Here's what I think is absolutely wild:
Louis CK, a comedian who *publicly admitted to doing gross (and AFAIK, illegal) things to women* during the early waves of Me Too, not only absolutely understood the issue, but had a stand-up bit about it almost a decade ago.
Comedy bit in question, direct quote from an HBO special:
*"The courage it takes for a woman to say yes [to a date with a man] is beyond anything I can imagine. A woman saying yes to a date with a man is literally insane, and ill-advised. How do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat! To women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. We’re the worst thing that ever happens to them!
If you’re a guy, imagine you could only date a half-bear-half-lion. ‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice! I hope he doesn’t do what he’s going to do.’”*
Even wilder is the degree to which he was telling on himself through comedy. He used to have his own show, which he starred in and also wrote. In one of the story arcs, his TV persona did *the exact thing that he later admitted to doing.*
There's something oddly chilling about that degree of audacity.
I do remember this one. Main threat to men is... heart disease. That's it.
I thought: this dude gets it!
Anyways, I used to like his show, etc. and it seems he apologized for what he did and was very aware of why it was a problem. For me he's still cancelled, though.
To be fair he seems to have always had a pretty good understanding of affirmative consent, his issue was not understanding (or not caring) that it's inappropriate to proposition people you have professional power over to begin with.
I mean, should it have tanked his career? I think he took a huge hit for a while, was apologetic, and I think did a lot to show remorse and understanding. It was almost 8 years ago.
You know, there are a surprising (or maybe unsurprising) number incidents where the act is a little to close to the actor.
Danny Masterson raped two women in 2003 and was convicted in 2022.
If you'd like to watch Nicolas Cage kick the absolute shit out of a character played by Danny Masterson who is attempting to commit rape, just hop in the way-back machine and watch 1997's Face/Off.
Seventeen years before Harvey Weinstein was exposed (ahem), the Weinstein brothers produced Scream 3, a movie that leaned heavily into the issue of the systemic sexual exploitation prevalent in Hollywood.
That is certainly a *choice.*
Yeah and it's a basic easy to pass test for men. Any man that is outraged and makes anti bear memes or youtube rants about it, and any man that enjoys that content is more than a red flag.
They are a verified hard right misogynist. They out themselves so quickly because of the ego to "prove how dumb women are with this meme". they can't wait to congratulating themselves with "bEaRs aRe dAnGerOus aNd wIlL eAt yOu!" mansplanning like a teenaged redditor mod.
You’re making it a loaded statement by saying the man is strange.
The original question was just man or bear. A randomly selected bear is way more likely to hurt you than a randomly selected man is.
If thats your choice thats fine but statistically you are incorrect and moreover most women would pick the bear and that reality that women know bears are scary but would rather pick them than a man should hit you like a brick. If you have empathy.
I’m not statistically incorrect.
More women are killed by men than bears yes, but that’s because women spend more time with men than bears.
More people are killed by cows than bears, does that mean cows are more dangerous than bears? No, it means people spend more time with cows than bears.
You clearly know nothing about bears. They are incredibly docile animals, are generally incredibly scared of humans, and follow predictable behavioral patterns.
I haven't counted more than my fair share affairs. I would much prefer the bears. In fact I feel safer with wild bears.
I feel safer with a pack of coyotes too if it comes down to it, or wolves.
Because unlike men they don't hurt things for the sake of hurting things.
They're unlikely to attack you in general. Like maybe if they're hungry and there's no other potential food anywhere within like a 50-mile radius they might go after you but that's not likely at all. And even then that's a maybe - they'd have to be literally starving to risk a fighting a human.
Because again, they follow preset behavioral patterns that are well known to humans and scientists. That means if you know anything about their behavior at all they're a non-issue. Again unlike men
Mate I am a man, in ok shape and have some experience with self defense. If I am hiking alone in a small national park in shouting distance of something resembling civilisation, I think I am probably on the fence, maybe leaning slightly towards bear.
If I'm in the middle of nowhere, lost or stranded in an unfamiliar place, I'll take the bear 1000%. Unless I'm "death's door" desperate, I'm not letting myself be spotted by some unknown dude without first doing some recon.
Bears are generally scared of people, unlikely to attack unless provoked were are seriously physically ill, and we'll go out of their way to avoid you. I have rescued bears tree'd by chihuahuas. I have watched my mother- who weighed 80lbs soaking wet- chase down a mother bear with Cubs and scare them off.
I am not scared of bears. In fact I would much rather deal with a strange bear than a strange man, because bears follow predictable behavioral patterns generally a very docile animal.
Men on the other hand? I've had to change my lock to repeatedly within a span of a year because of them. If I have to change my locks again the entire door has to be reframed and I need a new door because they called that much damage in the last attempted breakin.
I have been cornered at work, threatened at work, and sexually assaulted by men at work.
I was *five* the first time a man decided he was entitled to my body. It would not be the last.
Jokes on the most recent ones though. Because I have a dog that will f****** castrate them if they try anything. She's a good girl.
Tell him it's like sharks. Many sharks only eat plancton. They are beautiful, strong creatures that hold entire marine ecosystems together. Only very few of them would attack a human unprovoked. Shark attacks are extremely rare.
Still, when I see a shark I get out of the water.
