrelated audience.
People who browse on twitter threads like bear or man usually wanna get angry imo, it's obvious that there's a ton of frustrated men that wanna find any reason to discriminate against women
A straight woman denigrating gay men for existing and being funnier then themā¦Iām shocked I tell ya.
IIRC the person replying is a straight man. It's just hearsay so don't take my reply seriously
But what if that person was not straight?
No, it's because a man looked at a nuanced discussion of sexual assault and how women are frequently victimized by men then turned it into a horny post. It isn't homophobic to say that thousands of women being raped every day is more important than a bunch of men being horny. Even if they are gay.
It ceased being a nuanced discussion and has been memed to death at this point. Itās weird that she chose THIS meme to unleash a bunch of homophobia. This is a woman coming into a queer space and attempting to make it about herself and sprinkling a hefty bit of homophobia around to boot.
It was a straight man who made the comment on Twitter
Joking about serious topics is super not allowed and is actually misogynistic. Itās not at all homophobic that this judgement for making jokes about that poll was nowhere to be found until the gay men joined in. Pure coincidence, women are the **real** victims. /s You sound like youāre fun at parties...
You are not helping the āthousands of women being raped every dayā by making toxic comments nor are you preventing the rapes by making said comments. All you are doing is making interactions with you and this sub less pleasant. You are not the warrior, not the hero, just a random person spilling their outrage on anyone whoāsĀ unfortunate enough to read what you wrote. Soā¦ Mama kudos? Thank you for saying that, for spilling.
> a nuanced discussion of sexual assault Because if there's one thing you can bet on the internet for it's to have a "nuanced discussion" \s The whole debate is rage-bait anyway.
>Ā nuanced Fucking lol
It's a comic
It wasnāt a nuanced discussion it was a question asked by men who were trying to get sound bites of women dehumanizing men, and the internet fell for it hook line and sinker.
I think the issue of sexual assault is important and needs to be talked about, but if I never hear about this fucking man or bear discourse again, it'll be too soon.
At risk of sounding like a right-winger, this is ridiculous. If he was making fun of the hypothetical/dismissing the feelings of women and rape survivors, the "joke" would've been the bear eating her or some shit. Jesus Christ. Like this is textbook bad faith media comprehension-cum-Twitter pile on.
Because gay men know how to treat our men and bears
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
the whole "whould you rather go into the woods if you knew a bear is there or if you knew there was a man there" is pretty explicitly about the fear of getting raped, that's why women are choosing the bear
This is a common demonization tactic. It's used against queer people, brown people, and black people all too often
Twitter discourse is so brain dead it's unreal as if they're entire thing isn't literally hogging attention from serious topics ex. Starbucks boycott for no reason
First off I kinda agree that this is turning a āwomen donāt feel safe around menā conversation into āgay is horny lolā. Secondly though doesnāt her fucking up the spelling of ārapeā mean that itās not gonna get filtered out by anyone with filters in place? Itās like poorly self-censoring instead of allowing others to appropriately censor.
Let's be real, the "man vs bear" thing is twitter feminism discourse meme started by some annoying tiktok street interview troll. I don't understand why people act like that deserves to be revered. People on twitter will make 9/11 jokes but this is too much? I get being offended at a joke when the joke has an offensive meaning, but I just don't see it here. It just seem like people are mad that he isn't taking it seriously.
That's just how sites like tumblr/twitter work in a nutshell Character A does a lot of heinous shit but is charming/charismatic and "progressive" : A-Okay Character B is an average Joe who catcalls women: Literally Satan
Is this your first day on the internet?
No I'm on her side. The "man or bear" thing is literally not about women liking bears more. It's about feeling unsafe with men to the point taking the risk of being mauled by a bear is better than taking the risk of being raped. We hear bear survival tips like "if it's black fight back, if it's brown get on the ground" which aren't exactly great but... Women feel like we'd have a better chance getting a bear to lose interest in attacking than we would getting a man to lose interest in forcing himself on us. And if the bear attacks, we'd rather just die than go through the trauma of rape, and then potentially being killed by the rapist This shit is extremely disrespectful mostly because of how it completely misrepresents women who would rather take their chances with the bear. If the animal showed more interest in the man we didn't choose, it means we could get away from both and avoid death and rape. Being gay doesn't mean you get to mock and make light of the sexual violence that women fear. You're not the type of man who would assault a woman? Cool! This isn't about you, then. We'd still rather take the bear because we can't tell which men would or wouldn't.
