“b-but bears are actually dangerous!” Shut the hell up.
So if men are statistically safer than bears and women’s safety is most important, then you agree “bear” is the incorrect choice?
I’m just trying to figure out all these incoherent memes.
Do you have those stats? I would love to actually see a comparison, instead of a slap-fight
So what people are meaning to say is women’s feelings are more important than men’s? I think the statistics should matter xD. But I don’t think bears attack people as often as people are trying to make out.
Very few people someone gets near enough to be grabbed by want to rape them. Nearly every bear someone gets near enough to be grabbed by wants to kill them. A large number of women feel it is better to be killed by a bear than live with their irrational fear that every man they get near shall rape them. The fear not being rational is irrelevant as the fear is based upon a more than likely chance, approx. 25% is reported, that at some point the fear was justified and not irrational. However those numbers are screwy as folks that get raped are more likely to get raped again.
I’d give percentage chances of each occurring, (the National Park Service estimates the odds of being attacked by a bear are about one in 2.1 million.), but the media seems to only report percentage of gender raped not chance of rape.
Bruh, it’s not even about rape. A dude negatively impacting a woman’s physical or emotional well being compromises their safety.
The odds you mentioned of bear attacks seem a lot lower than the odds of a woman having to deal with shit from men. I say this as a man who worked in the boreal for 10 years and with a pile of construction folks (men and women).
What percentage of women do you suppose have had a man threaten to rape or kill them? Get violently angry at them? Sexually assault them or a friend? I reckon it’s near 100%.
The fear isn’t that all men will assault them, it’s that any man might. It’s not irrational, it’s based on experience. There are men in this thread arguing that women should be arming themselves to stay safe, right alongside men arguing that fear is irrational.
Fuck the men with hurt feelings. Your fellow men have proved themselves dangerous, time and again. Women will treat you like dangerous predators until men as a group start policing their own and building a world where women don’t have reason to fear.
You’re asking for statistics in bad faith of the argument. Seems like you’re the one slap-fighting here - if you wanted to actually engage in logical discourse, you’d have presented statistics yourself, which you have not.
There’s obviously no statistics on the rate of how many bear-human and male-female interactions happen. One rarely happens, the other happens billions of times per day. We can prove that bears are more aggressive and dangerous than humans though.
In one black bear study 88% of fatal attacks were a result of the bear being the aggressor. Note that black bears are known to be timid of humans, and notoriously not aggressive.
- https://sapl.ucalgary.ca/evds_info/content/black-bears
- https://bear.org/bear-facts/how-dangerous-are-black-bears
So, statistically even the more timid bear species are wildly more aggressive to humans than humans to bears. Unless you have data that proves that men are more aggressive to women than bears are to humans, this is the closest we get to proving men are statistically safer than bears.
In one black bear study 88% of fatal attacks were a result of the bear being the aggressor.
Lmfao what a useless fact.
How many rapes or instances of physical assault on a woman were a result of the man being the aggressor?
You’re just discarding every opinion as “toxic masculinity” which is actually worse than engaging in logical discourse.
I’ll do everything in my power to empower women and make them feel safe. This thought experiment has unfortunately been detrimental and used to attack men.
“It’s not you” - yes, and nothing I said made it about me at all. See how fast you went on the offense on a completely neutral comment? You should listen to your own advice and listen the points being made equally as much as you’re lobbying others to do.
I read some of these, more to get insight into how other people think, but often I come to the conclusion that there is very little I can do to help and that people who behave that way aren’t people I want to help. My ego is just fine, thanks, but blind hostility isn’t something I welcome into my life.
Here’s the thing…if you get upset that a random woman that you don’t know would take the hyperbolic position that they would rather be in the same room as a bear than with you, you’re likely the exact type of man that these memes are talking about. They are meant to expose fragile egos that don’t understand how intimidating they are to women. They know how dangerous a bear is. They don’t know how dangerous you are. That’s the point…
Here’s the thing…if you get upset that a random woman that you don’t know would take the hyperbolic position that they would rather be in the same room as a bear than with you, you’re likely the exact type of man that these memes are talking about.
What the heck? Expressing resentment at the implication that you are more threatening than a bear based solely on gender is evidence that you are, in fact, more threatening than a bear? How does that follow? You don’t need to have a fragile ego to recognize the unfairness of it.