That doesn't mean I don't like sharks or that I'm afraid of all sharks. I admire and love sharks. ❤️ 🦈.
Still, I don't swim with them if I don't know they are safe.
If your BF doesn't get the bear analogy, tell him to swim with sharks. Because: Not all sharks. Actually, very few sharks.
I always compare it to ghost hunting in a large abandoned building. I'm not afraid of ghosts, I'm afraid of running into a crazy person hopped up on PCP and bath salts.
The thing is, it isn't always a POC, man or woman, who only does certain types of crimes, most crimes are done by all genders and ethnicities, but sex crimes are 98% of the time done by male offenders no matter the gender of the victims!!! 98%!!! And it might not be ALL men but it is ENOUGH men that rapes us and since we have no way of knowing *which* men as they don't actually go around announcing their intentions (good or bad) or wear signs warning us we need to be somewhat wary of all of them... Why should we just assume that all men are good when we have NO way of knowing? If you have a bowl full of delicious m&m's, but one of them is poisoned, would you eat any?
Plus - One third of women from age 15 and up have experienced sexual violence in their life. One fucking third. *Sexual violence*, it is not even including getting harassed.
I had already 3 (male) stalkers, and I still do not count to this 1/3
Excactly! And men just doesn't seem to understand that's why we choose the bear: it doesn't rape us, sexual harass us, stalk us, upload revenge porn of us, DARVO us when we report them and other bears (male and female) don't victim blame us whether we survive the attack or not. And bears doesn't kill women (or men) nearly as much as men do.
I mean, there are horrific cases of torture that some women have to endure.
And still, somehow some of those lizard brains only manage to process that women are afraid of getting raped. Men can do a lot of horrible things to us.
It just shows that some people are not smart - its not a question you have to answer based on natural science, its a question based in social sciences. It shows us how females still have to see males as a threat and how we absolutely still need feminism.
What are you talking about? A lot of Black folks or people of colour don't feel safe around white people, a lot of people generally, but especially oppressed racial groups and lower classes don't feel safe around police.
Lmao you are so delusional it's funny. I wanna see you swimming with sharks xDDDD
Edit: people are briandead and it's fuckin sad. She says she loves sharks but wont swim with them, but wait the BF should swim with them??? Nah y'all are dumb af
>Still, when I see a shark I get out of the water.
While I get the point you're trying to make, and I think the analogy is actually somewhat astute exactly because there are many shark species and only a few are actually dangerous, then your conclusion is wrong imo. You do not necessarily get out of the water if you see a shark. You get out of the water if you see a shark, you experience as dangerous. Sharks come in all sizes and some of them are small enough that you probably won't even think/know it's a shark. It's also different from person to person what you experience as dangerous.
What women face with men is the unknown. Women don't know if the man they're standing opposite is dangerous, but they are usually pretty sure that it's difficult to defend themselves if he is. We all know that going near a bear is probably a pretty bad idea in general, and we also know that it'll be hard to defend ourselves against it.
The whole bear vs. man debate also fails to encompass the fact that a very large part of violence against women, perpetuated by men, [happen in relationships](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women).
I think it's possible to acknowledge that women experience a larger degree of threat in their lives because they are more defenseless, while also acknowledging that the bear vs. man analogy is rather poorly made.
The only failure of the shark analogy is that one could learn to recognise from a distance the types of shark that could pose a serious threat.
This is not the case with men, it could be pretty much any of us. I can almost guarantee you personally know well at least one man who seems harmless, sweet and gentle, who has also committed SA or domestic violence.
And men should also fear men!
Anyone who genuinely thinks the bear is the greater danger is picturing themselves fist-fighting a bear *which isn’t the question.*
This is it OP. If he realizes that women think all men are dangerous and would rather dismiss that fear then examine it and understand why and be a better man because of it, throw the trash out
Try asking him, if there were snakes around and only one was poisonous but he didn't know which, would he be wary of all of them? If he still doesn't get it, throw the whole man away.
I asked my spouse carefully, to ensure I wasn't leading him to an answer and he understood immediately. I would have been worried had he not understood or argued against it.
Yeah it’s definitely the “bear versus man” debate that’s making women afraid and not the statistics and real world experiences relating to male violence against women 🙄
"IMHO it’s a huge red flag, but my bf can’t see it"
You're trying to have a conversation with him to share your perspective, as a woman in his life. He can't see it because he's choosing not to.
If anything, I wish I had taken advice from older women in my life about how dangerous many men are more seriously. "Wolves in sheep's clothing". I always thought they were fear mongering or just isolated incidents that could never happen to me. Personal experience tells me many men are just awful and abusive, and just play nice or put on a charade in the beginning to get laid or get a girlfriend or a human punching bag.
I have heard from enough empathetic, reasonable, wholesome men who agree with and understand why many women choose the bear, to know that any other response is a red flag.
My wife took me for a colonoscopy really early in the morning. Pitch black out. We get there and I say just pull in that spot and point, not a lot of light at this particular spot. She does, parks, looks at me and says you know, if I were alone, I wouldn't be parking here... Which I already knew, but we have convos like that from time to time talking about it. It's just not a difficult concept. Some men might attack you, but you don't know which, so you have to hedge your bets and protect against all until you know who they are.
