this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
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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, based on the experience of most 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 their response is about what you'd expect, confirming all the reasons why women chose the strange bear over the strange man
Edit/preface: none of this is intended to diminish the very real and valid sense of fear that women may feel towards unknown/untrusted men. I am in no way trying to gatekeep other people’s emotions, nor saying women should “toughen up” or whatever. If my comment was construed as such, I apologize.
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?
Exhibit A: The internet.
Exhibit B: Social Media.
I rest my case your honour. No further questions. I object.
You're objecting to your own argument!
Jury's not expecting that, are they?
It reminded me of Liar Liar.
Prosecutor: "He's badgering the witness!"
Josh: "It's his witness..."
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?
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.
Thanks to that experience 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. They're not making light of the danger. 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.
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.
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?
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 should be the ones facing that inquiry, not the people on the internet trying to point you towards them. It may be more uncomfortable and even dangerous to confront them, but don't take the easy way out by asking victims and their allies to be "nicer" instead
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.
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.
I didn’t mean to diminish any of that. I agree - the fact that so many women would answer that way is distressing.
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?
Dr. Strange Bear
I'll leave it up to you whether that's Marvel's Dr. Strange or a twist on Dr. Srange Love
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.
I find this concerning.
That gender disputes 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 a woman 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.
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.
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.
The automatic moderation is kind of funny here lmao
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.
I'd rather a strange bear than a strange women.
Title
Now watch as this gets down voted and I get called sexist...