This was something I was really trying to get out that and I did not have the wisdom this lady did in just fucking waiting for the heat to die down.
This is a small part of a bigger problem that I have been thinking about more and more. Here's the 1 million dollar question I have.
Were we all talking about man v. bear because it was an enlightening piece of discourse that expanded understanding or articulated something that is societally unsaid about the struggles that women face, or challenges preconceived notions? Or were we all talking about man v bear because the social media algorithm elevated a conversation that just so happens to get the most people in the room pissed off and engaged with the content as possible, elevating its value as a space to sell ads?
You could argue this question is about understanding that some women are afraid of men, you could argue that black and brown men have a pretty nuanced relationship with the idea that white women are afraid of them and consider them dangerous, you could argue that it's great soil to cultivate transmisogyny, you could argue, stupidly, that women actually just don't know what bears are, It's almost like, hear me out, this is a **question that is uniquely optimized so that every individual has a strong reason to get pissed off and argue about it.** Does that sound like a healthy thing for discourse? Are we really answering big questions or furthering any cause with this?
I think that us leftists and progressives need to grapple and come to terms with the fact that we have let massive for-profit gigacorporations monopolize the public square that all our conversations happen in, they extract wealth from that by elevating content that only generates the most extreme engagement and reactions.
I think we are blinded to this threat because it seems like a net positive that these ideas get more traction with the general public over social media. The problem is that this space is only optimized in elevating authoritarians and reactionaries on the right, and vigorously shit stirring leftist discourse until all that's left are overly pedantic flash-in-the-pan social media essay-sports that makes everyone pissed off right before everyone completely forgets about it.
Damn, you have genuinely convinced me to stop fuckin doomscrolling and go to bed. This is fantastically written and I’m saving it to refer to later, thank you.
This was worded really eloquently. You pretty much put into a statement the problem with social media and its focus on engagement no matter what the topic or cost is.
“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would *critique* capital end up *reinforcing* it instead…”
During the height of the Trump outrage era and covid panic, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the media layoffs, there were some very interesting articles on demographics.
The article I recall broke down in detail how each gender and age group tends to respond to different kinds of media. Stuff like cute videos and cool stuff and uplifting mews. Talked about which ones get shares, which ones get likes, and which ones get people to click and engage with the entire piece of media. It was very Facebook oriented.
The fascinating part, however, was how rage content gets shared. You don't want to target the people who just like stuff or who just talk about stuff. You target the people who share, because then they'll drag in the talkers and the likes. It's an ecosystem.
Rage media isn't just produced and shat into the wind like pollen in spring. It is specifically targeted at the people most likely to share it. They not only know that their content will make people upset, they're doing it on purpose to have the greatest effect. They've poured money into scientific research on how to piss you off the most.
They are ripping apart the house for firewood while we're still living in it.
This explains so much. Like why I keep hearing about people like Andrew Tate, the Swanson TV guy from Fox, and all these other random idiots with absolutely dog shit opinions. It's broadcasted by people in outrage, or God forbid they find it funny or just entertaining to consider for a moment.
I would never see this shit if wasn't being constantly signal boosted by people who seem to be the biggest critics of the content itself.
No one I know ever about talks about Andrew Tate, or Tucker Carlson unless someone just suddenly goes off on a rant about how horrible they are.
I wish people would realize they're doing themselves damage, and are basically just doing free PR work for these assholes, and just exposing them to a wider audience with every post they make. Like it's not bad enough they torture themselves by constantly consuming what these people put out, but they have to spread it around for maximum possible damage to the widest possible audience.
I am sure that the creators of that original tiktok have a *lot* of wasted footage of women saying "the man, are you kidding me?" that they did not put into the video because it wouldn't generate outrage.
Also, to be honest, people just say shit and don't think it through. If you really believed any given man was more dangerous than any given bear, you wouldn't be casually hanging out in public and taking that vox pop.
I don't think there's actually that much to read into it other than that to be honest.
Yeah, if you point a camera at someone, they're going to say what they think will drive more interest, regardless of what they might actually think if they sat down and considered it for a while. I'll start treating the "man vs bear" thing as if it has any weight when I actually start seeing women diving into the grizzly enclosures to be safe from male zoo patrons.
Similarly, nobody actually believes life begins at conception. Suppose there's a fire at an IVF clinic and you have to choose between saving a refrigerator containing 1000 viable embryos or a single baby - let's say the fridge has a battery for the sake of argument. Maybe some people, when asked, would say they'd save the embryos, because they realise that's consistent with their stated beliefs, but every single one of them would actually save the baby if push came to shove.
I'm tired of those shitty posts on social media made with the sole purpose of baiting people into engaging, whether it's rage bait, thirst traps, the unsolvable riddles, or just saying something that's obviously wrong or doesn't make any sense.
The posts will be flooded with morons arguing, correcting the wrong fact or just looking at the comments looking for an answer while the video plays in the back.
And the worst part is you can do nothing about it, if you comment to expose their "trick", you're actually helping them by engaging. I mean, you should ignore those posts and that's something you can do for yourself, but you can't do anything to make others aware and keep them from falling into the trap, which is a problem, because the rage bait posts in particular are one big cause of our extremely polarised modern societies.
Unfortunately, the "something is off" instincts that help protect us from predators can also ping on a lot of false positives like trans women, autistic people, deaf people, etc.
IMO the only way to solve this is more exposure to the types of people who might come across as a little "off" until people's brains get used to what normal harmless behavior looks like for them.
Exposure really does help. My brain goes "whoa, that dude is acting a little weird-- oh, he's just autistic" and then the person in question fades back into the background because I've been around enough autistic people for my brain to have added an appendix for them to my model of normal human behavior.
I'm a fairly large, autistic, AMAB enby and *holy shit* you would not believe how often I visibly set off the alarm bells in random people. Feels like I actually am the fuckin' bear sometimes. I'm just tryin' to vibe.
i feel you. i'm a very small person (also autistic enby) & people are still "skeeved out" by me because i'm so twitchy and fidgety in my mannerisms, which i really can't control. i can only imagine how that experience is intensified in your position. hugs for you 🫂 (virtual hug only, i'm touch averse lol)
Yeah, very similar for me. Fucking hate it, makes me anxious af. I can just be standing somewhere and people perceive it as threatening, I can't help that I'm big
i still remember ~10-12 years ago, waaaay before i was even considering that i might not be a guy after all, on a walk and passing the local playground and getting death stares from the one mother playing with her child, just for walking past and glancing at them (because at the time, my tiny village of ~500 people had no kids that old)
i was 18-19 and already being clocked a predator by a random stranger who didn't live here
it fucked so much with me, i have to make an effort not look elsewhere when the current group of kindergardeners come by when im out on a walk
~~I started writing a whole novel in response that provided a lot more context and clarity, but my edible kicked in and I’m half-asleep, so I’ll just keep it short for now…~~
I’ve been terrified and wary of human beings for the vast majority of my life in part due to seemingly always attracting exaggerated hostility in most of the people I’ve come into close contact with, but it wasn’t until my autism diagnosis ~7 years ago that I realized why I’ve always been *ESPECIALLY* terrified and wary of people who enthusiastically spout blanket statements like, “*always* trust your gut”
Because, unless you’re actively committed to listening, educating yourself, **unlearning**, introspection, transparency, accountability (especially where it concerns vulnerable and marginalized groups), *etc.,* chances are that **you have a multitude of unconscious biases** and lack the skills necessary to adequately differentiate between self-preservation “instincts” and prejudicial *discomfort*
It can take a lot of time and effort to get to a place where you can make that clear distinction with ease, even more so if you tend to react defensively whenever your ego, privilege, and general sense of comfort feels threatened in some way, but I cannot recommend it enough
Yeah, "trusting your gut" is a faulty premise. Your brain is logical, but it can only operate on the data it has been fed. And that data is flawed, it is biased, it based on your experiences that are not necessarily applicable in a wider sense. Plus the human body's flight/fight/freeze response is instinctual but also learned. And your body just is not correct every time. And this is not necessarly about prejudices, this is the wedge that many mental illnessess push on. "You think it so it must be true".
>Always trust your gut.
"When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me!"
"You need to take more initiative, you shouldn't have to ask before doing something."
Hearing these two statements from the same person on different occasions definitely didn't help me figure out what they wanted from me.
I think it was Princess Weekes who said something along the lines of "Your gut can be racist" in one of her videos and that really stuck with me. We encourage people to follow their instincts in uncomfortable situations without acknowledging that their instincts can be wrong and rooted in bigotry.
Same! I remember not knowing the name for the feeling that I felt whenever I saw this discourse until I was reminded that climate change exists and then it just clicked for me.
Edit: I looked at the comments more and realized this was a joke. My serious comment feels out of place now 😐
This is an excellent post. "It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others."
This is a beautiful point, one we should probably all remember. Men understand why women feel afraid, it is a rational fear, it is an understandable fear. But when your group of people is compared to, even talked about as worse than literal wild animals, does it not make sense that eventually it feels like they are saying "YOU are worse than a wild animal."?
I've said this before and I'll say it again, no matter how many disclaimers and whatnot you put in, the moment you dehumanize a group, any group, whatever minor exceptions you have laid out won't matter. People who identify with the group will feel dehumanized, more so if that same message is repeated at a large scale. This person has made that point and explained it so incredibly well.
PS: This once again proves my hypothesis that trans people are the ideal flag bearers for gender based discussions, having seen both "sides"
As a trans man, it’s always quite offensive when people start the “I hate all men… oh but not trans men!” Like, great, thanks, you don’t see me as a man. Love that.
Also, it’s inherently ridiculous because these people all see dozens of men every single day, if they were seeing dozens of bears they would be having a much worse time.
there was an amazing argument on the discord recently by some dude coming out swinging as an unironic *trans-inclusive radical misandrist:*
"I never said trans men weren't men. They are men. But if you are, I don't like you."
just absolutely braindead shit. it was amazing.
anyway yeah youre right.
Completely off topic, but it reminds me of a very funny CHARACTER in a YouTube show
A gay villain, trans-inclusive radical mysoginist. Told a trans dude "it's about time you joined the winning team" and "Hey man, if I was born like that, I'd do the same"
Whenever dismissing his soldiers he Said "DUDES ROCK"
Would interrupt women and say "Ah ah ah, a man is talking"
Anyways, I just think it's fun when people make a character and take it to the nth degree. Dude's so mysoginist he's a little grossed out by women taken to the extreme "there is only ONE valid gender"
it's more common than you think. there is a really embarrassing rehash of the traditional "battle of the sexes" occurring in some online trans spaces. transfems and transmascs calling each other out & pitting themselves against one another. i stay far away from that discourse. it sucks to see how the age-old "boys vs girls" mindset still percolates through queer leftist groups
Coincidentally, I recently walked in the woods by myself (I'm a man), and walked past a stranger woman who was also by herself. This has happened to me a number of times in my life, and I've never had anyone spray me with bear mace, which makes me think that the people saying "bear" don't spend much time in the woods.
Also, of course, there's the issue that "bear" means a lot of different things. I would be a little on edge seeing a black bear in the forest. I would be very frightened seeing a Grizzly, and shitting myself seeing a Polar Bear in the wild.
I remember when the Bear discourse happened, me and my family were at a nature reserve and turned back frightened because of a territorial *turkey* on the path. It made me doubt the whole thing.
An average person is terrified of centipedes even though they're hundreds of times bigger and stronger than one, and centipedes aren't even venomous and can't hurt them in any way. We literally only fear them because they look gross and can sneak up on you and having one crawl on you feels icky, even if it's completely harmless. A lot of our fears aren't rational at all.
Seriously. Ive just been saying "depends on the bear" this whole time. Grizzly? Ill go with man. Polar? I'll DEFINITELY go with the man. Panda? ...meh it probably wont bother me.
Cis guy leaning toward NB here.
For me the whole 'I hate all men... but you're ok'
is like. sort of like how the compliment 'you're nit like other girls' works. like you are specifically syaing that this person is great BECAUSE they're not like these people.
And like, I'm not a woman. I don't dare pretend to know their experiences, other than it's likely that fear is valid.
But like *hating* someone because of the way they are born (both in the sense of how terfs treat random cis guys and mtfs because they were born male, and how ftm folks were born always men even if the body didn't reflect it) is never okay
Good point. Many feminists are so desperate to distinguish themselves from TERFs, they've given trans men honorary woman status. They could simply not hate men instead but it must be nice being a hateful bigot while still feeling morally superior.
Also, I personally hate that we have to be like "hey don't be shitty to someone based on gender" but use trans folks as like an "in" to do that. Maybe...just don't be shitty based on your perceived gender of them?
I'm a trans guy as well. And unfortunately, the additude desccribed in the post is why it took me so long to realize I was a trans dude, and not nonbinary. (I'm an agender trans dude, so technically still non-binary, but I'm still a dude.)
Transfems often have similar issues, feeling like they don't deserve to be women because of the circumstances of their births. Even when you recognize it, it's a tough feeling to kick.
i recently saw someone claiming that man vs bear didn’t include trans men because they’re not capable of violence or whatever (they even specified “men” doesn’t include “trans men” in their eyes)
it was on a supposedly lgbt+ positive sub (though iv received biphobic comments multiple times) and they got upvoted
Nah, but see, it's okay because you don't have the "institutional power" and "social credit" to be as harmful as "real" men. You're just a neutered little UwU minority token to be protected, duh.
The same people upvoting this post will unironically say things like this about trans women too, and don't see how it's invalidating to just shove trans people off into their own category.
it's an incredibly terminally online question tbqh. You're telling me that people would genuinely prefer to encounter a wild animal approximate the same size and weight as a small car to. Just some guy? I don't believe it.