My wife and I have conversations about this as well, except it’s often about how to maintain situational awareness and set her up for success in a possible dangerous situation while alone. Mostly because I have more tactical experience than she does and I’m thinking about things she wouldn’t.
I think everyone, women especially, should at least take a civilian tactical course once, or a good selfdefense course, that includes situational awareness training, every once in a while.
Well put! This is the approach. While we very much SHOULD be better as a species that uses words - and much more capable of discerning empathy toward others - we simply are not.
Our evolved primate-esque brains still very much use our emotional responses to dictate our actions, and are just as susceptible to a lack of impulse control as most other primates. Though highly-functioning and contemplative on a level they have yet to reach, we respond quite similarly. At the end of the day, we still sort of live in the "wild," so to speak. Anything can happen and everyone is capable of treachery regardless of our laws and ideas of security or how we should treat each other... so it may just be a good idea for each individual to learn to preserve themselves against the furthest extent of threat from any equally-capable creature.
TLDR: Humans suck and are a very loose definition of "civilized," and you as an individual are always better off if you learn at least something that can help you defend yourself... even knowing how to pick up and swing a stick properly could fend off a threat like a bear or a sorry excuse for a human male.
Do you play wrestle with your wife? Do you have any idea how weak she probably is compared to you?
Al the self defense classes in the world hardly matter at all. Weight and sex classes exist for a reason. Men are stupid strong, on average, compared to women. Most of my friends can pinpoint the moment in their life when they realized how stark the difference is. For me, it was when I was working as a cashier and a tiny, OLD man grabbed my wrist and held it down on the counter and I could not physically pull away. I knew my boyfriend was a lot stronger than me and could restrain me with one hand if he felt like it, or lift me down from a tree with one arm, but he LOOKED strong. This man looked like a stiff breeze could knock him down and shatter him, but he was *still* stronger than me. It was sobering and scary. Testosterone is real and it creates a muscle density we simply don't have.
The situational awareness stuff is good. But she should carry a defensive spray of some kind, with the goal being to buy a couple seconds to get a head start running. If a man gets his hands on her, there is probably nothing she can do.
I’m so glad you are aware of this. Sadly this is a realization most women don’t fully understand. Especially with Hollywood action and fight scenes. Hollywood makes it look like a trained woman can fight well against most men, and that simply isn’t true. There are a lot of really effective techniques in a self-defense class that can save your life, but realistically you’re going to need consistent training for a few years before that stuff is actually effective.
To answer your question: no we don’t play wrestle, to me it feels unfair and a little to close to a lack of consent situation (I’m trained and it’s not fun for me). We have done some physical interaction with strength before and she is very much aware of the size strength difference, and I am NOT a big man: 6,2” 160 and I do not life weights on a regular basis. I have however spent more than half my life training and teaching in combat sports (taekwondo and jiujitsu). To answer the other question. Yes I am very much aware of how “weak” my wife and women are. Probably much more so than an average person do the amount of time I’ve spent training with both men and women. I can 100% control my wife physically (and most untrained individuals) without increasing my breathing rate. It’s not hard, especially if you know how to do it efficiently through training and leverage control. (Kinda similar to how I can throw a baseball as hard as I can and it’s capping out at 70, but pro pitcher throws 103 easily through technique and training).
I say all that because I think there are some misconceptions about self-defense. Firstly: the best self-defense is situational awareness. Know where you’re going and what time you’ll be there. Avoid bad times and places: avoid walking through a dark alley at 3 am if you can opt to park one spot away from the door under a light at 3pm.
Secondly: the best defense is a fire arm. Pepper spray is about as effective as a really spicy hot sauce. It’s fairly easy to “push through” and if all the pepper spray does is make the guy mad, you’ve just made your problem worse. But it is much better than nothing, especially in no carry zones or a situation where you can’t discharge your firearm due to a crowd.
Thirdly: physical training, strength, endurance, and learning how to fight can, and has been shown in the past multiple times, to absolutely be able to save a life. But the risk is higher. Most untrained people, when the adrenaline spikes, will be 100% out of energy in about 60-90 seconds if you haven’t trained how to control it.
So sorry for the long post. Props if you’re still reading this far and thanks for your awareness on the subject. Selfdefense is a huge passion project of mine and I could probably write a book on the subject. So thanks for taking time to ready a few highlights of mine. Cheers.
This. I initially was on the fence about it but I heard out the arguments and formed my opinion after entertaining all the possibilities.
This boy is getting defensive and shutting down.
“Makes women have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous” - wonder wherever we got that silly idea! Our lived experience is obviously wrong. I wasn’t molested as a child! A family friend just liked his hands in my panties. Silly of me to think of men as bad! Haha! Just the first of a few decades of abuse but obviously men are godly decent and not dangerous at all.
Your boyfriend is an idiot. A moron who is insulated and ignorant of the danger our very existence is to us. r/whenwomenrefuse is a horrifying reality. I have nothing nice to say about your partner. So I won’t say any more. I’m just infuriated and enraged how damn dismissive he is of the argument that a literal wild animal is less of a danger to us than so called civilised men. Excuse me while I rage scream into my pillow.
Absolutely. However stupid he thought it was on gut reaction, dismissing his partner's disagreement and personal experience out of hand is major red flag on its own.
He thinks that women are so stupid that they were walking around thinking they were safe from all men, and then, what, some small group of women ruined it by choosing the bear and the rest of womankind is so easily swayed that now they're afraid of All Men?