They know how dangerous a bear is.
If they would rather be alone with a bear than a random stranger of any gender I’m going to say they don’t.
The original post was a bad-faith engagement farm that became much more popular than it ever should have been. It ended up bringing up a bit of good discussion and a lot of insane takes.
Once again, it’s a hyperbolic statement. They don’t really want to be alone with a bear. They are merely pointing out that they trust you less than a bear. A bear would simply kill them. What a man could do to them is far worse than anything a bear could do. If you can’t understand that, that’s the entire problem.
It’s so tiring seeing the men coming in and deliberately misunderstanding what’s being discussed. They will do literally anything, appear dumb as rocks, to not recognize rape culture and admit potentially any fault or responsibility towards it’s continued existence. They take everything personally instead of being able to see that societal problems there are also responsible for helping to fix.
Not all men /s
Your comment really hits the nail on the head, esp the dumb as rocks part. I think part of that stupidity is legitimately not being able to see past our own privilege.
E: baha, downvote me harder, you nematodes
Are we also going to tolerate the same with Islam and terrorism? POC and safety because “crime statistics”? If those are not acceptable because it’s not anyone’s individual responsibility for others in an involuntarily assigned group, why is this ok?
Here’s the problem with that statement. I agree that there is a problem with men committing rape. However, I (along with most men) have never raped anybody. Furthermore I have not done anything to perpetuate the actions of the minority of men who do commit sex crimes. Therefore I do NOT take responsibility or admit fault for their actions. Saying that men as a whole are the problem is offensive and unhelpful. It’s how random peaceful Muslims feel when conservatives tell them they need to take responsibility for the actions of terrorists and take action to stop terrorists “in their community” like all Muslims are in one big group chat. I would straight up give my life to prevent a woman I don’t know from being raped. Idk what more you want from me.
the difference is that the patriarchy exists and favors men. there is no systematic structure that puts Muslims above others, at the expense of others, in a way that is parallel to what the patriarchy does.
i get what you are saying, and maybe not too long ago i was professing quite similar feelings, but i encourage you to self interrogate how big of a difference that is. truly hope this is helpful.
So it is the level of “privilege” that does or does not allow the commission of -isms then. The better off the target is, the more acceptable discrimination is? That is also a very Western perspective. It would be ok to tell Muslims in the Middle East that terrorism is their responsibility because their country’s power structure does put Islam firmly above others?
This “some animals are more equal than others” stuff is moral equivocating. If something is wrong if done to a group that isn’t “in power”, then it is also wrong to do it to the group “in power”. This isn’t a zero sum game. We don’t have to weight the guilt by association for a black man when compared with a white man because systemic racism competes with systemic patriarchy. If you do think that the immutable characteristics a person is born with are the most important things about them, I would encourage you to self interrogate how messed up that is.
this comment section has been so enlightening about the makeup of this side of the fediverse. and all i can say is i am so sorry. i always guessed it was a male-heavy makeup but i never thought it would precipitate this badly.
this community usually veers leftist and toward respecting human dignity, but it appears as soon as women express the pain and fear that is forced upon them for merely existing all of that is lost and their comments are getting 30/70 downvoted, even in conversations where folks have already acknowledged the caveat of the importance of non-alienating.
it’s clear there is a lot of work to be done when one of the most progressive communities i have ever followed is so packed with malinformed spite as soon as the subject comes to humans asking for the basic privilege of safety.
Agreed and well said. It’s very disheartening. For me it’s just another example of how pervasive and ingrained the patriarchy and misogyny is.
That’s quite the universal statement. I think first and foremost, men need to learn that they might not be part of the problem, but that there are many very problematic ones among us.
The feeling of general suspicion is what we need to tackle. If you don’t grasp the problems and their magnitude, you will naturally take offense in being suspected.
We need to take this feeling and turn it into anger towards the disgraceful people that are the reason for the suspicion.
So on the contrary, I think men’s feelings actually matter a lot, if you want to reach a world free of misogyny and violence against women.
Sometimes things aren’t your fault but are your problem. And men making excuses like “just locker room talk” and not confronting other men in their lives who do or say toxic things or espouse ideas or personalities that generally make women uncomfortable are our problems, whether or not they are our fault.
I have no heard a man express what you would call a toxic opinion in like twenty years. And yet women are still just as afraid. Crime rates are at an all-time low, yet women are more afraid than ever.