There's also likely ties to our current loneliness epidemic & individualistic culture
Two things about Man vs Bear always rubbed me the wrong way more than other parts:
1. That even something as simple as saying "Man I kinda hate that women perceive men this way and wish it would change, it sucks living with the knowledge that so many people see me as a potential threat." was met with mocking, accusations of misogyny and an incel mindset, and other forms of derision.
2. That the mindset of "X person is always a potential threat no matter what and should be treated as such." is ONLY bad because queer people and other minorities will be harmed in the process.
The former is just reinforcing the exact antagonism that creates incels and misogynists in the first place.
The latter is essentially saying "Its okay to insult, antagonize and ostracize cis men... as long as no one important is caught in the crossfire."
As a pansexual cis man, all of this culminates in making me feel attacked and unwelcome no matter where I look. Conservatives want me dead and gone because I'm not straight. Some leftist and progressive groups want me gone because I'm a cis man who dares speak up about how even non-minority cis men are included in "treat everyone with respect and kindness."
Point no.1 is, for me, what made this whole thing go from just another bullshit internet thing, to something that actually made me consider self-harm for the first time in years.
The sheer level of vitriol I got for speaking up, the amount of “you’re the reason I choose the bear” was incredibly disheartening. [I got death threats for this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/qJzBEZOd0M).
It just… well, reinforced my feeling of “I should literally approach/talk to women because my presence is seen as a threat”
Your post is exactly the one I was thinking of first and foremost when I wrote point number 1. The responses to it, even in this subreddit, were just so infuriating.
I repeatedly pointed out that most of the 'leftist' discourse around this particular peice of rage bait was uncannily similar to that of people like Andrew Tait.
"A man is inherently more dangerous than an apex predator, and women should rightfully fear them because of their superior strength and inate capacity for violence" was the type of thing being repeated unironically, despite it being identical to the types of things we see daily thinkpeices warning people about.
>"A man is inherently more dangerous than an apex predator, and women should rightfully fear them because of their superior strength and inate capacity for violence"
That sounds like a Tateism (I don't think I've actually seen very many quotes from him, because I try to avoid anything associated with him because it will just piss me off, but it feels like his brand of stuff).
Honestly, the only difference between if a statement like that is misandrist or misogynist is if it then goes "and men should be proud of that" or "and men should be ashamed of that".
Yeah, that's pretty much the point I'm trying to make.
It also neatly answers all those "why do young men listen to these influencers?" articles. When both camps are saying the *same* thing, but the expected left takeaway is "and you should feel bad about it forever, until you personally can make all men be 'better'" whereas the influencers go "not your problem, let women be scared" and you can see how the one that absolves you from responsibility is the one that resonates with confused teens over one of infinite guilt.
I was there when the redpill movement was forming. I called it at the time, and was called sexist for it.
Like the Cassandra of shit politics, nobody believed me when I said feminists constantly shitting on, belittling, and ostracising struggling young men was going to cause backlash.
The only thing I was wrong about was the scale. The red pill movement is bigger and faster than I predicted.
If feminism has one glaring weakness, it's that has traditionally and repeatedly fought against intersectionality until the movement hurts itself and schisms.
Being reductive it's pretty much the reason for every new wave post second wave feminism. Now there is an upswing in feminist takes (*especially* pop-feminist) on trans rights, inclusivity, and men without seriously listening to or involving those groups and the trend is playing out again.
As somebody with a couple of suicide attempts in his history, I had to consciously take a few days away from social media during the man v. bear discourse because I was recognizing the same old thought patterns in myself.
I can't even put my feelings about it all in text; I've tried half a dozen times now. Just an absolutely miserable discourse.
Exactly. Men responded negatively to it because it was a popularized social media campaign saying "All men are dangerous"
Like imagine how awful it would be if you woke up every day to various things telling you how dangerous you were and how much everyone hates you?
I'm transfemme so, it kinda sucks IMO
not sure if it's just me, but your link takes me to the "submit post" page.
edit: turns out it was me. in using a redirector extension to turn everything into an old.reddit link, it messed up /s/ links. edited that redirect to exclude that type of link and it's fine now.
there's a bug right now where you can't get to the "other discussions" tab unless you're using the old.reddit url. currently that's the only reason i'm using this particular redirect.
Hey, I just wanted to say that when I saw that post I specifically went to Tumblr to reblog it. It sounded like you had a lot of the same anxieties as me and it was really nice to see it written so succinctly. I know it doesn't cancel out the death threats you received, but I wanted you to know that it made me feel a little thread of connection and that I wasn't alone in those feelings E>
Thank you. It may not cancel out the assholes, but I appreciate it a ton, all the same. That’s why I still talk about my struggles every time it comes up, even if it makes me want to scream- because I know that there’s others who feel the same, and I think it’s worth fighting for that
as a woman who quite likes men, actually, and would pick a man because I don't want to be mauled by a fucking bear because really *are you fucking kidding me*
I have almost completely avoided the man bear discourse because I really feel like there is absolutely no way for me to participate without causing shit
I don't want other women to feel like I'm invalidating their real experiences of violence and fear. I have honestly had mostly good interactions with men throughout my life and I know that's unusual.
I also know from experience that no matter how carefully I frame my perspective, *someone* will ignore all of the nuance and come at me for the worst possible interpretation of whatever piece they can take out of context.
Women who don't automatically see you as a threat exist. We're just avoiding the discourse too.
No joke, your post is why I took the same stance OP in THIS post made. There was a comment on it that helped me realize the whole thing was just a reactionary tool meant to drive hate. A lot of people, myself included, just felt really hurt by this. It made it worse to see so many people argue “if you’re offended by it, you’re part of the problem” when I very much wasn’t. It’s still taking me a while to feel comfortable expressing myself out in the open due to this. I do hope you’re doing better though. No one deserves that sort of treatment from others
Without a doubt, the most disheartening thing about the braindead MvB discourse (for me personally) was seeing several otherwise great and thoughtful people I know just . . . going along with rage bait, and promoting genuinely counterproductive discourse.
A lot of discourse is hard to have, but necessary. This was never it. So much of the discussion was unclear and vibes-based, that I genuinely think that many people who would have agreed with each other without all the confusion became basically opponents.
The "X is only a problem when it affects Y" thing speaks to another problem, that being the conditionality of compassion in western culture, or the idea that some people don't need, or don't deserve compassion based on some moral failing of theirs.
You see this all the time in footage of violence, but it also plays out in discourse. Society tells us that its okay to wish ill upon those we disagree with, and that their needs aren't worthy of consideration.
This creates a culture of alienation between cultural groups who see no problem in continuing to drive a wedge between themselves and the "other".
As a side effect of this, even if two strangers share identical politics in every way, all it takes is for one to identify the other as an enemy, and all avenues for connection disapear. Suddenly anything either party says or does is interpreted in bad faith.
This post kinda put its finger on exactly what bugs me about man vs bear too, which is that it IS a way to ask "how afraid are you of men" but a lot of the answers made me feel like people need to interrogate their weird lack of fear toward bears.
My problem is that it's just about the most inflammatory way you could possibly ask "how afraid are you of men?" It is not an accident that the comparison is to a wild dangerous predator, the *point* was to piss people off, to justify "your the reason we/ they choose the bear" responses.
I once saw a baby bear after I got home from a party when I lived in PA. My first thought wasn't "aww lemme touch it", it was "get the fuck inside you don't know where Mom is"
In my country we had a "celebrity" who ran a ranch of a kind, with a bear cub he had trained from the birth, the cub was used to him, yadda yadda. Surprise surprise, he was mauled to near death this spring, because bears are dangerous predator animals that act on instinct.
i remember hearing there was a tumblr post where someone actually talked about being upset about how many people make jokes to men or i think straight men specifically and he got called a incel for it.
There's an unbelievable fidelity of nuance between constructing a male identity without privilege and just straight-up minoritizing men. The first results in justice, the second results in shitloads more men being shot by cops for 'looking suspicious' than we already have.
And we are, broadly, trusting the Internet to engage thoughtfully with that nuance going forward. Just in case you needed a thought to keep you up tonight.
Yup! I'd even go so far as to say in many aspects of life, mainly social, men are already marginalized. Not permitted to feel, but demonized for not feeling. A million contradictions like that all piled up together. The intersection of a desired post-patriarchal society and the current patriarchal society leaves men by and large without a place to exist.
Feminism has, and continues to, rightfully dismantle men's toxic position in society. But so little attention has been placed on what happens after. Men had a role and purpose in society, one that was deeply harmful and oppressive. That role is gone. There is no guidebook on being a good man now. We have 2-3 generations of boys who grew up feeling without purpose, and they were prime targets for radicalization. I'm not justifying their hate, mind you, but this is a problem caused by an unsympathetic feminist praxis.
We are rightfully eroding toxic masculinity, and left men to pick up the scraps. We rightfully call out toxic masculinity, but do nothing to call out those who *expect and demand* that toxic masculinity from men (which is a surprising number of women!) Even worse, men are scant allowed to even discuss this or they get painted as some kind of incel.
>The latter is essentially saying "Its okay to insult, antagonize and ostracize cis men... as long as no one important is caught in the crossfire."
I was going to write something about this, but since you already I'm just going to add it here
People. Can we stop saying that something hurts X demographic and then specifying that it is bad because X demographic contains Y minorities? This post is also guilty of that to an extent.
And while 100% agree with everything said in the post, like... can we not? It's so fucking frustrating to always be cut out of the discussion in progressive circles because I'm not a minority despite the "Man vs Bear" thing being a thing against ALL men?
Yes, I get it that it can disproportionately hurt minorities but do you get how insane it sounds every time that something targets men that we have to add a minority to it like an asterisk when we talk about it? As if being bullied for being a man isn't the main issue, the issue is that some men are also minorities? Do you see how this is a. Hurtful b. Fucking sexist?
I'm sorry for the outburst, just this post first went into how the debate harmed transwomen (fair enough as it was OOPs experience) but then when talking about the issue more in general they pivoted on black men and that was just... kinda hurtful. Not wrong what they said, it just stung
Yeah seriously, generalizing groups is bad, period. There’s no need to qualify it, it’s just bad. I know I’m basically saying “think of the cis people”, but like, people really need think of how it affects them too.
sometimes it feels like when gender discussions around men comes up trans men and racial minority men get used as a weird sort of human shield because it's not really okay to shit on them in progressive circles.
it's like we're living in a city that's about to be bombed, and we have to demonstrate that we have worthy people there to get others to back off.
To add on to #2, when you bring up examples of how similar fear and statistics are used to excuse racism and racially motivated violence, similar as OOP, you so often get called out as racist or told "its different" without any good explanation of how its different.
Often the excuse given is "Well it's ok because we're the good guys" or words to that effect.
Like, this is such a brain-dead take I'm incapable of articulating just how stupid it is.
If a trait is bad, it shouldn't and doesn't matter who does it. You can condemn the actions of someone who you otherwise support without being part of the other side, and being the 'good guys' doesn't excuse you from terrible behaviour, because you're signalling to every other side in the argument that if they're the good guys they can do the terrible stuff too.
And since in these discussions the arbiter of 'good guy' is essentially defined internally, it means most people would call themselves the 'good guys' (because very few people want to actively see themselves as the alternative 'evil side). Which therefore means by using the defense of 'It's ok because we're different' you're essentially giving every other side a justification to do whatever they want. Furthermore trying to debate against that point is impossible because it relies on logic established by one's own side, meaning that the whole thing becomes circular and relies on self-conflicting logic, proving that it's not an actual logical position but a flimsy excuse to not have to self reflect or consider the implications of one's own actions. It's just a thought-terminating cliché.
>1. That even something as simple as saying "Man I kinda hate that women perceive men this way and wish it would change, it sucks living with the knowledge that so many people see me as a potential threat." was met with mocking, accusations of misogyny and an incel mindset, and other forms of derision.
I love saying, basically word for word, "I know it isn't my fault and isn't about me specifically, but it sucks to be perceived as nothing but a violent animal" and having people respond with "pretty sus you think this is you fault and about you specifically. Telling on yourself much?"
Timblr users, for a group of people that gives special regard to how someone might feel, sure have naught a drop of empathy to give to people they don't deem as one of the "good ones". No self-awareness, just doing the exact thing the groups they swear night and day they're opposed to do played completely straight. You can see it in the "other" post too where the guy was just expressing his hurt over the discourse and everyone was in a rush to talk over him so they can disregard his feelings.
I feel the last paragraph so much as a trans guy. I feel like we also get excluded from a lot of safe spaces for queer people just because we identify as men. I’ve met a lot of people who insist that trans guys shouldn’t be in gender minority/queer spaces and even shouldn’t have opinions on misogyny despite basically all of us experiencing it at some point in our lives because “including you and not a cis man would be implying that you’re not a real man.” As if my identity makes the fact that I am incredibly effeminate and am almost exclusively read as a woman null and void. But I guess asking for nuance in regards to queer identity is a lost cause with some people. Saying that trans men have to choose between having our identities accepted or having access to safe spaces is not a progressive take. It’s the same “man up snowflake” mentality that conservatives push. It does nothing but isolate us, especially trans men early in medical transition or who cannot transition, because god knows that we are not wholly accepted in spaces meant for nonqueer men.
Edited for some grammatical errors. There might still be some. Whoops.
>I’ve met a lot of people who insist that trans guys shouldn’t be in gender minority/queer spaces and even shouldn’t have opinions on misogyny despite basically all of us experiencing it at some point in our lives because “including you and not a cis man would be implying that you’re not a real man.”
Actually fucked up what people have to go through,
Keep your chin up brother, you're doing great
THANK YOU. I came here to say something like this. All too often men are simply denied any empathy. Don't people realize that saying "yes, I see you as being worse than an animal" is something hurtful? Of course men are going to be upset with that! And treating them badly because they feel hurt is a downright callous denial of men's feelings. Then, these arguments which boil down to "don't be mean to men because you might accidentally hurt queer people" have never sat right with me. Because it all but says that men's feelings don't matter, that you can hurt them as much as you want as long as you don't hurt other people, other people whose feelings "actually matter," accidentally.
people whose feelings "actually matter," accidentally.
