While I don’t want to diminish the problems of the interactions between men and women in our society, I think there’s a point that’s not been discussed here yet: what does STRANGE bear entail? Is it sick? Is it like an eldritch horror bear? Does it just behave weirdly sometimes? Does it just wear a hat?
Comment on It is apparently controversial
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Tl;Dr: a meme went around asking women if they’d rather be stuck on an isolated island with a strange man or a strange bear. Most women chose the bear, largely due to the bear being more predictable and easier to deal with than a man inclined to do them harm, which, by the experience many women, is a whole lot of men.
Fragile men took this as an attack on all men everywhere and were offended at being “called a predator”.
There’s a pretty good thread in my comment history where I try to address the issue with one such fellow male and they’re response is what you expect, confirming all the reasons why women chose the strange bear over the strange man
Mok98@feddit.it 1 month ago
trafficnab@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
It’s to make sure you don’t assume they mean the familiar bear from down the street
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Dr. Strange Bear
I’ll leave it up to you whether that’s Marvel’s Dr. Strange or a twist on Dr. Srange Love
exocrinous@startrek.website 1 month ago
For someone raised in a city, all bears are strange. Whereas, a man has to have some visible deviation from normal behaviour like a red armband or an anime porn hoodie in order to be strange.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It travels around with a little pal named Boo Boo, and steals pick-a-nick baskets.
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I find this concerning. That gender disputes saved reached such an explosive level, that women say they’d rather a bear join them than a man and that man get super upset over this. There’s a little truth in everything. Imagine trying your hardest as a man and still being told ppl prefer a wild animal over you. Imagine knowing as women you can’t trust men to the point where you’d prefer a wild and dangerous animal keep you company. And also imagine hating another gender with such a deep passion that a meme becomes a toxic war of insult and discrediting.
I don’t like this timeline, I want a do-over.
Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
I think you hit on something that is a pretty big part of the problem: Men taking it personally. As far as I know, no specific man is mentioned, but a lot seem to insert themselves into the situation.
I try to do my best in life to be a good person, to be a good man, but I completely get why a woman would be worried about being in the middle of nowhere with a strange man, even if that man was me, because they don’t know what that person is capable of.
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
THIS is EXACTLY the point of the meme. If you understand this, and are a man, you stfu and nod along, or support the women talking about it as a good ally should. The men who don’t understand this are the reply-guys trying to explain how all the women are unreasonable and this is discrimination against men and blah blah blah
Leg@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s pretty insane just how many men can’t wrap their heads around something this simple. Goes to show how deep the patriarchy programming goes.
redisdead@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Oh so if someone says ‘black people are dangerous thugs, I’d rather encounter a bear than a removed’, it’s all good, a black person shouldn’t take it personally? After all, no specific black person is mentioned. Come on, just be a good ally, stfu and nod.
I am willing to bet many, many people wouldn’t be ok with that, and rightfully so. I know I would not.
redisdead@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The automatic moderation is kind of funny here lmao
Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
That is, at least to me, is both a bit of a strawman and an invalid comparison.
First: The statement “black people are” implies it applies to all of them, or at least the average person, whereas the sentiment that I usually see isn’t that all men are dangerous but rather that some are and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know which are beforehand.
Second: Men have not been marginalized, discriminated, and systematically oppressed for centuries. People of color have been, at the very least in the west and the countries they’ve colonized.
There’s an additional point to be made here that I feel is relevant: Ethnicity does not inherently infer a large difference in physical characteristics the same way biological sex does. I don’t imagine the strength of an average person varies as much depending on ethnicity as it does depending on biological sex. The average man is much physically stronger than the average woman, in a physical confrontation she’d be at a distinct disadvantage.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Like, I understand why some people might answer that way. And as a dude, it makes me sad that it’s such an apparently omnipresent societal problem these days.
Rustmilian@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’d rather a strange bear than a strange women.
Title
Now watch as this get down voted and I get called sexist…
willya@lemmyf.uk 1 month ago
The whole point of it is to show that most women are irrationally afraid of men. So many immediately assume the bear is somehow good and the man is somehow evil when the stats for reality show the complete opposite.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 month ago
The bear would not call women irrational.