Whether it’s my problem is my decision. Primarily, it is women’s problem. And they have practical steps they can take to fix that problem. I refuse to make someone else’s problem my own problem, if that other person is ignoring steps they themselves can take to fix it.
I’m all for helping out, but only people who have done the first step themselves.
Women’s general attitude toward this is “It’s my problem but it’s your responsibility to solve it” and I say fuck that. I have my own problems to solve. My life is, in fact, absolutely full of problems that take all my energy to solve.
I have no heard a man express what you would call a toxic opinion in like twenty years.
Your personal experience is not representative of the experience of the rest of the world. Though I am very glad that this has been your experience!
I mean, it depends. I am not my own gender police, I don’t see my life with my peers as “shaping the culture of manhood” because having gender in common is basically irrelevant and there is absolute no sense of belonging for me into “manhood” as a gender. We are not talking about contributing to shape the culture of your organization, or club or something, where there are (or should be) some form of shared values.
In fact, I find this whole idea between silly and sexist, where by sexist I mean rigid attributes applied based on gender.
The way I see it is that I - as a man - have absolutely nothing to do to help with the overall problem and the only way that I can help improve is by not being part of it (in this case, not assault, rape, stalk, harass etc.). That’s pretty much the end of it.
The feeling of general suspicion is what we need to tackle.
I agree. This general suspicion is not good. As Bruce Lee says, “Do not be tense, but ready”.
I recommend women take concrete steps to protect their own safety, so they don’t have to be constantly on high alert. That’s a terrible way to live.
This, except that shouldn’t be anger, really.
Anger is a feeling that leads to alienation, and an alienated beast is the most dangerous one.
We should be on a watch for potentially dangerous behaviors and offer help so that people gently unlearn their ways.
That’s not to say people who have already committed some form of abuse shouldn’t be punished, but that we should fight for those who can become dangers and support those who recognize their mistakes and genuinely strive to do better.
I’m a woman and the same way that women feel about men in this whole meme thing, is the exact same way I feel about women…
I don’t trust women within a hairs inch of my life and I would rather be with a bear than a Woman but I bet you I’ll get super downvoted for this opinion.
Nope I definitely trust men more than I trust women. I don’t know what part of what I said sounds like that when I said I don’t trust women, not people.
My wife shares the same opinion. It’s not something she can discuss in her social circles, but she feels like she’s been backstabbed in more awful ways by her fellow women.
When she gets in that pattern, I try to remind her that people tend to suck and you have to be choosy regardless of gender.
I hear you, but as a dude, I feel like there’s significantly more risk of bodily harm from men than than women. This doesn’t mean women are Nice, just less likely to try to rape or murder someone in an alley :(
You’re right… a woman would take you home first before she fucking drugged your tea or whatever the Hell she’s going to do to you. Just because women have less muscles don’t mean they’re not just as psychopathic as any dude murderer. The long-term damage that women can cause on the mind and body is fucking creepy and terrifying. Even creepier and more terrifying when you realize how many women utilize manipulative psychopathic actions in regular day-to-day life. Women are total horror shows for me. Unknowable, unsafe, unreliable, unstable. Terrifying.
I feel like with men it’s usually more physical and with women it’s more social/mental. And physical is way easier to document and make stats out of
What are we comparing here? Cyberbullying to r*pe? Social exclusion to being thrown down the stairs? Not sure if you’re attempting to draw equivalences or minimize physical harm but that is how I read this
Straight up… it seems like when I tell people that I’m scared of women they want to quantify it or somehow tell me I’m wrong for having the opinion I do it’s fucking hilarious… the same women who would shit on a man for being a man are the same women who couldn’t possibly believe that women are the problem for some folk.
I’ve never been downvoted anywhere for expressing that opinion. Lemmy especially there’s a huge disparity where saying you’d rather be with a bear than a man is unacceptable, but saying you’d rather be with a bear than a woman? A-okay. Source? I’ve said both. Only one was I not attacked for. Guess which?
Seriously, I’ve expressed my trauma regarding men countless times and every time been attacked for it. I’ve expressed my trauma at the hands of women and not a single downvote or attack or disparaging remark any time. Lemmy has a very clear bias.