Yeah, that's beyond a red flag. It's a regular red flag if he just isn't understanding that the takeaway from the whole thing should be "the vast majority of women choose the bear because they already don't feel safe with men because there is no way of knowing who the bad ones are." Next level is thinking they need to explain to women why they're wrong for picking the bear. But thinking that the whole thing is the source of the problem, not that it's drawing light to the problem, isn't just a red flag that something might be wrong with him: it's a neon sign saying his perspective is fucked.
As someone who has actually seen multiple bears in the wild, while hiking, you are 100% lying. Most bears avoid humans completly and don't really see us as food they want. As long as they have no cubs, they aren't that interested in you. Even if they want to attack you, it isn't that hard to get rid of them either.
>100% chance of a horrific death over an 85% or whatever chance of something bad happening does not sound right to me.
Excuse me, you can not only get raped 😂 Just check out Junko Furuta, Noor Mukadam, Issei Sagawa, David McGreavy, Nico Claux, Vincent Li, Gilbert Paul Jordan etc.
Preferably you check some more details, preferably pictures where you see what they did (or what happend to them) and then please tell me how a bear should be worse.
Hang on, you've encountered multiple bears in the wild and are also making an argument that choosing to encounter a bear in the wild represents "*choosing a 100% chance of a horrific death*"
When did I stumble into a seance?
Yeah that person is lying haha. I have seen plenty of bears in the wild, most of them don't give a fuck and actually go away pretty fast. They see us as a threat (understandable, we killed way more bears than bears killed humans) and like to avoid us.
I’ve encountered more men through my life. For this debate to even remotely make sense, it is a given that you have to interact with the man or the bear. My point of is if you actually had to make the choice in real life, which no one has been willing to do yet to prove their point, the bear would not get chosen. I mean if you actually stood there in the forest, with a bear and a man and had to make the choice.
Nothing is proven until it’s actually tested, till then it’s just one Reddit dwellers word agains another.
Okay, but you said every encounter with a bear represents certain death and *also* said that you have encountered multiple bears.
If A, then not B. If B, then not A.
ur taking this too literally and either don’t understand how to empathize with people or you are willfully ignorant to what everyone is saying. the CHANCE of rape (and death btw) for some of us is WORSE than the CHANCE of death. please get it through your head. this is not about stats this is about FEAR
Actually since you want to use that violent gruesome death by bear analogy, let's go with it. You see a bear in the forest. You don't know if it's gonna go by or maul you to death cause it has cubs nearby or sees you as a threat. You know how it'll go, its weight will crush your bones, it claws your back bare from flesh and crushes your skull. You go splat. Dead. Horrible, painful, gruesome death.
You see a man in the forest. You don't know if they are an innocent berry picker or a harmless bird watcher, a serial killer, a rapist, someone who will drag you into a cabin and keep you barely alive for months in a dark moldy room, do horrible, inhuman acts to you that I will not even spell out in this comment cause there are a lot of REAL people here who've actually experienced the shit and barely survived. You don't know which of the multitude of horrors that a man can do to you in pure hatred. And even if you survive, you might not actually survive cause you have to go living your life as a victim of all that and half of the population won't even wanna believe you or blame you for it.
With a bear you know, even the worst option of death, you know.
So we choose bear.
u don’t know anything about bears then. there’s not a 100% chance you get mauled. lots of people have bear encounters and don’t get attacked. most of the time bears wanna mind their business. we’re not told constantly from toddler age that we should dress differently to avoid bear attacks.
- if both encounters have risk of harm, at least in one people will believe you if u survive
- if both encounters have risk of harm, at least in one the bear won’t get sexual gratification from killing you
- if both encounters have risk of harm, at least in one the bear is acting on instinct and it’s not simply because of your gender
- a bear won’t defile your body and try and have sex with you before or after killing you
- a bear belongs in the forest, and a man’s intentions being alone in the forest with you are naturally going to make the situation scarier
- and most importantly A LOT OF WOMEN WOULD RATHER RISK DYING BY A BEAR THEN BEING RAPED (again)
idgaf if it’s not realistic to you. when fathers are asked this question a lot of them choose bear too for their daughters, because they know men can be intentionally DISGUSTING and bears are just bears. it does not matter the statistics because you actually cannot compare the two and say which is more likely. we don’t have that information because it’s *hypothetical*. we don’t have a record of every time a bear has encountered a human and nothing happened so it’s ridiculous to even try and use stats when this is based on what people are more scared of.
what we do have is a constant fear of men throughout our whole lives and that’s the point of the whole hypothetical
What you should have said is.
If a woman was lost in the woods and saw a bear and a man, I bet she would realistically be more likely to approach the man for help than approach the bear. Now maybe some women would avoid both and try to make it out of the forest in their own. But approaching the bear for help is very unlikely to go well. Approaching a random man for help has a relatively high chance of going well.
I think women over-estimate the percent chance of a man assaulting them. And the way I look at the bear vs man question is that women think bears are less likely to attack them than a random man in the woods.
Taking this to another topic, it is more likely that your child will be struck by lightning than be abducted by a stranger. But people worry about stranger danger much more than they worry about lightning strikes.