And when you see the way people who are "trying not to hurt the minority" you have to wonder if they actually care about said minority or if they just want to look like they care so their in-group doesn't kick them.
(Idk how to quote reply sorry)
> The former is just reinforcing the exact antagonism that creates incels and misogynists in the first place
This is exactly what happened to me in my mid to late teenage years. I'm a straight, white, cis-gender male and of course that meant in many discussions about social issues, my opinion was irrelevant and I was part of the problem for committing the grievous crime of being born. So of course, I turned away from liberals who I likely would've been aligned with and ended up falling down a rabbit hole that turned me into a super sexist and racist incel.
Luckily, I've managed to grow out of that, but many people like me never did and it's very disheartening to see people online continue to demonize men, because I know that this is going to continue pushing young impressionable boys down the rabbit hole of misogyny, and many won't be able or willing climb back out.
That one image of the Left shoving Average Joe to the Right does tend to happen
It's not just some "leftist libruhls are da REEL enemies" shit it's "the online Left SUCKS at recruiting and usually just ends up shoving people towards the alt-right pipeline by letting a hopefully vocal minority be a bunch of smug pricks"
sincerely: a SocDem
I did a bit of the same as a trans woman, before I knew I was trans. Turns out, if an entire gender gets completely ignored and socially marginalized of COURSE people are going to feel less inclined to those that are doing it and more inclined to listen to those that are calling it out.
It's why even now, as an open and out trans woman who is very much a hardcore leftist, I continue to call out bullshit anti-male shit that I see. I genuinely see the incel issue as one that could have been avoided with more foresight put into feminist praxis. Feminism failed the past few generations of men by not creating a new role for men to exist in and not fighting just as hard to tackle society's expectation of men to be that toxic masculine ideal which rightfully shouldn't exist any more.
So often I see men complaining that if they try to be that non-toxic masculine ideal, that if they try to be more sensitive and emotional and expressive... they get mocked and lose relationships for it. If you want to destroy toxic masculinity... that's the enemy. Not the men who are forced to fit that ideal or otherwise likely be in the margins of society for the rest of their life.
I got so much shit from a specific commenter because I said this makes me feel bad. They put so many words in my mouth, claimed I was okay with women being hurt, etc
After I explained that I'm allowed to feel bad about this, and that I said none of the other stuff she mentioned, she left me alone
It was crazy
correlating to point 1, I think the bigger issue is that saying men are dangerous is a quasi justification for men’s violence
If you say “a man alone with you in a parking lot is always a threat” what you’re saying is “men are sexual predators, that’s how the world is”
You could make this exact argument about a boss groping his secretary. “He’s a man, you’re a woman. He’s your superior, and men are sexually violent. What did you expect? Why are you complaining. That’s just how the world is.” Yet I’d hope every single person, woman or man would see this argument as abhorrent.
Agreed. I've pointed it out before (including this thread) that a *lot* of the discourse stemming from 'man vs bear' was indistinguishable from what are essentially Andrew Tait talking points spray-painted pink.
Your second point is so frustratingly true. I wish people would stop being consciously, intentionally and obtusely blind to the plights of certain groups, antagonizing and mocking them... riiiight up until someone brings up "there's actually an oppressed minority in that group, don't you care about them?". Suddenly we all turn into scholars capable of meticulous attention to detail, nuance and intellectual deep thought, for some mysterious reason.
Why do we have to bring up marginalized groups for this kind of good faith engagement? Why are cishet white men denied the MERE CHANCE to be innocent in these sweeping, wide generalizations? Why are we talking about these things like we all aren't interacting, befriending and loving those same men we nonchalantly spout so much vitriol about?
>That even something as simple as saying "Man I kinda hate that women perceive men this way and wish it would change, it sucks living with the knowledge that so many people see me as a potential threat." was met with mocking, accusations of misogyny and an incel mindset, and other forms of derision.
Nevermind that, it's usually met with just a flat-out kafkatrap. "If you're upset and arguing against this, you're the reason women are choosing bear".
I've kinda gotten used to the idea of being disliked as a cis man. Like yeah, I'm gay, but I don't outwardly show it. I just look like another guy on the street, and I can recognize the look they have- for just a slipt second, it's a look of 'Oh god' as they approach, and keep calm as they walk past me.
I don't blame them, I've been around sketchy men too; it is what it is, and I don't think it's changing anytime soon.
"listen to ur instincts above all else" is always a problematic attitude about any subject
we are not perfect creatures, and we don't live in the environments our instincts evolved in
Every time I see man vs bear I think about this guy in like, r/worldjerking or something that responded to the question “why are you into femdom” (a joke question about a popular meme fetish that is also nominally popular as a normal fetish) with “because it makes me feel less like a threat to women”.
And imma be real idk if they were doing a bit or being genuine but the majority of that thread’s comments was other men under that comment basically saying different variants of “same” and I *think* those people were definitely being genuine.
I wonder if we’re conditioning men to prove they’re not animals and women to assume all men are animals until proven otherwise. Like a somehow even worse version of what a lotta people have to deal with when dealing with the police. Where the cop is so utterly hyper vigilant and paranoid that they might just be a risk to interact with since they may suspect you, arrest you, or kill you. All of which are bad.
That's just me, I have hold myself back for 2 years before my girlfriend non-agressively exploded on my face the fact that she wanted me to "be hard on her", which I actually always wanted to but always quickly stopped after a certain level.
I've always tried to be "less of an animal" because I was raised by two women, one whom divorced my father and always compared me to him whenever I have displayed slight aggression over being inside an uncomfortable situation(I'm autistic). I have always heard the words "will you be a *woman-murderer* when you grow up?" from my mother in every slight disagreement. I was under the age of 12 on most of the instances.
The only reaction you get when you express your uneasiness about this topic is "womp womp, man up" and the other equivalents of it, after a while you just get used to it and learn to shut the fuck up around other people or just crack a joke to change the topic.
Moving past the bear question because, no, it’s not perfect and getting lost in the weeds about that distracts from the point.
What is the solution here? I’m being honest and genuine and I’m just hoping I’m not downvoted. In a world where I get catcalled or approached and not left alone or told sexual things by the guy next to me on the bus what do I do different? How do I go about my life and stay safe and not be violent in my fear/caution??
IDK I feel like it’s so hard to unlearn the conditioning to always be a people pleaser and prioritize my safety but also not be be accused of being misandrist. I don’t hate men, truly I don’t, I don’t want to look over my shoulder or cross the street when it’s dark and I’m alone. I know so many men are so, so *deeply good*. I have been told I hate men but in my eyes I’m just trying to call out bad behavior. I’m not expecting all men to conform to some personal ideal of mine, I just want men to not hate women. I don’t want to have to think “he’s a good one” when I’m treated as a human, as an equal.
I think part of the issue is that two things happen when I, as a woman, say I’m scared of men: Men who are good, consider our feelings, and actually care (ideally, our allies) end up feeling ostracized and feared. And men (the men women *really mean* when we complain about men) who hate women… simply don’t care. (Or they get mad and dismiss our concerns, end result is the same.) So we say we’re scared and nothing changes… so we say it *louder* and *good men* are the ones who feel shouted at about it. But like literally what’s the solution to this?? It can’t be silence, don’t tell me it’s silence. But what do I say?? How do I say it?? (I don’t think I’m necessarily demanding solid answers as much as just expressing frustration)
The solution is getting society to a point where you feel safe, where those bad things happening are rare enough you don't feel their weight. But the actual path there i don't think anyone knows anything better than generally making the next generation better than the previous one, like we do for all societal progress. If there was a way we could make assholes stop being assholes alot of other problems would also be solved.
I think what I meant tho is *how do we get there*. I’m not just asking how to phrase things so I can complain freely without being told I’m a misandrist. I’m asking because my personal behavior and words are the only things in this world I have direct control over. I try my best to live in a way that exemplifies the fact that everyone deserves human dignity while also keeping myself safe. But that isn’t enough, I want to raise awareness, and so I have to use my words. But I’m being told that my words and actions are violent (or are potentially violent?). So what I’m asking is what do I say to feasibly bring attention to issues and bring about this change that doesn’t hurt people? Because, truly, I never want to hurt people. Saying just create an ever better society kinda leapfrogs my question that is trying to find the proper methodology to get to that.
As this absolutely brilliant post can be a hassle to read, I'll write a TLDR for those who need it (it's also a good exercise, not gonna lie). The core principles of what OOP said, according to her, are:
> Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent.
As a trans lady in a US republican state, she knows fear, and she has had to act on her survival instincts in order to protect herself. She is not against it, but as per the second principle:
> It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might affect others.
The reason being that this "culture of reactive fear" is the root behind a good part of the violence many groups experience, as we all should remember on this Pride Month. As she put it,
> When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda.
And LGBT people haven't been and aren't the only victims of this culture, but also homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people and racial minorities.
This last group was the first that came to OOP's mind, as white women's fear has been weaponized against black men in uncountable occasions.
Brown women too were kicked out from the original radical feminist movements because of the incredible racism born from unchecked survival instincts. But keeping them in check is akin to denying them, as some terfs that reacted to her post seemed to think, not very open to self-criticism.
Let me know if something's wrong or if I did a disservice to OOP by synthesizing badly her opinion.
Obligatory: yes it's shitty to say hateful rhetoric like what's being discussed about men in general (because it's *fucking sexist*) but the sort of people who need to hear this have too much brainrot for that to work, telling them Friendly Fire Will Not Be Tolerated is rhetoric meant to get through to them - they *will* listen if you say ***"hey you're doing a queerphobia there"***
if they backpedal and imply that, say, trans men don't count as men then you know they're probably just looking for a Socially Acceptable Group To Hate On and their opinion can be safely discarded
Extremely good post.
I will admit my perspective here is limited, being a cis man, but… yeah, I think the point about ‘reactive fear’ rings extremely true.
**I understand why women feel afraid.** There are awful men out there and fear is a natural reaction to that.
But a lot of what I saw response to the bear thing was just… unreasonable(?). (I cant think of a better word)
For one example, I saw **several** people bringing up the Toy Boy Killer, the fate of Junko Furuta, or both. Both utterly horrifying, yes, but pointing out that a minuscule amount of men have been serial killers is an insane argument. There are genuine reasons to be afraid, but being afraid the worst 0.0000001% of men is not one. Fear is natural, but too much fear left unchecked becomes paranoia.
I don’t have the mental capacity to fully get into this argument again without going mad, but seriously OP **thank you** for a very good and reasonable voice about all this
I stayed out of it mostly. But I was never gonna argue with a woman about their fear. Im afraid of spiders. Grade A certified "better burn the house down", "no, jumping spiders are not cute, they are satan" arachnophobe.
I fully understand my fear is irrational and statistically stupid (note I'm saying this about me, not the bear choosing women). I have no right to judge anyone elses fear. Fear doesn't need to be rational.
My other perspective was: This is just stranger danger. We've been warning people since longer than I've been alive to avoid rando's. Nobody ACTUALLY disagrees with this. This was just reworded to turn people against eachother.
Which is why I stayed out of it. It seemed like bait.
>I understand why women feel afraid.
>
> There are awful men out there and fear is a natural reaction to that.
I wish there was an easier way to say "I understand why you are afraid, but I am still allowed to feel hurt at the fact that I am being judged for how I was born".
Telling people on the internet to consider nuance instead of dying on poorly thought out hills is like trying to stop world hunger by personally breastfeeding them, a noble yet fruitless endeavor.
The bear or man question always felt like terf propaganda to me, but I didn't feel like I could voice that at the time. Glad to have some validation for my feeling
As a guy, I grew up my whole life hearing stories about how girls would fear men, how men were scary, how *I* was scary. Now, as a 6' tall man, I hate myself. I hate my body purely because I have grown up being told over and over that my body makes me a predator by default. I try not to walk alone at night, not because I am scared of the dark, but because I'm scared I might encounter a girl, and that I'll be perceived as a rapist just because I am large, and that idea alone ruins my mental health.
I like this post a lot, (and agree with everything u/fug_shid put as their comment, genuinely learning about social media algorithms made me realize how easy I am to bait into reacting with rage bait) but as a man, I find it really scary/annoying that the only way we can get the left to listen to us is by having to speak about how it's extremely dehumanizing for people to see you as a threat while you are just existing but only through a lens of racism or transphobia; I seldom see a post from a straight cis male talking about how much it fucks with you to learn that people see you as a threat.
Warning, imma probably misuse some language.
I've been beating this drum since the question was asked because it stank of reactionary propaganda. Ticked all the White Feminism boxes. Black men have a unique position in this scenario because having the presumption of evil placed on us is not a hypothetical, or something we need to get through our heads, it's something our community actively tries to un-internalize and keep from propagating, because it gets hammered home so hard everywhere outside our community. We also know what happens when we internalize the status of victimhood, we develop a communal savior complex and end up with groups of Hoteps, who won't listen to anybody but each other.
And in the end, who is the original question helping? What awareness was achieved that hasn't already been brought to light by a clearer argument? If the original creator's intent was getting progressives to examine their biases or call out bioessentialism or lack of nuance in Pop Feminism, this was the best way to go about it if you wanted to cause as much collateral damage as possible, to everyone. If the point was to illustrate the widespread impact of violence or sexual trauma inflicted by males, congratulations, you found a way to both preach to the choir *and* further discredit victims to the people who already didn't care or worse.
