“b-but bears are actually dangerous!” Shut the hell up.
Imo this doesn’t impact the men who would do such a thing in the slightest. You’re just making the ones who have empathy feel bad, those who would rape are just getting their egos stoked by this fad: “Look at me, I’m more dangerous than a bear! That means I’m badass”
The problem is a large portion of rape is not done by serial rapists who rapes every chance they get, it’s done by average dudes once or twice when an opportunity arrives. Most rape cases involve someone known to the victim.
Rape culture (as awkward and taboo of a phrase as it as) is a real thing that this bear analogy is pointing to. You may not have anything to examine in yourself that is the result of that culture but a metric fuck-ton of men do have internalized rape cultural aspects that need to be examined and extracted. The fact that so many women picked the bear is a testament to how pervasive that culture is, at least in their eyes.
The point isn’t to stoke the egos of the serial rapists with no empathy, it’s to use empathy to make the “average-Joe” rapist examine his internal biases before they turn into an actual rape.