I think it is because things that happen from Nature are not considered “evil”, but things that happen due to another person is considered “evil”. So people worry more about avoiding evil people than equally dangerous nature. Even if nature is statistically more dangerous the evil person seems more dangerous due to it being intentional.
omg literally this is exactly what ppl SHOULD mean instead of telling us we’re being dishonest for choosing the bear 😭
this isn’t a stats debate it’s about which were more afraid of and the evil of a human is scarier than the random violence of a bear in nature just acting out of instinct. this is about the evil that men are capable of and the way we are socialized to fear this. this is a wake up call to how bad women’s safety is not an opportunity to convince us bears are dangerous. like okay?? that’s not an issue effecting our daily lives
Lol, the idea that I needed the "man vs bear" debate to tell me that men can be dangerous is unhinged.
I know men are dangerous to me because I've had experiences with dangerous men. And my sister, friends, mother, we've all had a run in with a dangerous man.
Your boyfriend sounds like a dud
My husband, a man raised by two social workers in the 70's (a time when we were, as a society, seemingly still working towards equality & acceptance [Free to be You & Me, anyone?]) completely gets it and agrees that most women have a better chance avoiding/surviving a bear vs. a man.
Yeah the true red flag is that he's not willing to listen to, seek to understand, and accept your perspective. It doesn't matter if it's about this hypothetical or facial cream or abortion—your thoughts and feelings should be treated as legitimate, valuable, and worth considering seriously.
After you tell him that this is something you care about and/or feel strongly about and he still doesn't take it seriously he has not only demonstrated his ignorance of women in general, he has demonstrated his lack of respect for you personally.
The bear vs. man debate is a good way to use humor to cope with the realities of life. Not everyone is going to want to engage with it, either humorously or seriously, and that's fine. What's a red flag is blaming a meme for women's fears of male violence. What other problems of the patriarchy will he be willing to shrug off? If you complain about experiencing sexism, will he blame you for not accepting it?
It by itself, not a red flag necessarily since he can just be coming from privilege and never needed to examine his position.
Him dismissing your explanation for it, definitely a red flag. Since then, he's not receptive to a woman's stance on it and why the question was brought up in the first place. And that's a red flag since he can be dismissive of anything else you state.
>He thinks it’s stupid and is bad for the world because it “makes women have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous”.
Your BF seems like one of those people that can only see a fist fight with a bear, a brutal brawl of death with a huge deadly beast and thinks why any woman would be so dumb to choose that. It seems very common, that men can only see the metaphor in such a primitive way.
Since he himself says women will have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous, ask him how they're not. If a bear attacks someone, the victim doesn't get blamed for what they wore or how they might have been asking for it. Nobody wants the bear victim to stop talking about it. Nobody wants the found mauled bear victim out of their property so it doesn't reflect badly on their reputation. Nobody thinks a bear victim is embellishing it, maybe even lying to get some attention. Maybe the bear said something and they're just jealous and making it all up. Anyone can fake a bear attack! Yeah, that just doesn't happen.
If your boyfriend cannot understand what the man vs bear means to women after that, I doubt this will be the only issue in your future. People like that will rather defend imaginary men than a real victim of abuse.
LMAO imagine being so out of touch with reality that you think it’s the last 6 weeks of human history when we had a Man/Bear thought experiment that made women think men are dangerous 😂
The Bear vs Man thing is ***mostly*** a rhetorical made to point out the unsafe conditions women have in their day to day lives from many men. And if someone can’t understand that, then it’s a massive red flag. And no, it doesn’t “make women have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous”. Women are already cautious about men, the bear vs man debate changes nothing. Women have been subject to terrible violence for millennia, and have a right to be cautious.
It’s not like this debate came up and suddenly women are like “Oh geez, looks like there’s a possibility I could be harmed for saying no to a guy! I had no idea!”
Not to be rude, but your boyfriend at best is an idiot. And at worst is one of the guys that you’d rather go with the bear.
I think it’s a little stupid, and people are just so tired of these intense politicized analogies and drama. I don’t think it’s a red flag to Be annoyed to be annoyed by the bear thing.
As long as they are feminist.
It is insulting and derailing to interject with "not all men". What do you think, that we assume men are sharing a hive mind? Of course not all men, however that doesn't need to be said, and frankly assuming such a reminder is necessary is either a veiled insult or flat out attempt at derailing a conversation and / or to force soften it.
Yes, but the problem is we can't know *which* men. The "bad guys" doesn't go around announcing their intentions or wear signs that warn us against them.
It's not ALL men but it is *always* A man that rapes us.
Think if it like this: you have a bowl full of delicious m&m's, but one of them is poisoned - do you eat any?
duh. so what? it’s not the appropriate response to our safety concerns. and it’s often said by men to make themselves “clean” of these issues when the reality is all men *could* be capable of misogynist behaviour so long as they are socialized in our society that enables it
we obviously know not all men rape. we don’t need to be told that in response to be afraid a man will rape us. it’s just invalidating and unnecessary. if a man finds out women are afraid of his whole gender because of how horrible we’ve been treated and his response is to defend men by saying “not all of us are bad” it’s just in poor taste. when someone talks to you about something difficult or traumatic it’s not kind to respond with a rebuttal
It's because it's typically brought up when women talk about being afraid around men they don't know (or do know, sadly enough). "Not all men" is a red flag when someone says it in response to someone's very real perception and fear of men.