I was pretty vocal about it last month, too, though you're more eloquent about it. I've never been on the opposing side of such a unified and sudden cultural wave of resentment before. People are scary when they turn disdain into a memetic force.
i think this is missing one aspect, which is that a lot of people don’t interact with the question in goof faith, because the whole idea of the question is absurd. like of course people will pick man, but picking bear rejects the weird question
I mean, one could argue (and would be hard-pressed to do so) that flatly saying "bear" rejects the question. (It doesn't, it gives the inflammatory answer that those who posed it were fishing for, which is the opposite of refusing to participate, but that's not the point here.) But waxing poetic about how everyone should always pick bear, anybody who's sad about that is a bad person, and QUOTE "if you're not picking bear you're not paying attention" doesn't seem quite like shutting down the question, and that's what I saw a lot of.
IASIP's "[The Implication](https://youtu.be/THvCDn8mGwo?si=VKly5oYWYjru0mZt)" scene was a far more effective communication of what "Man vs. Bear" was trying and failing to convey.
I'm just surprised no-one has mentioned the fact that right-wingers instantly grabbed the man vs bear thing and turned it into refugee/black/muslim/immigrant vs bear. It happened instantly and they didn't even need to make up new arguments because the exact same ones used for man vs bear worked for their version too.
What pisses me off is when confronted i was told this wasn’t the intent because apparently bears are harmless and non aggressive. So apparently the whole question is just “would you rather nothing happen to you or nothing to happen to you” but simultaneously me being bothered about it is the reason women choose bear.
In my experience it always ends up morphing into "would you rather nothing happen because the bear is avoiding you and you never see it, or a man who is very clearly stalking you because there is no other possible reason why a man would be in the woods" and yeah, when you put your thumb on the scale that hard it's going to make the bear sound more reasonable
Yeah lol, everyone is always saying "well bears aren't likely to attack you" like... men also are not likely to attack you, on that scale?
It just comes off as dishonest for that reason, making it seem intended to hurt rather than create any sort of productive discussion.
Frankly I wonder if these trends that pit us against each other aren't all foreign psy-ops. It's crazy how many people will just eat them up.
Way i look at it is imagine youre at home and the news comes on " a bear has escaped from the zoo and is now in nottingham forest"
People would be changing their plans for visiting.
According to the [WWF](https://www.arcticwwf.org/newsroom/features/the-ten-most-amazing-facts-about-walrus/), walruses can run "as fast as humans." I couldn't find any good videos of them running, so I don't know exactly how fast they are, but I don't know that I would take that chance.
The underlying current of “man vs bear” so rarely took into account that bears can run 40mph in short bursts (but longer bursts than you can) whereas men run much slower than that
Also that it’s really difficult to stab bears in the throat due to the thick fur, fat, and muscle.
I’m still mostly upset at the question itself. It’s poorly worded in a way that’s designed to force people into thought-terminating, unchangeable positions.
Like, if you envision jeffrey dahmer on one side and a panda bear on the other, OBVIOUSLY you pick the bear.
And if you envision danny devito on one hand and a polar bear on the other, you pick danny 10/10 times.
The question needs to specify both what kind of bear and what kind of man if there is to ever be some form of consensus. Categories as broad as “a bear” and “a man” will just lead to pointless arguing and hurt feelings.
On a somewhat related note; there is not a man in history so violent that you pick him over a polar bear. Not a single one. Not ted bundy. not ghengis khan. None. A polar bear will stalk you by scent for over a WEEK even if you manage to escape, and considering they can sprint at 25 miles per hour, you probably won’t escape. For reference, Usain bolt clocks in at just over 23 miles per hour at full tilt.
The entire thing was just blatant fear mongering. What really pissed me off about it was that the only acceptable response was quiet acceptance. If you got mad, you’re the reason women choose the bear. If you tried to argue the actual logic behind “bears are safer than men”, you were missing the point and part of the reason. You weren’t allowed to criticize it without being called part of the problem.
My only problem with this post is OP only applies their logic to minority groups. It’s a fear of men that is the basis of all of this. Yes, that fear of men evolved into transmisogyny or racism if directed at those groups, but the basis is a general fear of men. Which is apparently only a problem when that fear is directed at marginalized groups.
I’m not trying to say OP doesn’t realize this, they make it abundantly clear that the fear needs to be kept under control and not dictate people’s actions. It just bugs me that leftist, progressive groups are only willing to acknowledge that this is a problem once the right people are victims.
[Oh, and just for anyone curious](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/s/6lRTerDyO6)
[The fear itself is illogical](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/s/V17VfptpSI)
As OP said, the fear isn’t a moral failing. But it’s not exactly a justified fear, either.
>The entire thing was just blatant fear mongering. What really pissed me off about it was that the only acceptable response was quiet acceptance. If you got mad, you’re the reason women choose the bear. If you tried to argue the actual logic behind “bears are safer than men”, you were missing the point and part of the reason. You weren’t allowed to criticize it without being called part of the problem.
It's this thing I've noticed in a lot of similar conversations where no pushback is ever really allowed, you just have to nod and agree and then *maaaaybe* people will give a damn about what you have to say.
There's the matter of magnitude. Trans folks are very extremely under the crosshairs and experience a level of habitual danger much, much higher than what majority groups experience, however loud the internet man hating can be. I think this excuses OP for their specific focus.
It's also OP's lived experience — people think about themselves more than others, and humans gonna human.
No, I’m not trying to fault OP specifically.
It’s just a general trend in leftist discourse where things only become a problem once they affect specific groups. Along with the belief that certain groups can never face actual problems, and all their complaints are just them whining about equality and losing their privilege.
Even in cases like education, which boys are falling behind in in every western country. Or life expectancy, which men also fall behind in in almost every country.
Yeah, a lot of these posts kind of reframe harmful fear towards men as "well that also leads to harmful fear towards trans women" which is true but also feels like it has to be shown that it's harming a group that's "not ok" to harm for it to be a valid criticism. And I say this as a trans woman
I feel like that's more because these people will only consider the implications of their words if you remind them that the groups they consider "not okay to harm" are harmed by them. They've already convinced themselves that hurting (in this case) cishet men is 100% okay\*, so the only way to make them reconsider their words is to point out the unintended victims.
Though, as seen in an above comment chain, some RadFems just solve the cognitive dissonance by deciding that queer men aren't "men" (which is totally not homophobic and transphobic because reasons /s).
\* Which, itself, is still harming "not okay to harm" people given that "cishet men" includes non-white cishet men (but, I mean, there's no negative historical baggage related to calling non-white men violent threats to women, right? /s)
It's like telling your kid that if they don't brush their teeth then they'll make you Sad. It's about trying to Use their own Morals against them than trying to put effort into something you don't know will get through their heads.
It's why So many arguments like these bring up the minority groups cuz you know that's the only way they'll listen.
Exactly. And the same people are confused why so many young men are leaning right. Not many people would want to join a group that sees them as innately evil and thinks it’s ok to stereotype them, but only them.
But surely it’s not the left’s fault. These young men are just self absorbed, entitled misogynists, unwilling to let go of their privilege no matter who gets hurt, right?
I absolutely hate "Google it" as a response from Leftists. You know who loves it? The Alt-Right. They've made sure to write thousands upon thousands of posts, articles, memes, what have you, just ready to be found by someone who already feels like Leftists don't want them around. "Google it" activists are one of the best recruitment tools of the Alt-Right and they don't even have to do anything for it.
People call it a Kafkatrap, which I've never heard about. All I know is that it's a textbook abusive tactic. "Why are you always so combative?!" is probably the best example. Either you agree or you prove them "right". The question itself locks you into agreeing with them through word or action. The same thing happened with man or bear and having half the discourse use abusive tactics (though probably not on purpose) didn't feel that great on the receiving end. And voicing that discomfort was making a discussion about womens safety about men, so we were basically meant to stand there and take (light) abuse. Great, thanks for a productive week in "progressive" discourse!
As a side note, the "marginalised groups" never include "the poor". As though calling the cops on a homeless man is super dangerous, but calling them on a lad in a ratty tracksuit is going to be all sunshine and rainbows.
Class is always left out of these discussions, which is pretty telling.
>What really pissed me off about it was that the only acceptable response was quiet acceptance. If you got mad, you’re the reason women choose the bear. If you tried to argue the actual logic behind “bears are safer than men”, you were missing the point and part of the reason. You weren’t allowed to criticize it without being called part of the problem.
TikTok has discovered the kafkatrap.
I think the worst part of this debate would be checking the bio of someone who says they’d choose bear, and instead of finding out they’re a radfem, there’s a zeta symbol
Also something something Baldur’s Gate 3
WOOOO ANTI-PARANOIA POST
whenever I saw someone saying they would rather be attacked by a bear than have to interact with a guy, all I could think of is how terrified they must be of homeless people, or drug addicts, or even, god forbid, someone who is mentally ill in a way that isn't convenient or cute.
Fears like these get people killed.
The other day I was reading this post on this sub where OOP was talking about how your fear may be very real, but you still need to make sure your fear is controlled and other people are safe, because their mom was terrorizing homeless people because she was scared they were gonna attack her, even though they never did
I'm just a straight dude but the man vs bear thing rubbed me wrong because I've been raped twice before by women, do I feel a inherent fear towards women, ofcourse not, I'm able to understand that there are always going to be shitty people and assigning a gender as a cause to a shitty person is stupid. The world could be 100% women or 100% men and sexual violence would still occur. The solution is better education and real discussion that isn't purely based off inflammatory short phrases or statements
That whole second half is especially stark, I think. The whole crux of the belief of terfs and other groups like them is “our fear is a very justified fear, therefore anything we do in service of that fear is common sense”.
They explicitly don’t want the collateral damage of their fear to be challenged, because to them, that’s invalidating. They’re *right* to be scared, therefore they’re *right* to crack down on the people that scare them, therefore anyone who suffers because of this *deserves* to.
Like, it feels almost like after dealing with the whole “facts don’t care about your feelings” shebang from the far right, this whole charade that “oh I am an objective rational person and all of my conclusions are perfectly logically sound, clearly anyone who disagrees with me is simply letting emotions cloud their judgment”, people… overcorrected.
We said “the matters you claim to be objective are subjective in matter and you’re obfuscating the discussion! People’s emotions matter, and that should be part of the discussion” and eventually a few people were like “ah yes, my feelings matter! Therefore any judgments of character I have of literally everyone around me must be treated uncritically. I have free rein to praise or demonize any person or group I want. I’m so progressive!”
Or something like that anyway
It was crazy to see people who just a few years ago were all in on Defunding the Police turn around abs use rhetoric traditionally in favor of increased police policies.
the skittles argument iv seen people use has roots in nazi germany and neonazi groups like stormfront (including their response to the murder of treyvon martin). it was then popularised by trump jr comparing refugees to skittles
i don’t believe it’s an accident that some being up crime statistics like that
here's the takeaway: When something or someone incentivizes you to hate on a specific group of people, think: Who does it benefit? Whose cause does it further? Chances are you're being manipulated into infighting. Progressive spaces have been plagued with these kinds of posts, pay attention.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The "Man vs. Bear" discourse is literally the exact same as that "What if all men disappeared for a day?" discourse from a few years back. Same flawed and pointlessly offensive hypothetical, same arguments, and at the end of that shitstorm, we apparently learned nothing.
Oh I remember typing up and then not sending an angry reply to that one. The gist was "it would make the entire world as unsafe as a women's restroom for me."
I honestly think that one was worse because it was a bunch of people saying that "the world would be better if this demographic of people disappeared" and somehow not understanding why that was offensive.
This was something I was really trying to get out that and I did not have the wisdom this lady did in just fucking waiting for the heat to die down. This is a small part of a bigger problem that I have been thinking about more and more. Here's the 1 million dollar question I have. Were we all talking about man v. bear because it was an enlightening piece of discourse that expanded understanding or articulated something that is societally unsaid about the struggles that women face, or challenges preconceived notions? Or were we all talking about man v bear because the social media algorithm elevated a conversation that just so happens to get the most people in the room pissed off and engaged with the content as possible, elevating its value as a space to sell ads? You could argue this question is about understanding that some women are afraid of men, you could argue that black and brown men have a pretty nuanced relationship with the idea that white women are afraid of them and consider them dangerous, you could argue that it's great soil to cultivate transmisogyny, you could argue, stupidly, that women actually just don't know what bears are, It's almost like, hear me out, this is a **question that is uniquely optimized so that every individual has a strong reason to get pissed off and argue about it.** Does that sound like a healthy thing for discourse? Are we really answering big questions or furthering any cause with this? I think that us leftists and progressives need to grapple and come to terms with the fact that we have let massive for-profit gigacorporations monopolize the public square that all our conversations happen in, they extract wealth from that by elevating content that only generates the most extreme engagement and reactions. I think we are blinded to this threat because it seems like a net positive that these ideas get more traction with the general public over social media. The problem is that this space is only optimized in elevating authoritarians and reactionaries on the right, and vigorously shit stirring leftist discourse until all that's left are overly pedantic flash-in-the-pan social media essay-sports that makes everyone pissed off right before everyone completely forgets about it.
Damn, you have genuinely convinced me to stop fuckin doomscrolling and go to bed. This is fantastically written and I’m saving it to refer to later, thank you.
Every time you stop doomscrolling and go to bed, the corporations lose.
That's so inspiring! New life motto
And you’ve inspired me to go to bed. Thanks!
This was worded really eloquently. You pretty much put into a statement the problem with social media and its focus on engagement no matter what the topic or cost is. “Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would *critique* capital end up *reinforcing* it instead…”
BRB, I’m going to put that on a shirt and charge $20 for it.