(The best part of this meme is that the people in question supply the rebukes themselves.)
redisdead@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You’re right, a bear wouldn’t call women irrational.
Personally, I’d rather be called irrational than get mauled/eaten by a bear, but I know better than to kink shame people.
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Good job telling on yourself! This is my favorite part of the meme.
You don’t have to be a predator to enable and protect predators.
Try listening to women next time instead of being, you know, exactly the thing they’re talking about 👍
Willy@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
They are probably pretty rational about men. I think they like bears a bit too much.
snooggums@midwest.social 1 month ago
No, the point was to who that women so frequently suffer from abuse from one or more men in their lives that they would rather pick a wild ainmal.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
willya@lemmyf.uk 1 month ago
Now there’s a real question. Would you rather come across Pepe the Frog or a man in the woods?
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Pepe easily, fucking love frogs
neoman4426@fedia.io 1 month ago
Don't forget it's literally a very slight rewording of a common racist one, but that's different. For reasons. "Rather run into a black man or a bear (or wolf, or other dangerous animal)" has been asked by racists for years.
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Punching up and punching down are extremely different and your comparison is deeply disingenuous.
Black men don’t hold positions of power in society simply by being black. Black men don’t get off with nothing but a slap on the wrist for serial sexual assault because “we don’t want to ruin the promising life he has ahead of him”.
Knock it off with the false equivalence.
fah_Q@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Because the stereotype of crossing the street when heading towards a black men isn’t a thing? Just because you don’t believe it don’t make it untrue. I bet if you’d honestly be surprised. But your probably still shocked when a priest molests a child.
Leg@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You didn’t read his response correctly, and your response comes off as nonsense because of this. Replace black with white, and the comparison is more accurate. Understand the dynamics between oppressor and the oppressed, and the different ways similar rhetorics are used to muddy the waters to create disingenuous conversations. “It’s sexist because women are saying men are scary” is a bad take.
Kaboom@reddthat.com 1 month ago
So youve never seen a bear in the woods? Hint: if you see a bear, its probably brown, and you’re in a heap of trouble. Best hope you’re in a car or something like that. They will eat you alive if they can get at you.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 1 month ago
Gods, it’s like some people never passed 10th grade English. Sometimes the important part of the text isn’t the literal meaning. There’s like metaphor and hyperbole and shit.
sus@programming.dev 1 month ago
When you meet a bear in the woods, there is a 0% chance they will notice the parallel to the popular meme and proceed to mansplain about how bears are more dangerous.
This is and has always been the one and only reason women choose the bear. But one question yet eludes us: how did the cycle start?
Kaboom@reddthat.com 1 month ago
If youre so suicidal youd rather to be eaten alive than a chance to be condescended to, theres a problem.
Kaboom@reddthat.com 1 month ago
Dude was going around asking if theyd rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. There isnt much hidden meaning behind it, its not a 4deep2me tumblr post
Leg@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Here’s the thing. You’re very right, it’s not deep at all. Metaphors, similies, analogies, hyperboles, implications, etc. are all very normal parts of human speech, and this meme is pretty surface level in its requirement to use these things.
However, something has dawned on me, and I feel it necessary to ask you: are you perhaps on the spectrum? We sometimes have difficulties not taking everything literally, and this causes a communication gap. If this is the case, I will be completely and totally clear for you.
We are not literally talking about a literal bear vs a literal man. This is in fact a real metaphor for “danger vs danger”. The literal interpretation is “men can be scary to many women”. Going further, respond to this point and don’t fixate on the hypothetical bear.
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Round 12 people, all aboard.
vrek@programming.dev 1 month ago
Depends on where you live… Northeast us most likely a black bear, as long as its not a mother protecting its cubs make some noise and it will leave you alone. If your in the artic, how the hell are you in woods but ignoring that’s and it’s likely a polar bear and you are dead.
casual_turtle_stew_enjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Non-misandry/-sexism version:
A meme was made posing the humorous rhetoric of whether sex A would rather be stuck on an island with sex B or a bear. No distinction was made about the character of the sex B persona or the bear persona, it was left as a fill-in-the-blank for those who respond to rhetoric.