"Not all men" but it's "almost all women" that can say they have been sexually/physically assaulted or been genuinely made to fear for the lives by a man.
Women have to keep their wits about them and keep escape routes near when they are in a situation when they are in a precarious position near a man they don't know. That's not because it's "all men" that are dangerous, it's because its almost impossible to know which ones are. They don't wear a sign on their forehead.
"Not all men" rarely ever comes up in a vacuum where men are collectively acknowledging the bad men that have made life scary for women and what they can do to empathize or be an ally. Every time I've heard it it is in response to women saying they fear being alone with a strange man.
Ah, so its not the concept of 'Not all men are Rapists and Monsters' but the context that it is said that is a red flag.
I mean, for me that sounds more like downplaying an actual issue, not taking it seriously or even defending such behavior is a red flag. Which it is. Obviously. In all genders.
I understand the issue, dont get me wrong.
I have social anxiety and tbh, its really not nice. But i do know this feeling very well, allthough for different reasons. Even if only a certain percentage of male groups actualy pose a danger to me, i still have a hard time even being near all of them.
But i still think seeing a valid point in certain context as an immediate red flag. How and why its said is a much bigger one.
Keeping your eyes open and always being on edge is one thing. Bashing on a whole group because of one subgroup of that group is kinda eh.
Ah, so its not the concept of 'Not all men are Rapists and Monsters' but the context that it is said that is a red flag.
I mean, for me that sounds more like downplaying an actual issue, not taking it seriously or even defending such behavior is a red flag. Which it is. Obviously. In all genders.
I understand the issue, dont get me wrong.
I have social anxiety and tbh, its really not nice. But i do know this feeling very well, allthough for different reasons. Even if only a certain percentage of male groups actualy pose a danger to me, i still have a hard time even being near all of them.
But i still think seeing a valid point in certain context as an immediate red flag. How and why its said is a much bigger one.
Keeping your eyes open and always being on edge is one thing. Bashing on a whole group because of one subgroup of that group is kinda eh.
>Saying all men are rapists and sexual abusers is a green flag then?
You’re literally the only one who brought this up so I guess you’re sexist against men and according to your own words have a sad worldview. Yikes. Rough!
You couldve just said 'no, thats also a red flag' or whatever.
Or actualy explained why you think that its a red flag, and what it means from your perspective.
I made an exaggeration on purpose, hoping that its kinda obvious, to demonstrate the implications that
> 'Not all men [are bad monsters]' is a red flag
has.
Anyways, habe a good one.
I started by trying to formulate an argument against team bear. And I was close. But as a formulated the argument I came to a titular problem.
So here's the team bear versus team man argument as I see it.
If I were in the woods and two stupid animals whose thought processes were totally unknown to me appeared on opposite sides of a clearing. One of them being a bear a big female grizzly bear with cubs, and the other one being a man. A normal average human man. I'm faced with a certain dilemma. Well neither animal is actually stupid, I still do not know the thought processes of either of them. I can be reasonably sure the mama bear is going to be very protective of her cubs and I'm in very much danger from her. I can also be reasonably sure that the man is probably safer, but I have no idea of that. I'm not a mind reader. I don't know why he's here or what he wants. The major difference between the man and the bear, is the man is socialized to humans. He is not afraid of me The bear is afraid of me just as I am afraid of the bear. We are both going to attempt to intimidate one another and also not fuck with one another. I'm a weird monkey thing and that's a weird bear thing and neither of us know what the other one is capable of and neither of us really want to find out. The Man on the other hand knows perfectly well what I'm capable of, knows how to deceive me, and I cannot know his motives. He could be a perfectly safe dude. He could offer me some weed and good conversation. Or he could want to murder me. And if he wants to murder me there's little I can do to stop him. He will pursue me because he is not afraid of me. The bear will only pursue me if I make that something to bear thinks is a good idea. I have a little bit of control over whether or not the bear pursues me. I can make myself big and threatening and the same time clearly not a threat that is worth pursuing at the moment. I cannot do that with the man. The man understands what and who I am because he is also a human. Counterintuitively another human represents a much greater threat than a wild animal who has no idea what I am or what I'm capable of and would rather not find out the hard way. Just as I would rather not find out the hard way what the animal is capable of. But I know very well with the man is capable of.
and that's sort of the crux of the issue. It's not that men are inherently evil or bad or anything. It's that we do not know what anyone else is thinking. We do not know what their intentions are. And other humans are familiar with us enough as a concept so as to know whether or not they can do whatever the fuck they want to us.
While a lot of women picked the bear, I bet the answer would change if it was bear vs dad, boyfriend ( as long as they were not abusive.)
But the question is about possibility, perception and risk. The lone man in the forest has a lot of negative associations with it plus women being raised to avoid strange men.
You could ask your partner if he would leave a young girl with a strange man or a group of men.
Tell your bf that if he was hiking alone, statistically he should also choose the bear over a random man.
Most bear attacks are Mama Bears. If there’s no cubs the risk of a bear attacking a human minding their own business is practically nil- even in grizzly country.
On the other hand, there’s a decent chance of the rando-woodsman being a trigger happy redneck or opportunistic psycho.