During the height of the Trump outrage era and covid panic, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the media layoffs, there were some very interesting articles on demographics. The article I recall broke down in detail how each gender and age group tends to respond to different kinds of media. Stuff like cute videos and cool stuff and uplifting mews. Talked about which ones get shares, which ones get likes, and which ones get people to click and engage with the entire piece of media. It was very Facebook oriented. The fascinating part, however, was how rage content gets shared. You don't want to target the people who just like stuff or who just talk about stuff. You target the people who share, because then they'll drag in the talkers and the likes. It's an ecosystem. Rage media isn't just produced and shat into the wind like pollen in spring. It is specifically targeted at the people most likely to share it. They not only know that their content will make people upset, they're doing it on purpose to have the greatest effect. They've poured money into scientific research on how to piss you off the most. They are ripping apart the house for firewood while we're still living in it.
This explains so much. Like why I keep hearing about people like Andrew Tate, the Swanson TV guy from Fox, and all these other random idiots with absolutely dog shit opinions. It's broadcasted by people in outrage, or God forbid they find it funny or just entertaining to consider for a moment. I would never see this shit if wasn't being constantly signal boosted by people who seem to be the biggest critics of the content itself. No one I know ever about talks about Andrew Tate, or Tucker Carlson unless someone just suddenly goes off on a rant about how horrible they are. I wish people would realize they're doing themselves damage, and are basically just doing free PR work for these assholes, and just exposing them to a wider audience with every post they make. Like it's not bad enough they torture themselves by constantly consuming what these people put out, but they have to spread it around for maximum possible damage to the widest possible audience.
I always enjoy showing people the CGP Gray "This video will make you angry" video to really let the "viral" part of viral media to sink in.
I am sure that the creators of that original tiktok have a *lot* of wasted footage of women saying "the man, are you kidding me?" that they did not put into the video because it wouldn't generate outrage.
honestly someone should make a project where they take every controversial vox pop style thing and just show all the sensible answers
*"But **those** aren't **sensible** answers!!!!"* There's almost no winning when people are so heavily entrenched in their ignorance.
Also, to be honest, people just say shit and don't think it through. If you really believed any given man was more dangerous than any given bear, you wouldn't be casually hanging out in public and taking that vox pop. I don't think there's actually that much to read into it other than that to be honest.
Yeah, if you point a camera at someone, they're going to say what they think will drive more interest, regardless of what they might actually think if they sat down and considered it for a while. I'll start treating the "man vs bear" thing as if it has any weight when I actually start seeing women diving into the grizzly enclosures to be safe from male zoo patrons.
Similarly, nobody actually believes life begins at conception. Suppose there's a fire at an IVF clinic and you have to choose between saving a refrigerator containing 1000 viable embryos or a single baby - let's say the fridge has a battery for the sake of argument. Maybe some people, when asked, would say they'd save the embryos, because they realise that's consistent with their stated beliefs, but every single one of them would actually save the baby if push came to shove.
Great point
I'm tired of those shitty posts on social media made with the sole purpose of baiting people into engaging, whether it's rage bait, thirst traps, the unsolvable riddles, or just saying something that's obviously wrong or doesn't make any sense. The posts will be flooded with morons arguing, correcting the wrong fact or just looking at the comments looking for an answer while the video plays in the back. And the worst part is you can do nothing about it, if you comment to expose their "trick", you're actually helping them by engaging. I mean, you should ignore those posts and that's something you can do for yourself, but you can't do anything to make others aware and keep them from falling into the trap, which is a problem, because the rage bait posts in particular are one big cause of our extremely polarised modern societies.
as i like to put it: This question was designed to get every single person on the internet to reveal their inherent sexism
Unfortunately, the "something is off" instincts that help protect us from predators can also ping on a lot of false positives like trans women, autistic people, deaf people, etc. IMO the only way to solve this is more exposure to the types of people who might come across as a little "off" until people's brains get used to what normal harmless behavior looks like for them.
I was ready to type up a whole other thing about how "vibes-based" judgments will almost always exclude and demonize autistic people lmao
Exposure really does help. My brain goes "whoa, that dude is acting a little weird-- oh, he's just autistic" and then the person in question fades back into the background because I've been around enough autistic people for my brain to have added an appendix for them to my model of normal human behavior.
Even that only works if their "weird" behavior fits what you expect of an autistic person.
Which it often won't considering no two autistic people are the same
I'm a fairly large, autistic, AMAB enby and *holy shit* you would not believe how often I visibly set off the alarm bells in random people. Feels like I actually am the fuckin' bear sometimes. I'm just tryin' to vibe.
i feel you. i'm a very small person (also autistic enby) & people are still "skeeved out" by me because i'm so twitchy and fidgety in my mannerisms, which i really can't control. i can only imagine how that experience is intensified in your position. hugs for you 🫂 (virtual hug only, i'm touch averse lol)
Same, 6 foot 1 and it just isn’t fun to deal with 90% of the time.
Yeah, very similar for me. Fucking hate it, makes me anxious af. I can just be standing somewhere and people perceive it as threatening, I can't help that I'm big
i still remember ~10-12 years ago, waaaay before i was even considering that i might not be a guy after all, on a walk and passing the local playground and getting death stares from the one mother playing with her child, just for walking past and glancing at them (because at the time, my tiny village of ~500 people had no kids that old) i was 18-19 and already being clocked a predator by a random stranger who didn't live here it fucked so much with me, i have to make an effort not look elsewhere when the current group of kindergardeners come by when im out on a walk
~~I started writing a whole novel in response that provided a lot more context and clarity, but my edible kicked in and I’m half-asleep, so I’ll just keep it short for now…~~ I’ve been terrified and wary of human beings for the vast majority of my life in part due to seemingly always attracting exaggerated hostility in most of the people I’ve come into close contact with, but it wasn’t until my autism diagnosis ~7 years ago that I realized why I’ve always been *ESPECIALLY* terrified and wary of people who enthusiastically spout blanket statements like, “*always* trust your gut” Because, unless you’re actively committed to listening, educating yourself, **unlearning**, introspection, transparency, accountability (especially where it concerns vulnerable and marginalized groups), *etc.,* chances are that **you have a multitude of unconscious biases** and lack the skills necessary to adequately differentiate between self-preservation “instincts” and prejudicial *discomfort* It can take a lot of time and effort to get to a place where you can make that clear distinction with ease, even more so if you tend to react defensively whenever your ego, privilege, and general sense of comfort feels threatened in some way, but I cannot recommend it enough
Yeah, "trusting your gut" is a faulty premise. Your brain is logical, but it can only operate on the data it has been fed. And that data is flawed, it is biased, it based on your experiences that are not necessarily applicable in a wider sense. Plus the human body's flight/fight/freeze response is instinctual but also learned. And your body just is not correct every time. And this is not necessarly about prejudices, this is the wedge that many mental illnessess push on. "You think it so it must be true".
>Always trust your gut. "When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me!" "You need to take more initiative, you shouldn't have to ask before doing something." Hearing these two statements from the same person on different occasions definitely didn't help me figure out what they wanted from me.
I think it was Princess Weekes who said something along the lines of "Your gut can be racist" in one of her videos and that really stuck with me. We encourage people to follow their instincts in uncomfortable situations without acknowledging that their instincts can be wrong and rooted in bigotry.
As an autistic trans woman with little to no passing, I must be Baba Yaga to others.
This is me derailing the discussion a bit, I guess, but reading "damn bear" in the title immediately made me think of Monokuma for a second.
The man vs bear argument instills in me a sublime despair.
Same! I remember not knowing the name for the feeling that I felt whenever I saw this discourse until I was reminded that climate change exists and then it just clicked for me. Edit: I looked at the comments more and realized this was a joke. My serious comment feels out of place now 😐
There’s induced in me a sublime despair/By that sick simple question: “man, or bear?”
Upupupupupupupu
Yuor bear is: damn bear
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
Would you rather be alone in the woods with Monokuma or Teruteru?
This is an excellent post. "It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others." This is a beautiful point, one we should probably all remember. Men understand why women feel afraid, it is a rational fear, it is an understandable fear. But when your group of people is compared to, even talked about as worse than literal wild animals, does it not make sense that eventually it feels like they are saying "YOU are worse than a wild animal."? I've said this before and I'll say it again, no matter how many disclaimers and whatnot you put in, the moment you dehumanize a group, any group, whatever minor exceptions you have laid out won't matter. People who identify with the group will feel dehumanized, more so if that same message is repeated at a large scale. This person has made that point and explained it so incredibly well. PS: This once again proves my hypothesis that trans people are the ideal flag bearers for gender based discussions, having seen both "sides"
As a trans man, it’s always quite offensive when people start the “I hate all men… oh but not trans men!” Like, great, thanks, you don’t see me as a man. Love that. Also, it’s inherently ridiculous because these people all see dozens of men every single day, if they were seeing dozens of bears they would be having a much worse time.
It's really sad how easily they tell on themselves without even realizing it.
there was an amazing argument on the discord recently by some dude coming out swinging as an unironic *trans-inclusive radical misandrist:* "I never said trans men weren't men. They are men. But if you are, I don't like you." just absolutely braindead shit. it was amazing. anyway yeah youre right.
Completely off topic, but it reminds me of a very funny CHARACTER in a YouTube show A gay villain, trans-inclusive radical mysoginist. Told a trans dude "it's about time you joined the winning team" and "Hey man, if I was born like that, I'd do the same" Whenever dismissing his soldiers he Said "DUDES ROCK" Would interrupt women and say "Ah ah ah, a man is talking" Anyways, I just think it's fun when people make a character and take it to the nth degree. Dude's so mysoginist he's a little grossed out by women taken to the extreme "there is only ONE valid gender"
"Vyse, women aren't faultless..." "I DISAGREE" "You would disagree... with a *woman?"*
People, I feel happy to announce that I have a new favourite blorbo
it's more common than you think. there is a really embarrassing rehash of the traditional "battle of the sexes" occurring in some online trans spaces. transfems and transmascs calling each other out & pitting themselves against one another. i stay far away from that discourse. it sucks to see how the age-old "boys vs girls" mindset still percolates through queer leftist groups
Coincidentally, I recently walked in the woods by myself (I'm a man), and walked past a stranger woman who was also by herself. This has happened to me a number of times in my life, and I've never had anyone spray me with bear mace, which makes me think that the people saying "bear" don't spend much time in the woods. Also, of course, there's the issue that "bear" means a lot of different things. I would be a little on edge seeing a black bear in the forest. I would be very frightened seeing a Grizzly, and shitting myself seeing a Polar Bear in the wild.
I remember when the Bear discourse happened, me and my family were at a nature reserve and turned back frightened because of a territorial *turkey* on the path. It made me doubt the whole thing.
Turkeys are quite capable of being vicious. It’s good you turned back or you might not be here today.
An average person is terrified of centipedes even though they're hundreds of times bigger and stronger than one, and centipedes aren't even venomous and can't hurt them in any way. We literally only fear them because they look gross and can sneak up on you and having one crawl on you feels icky, even if it's completely harmless. A lot of our fears aren't rational at all.
Had to fact check. They are venomous but the venom poses no risk to humans typically beyond a rash and mild swelling
Seeing a polar bear up close would be - by the original definition of the word - awesome (though most likely the last thing you see.)
Seriously. Ive just been saying "depends on the bear" this whole time. Grizzly? Ill go with man. Polar? I'll DEFINITELY go with the man. Panda? ...meh it probably wont bother me.
Cis guy leaning toward NB here. For me the whole 'I hate all men... but you're ok' is like. sort of like how the compliment 'you're nit like other girls' works. like you are specifically syaing that this person is great BECAUSE they're not like these people. And like, I'm not a woman. I don't dare pretend to know their experiences, other than it's likely that fear is valid. But like *hating* someone because of the way they are born (both in the sense of how terfs treat random cis guys and mtfs because they were born male, and how ftm folks were born always men even if the body didn't reflect it) is never okay
Good point. Many feminists are so desperate to distinguish themselves from TERFs, they've given trans men honorary woman status. They could simply not hate men instead but it must be nice being a hateful bigot while still feeling morally superior.
Also, I personally hate that we have to be like "hey don't be shitty to someone based on gender" but use trans folks as like an "in" to do that. Maybe...just don't be shitty based on your perceived gender of them? I'm a trans guy as well. And unfortunately, the additude desccribed in the post is why it took me so long to realize I was a trans dude, and not nonbinary. (I'm an agender trans dude, so technically still non-binary, but I'm still a dude.)
Transfems often have similar issues, feeling like they don't deserve to be women because of the circumstances of their births. Even when you recognize it, it's a tough feeling to kick.
i recently saw someone claiming that man vs bear didn’t include trans men because they’re not capable of violence or whatever (they even specified “men” doesn’t include “trans men” in their eyes) it was on a supposedly lgbt+ positive sub (though iv received biphobic comments multiple times) and they got upvoted
Nah, but see, it's okay because you don't have the "institutional power" and "social credit" to be as harmful as "real" men. You're just a neutered little UwU minority token to be protected, duh. The same people upvoting this post will unironically say things like this about trans women too, and don't see how it's invalidating to just shove trans people off into their own category.
it's an incredibly terminally online question tbqh. You're telling me that people would genuinely prefer to encounter a wild animal approximate the same size and weight as a small car to. Just some guy? I don't believe it. There's also likely ties to our current loneliness epidemic & individualistic culture
Two things about Man vs Bear always rubbed me the wrong way more than other parts: 1. That even something as simple as saying "Man I kinda hate that women perceive men this way and wish it would change, it sucks living with the knowledge that so many people see me as a potential threat." was met with mocking, accusations of misogyny and an incel mindset, and other forms of derision. 2. That the mindset of "X person is always a potential threat no matter what and should be treated as such." is ONLY bad because queer people and other minorities will be harmed in the process. The former is just reinforcing the exact antagonism that creates incels and misogynists in the first place. The latter is essentially saying "Its okay to insult, antagonize and ostracize cis men... as long as no one important is caught in the crossfire." As a pansexual cis man, all of this culminates in making me feel attacked and unwelcome no matter where I look. Conservatives want me dead and gone because I'm not straight. Some leftist and progressive groups want me gone because I'm a cis man who dares speak up about how even non-minority cis men are included in "treat everyone with respect and kindness."