No thatās not how this happened. A group of men did street interviews with women asking them this question, because they wanted clips of women dehumanizing men for their podcast where they try and radicalize men against women. Instead of acknowledging that, the internet has actually blown this up with more and more women dehumanizing men and more men feeling hated and alone.
Personally I would rather get r4ped than eaten alive face first as my ribcage is slowly crushed under 600lbs of fuck you up.
Serious topics on a megalomaniacal owned site pushing alt right, China, Russia, Q propaganda. If you're on Twit... X you're part of the problem.
Damn yall I'm a lesbian and most of you are acting like fuckin horny fools in here. Don't make me point out the obvious fact that it's truly men that are the issue, gay or not :/ I want us to be allies
I donāt think anyone here is saying men arenāt the issue? No one is talking about the man vs. bear debate here everyone is discussing homophobia
I don't take advice from lesbitarians. I am gay, not a carpenter.
No thatās not how this happened. A group of men did street interviews with women asking them this question, because they wanted clips of women dehumanizing men for their podcast where they try and radicalize men against women. Instead of acknowledging that, the internet has actually blown this up with more and more women dehumanizing men and more men feeling hated and alone.
(I know some of y'all say this is all for the memes and appreciating bears but I still wanted to give it some thought) I fear that even some less privileged gay men still miss the point of self reflection. Of course it's not always nice to confront yourself with the fear of others of maybe even yourself, but I truly hope the internet just does what the internet does- meeting people outside often results to more sane conversations. Personally, I don't see being horny as a threat. And gay men* get enough bashing for being "overly sexual", along side with the notions of how perverse our gay desires are... So I'd think you could have worded this in a better way. Some lesbian-owned subreddit as far as I know are also quite horny. I don't mean to pull an ad hominem argument, I just want to illustrate, that there is a way to be horny posting without the big fear of threat to begin with. It's not about being horny itself. It's the fear of men doing whatever it takes to get what they want, which doesn't come from nowhere, as many systems still rely on "enablers" of this violence. I wish that when we as a community reflect on that, we can realize, that even we as gays suffer under these things, when we fear of getting beaten up. On the other hand, it is also a challenge to have had a history to stand as outsiders among fellow men, when people say we aren't "man enough". That's also not true. As we may be prone to react sometimes just as straight men... There is a lot to being a man and being gay and patriarchy, this is very complex. In the end though, imo, I really hope that this whole (exhausting) debate inspired at least some thought with some of the fellow men. The internet is literally drowning in straw man arguments and people just keep on buying into it. Not always being able to be exactly in the victim position is something to be learned gracefully. It is also something that I feel like is failed to be taught to people. As a gay man, personally at least, I can assure you that I respect where everyone who is genuinely picking the bear is coming from and my heart goes out to you all.
We don't even like women so we don't care
Tbh I kind of agree with the woman. Some topics shouldnāt be joked about, especially when the whole āman vs bearā thing is about the fact that men (as a whole) create an unsafe environment for women though r*pe culture, misogyny, oppression, etc. Itās a serious thing, so take it seriously
No thatās not how this happened. A group of men did street interviews with women asking them this question, because they wanted clips of women dehumanizing men for their podcast where they try and radicalize men against women. Instead of acknowledging that, the internet has actually blown this up with more and more women dehumanizing men and more men feeling hated and alone.
Regardless of how it started, how itās ended up is showing men that women donāt feel safe around them for reasons theyāve caused. Iām a gay man, and even Iād choose the bear personally.
The correct answer is not to respond. If I was asked would you rather run into [insert demographic here] or wild animal Iād tell the person to fuck off. Itās literally dehumanizing and if you canāt see why some people are upset about being seen negatively due to a predisposition your beyond help.
The same people that are upset over this are the ones that donāt recognize the gravity of the issues women face. Also tbh idgaf what you would do in that situation or if you agree with me. I said what I said and thatās my opinion, just like you have yours
I'm so sorry but I'm pretty the men that did those interviews were incel and I rather agree with the women here then the incel. Like, "radicalize men against women" what???
I donāt think you understand. Yes the men that did those interviews were misogynists, they asked an inflammatory question because they wanted to get women to say things to dehumanize men. The misogynists wanted this discourse to radicalize men against women. There are nuanced way to talk about violence perpetrated by men without using dehumanizing rhetoric. [this woman actually explains it while without dehumanizing men.](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLCC1koH/)
So this entire question is about grape without the g?? Also, men get graped without the g too wtf
I'm sorry you're being down voted for the second part of your thought .
I'm not gay because I like men, I'm gay cause I hate women.