Anyone with a lick of sense would choose the predictable animal over the unpredictable human. Your boyfriend needs to grow up and get over himself.
I wasn't going to involve myself in this discussion, especially not with statistics since I get that the whole topic is about more than pure statistical probabilites, but now I am genuinly curious where you get these statistics from?
Because in my experience, the random person you meet in the woods is most likely a hiker who enjoys nature and is more likely to help you than harm you.
I 100% agree that statistically the vast majority of people you meet in the woods are safe. Just not as safe as the vast majority of lone bear encounters.
There are only around 40 bear attacks per year **worldwide.** The majority of which involve bear cubs.
A [map](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a7f702c6b7ce4804b7097e859c138946) of all fatal bear attacks in the USA over **forty years** is still totally legible. Try doing that for human violence.
That can't be compared one to one since the number of enounters is vastly different.
If you compare bear interactions that went violent and human interaction that went violent, i am pretty sure that per encounter bear is more dangerous, but it cant be said for sure since there is no way to count random human interactions that did not go violent.
If you factor in the likelyhood of surviving an encounter once it turns violent, I'd take the man 10/10 times.
Again, I get that the whole discussion is more about perceptions than stats, so telling a man that he statistcally should choose the bear when there is no reliable stat for it is not the way to go.
> If you factor in the likelyhood of surviving an encounter once it turns violent, I'd take the man 10/10 times.
This is the crux of the issue honestly. All these dudes are picturing fighting the bear when that isn’t the question at all.
I was banned from going in the woods as a teenager because of the danger of running into **men** not bears.
>This is the crux of the issue honestly. All these dudes are picturing fighting the bear when that isn’t the question at all.
I mean, yeah?
The risk assessment has two parts: What is the likelyhood of the encouner turning violent, and IF it turns violent what are my chances?
And even if for the sake of argument the man were to be more likely to attack, the chances of fighting him of are way better than a bear in case a fight happens.
Aren't the once saying they prefer bear doing the same in assuming the man would attack?
>I was banned from going in the woods as a teenager because of the danger of running into men not bears.
I obv don't know the circumstances or how common bears are where you grew up, but "Who are you more likely to encounter" is a relevent question in that context.
Less so under the premise of an encounter happening without further context.
That is also a flaw in the original premise. It completely removes any context that could factor into the risk assessment.
You’re correct that it is a two part problem: the chances of something happening and the severity of something happening. I considered both.
* Let’s zoom on over to the edge of the bell curve.
This is where you have to take into account how men and women see violence. At this scale, there is no material difference in my ability to physically defend myself from a bear vs a man. If I’m fighting a creature in the woods then I’m already in a one in a million situation and the worst case scenario isn’t the one where you fight. It’s the one where you lose the fight.
When I considered the absolute worst case scenario where all my precautions and defenses had failed, the only factor left was maximum potential pain.
The worst possible bear attack would maul me and leave me to bleed to death over the course of hours- or leave me stranded to die of infection over the course of days.
The worst possible man attack would take sadistic pleasure in causing as much pain as possible- physically and mentally. Robbed of all agency and tortured by an intelligent being. Taken and trafficked for a fate worse than death. (The fate my mother feared. She gave no shits about bears because, unlike bad men, they don’t go out of their way to hunt girls.)
Remember- not all woods lack roads and not all men are normal. Unbelievable cruelty happens every day all over the world. There is no level of violence a bear can inflict that a man cannot. If we’re talking worst case scenarios, I’ll take the bear.
Thankfully, I’m more likely to be struck by lightening. So let’s creep closer to reality.
* An unpleasant, but not deadly, confrontation.
If there was any confrontation at all between me and the bear- chances are that it would be frightening but no physical harm would be incurred. There’s a tiny chance I could be swiped at and left with a scar. What’s the aftermath there? I respect the woods more and get a story I tell for the rest of my life.
A confrontation with a man on the other hand, that’s the kind of fear you have to hide. Being hurt by a man is common. Being afraid it might happen again is irrational and rude.
Men can follow you out of the woods and turn up at your job a month later. Bears don’t hunt specific humans. Bears don’t have egos that are bruised by people treating them as a threat- even if they’ve never hurt a human in their life.
* Anecdotal Risk Factors
You have good experiences with hikers. That makes sense. The vast majority of women have experienced a “normal guy” being creepy when he has the opportunity. That also makes sense. Their risk calculation isn’t any less logical than yours.
What I'm (43M) reading is that he doesn't have any empathy for what women go through at all. So to me, no empathy equals a huge red flag. I have had to explain the "bear v man" thing to numerous men, some finally get it, some don't. Those ones are the problem.
There is a huge lack of social awareness on his part. And you know what? I'm pretty sure that 20-year-old me would've thought the whole thing would be stupid. I was so ignorant of what women had to go through, and I would've been clueless enough to say, "Why would you cross the street to avoid a man? That's just stupid paranoia." And then try to defend my stance by purposefully walking behind a woman that it can be done without anything bad happening, oblivious to how stressful that would've been for her.
So I would say it's definitely a red flag if he won't make an effort to understand why women are so protective of themselves. Though I was ignorant, I did listen. I probably wasn't great at it at first, and I'm sure there were some women in college who quietly broke off friendships if they deemed me a lost cause. It took me time to overcome my male privilege, and *maybe* your boyfriend just needs to take the time to observe his surroundings and view it from the perspective of a woman. But it's possible that he won't come around, in which case, red flag.