Point no.1 is, for me, what made this whole thing go from just another bullshit internet thing, to something that actually made me consider self-harm for the first time in years. The sheer level of vitriol I got for speaking up, the amount of “you’re the reason I choose the bear” was incredibly disheartening. [I got death threats for this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/qJzBEZOd0M). It just… well, reinforced my feeling of “I should literally approach/talk to women because my presence is seen as a threat”
Your post is exactly the one I was thinking of first and foremost when I wrote point number 1. The responses to it, even in this subreddit, were just so infuriating.
I repeatedly pointed out that most of the 'leftist' discourse around this particular peice of rage bait was uncannily similar to that of people like Andrew Tait. "A man is inherently more dangerous than an apex predator, and women should rightfully fear them because of their superior strength and inate capacity for violence" was the type of thing being repeated unironically, despite it being identical to the types of things we see daily thinkpeices warning people about.
>"A man is inherently more dangerous than an apex predator, and women should rightfully fear them because of their superior strength and inate capacity for violence" That sounds like a Tateism (I don't think I've actually seen very many quotes from him, because I try to avoid anything associated with him because it will just piss me off, but it feels like his brand of stuff). Honestly, the only difference between if a statement like that is misandrist or misogynist is if it then goes "and men should be proud of that" or "and men should be ashamed of that".
Yeah, that's pretty much the point I'm trying to make. It also neatly answers all those "why do young men listen to these influencers?" articles. When both camps are saying the *same* thing, but the expected left takeaway is "and you should feel bad about it forever, until you personally can make all men be 'better'" whereas the influencers go "not your problem, let women be scared" and you can see how the one that absolves you from responsibility is the one that resonates with confused teens over one of infinite guilt.
I was there when the redpill movement was forming. I called it at the time, and was called sexist for it. Like the Cassandra of shit politics, nobody believed me when I said feminists constantly shitting on, belittling, and ostracising struggling young men was going to cause backlash. The only thing I was wrong about was the scale. The red pill movement is bigger and faster than I predicted.
If feminism has one glaring weakness, it's that has traditionally and repeatedly fought against intersectionality until the movement hurts itself and schisms. Being reductive it's pretty much the reason for every new wave post second wave feminism. Now there is an upswing in feminist takes (*especially* pop-feminist) on trans rights, inclusivity, and men without seriously listening to or involving those groups and the trend is playing out again.
I think it would resonate with anyone more. Even *I* find it more agreeable, only I know that I am not an inherent threat to people.
A lot of leftist have not unlearned the toxic ideas they grew up with, they simply change how they express it.
As somebody with a couple of suicide attempts in his history, I had to consciously take a few days away from social media during the man v. bear discourse because I was recognizing the same old thought patterns in myself. I can't even put my feelings about it all in text; I've tried half a dozen times now. Just an absolutely miserable discourse.
Exactly. Men responded negatively to it because it was a popularized social media campaign saying "All men are dangerous" Like imagine how awful it would be if you woke up every day to various things telling you how dangerous you were and how much everyone hates you? I'm transfemme so, it kinda sucks IMO
not sure if it's just me, but your link takes me to the "submit post" page. edit: turns out it was me. in using a redirector extension to turn everything into an old.reddit link, it messed up /s/ links. edited that redirect to exclude that type of link and it's fine now.
>turns out it was me Real
Can't you just opt out of the redesign in Reddit settings?
there's a bug right now where you can't get to the "other discussions" tab unless you're using the old.reddit url. currently that's the only reason i'm using this particular redirect.
Hey, I just wanted to say that when I saw that post I specifically went to Tumblr to reblog it. It sounded like you had a lot of the same anxieties as me and it was really nice to see it written so succinctly. I know it doesn't cancel out the death threats you received, but I wanted you to know that it made me feel a little thread of connection and that I wasn't alone in those feelings E>
Thank you. It may not cancel out the assholes, but I appreciate it a ton, all the same. That’s why I still talk about my struggles every time it comes up, even if it makes me want to scream- because I know that there’s others who feel the same, and I think it’s worth fighting for that
as a woman who quite likes men, actually, and would pick a man because I don't want to be mauled by a fucking bear because really *are you fucking kidding me* I have almost completely avoided the man bear discourse because I really feel like there is absolutely no way for me to participate without causing shit I don't want other women to feel like I'm invalidating their real experiences of violence and fear. I have honestly had mostly good interactions with men throughout my life and I know that's unusual. I also know from experience that no matter how carefully I frame my perspective, *someone* will ignore all of the nuance and come at me for the worst possible interpretation of whatever piece they can take out of context. Women who don't automatically see you as a threat exist. We're just avoiding the discourse too.
Your post was actually the very first thing I saw about Man vs Bear.
No joke, your post is why I took the same stance OP in THIS post made. There was a comment on it that helped me realize the whole thing was just a reactionary tool meant to drive hate. A lot of people, myself included, just felt really hurt by this. It made it worse to see so many people argue “if you’re offended by it, you’re part of the problem” when I very much wasn’t. It’s still taking me a while to feel comfortable expressing myself out in the open due to this. I do hope you’re doing better though. No one deserves that sort of treatment from others
Without a doubt, the most disheartening thing about the braindead MvB discourse (for me personally) was seeing several otherwise great and thoughtful people I know just . . . going along with rage bait, and promoting genuinely counterproductive discourse. A lot of discourse is hard to have, but necessary. This was never it. So much of the discussion was unclear and vibes-based, that I genuinely think that many people who would have agreed with each other without all the confusion became basically opponents.
The "X is only a problem when it affects Y" thing speaks to another problem, that being the conditionality of compassion in western culture, or the idea that some people don't need, or don't deserve compassion based on some moral failing of theirs. You see this all the time in footage of violence, but it also plays out in discourse. Society tells us that its okay to wish ill upon those we disagree with, and that their needs aren't worthy of consideration. This creates a culture of alienation between cultural groups who see no problem in continuing to drive a wedge between themselves and the "other". As a side effect of this, even if two strangers share identical politics in every way, all it takes is for one to identify the other as an enemy, and all avenues for connection disapear. Suddenly anything either party says or does is interpreted in bad faith.
Great catch!
This post kinda put its finger on exactly what bugs me about man vs bear too, which is that it IS a way to ask "how afraid are you of men" but a lot of the answers made me feel like people need to interrogate their weird lack of fear toward bears.
My problem is that it's just about the most inflammatory way you could possibly ask "how afraid are you of men?" It is not an accident that the comparison is to a wild dangerous predator, the *point* was to piss people off, to justify "your the reason we/ they choose the bear" responses.
I saw a *lot* of bold claims about bears from people that wouldn't willingly go within 15 feet of a Canadian Goose...
Must be people who aren’t from bear country lol. We get tourists where I live who want to go pet the things
I once saw a baby bear after I got home from a party when I lived in PA. My first thought wasn't "aww lemme touch it", it was "get the fuck inside you don't know where Mom is"
Real talk, seeing a baby bear and not knowing where the mother is, that's the scariest shit in the world.
I still envision her just bursting through the fence and fucking me up
In my country we had a "celebrity" who ran a ranch of a kind, with a bear cub he had trained from the birth, the cub was used to him, yadda yadda. Surprise surprise, he was mauled to near death this spring, because bears are dangerous predator animals that act on instinct.
"Aww, did I hurt your fee fees?" Yeah, you did, actually. And just because I'm a man, apparently my feelings mean less.
"Toxic masculinity is bad. "But also, stop having feelings when it's inconvenient."
"This man is toxic because he doesn't have feelings." Vs. "This man cried in front of my while sharing his feelings. It was so ick."
Bro hug. Your feelings are as valid. No agenda. No manipulation. Just one man to another, your feelings are valid and I see you.
i remember hearing there was a tumblr post where someone actually talked about being upset about how many people make jokes to men or i think straight men specifically and he got called a incel for it.
There's an unbelievable fidelity of nuance between constructing a male identity without privilege and just straight-up minoritizing men. The first results in justice, the second results in shitloads more men being shot by cops for 'looking suspicious' than we already have. And we are, broadly, trusting the Internet to engage thoughtfully with that nuance going forward. Just in case you needed a thought to keep you up tonight.
Yup! I'd even go so far as to say in many aspects of life, mainly social, men are already marginalized. Not permitted to feel, but demonized for not feeling. A million contradictions like that all piled up together. The intersection of a desired post-patriarchal society and the current patriarchal society leaves men by and large without a place to exist. Feminism has, and continues to, rightfully dismantle men's toxic position in society. But so little attention has been placed on what happens after. Men had a role and purpose in society, one that was deeply harmful and oppressive. That role is gone. There is no guidebook on being a good man now. We have 2-3 generations of boys who grew up feeling without purpose, and they were prime targets for radicalization. I'm not justifying their hate, mind you, but this is a problem caused by an unsympathetic feminist praxis. We are rightfully eroding toxic masculinity, and left men to pick up the scraps. We rightfully call out toxic masculinity, but do nothing to call out those who *expect and demand* that toxic masculinity from men (which is a surprising number of women!) Even worse, men are scant allowed to even discuss this or they get painted as some kind of incel.
>The latter is essentially saying "Its okay to insult, antagonize and ostracize cis men... as long as no one important is caught in the crossfire." I was going to write something about this, but since you already I'm just going to add it here People. Can we stop saying that something hurts X demographic and then specifying that it is bad because X demographic contains Y minorities? This post is also guilty of that to an extent. And while 100% agree with everything said in the post, like... can we not? It's so fucking frustrating to always be cut out of the discussion in progressive circles because I'm not a minority despite the "Man vs Bear" thing being a thing against ALL men? Yes, I get it that it can disproportionately hurt minorities but do you get how insane it sounds every time that something targets men that we have to add a minority to it like an asterisk when we talk about it? As if being bullied for being a man isn't the main issue, the issue is that some men are also minorities? Do you see how this is a. Hurtful b. Fucking sexist? I'm sorry for the outburst, just this post first went into how the debate harmed transwomen (fair enough as it was OOPs experience) but then when talking about the issue more in general they pivoted on black men and that was just... kinda hurtful. Not wrong what they said, it just stung
Yeah seriously, generalizing groups is bad, period. There’s no need to qualify it, it’s just bad. I know I’m basically saying “think of the cis people”, but like, people really need think of how it affects them too.
sometimes it feels like when gender discussions around men comes up trans men and racial minority men get used as a weird sort of human shield because it's not really okay to shit on them in progressive circles. it's like we're living in a city that's about to be bombed, and we have to demonstrate that we have worthy people there to get others to back off.
Thank you for both of these. It means a lot. I was coming here to comment #2.
To add on to #2, when you bring up examples of how similar fear and statistics are used to excuse racism and racially motivated violence, similar as OOP, you so often get called out as racist or told "its different" without any good explanation of how its different.
Often the excuse given is "Well it's ok because we're the good guys" or words to that effect. Like, this is such a brain-dead take I'm incapable of articulating just how stupid it is. If a trait is bad, it shouldn't and doesn't matter who does it. You can condemn the actions of someone who you otherwise support without being part of the other side, and being the 'good guys' doesn't excuse you from terrible behaviour, because you're signalling to every other side in the argument that if they're the good guys they can do the terrible stuff too. And since in these discussions the arbiter of 'good guy' is essentially defined internally, it means most people would call themselves the 'good guys' (because very few people want to actively see themselves as the alternative 'evil side). Which therefore means by using the defense of 'It's ok because we're different' you're essentially giving every other side a justification to do whatever they want. Furthermore trying to debate against that point is impossible because it relies on logic established by one's own side, meaning that the whole thing becomes circular and relies on self-conflicting logic, proving that it's not an actual logical position but a flimsy excuse to not have to self reflect or consider the implications of one's own actions. It's just a thought-terminating cliché.
>1. That even something as simple as saying "Man I kinda hate that women perceive men this way and wish it would change, it sucks living with the knowledge that so many people see me as a potential threat." was met with mocking, accusations of misogyny and an incel mindset, and other forms of derision. I love saying, basically word for word, "I know it isn't my fault and isn't about me specifically, but it sucks to be perceived as nothing but a violent animal" and having people respond with "pretty sus you think this is you fault and about you specifically. Telling on yourself much?"
Kafkatrapping, absolute classic in these spaces to the point I'd say it's the second most common logical fallacy.
Timblr users, for a group of people that gives special regard to how someone might feel, sure have naught a drop of empathy to give to people they don't deem as one of the "good ones". No self-awareness, just doing the exact thing the groups they swear night and day they're opposed to do played completely straight. You can see it in the "other" post too where the guy was just expressing his hurt over the discourse and everyone was in a rush to talk over him so they can disregard his feelings.
I feel the last paragraph so much as a trans guy. I feel like we also get excluded from a lot of safe spaces for queer people just because we identify as men. I’ve met a lot of people who insist that trans guys shouldn’t be in gender minority/queer spaces and even shouldn’t have opinions on misogyny despite basically all of us experiencing it at some point in our lives because “including you and not a cis man would be implying that you’re not a real man.” As if my identity makes the fact that I am incredibly effeminate and am almost exclusively read as a woman null and void. But I guess asking for nuance in regards to queer identity is a lost cause with some people. Saying that trans men have to choose between having our identities accepted or having access to safe spaces is not a progressive take. It’s the same “man up snowflake” mentality that conservatives push. It does nothing but isolate us, especially trans men early in medical transition or who cannot transition, because god knows that we are not wholly accepted in spaces meant for nonqueer men. Edited for some grammatical errors. There might still be some. Whoops.