I wouldn’t have a single problem with men getting upset about this bear thing if they got equally upset when somebody says something similar or worse about women, but they don’t.
It’s because nobody wants to talk about trauma at the hands of women… everybody goes extremely, extremely quiet when the topic of the capable violence of women enters the room. I have a personal feeling, as a woman, that if we talk about all of the tools and tricks and things that women do to manipulate and abuse, less women will get away with it, and women don’t want that, so they stay silent in order to enable basically a fucking gang, operating with impunity, in a way as a woman, I kind of feel held hostage at the sleepover if you know what I mean…
IRL, sure, but on Lemmy that’s not what’s happening. If you talk about trauma at the hands of women on Lemmy, you get outpourings of support and people sharing their experiences as well. Which is good. That should be happening everywhere.
The problem is you can’t do the same thing on Lemmy if you were traumatized by men. Instead, you get down voted to hell, get statistics quoted at you as if that’ll magically fix it, and when surprise, still traumatized after the stats, now you must be a misandrist so your trauma is invalid anyway.
I was just hoping one place would exist on the internet where men’s and women’s issues could get equal screen time and be respected just as much, but no, the genders have to be treated like sports teams and if you support one apparently you have to hate the other. I just don’t get why people are like this.
My edge-case where I run into something semi-related to this issue is when I go on my daily walks and get caught walking behind women. I’m a fast walker, it pains me to have to slow down for people and I don’t like having to walk awkwardly around other people walking too slow (especially if they’re just barely slow but not too slow). I realize that the Flash is trapped in a living hell walking behind all these goddamn slow walkers.
I dislike walking behind women especially, nothing that’s their fault, they’re just living life, but because then I get extra self-conscious, like, “Oh geez, what if they think I’m following them or that I’m trying took at their butt or what if I’m making them uncomfortable.” It’s about the implication. Walking slowly isn’t an option because it extends the whole thing out and makes it worse, so then I have to re-route my whole walking routine on the off-chance my very existence might make somebody else uncomfortable.
I’ve tried saying things to them to try to put them at ease like, “I wasn’t planning on raping you,” or “Hey, it’s ok, I’m not a rapist,” but nothing seems to work, if anything, it makes them more uncomfortable. I honestly don’t know what women want from men.
Uh, maybe say something that doesn’t include the word “rape” in a sentence?
“Just passing by, in a hurry… sorry to bother you” has always worked just fine for me.
Hey just so you know, I’m totally not going to rape you 😏 Jesus man, that’d creep me out, too.
Uh, you could literally just go around them and not say anything, or say excuse me or something. Happens all the time, and presumably these walks aren’t at 3am, so most people wouldn’t even question it. Saying, “I’m not a rapist,” is such a weird choice that I’d immediately be on edge.
Each of those women whose method of self defense is to be tense and walk faster has made the conscious decision not to carry a weapon for her own safety “because she shouldn’t have to”.
Instead of them taking practical steps, they are asking you to reroute around them. To literally bend your day, every day, around their needs so that they don’t have to take any practical steps for their own safety.
You are not forcing those feelings on them. They are taking them on as a form of protest against the nature of reality itself. Women refusing to carry weapons and make themselves safe is like a prisoner on hunger strike against their conditions.
We all dream of a society where women don’t have to be afraid. But if you, a 100% harmless man simply walking to work and giving zero signals of violence, are enough to make them “have to be afraid”, can we really achieve a society where women are unafraid?
It’s a question worth asking. How much effort are you willing to put in for someone who will not help herself?
As soon as I encountered street violence for the first time, I developed the fear. I then solved the fear by starting to carry a weapon. I don’t require all men bigger than me (who can hurt me just like they can hurt a woman, and who are statistically far more likely to to hurt me than they are to hurt a woman) to alter their routes so they never walk behind me. I don’t cower in fear at home either. I didn’t have either of those options in the situation where I developed the fear — living on the streets of Boston. Instead, I got a weapon. It’s my companion. It’s my tool for being safe. It’s my self-regulated solution to the problem of danger.
Women refuse this solution. I have little sympathy for that attitude. Ever since I developed the fear myself, and moved to the obvious solution, I regard women’s fear of me as their own problem. I have a life to live here. I’m not going to add fifteen minutes of walking to my day just so they can feel safer for two minutes without having to lift a finger for it.
Is your name Michael Jr?