Sex B largely understood this to be stereotyping and hate speech directed towards them at large without any distinction about whom the rhetoric was implying. Audience was then divided between those who recognize equality and sexism versus those who believe either only apply to marginalized groups
With love from an agender
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
It’s a bit of a silly premise, because I’m willing to bet the VAST majority of answerers have never been in close proximity to an actual, honest to god, “hmmm that meatbag looks tasty imma eat its face” bear.
I have. It’ll bring you a clarity of mind and a knowledge of complete vulnerability that you can’t really find outside of other imminently life-threatening situations.
Sure, random dude could be a psycho. But if there’s not much (or any) food on the island, the bear is definitely going to eat you at some point, and there’s nothing you can do about that.
All that said, as a dude myself, I wish there were less shitty men out there. Why can’t we all just fucking respect other humans?
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Here’s what you’re missing:
A) it’s much less about whether the bear is a bigger threat and much more about how fucking awful men must treat women for the average woman to go “hmmm… Maybe the bear, tbh?” The fact that it’s even something women have to think about for more than a split second is a dramatic failure of our society. THAT is the point, and any discussion of “well you don’t know about bears then…” is reply-guy shit that misses the entire point and simply serves to further solidify how blind most men are to what goes on in the day to day life of women.
B) An aggressive bear is a known quantity. Is it a threat? Obviously. But it’s a threat that we understand extremely well. Like, a quick Google search will teach you everything you need to know about what to do if you see a bear. But a strange, unknown man? Who the fuck knows. They might seem perfectly pleasant and reasonable, act like your friend, and then flip the fuck out when the woman refuses to sleep with him that night in return for all that manly protection he provided during the day or whatever. THAT is why women pick the bear: a known problem is often preferable to uncertainty that could lead to being extremely vulnerable against a really smart attacker.
Remember, the question wasn’t “would you rather be in a locked room with a bear or a man?” It was “would you rather be stuck on an island with a strange bear or a strange man?”
And to your final question, why can’t we just respect other humans? Great fucking question, but the misogynists would be the ones facing that inquiry, not the people on the internet trying to point you towards them
Lumisal@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Considering no one I’ve met so far that I’ve told “a grizzly bear can bend steel bars” knows that - no, most people don’t know much about bears, or how dangerous a bear is. Heck most don’t know how fast a bear can run or swim. Heck there’s people who constantly get injured or killed because they want to pet a wild bear.
This doesn’t negate point A that you made, but the other huge factor is, most women, men, and everything in between don’t really know much about bears, or have been exposed to bears, and that’s a gigantic reason why so many women picked the bear too. Heck, your point B proves that - you clearly don’t understand the threat, or you’d know that it’s not a threat, it’s a death sentence. You are not, in virtually any scenario of being stuck on an island with a ever growingly hungry bear, going to live. You can’t swim away, you can’t climb a tree to escape. You’d have a much better chance of killing an openly hostile man than surviving a wild bear. You basically just said “yeah, I know how missiles work, they fly in the air and go boom when they land - that’s why I can survive a missile”.
And the question was designed to create this divide, because had this question instead been with something that IS perceived as more dangerous (like, would you rather be stuck in the middle of a large pool with a shark of a man), it wouldn’t have received the same amount of replies, since sharks are seen and portrayed as scarier than bears. It wasn’t designed to actually improve society, it was designed to drive another wedge and make us forget that the real danger is the wealthy and corporations that literally kill and poison us daily.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s literally just a classic page from the bigot’s playbook, but since it’s being used against cishet men for some reason that makes it okay?
If JK Rowling said she would rather go to a bathroom with a bear than a trans woman I think we would all rightfully call that hate speech.
If a white supremecist said this about black people it would be dismissed as racist nonsense. I’ve seen a lot of defenders saying that this is somehow different because violence by cishet men against women is real. How many years have racists loved to use the good ol’ “did you know x% of crimes are committed by x% of the population” tactic for?