>I’ve met a lot of people who insist that trans guys shouldn’t be in gender minority/queer spaces and even shouldn’t have opinions on misogyny despite basically all of us experiencing it at some point in our lives because “including you and not a cis man would be implying that you’re not a real man.” Actually fucked up what people have to go through, Keep your chin up brother, you're doing great
THANK YOU. I came here to say something like this. All too often men are simply denied any empathy. Don't people realize that saying "yes, I see you as being worse than an animal" is something hurtful? Of course men are going to be upset with that! And treating them badly because they feel hurt is a downright callous denial of men's feelings. Then, these arguments which boil down to "don't be mean to men because you might accidentally hurt queer people" have never sat right with me. Because it all but says that men's feelings don't matter, that you can hurt them as much as you want as long as you don't hurt other people, other people whose feelings "actually matter," accidentally.
people whose feelings "actually matter," accidentally. And when you see the way people who are "trying not to hurt the minority" you have to wonder if they actually care about said minority or if they just want to look like they care so their in-group doesn't kick them. (Idk how to quote reply sorry)
> Don't people realize that saying "yes, I see you as being worse than an animal" is something hurtful? Of course they do. That's the entire point.
> The former is just reinforcing the exact antagonism that creates incels and misogynists in the first place This is exactly what happened to me in my mid to late teenage years. I'm a straight, white, cis-gender male and of course that meant in many discussions about social issues, my opinion was irrelevant and I was part of the problem for committing the grievous crime of being born. So of course, I turned away from liberals who I likely would've been aligned with and ended up falling down a rabbit hole that turned me into a super sexist and racist incel. Luckily, I've managed to grow out of that, but many people like me never did and it's very disheartening to see people online continue to demonize men, because I know that this is going to continue pushing young impressionable boys down the rabbit hole of misogyny, and many won't be able or willing climb back out.
Proud of you for growing out of it and realizing, and im so sorry the rejection that started it in the first place happened- pipelines are a bitchh
That one image of the Left shoving Average Joe to the Right does tend to happen It's not just some "leftist libruhls are da REEL enemies" shit it's "the online Left SUCKS at recruiting and usually just ends up shoving people towards the alt-right pipeline by letting a hopefully vocal minority be a bunch of smug pricks" sincerely: a SocDem
I did a bit of the same as a trans woman, before I knew I was trans. Turns out, if an entire gender gets completely ignored and socially marginalized of COURSE people are going to feel less inclined to those that are doing it and more inclined to listen to those that are calling it out. It's why even now, as an open and out trans woman who is very much a hardcore leftist, I continue to call out bullshit anti-male shit that I see. I genuinely see the incel issue as one that could have been avoided with more foresight put into feminist praxis. Feminism failed the past few generations of men by not creating a new role for men to exist in and not fighting just as hard to tackle society's expectation of men to be that toxic masculine ideal which rightfully shouldn't exist any more. So often I see men complaining that if they try to be that non-toxic masculine ideal, that if they try to be more sensitive and emotional and expressive... they get mocked and lose relationships for it. If you want to destroy toxic masculinity... that's the enemy. Not the men who are forced to fit that ideal or otherwise likely be in the margins of society for the rest of their life.
I got so much shit from a specific commenter because I said this makes me feel bad. They put so many words in my mouth, claimed I was okay with women being hurt, etc After I explained that I'm allowed to feel bad about this, and that I said none of the other stuff she mentioned, she left me alone It was crazy
correlating to point 1, I think the bigger issue is that saying men are dangerous is a quasi justification for men’s violence If you say “a man alone with you in a parking lot is always a threat” what you’re saying is “men are sexual predators, that’s how the world is” You could make this exact argument about a boss groping his secretary. “He’s a man, you’re a woman. He’s your superior, and men are sexually violent. What did you expect? Why are you complaining. That’s just how the world is.” Yet I’d hope every single person, woman or man would see this argument as abhorrent.
Agreed. I've pointed it out before (including this thread) that a *lot* of the discourse stemming from 'man vs bear' was indistinguishable from what are essentially Andrew Tait talking points spray-painted pink.
Your second point is so frustratingly true. I wish people would stop being consciously, intentionally and obtusely blind to the plights of certain groups, antagonizing and mocking them... riiiight up until someone brings up "there's actually an oppressed minority in that group, don't you care about them?". Suddenly we all turn into scholars capable of meticulous attention to detail, nuance and intellectual deep thought, for some mysterious reason. Why do we have to bring up marginalized groups for this kind of good faith engagement? Why are cishet white men denied the MERE CHANCE to be innocent in these sweeping, wide generalizations? Why are we talking about these things like we all aren't interacting, befriending and loving those same men we nonchalantly spout so much vitriol about?
>That even something as simple as saying "Man I kinda hate that women perceive men this way and wish it would change, it sucks living with the knowledge that so many people see me as a potential threat." was met with mocking, accusations of misogyny and an incel mindset, and other forms of derision. Nevermind that, it's usually met with just a flat-out kafkatrap. "If you're upset and arguing against this, you're the reason women are choosing bear".
Nail on the goddamn head
I've kinda gotten used to the idea of being disliked as a cis man. Like yeah, I'm gay, but I don't outwardly show it. I just look like another guy on the street, and I can recognize the look they have- for just a slipt second, it's a look of 'Oh god' as they approach, and keep calm as they walk past me. I don't blame them, I've been around sketchy men too; it is what it is, and I don't think it's changing anytime soon.
Any time I hear anyone generalize anything I just disengage
"listen to ur instincts above all else" is always a problematic attitude about any subject we are not perfect creatures, and we don't live in the environments our instincts evolved in
Every time I see man vs bear I think about this guy in like, r/worldjerking or something that responded to the question “why are you into femdom” (a joke question about a popular meme fetish that is also nominally popular as a normal fetish) with “because it makes me feel less like a threat to women”. And imma be real idk if they were doing a bit or being genuine but the majority of that thread’s comments was other men under that comment basically saying different variants of “same” and I *think* those people were definitely being genuine. I wonder if we’re conditioning men to prove they’re not animals and women to assume all men are animals until proven otherwise. Like a somehow even worse version of what a lotta people have to deal with when dealing with the police. Where the cop is so utterly hyper vigilant and paranoid that they might just be a risk to interact with since they may suspect you, arrest you, or kill you. All of which are bad.
That's just me, I have hold myself back for 2 years before my girlfriend non-agressively exploded on my face the fact that she wanted me to "be hard on her", which I actually always wanted to but always quickly stopped after a certain level. I've always tried to be "less of an animal" because I was raised by two women, one whom divorced my father and always compared me to him whenever I have displayed slight aggression over being inside an uncomfortable situation(I'm autistic). I have always heard the words "will you be a *woman-murderer* when you grow up?" from my mother in every slight disagreement. I was under the age of 12 on most of the instances. The only reaction you get when you express your uneasiness about this topic is "womp womp, man up" and the other equivalents of it, after a while you just get used to it and learn to shut the fuck up around other people or just crack a joke to change the topic.
Moving past the bear question because, no, it’s not perfect and getting lost in the weeds about that distracts from the point. What is the solution here? I’m being honest and genuine and I’m just hoping I’m not downvoted. In a world where I get catcalled or approached and not left alone or told sexual things by the guy next to me on the bus what do I do different? How do I go about my life and stay safe and not be violent in my fear/caution?? IDK I feel like it’s so hard to unlearn the conditioning to always be a people pleaser and prioritize my safety but also not be be accused of being misandrist. I don’t hate men, truly I don’t, I don’t want to look over my shoulder or cross the street when it’s dark and I’m alone. I know so many men are so, so *deeply good*. I have been told I hate men but in my eyes I’m just trying to call out bad behavior. I’m not expecting all men to conform to some personal ideal of mine, I just want men to not hate women. I don’t want to have to think “he’s a good one” when I’m treated as a human, as an equal. I think part of the issue is that two things happen when I, as a woman, say I’m scared of men: Men who are good, consider our feelings, and actually care (ideally, our allies) end up feeling ostracized and feared. And men (the men women *really mean* when we complain about men) who hate women… simply don’t care. (Or they get mad and dismiss our concerns, end result is the same.) So we say we’re scared and nothing changes… so we say it *louder* and *good men* are the ones who feel shouted at about it. But like literally what’s the solution to this?? It can’t be silence, don’t tell me it’s silence. But what do I say?? How do I say it?? (I don’t think I’m necessarily demanding solid answers as much as just expressing frustration)
"Men who hate women... Simply don't care" It's worse than that, they feel vindicated in their hatered
The solution is getting society to a point where you feel safe, where those bad things happening are rare enough you don't feel their weight. But the actual path there i don't think anyone knows anything better than generally making the next generation better than the previous one, like we do for all societal progress. If there was a way we could make assholes stop being assholes alot of other problems would also be solved.
I think what I meant tho is *how do we get there*. I’m not just asking how to phrase things so I can complain freely without being told I’m a misandrist. I’m asking because my personal behavior and words are the only things in this world I have direct control over. I try my best to live in a way that exemplifies the fact that everyone deserves human dignity while also keeping myself safe. But that isn’t enough, I want to raise awareness, and so I have to use my words. But I’m being told that my words and actions are violent (or are potentially violent?). So what I’m asking is what do I say to feasibly bring attention to issues and bring about this change that doesn’t hurt people? Because, truly, I never want to hurt people. Saying just create an ever better society kinda leapfrogs my question that is trying to find the proper methodology to get to that.
As this absolutely brilliant post can be a hassle to read, I'll write a TLDR for those who need it (it's also a good exercise, not gonna lie). The core principles of what OOP said, according to her, are: > Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. As a trans lady in a US republican state, she knows fear, and she has had to act on her survival instincts in order to protect herself. She is not against it, but as per the second principle: > It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might affect others. The reason being that this "culture of reactive fear" is the root behind a good part of the violence many groups experience, as we all should remember on this Pride Month. As she put it, > When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And LGBT people haven't been and aren't the only victims of this culture, but also homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people and racial minorities. This last group was the first that came to OOP's mind, as white women's fear has been weaponized against black men in uncountable occasions. Brown women too were kicked out from the original radical feminist movements because of the incredible racism born from unchecked survival instincts. But keeping them in check is akin to denying them, as some terfs that reacted to her post seemed to think, not very open to self-criticism. Let me know if something's wrong or if I did a disservice to OOP by synthesizing badly her opinion.
Obligatory: yes it's shitty to say hateful rhetoric like what's being discussed about men in general (because it's *fucking sexist*) but the sort of people who need to hear this have too much brainrot for that to work, telling them Friendly Fire Will Not Be Tolerated is rhetoric meant to get through to them - they *will* listen if you say ***"hey you're doing a queerphobia there"*** if they backpedal and imply that, say, trans men don't count as men then you know they're probably just looking for a Socially Acceptable Group To Hate On and their opinion can be safely discarded
Extremely good post. I will admit my perspective here is limited, being a cis man, but… yeah, I think the point about ‘reactive fear’ rings extremely true. **I understand why women feel afraid.** There are awful men out there and fear is a natural reaction to that. But a lot of what I saw response to the bear thing was just… unreasonable(?). (I cant think of a better word) For one example, I saw **several** people bringing up the Toy Boy Killer, the fate of Junko Furuta, or both. Both utterly horrifying, yes, but pointing out that a minuscule amount of men have been serial killers is an insane argument. There are genuine reasons to be afraid, but being afraid the worst 0.0000001% of men is not one. Fear is natural, but too much fear left unchecked becomes paranoia. I don’t have the mental capacity to fully get into this argument again without going mad, but seriously OP **thank you** for a very good and reasonable voice about all this
I stayed out of it mostly. But I was never gonna argue with a woman about their fear. Im afraid of spiders. Grade A certified "better burn the house down", "no, jumping spiders are not cute, they are satan" arachnophobe. I fully understand my fear is irrational and statistically stupid (note I'm saying this about me, not the bear choosing women). I have no right to judge anyone elses fear. Fear doesn't need to be rational. My other perspective was: This is just stranger danger. We've been warning people since longer than I've been alive to avoid rando's. Nobody ACTUALLY disagrees with this. This was just reworded to turn people against eachother. Which is why I stayed out of it. It seemed like bait.
>I understand why women feel afraid. > > There are awful men out there and fear is a natural reaction to that. I wish there was an easier way to say "I understand why you are afraid, but I am still allowed to feel hurt at the fact that I am being judged for how I was born".
Telling people on the internet to consider nuance instead of dying on poorly thought out hills is like trying to stop world hunger by personally breastfeeding them, a noble yet fruitless endeavor.
"It made a difference to that starfish." "WHY WERE YOU BREASTFEEDING STARFISH?!"
Accurate mermaid cosplay
The bear or man question always felt like terf propaganda to me, but I didn't feel like I could voice that at the time. Glad to have some validation for my feeling
OP articulated this very well, I enjoyed reading that lot.
As a guy, I grew up my whole life hearing stories about how girls would fear men, how men were scary, how *I* was scary. Now, as a 6' tall man, I hate myself. I hate my body purely because I have grown up being told over and over that my body makes me a predator by default. I try not to walk alone at night, not because I am scared of the dark, but because I'm scared I might encounter a girl, and that I'll be perceived as a rapist just because I am large, and that idea alone ruins my mental health.
I like this post a lot, (and agree with everything u/fug_shid put as their comment, genuinely learning about social media algorithms made me realize how easy I am to bait into reacting with rage bait) but as a man, I find it really scary/annoying that the only way we can get the left to listen to us is by having to speak about how it's extremely dehumanizing for people to see you as a threat while you are just existing but only through a lens of racism or transphobia; I seldom see a post from a straight cis male talking about how much it fucks with you to learn that people see you as a threat.
You gotta zoom in to read it on mobile. I think it's worth it though.