And I see the “not all men” getting tossed around. How is that any different from saying “I know not all Muslims are terrorists. The good ones know we aren’t talking about them”? Change the conversation from cis men to anything else and it gets called out as hate speech. It does nothing to help solve any issues or lead to a better society.
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Does the question say “with a bear, in an enclosed space, where the bear only has you as a source of food?” No, it didn’t. Your entire argument is based on “women - and people like you - are dumb and don’t know what they’re talking about if they think men are less scary than bears.” But the truth is, YOU don’t understand the question being posed. You are literally doing the thing that people have a problem with. You aren’t asking questions. You aren’t seeking clarification. You aren’t giving the benefit of the doubt. You aren’t asking trying to understand. You aren’t doing anything to indicate that you aren’t exactly the reason why so many women picked the bear.
You could have said all of this in a way that wasn’t being an ass. But you chose not to. Thank you for self-identifying as part of the problem.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I didn’t mean to diminish any of that. I agree - the fact that so many women would answer that way is distressing.
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I understand that it wasn’t your intention, but by shifting the conversation towards “have these people been near an angry bear? Well I have” you inadvertently detract from the issue at hand. It misses the point of the conversation: everyone knows an angry bear in your face is a more immediate threat than an unknown average male on the street. That’s not why the women pick the bear.
mannycalavera@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Exhibit A: The internet.
Exhibit B: Social Media.
I rest my case your honour. No further questions. I object.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You’re objecting to your own argument!
mannycalavera@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Jury’s not expecting that, are they?
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Now you know how women feel very often, sometimes multiple times in the same day. It’s something they learn to live with their whole lives.
It’s not hyperbole. When women say “I’d rather meet a bear” they really mean it. It’s the same feeling, but it would happen extremely rarely instead of daily.
makeawishkid@programming.dev 1 month ago
I think the question here is, if the bear attacked - would people believe the woman that she was attacked? Would they blame her for what she was wearing?
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Well… When a bear ate Grizzly Man and his girlfriend, a bunch of people blamed it on her menstrual cycle, so I think the chances are high that people would blame her for one thing or another. Perhaps they’d blame her for choosing to be alone on an island with a fuckin bear.
state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
That whole thing is not to be taken literally and if you do you are missing the point by a mile.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
a bear will kill you, perhaps horribly.
a bear will not kidnap you, rape you, and keep you in a cage.
I’m frankly amazed I have to keep explaining the order of magnitude difference in the horror of wildlife vs. horrible humans.
Kacarott@feddit.de 1 month ago
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it sounds like you are trying to say that kidnap and rape are magnitudes more horrible than being horribly murdered?
realbadat@programming.dev 1 month ago
When those are just the precursors to the horrible murder, I’d have to say yes, magnitudes worse.
Because on one hand you get brutally murdered, and on the other you get brutally raped and brutally murdered.
Makes perfect sense to me.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
that’s a bingo. Kidnap, imprisonment and rape are worse, in my opinion, than just being murdered.
And it’s hardly an isolated incident:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case
en.wikipedia.org/…/Kidnapping_of_Tanya_Nicole_Kac…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natascha_Kampusch
en.wikipedia.org/…/Kidnapping_of_Jaycee_Dugard
voi.id/en/memori/5584
6abc.com/…/14716082/
cbsnews.com/…/elk-grove-kidnapping-rape-assault-s…
just a few moments search. I’m certain there’s far more. <barf>
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I’m pretty sure that almost none of the men who were offended have spent time in an enclosed area with an angry human who is a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than they are.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 1 month ago
On the contrary I think you’ll find close to 100% of them were indeed children at one point.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 month ago
…and many still seem to be children.
[thanks so much for the set up!]
neatchee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Have a rough childhood? I was never in a room with an angry human who was a foot taller and 100lbs heavier until much later in life. Sounds like maybe there’s something to consider here in terms of normalizing aggressive male behavior… hmmm
Rustmilian@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s called going to McDonald’s and seeing a Karen…