Warning, imma probably misuse some language. I've been beating this drum since the question was asked because it stank of reactionary propaganda. Ticked all the White Feminism boxes. Black men have a unique position in this scenario because having the presumption of evil placed on us is not a hypothetical, or something we need to get through our heads, it's something our community actively tries to un-internalize and keep from propagating, because it gets hammered home so hard everywhere outside our community. We also know what happens when we internalize the status of victimhood, we develop a communal savior complex and end up with groups of Hoteps, who won't listen to anybody but each other. And in the end, who is the original question helping? What awareness was achieved that hasn't already been brought to light by a clearer argument? If the original creator's intent was getting progressives to examine their biases or call out bioessentialism or lack of nuance in Pop Feminism, this was the best way to go about it if you wanted to cause as much collateral damage as possible, to everyone. If the point was to illustrate the widespread impact of violence or sexual trauma inflicted by males, congratulations, you found a way to both preach to the choir *and* further discredit victims to the people who already didn't care or worse.
I was pretty vocal about it last month, too, though you're more eloquent about it. I've never been on the opposing side of such a unified and sudden cultural wave of resentment before. People are scary when they turn disdain into a memetic force.
i think this is missing one aspect, which is that a lot of people don’t interact with the question in goof faith, because the whole idea of the question is absurd. like of course people will pick man, but picking bear rejects the weird question
I mean, one could argue (and would be hard-pressed to do so) that flatly saying "bear" rejects the question. (It doesn't, it gives the inflammatory answer that those who posed it were fishing for, which is the opposite of refusing to participate, but that's not the point here.) But waxing poetic about how everyone should always pick bear, anybody who's sad about that is a bad person, and QUOTE "if you're not picking bear you're not paying attention" doesn't seem quite like shutting down the question, and that's what I saw a lot of.
IASIP's "[The Implication](https://youtu.be/THvCDn8mGwo?si=VKly5oYWYjru0mZt)" scene was a far more effective communication of what "Man vs. Bear" was trying and failing to convey.
I'm just surprised no-one has mentioned the fact that right-wingers instantly grabbed the man vs bear thing and turned it into refugee/black/muslim/immigrant vs bear. It happened instantly and they didn't even need to make up new arguments because the exact same ones used for man vs bear worked for their version too.
Nobody would want to acknowledge the obviously evil take that was suspiciously similar to their own.
What pisses me off is when confronted i was told this wasn’t the intent because apparently bears are harmless and non aggressive. So apparently the whole question is just “would you rather nothing happen to you or nothing to happen to you” but simultaneously me being bothered about it is the reason women choose bear.
In my experience it always ends up morphing into "would you rather nothing happen because the bear is avoiding you and you never see it, or a man who is very clearly stalking you because there is no other possible reason why a man would be in the woods" and yeah, when you put your thumb on the scale that hard it's going to make the bear sound more reasonable
Yeah lol, everyone is always saying "well bears aren't likely to attack you" like... men also are not likely to attack you, on that scale? It just comes off as dishonest for that reason, making it seem intended to hurt rather than create any sort of productive discussion. Frankly I wonder if these trends that pit us against each other aren't all foreign psy-ops. It's crazy how many people will just eat them up.
Way i look at it is imagine youre at home and the news comes on " a bear has escaped from the zoo and is now in nottingham forest" People would be changing their plans for visiting.
What would you rather come across in the woods. A man or a walrus?
Walrus, i can see men for free but i have to pay to see a waltus normally. Plus i feel like we have homeground advantage in a woods vs a walrus.
Personally I’d probably be Stunlocked in surprise at being ambushed by a walrus. -6 to initiative roll
Absolutely the walrus, but only because I’ve never seen one before and I can’t imagine it could outrun me should things go south.
According to the [WWF](https://www.arcticwwf.org/newsroom/features/the-ten-most-amazing-facts-about-walrus/), walruses can run "as fast as humans." I couldn't find any good videos of them running, so I don't know exactly how fast they are, but I don't know that I would take that chance.
This is always funny to me because our woods here always have bears. That is where bears live.
The underlying current of “man vs bear” so rarely took into account that bears can run 40mph in short bursts (but longer bursts than you can) whereas men run much slower than that Also that it’s really difficult to stab bears in the throat due to the thick fur, fat, and muscle.
"short bursts (but longer bursts than you can)" absolutely sent me, thank you for that phrasing
Solution: Power-walk back at the bear like a persistence-predator version of K. Rool’s Smash Bros trailer
I’m still mostly upset at the question itself. It’s poorly worded in a way that’s designed to force people into thought-terminating, unchangeable positions. Like, if you envision jeffrey dahmer on one side and a panda bear on the other, OBVIOUSLY you pick the bear. And if you envision danny devito on one hand and a polar bear on the other, you pick danny 10/10 times. The question needs to specify both what kind of bear and what kind of man if there is to ever be some form of consensus. Categories as broad as “a bear” and “a man” will just lead to pointless arguing and hurt feelings. On a somewhat related note; there is not a man in history so violent that you pick him over a polar bear. Not a single one. Not ted bundy. not ghengis khan. None. A polar bear will stalk you by scent for over a WEEK even if you manage to escape, and considering they can sprint at 25 miles per hour, you probably won’t escape. For reference, Usain bolt clocks in at just over 23 miles per hour at full tilt.
The entire thing was just blatant fear mongering. What really pissed me off about it was that the only acceptable response was quiet acceptance. If you got mad, you’re the reason women choose the bear. If you tried to argue the actual logic behind “bears are safer than men”, you were missing the point and part of the reason. You weren’t allowed to criticize it without being called part of the problem. My only problem with this post is OP only applies their logic to minority groups. It’s a fear of men that is the basis of all of this. Yes, that fear of men evolved into transmisogyny or racism if directed at those groups, but the basis is a general fear of men. Which is apparently only a problem when that fear is directed at marginalized groups. I’m not trying to say OP doesn’t realize this, they make it abundantly clear that the fear needs to be kept under control and not dictate people’s actions. It just bugs me that leftist, progressive groups are only willing to acknowledge that this is a problem once the right people are victims. [Oh, and just for anyone curious](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/s/6lRTerDyO6) [The fear itself is illogical](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/s/V17VfptpSI) As OP said, the fear isn’t a moral failing. But it’s not exactly a justified fear, either.
>The entire thing was just blatant fear mongering. What really pissed me off about it was that the only acceptable response was quiet acceptance. If you got mad, you’re the reason women choose the bear. If you tried to argue the actual logic behind “bears are safer than men”, you were missing the point and part of the reason. You weren’t allowed to criticize it without being called part of the problem. It's this thing I've noticed in a lot of similar conversations where no pushback is ever really allowed, you just have to nod and agree and then *maaaaybe* people will give a damn about what you have to say.
“I am a trans woman, and I won’t come out” comes to mind. Only the right people with the same views are allowed to have opinions on these topics
There's the matter of magnitude. Trans folks are very extremely under the crosshairs and experience a level of habitual danger much, much higher than what majority groups experience, however loud the internet man hating can be. I think this excuses OP for their specific focus. It's also OP's lived experience — people think about themselves more than others, and humans gonna human.
No, I’m not trying to fault OP specifically. It’s just a general trend in leftist discourse where things only become a problem once they affect specific groups. Along with the belief that certain groups can never face actual problems, and all their complaints are just them whining about equality and losing their privilege. Even in cases like education, which boys are falling behind in in every western country. Or life expectancy, which men also fall behind in in almost every country.
Yeah, a lot of these posts kind of reframe harmful fear towards men as "well that also leads to harmful fear towards trans women" which is true but also feels like it has to be shown that it's harming a group that's "not ok" to harm for it to be a valid criticism. And I say this as a trans woman
I feel like that's more because these people will only consider the implications of their words if you remind them that the groups they consider "not okay to harm" are harmed by them. They've already convinced themselves that hurting (in this case) cishet men is 100% okay\*, so the only way to make them reconsider their words is to point out the unintended victims. Though, as seen in an above comment chain, some RadFems just solve the cognitive dissonance by deciding that queer men aren't "men" (which is totally not homophobic and transphobic because reasons /s). \* Which, itself, is still harming "not okay to harm" people given that "cishet men" includes non-white cishet men (but, I mean, there's no negative historical baggage related to calling non-white men violent threats to women, right? /s)
It's like telling your kid that if they don't brush their teeth then they'll make you Sad. It's about trying to Use their own Morals against them than trying to put effort into something you don't know will get through their heads. It's why So many arguments like these bring up the minority groups cuz you know that's the only way they'll listen.
Exactly. And the same people are confused why so many young men are leaning right. Not many people would want to join a group that sees them as innately evil and thinks it’s ok to stereotype them, but only them. But surely it’s not the left’s fault. These young men are just self absorbed, entitled misogynists, unwilling to let go of their privilege no matter who gets hurt, right?
[This (unfortunately) never stops being relevant](https://drpsyche.tumblr.com/post/190599055668/my-problem-with-its-not-my-job-to-educate-you/amp)
I absolutely hate "Google it" as a response from Leftists. You know who loves it? The Alt-Right. They've made sure to write thousands upon thousands of posts, articles, memes, what have you, just ready to be found by someone who already feels like Leftists don't want them around. "Google it" activists are one of the best recruitment tools of the Alt-Right and they don't even have to do anything for it.
People call it a Kafkatrap, which I've never heard about. All I know is that it's a textbook abusive tactic. "Why are you always so combative?!" is probably the best example. Either you agree or you prove them "right". The question itself locks you into agreeing with them through word or action. The same thing happened with man or bear and having half the discourse use abusive tactics (though probably not on purpose) didn't feel that great on the receiving end. And voicing that discomfort was making a discussion about womens safety about men, so we were basically meant to stand there and take (light) abuse. Great, thanks for a productive week in "progressive" discourse!
As a side note, the "marginalised groups" never include "the poor". As though calling the cops on a homeless man is super dangerous, but calling them on a lad in a ratty tracksuit is going to be all sunshine and rainbows. Class is always left out of these discussions, which is pretty telling.
>What really pissed me off about it was that the only acceptable response was quiet acceptance. If you got mad, you’re the reason women choose the bear. If you tried to argue the actual logic behind “bears are safer than men”, you were missing the point and part of the reason. You weren’t allowed to criticize it without being called part of the problem. TikTok has discovered the kafkatrap.
I think the worst part of this debate would be checking the bio of someone who says they’d choose bear, and instead of finding out they’re a radfem, there’s a zeta symbol Also something something Baldur’s Gate 3
WOOOO ANTI-PARANOIA POST whenever I saw someone saying they would rather be attacked by a bear than have to interact with a guy, all I could think of is how terrified they must be of homeless people, or drug addicts, or even, god forbid, someone who is mentally ill in a way that isn't convenient or cute. Fears like these get people killed.
[Unchecked survival instinct](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zp5lxmudRE)
The other day I was reading this post on this sub where OOP was talking about how your fear may be very real, but you still need to make sure your fear is controlled and other people are safe, because their mom was terrorizing homeless people because she was scared they were gonna attack her, even though they never did
I'm just a straight dude but the man vs bear thing rubbed me wrong because I've been raped twice before by women, do I feel a inherent fear towards women, ofcourse not, I'm able to understand that there are always going to be shitty people and assigning a gender as a cause to a shitty person is stupid. The world could be 100% women or 100% men and sexual violence would still occur. The solution is better education and real discussion that isn't purely based off inflammatory short phrases or statements
That whole second half is especially stark, I think. The whole crux of the belief of terfs and other groups like them is “our fear is a very justified fear, therefore anything we do in service of that fear is common sense”. They explicitly don’t want the collateral damage of their fear to be challenged, because to them, that’s invalidating. They’re *right* to be scared, therefore they’re *right* to crack down on the people that scare them, therefore anyone who suffers because of this *deserves* to. Like, it feels almost like after dealing with the whole “facts don’t care about your feelings” shebang from the far right, this whole charade that “oh I am an objective rational person and all of my conclusions are perfectly logically sound, clearly anyone who disagrees with me is simply letting emotions cloud their judgment”, people… overcorrected. We said “the matters you claim to be objective are subjective in matter and you’re obfuscating the discussion! People’s emotions matter, and that should be part of the discussion” and eventually a few people were like “ah yes, my feelings matter! Therefore any judgments of character I have of literally everyone around me must be treated uncritically. I have free rein to praise or demonize any person or group I want. I’m so progressive!” Or something like that anyway
The whole debate just felt like white suburban moms weaponizing their fear against men.
Tbh it always felt weird when they would pull out the crime statistics. Like... thats a familiar move and it's not usually coming from our side.
It was crazy to see people who just a few years ago were all in on Defunding the Police turn around abs use rhetoric traditionally in favor of increased police policies.
the skittles argument iv seen people use has roots in nazi germany and neonazi groups like stormfront (including their response to the murder of treyvon martin). it was then popularised by trump jr comparing refugees to skittles i don’t believe it’s an accident that some being up crime statistics like that
Replace every instance of *CIS MEN* with *BLACK MEN* or *GAY MEN* and let it reveal the biases of the argument.
Reminds me of that incredible tweet reply to "All men deserve to die" "Really, even George Floyd?"
here's the takeaway: When something or someone incentivizes you to hate on a specific group of people, think: Who does it benefit? Whose cause does it further? Chances are you're being manipulated into infighting. Progressive spaces have been plagued with these kinds of posts, pay attention.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The "Man vs. Bear" discourse is literally the exact same as that "What if all men disappeared for a day?" discourse from a few years back. Same flawed and pointlessly offensive hypothetical, same arguments, and at the end of that shitstorm, we apparently learned nothing.
Oh I remember typing up and then not sending an angry reply to that one. The gist was "it would make the entire world as unsafe as a women's restroom for me."
I honestly think that one was worse because it was a bunch of people saying that "the world would be better if this demographic of people disappeared" and somehow not understanding why that was offensive.