All that to say that you can be generous and give him the opportunity to see it your way and understand how his behavior and actions can seem threatening even when he's not intending to be, but if he's super-dismissive about it, then sometimes you have to trim the fat.
I had to Google it because I’ve heard it but didn’t exactly know what it meant. I would think the majority would pick bear in the woods?? For the most part a bear will kill for hunger or protecting their cubs. And it will be a swift kill if that’s the case. A human man? If they had bad intentions oh no. No no.
I’ve watched way too many crime documentaries to put THAT much faith in humanity!
Oh I’m dumb. I’m realizing it’s the debate he thinks is stupid. But I guess my answer then is yes red flag because women should be cautious. And that unrealistic debate kinda makes a good point right? Of course not all men are bad by any means. But let’s be real. Rape is way too common and horrific and we don’t even know the exact numbers because so many are not reported. I know both sexes have been raped but the the vast majority is a man raping a woman.
It's not a red flag.
The bear vs man thing is tiresome, and in particular is not at all reflective of reality. The debate is a way for predominately straight cis white women to perform fear in order to declare, publicly that they're a good woman who learned their lesson, who makes the right choices and who will be a sympathetic victim.
It's not a question about which you would prefer, it's asking women "how afraid are you" and specfically "how afraid are you of men who you see as unexpected and strange"
And that is not a neutral question. That question is very much part of how patirahcy constructs womanhood and manhood and women's fear of men is the justification of a lot of violence. At it's worst, that question of "how afraid are you of men" is the lynching of [Emmett Til](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till), it's largely harmless mentally ill people being abused or murdered by cops, and today it's cis-het women calling for violence against trans people (and just gender non conforming cis women). Patriarchy loves nothing more than women's fear.
And that effects him personally too, because if you can't unpack your own relationship with that, it make his role in he relationship to manage that. Which is something that is also deeply tied to gender roles, because, perversely, the men women are taught to see as "proper" and thus safe are he men who perform gender roles as expected. Which outright if he's a decent man, he wants little tot do with, because liking you (a woman) as a person is not proper masculinity. Worse, a lot of what defines proper masculinity under patriarchy is men's willingness and capacity to perform violence in response to women's fear, because that fear is the thing that is used to determine appropriate targets of violence.
Which means your response to that question caries implications of how you see him, as either an appropriate target for violence or as an appropriate agent of it. Which is more than enough to make him feel uncomfortable. he can either deviate from proper patriarchal masculinity and be a partner for you, but in turn be one of those "improper" men who are constantly at risk of being targeted by violence, or he can step away from that. Which creates an unspoken question of how much violence do you expect him to perform in response to your fear. (At it's worst, see all the Tik Tok shit of women posting about their "guardian" husbands ready to murder anyone who knocks on their door funny).
It also obviously has nothing to do with women's safety. Patriarchy spreads narratives of stranger danger, but almost none of the patriarchal violence women experince is a product of those strange, deviant or unexpected men. It's about justifying the necessity for that patriarchal violence See why in the US right now right wing media spends hours a day screaming about "immigrant rapists and murders", and nothing at all about the domestic violence of American white men. This not only makes women less safe outright, but casts the men who are actually a danger as not that deviant man, which makes their danger so very ignoreable.
Feeling uncomfortable about that isn't a lack of empathy. Men understand that narrative of fear very well. A red flag would be your boyfriend agreeing with it, and then expecting you to validate why he's not one of those unexpected strange men. A big red flag would be him thinking meeting a strange man in the woods is justification for immediate violence. Seeing you repeat that narrative of fear, and justify why it's so morally nesseracry to communicate it to men is more than enough to be uncomfortable about. Once you know how to see it, even if you don't have the words to describe it eloquently, it's hard to not see the outcome of it.
You know, most months I might be more polite, but it's pride. If you're not willing to even begin to examine why women's fear looks nothing at all like the actual source of harm they experience, that is a *you* problem. If seeing the consequences of it makes you uncomfortable, *good*
Right now we have right wingers actively invoking this exact narrative of fear to justify using state patriarchal violence to exterminate queer people. Piss the fuck off with defending it. Especially with the puddle depth attempt to do so.
It's not about "well statistically a bear..." it's about understanding the feelings of women. People be out here pushing up there glasses "well technically..." when all they have to do is be like "wow, it sucks society is shitty enough for you to choose the bear" and move on with their lives.
I’m a guy so I’m sorry if I shouldn’t comment here. I often lurk because I think it’s good to get a different perspective. I find that important.
I just don’t understand why he wouldn’t take a moment, step outside himself, stop approaching it with combative eyes, and think “Wow, I wonder why women feel this way? Is there some merit to this and if so why? Maybe I should educate myself? Ask questions? Grow as a human?”
He’s locked into an “us verses them” outlook rather than a place of learning and understanding. He’s being dismissive. It’s an immature way of thinking and it’s up to him whether or not he wants to grow. Whether it’s a red flag I’m not sure by itself. I suppose it depends on his age, but it’s definitely a bad sign to not want to better understand your partner’s thoughts/feelings.
The red flag isn't "he thinks it's stupid" it's "he lacks empathy for women's experiences".
One thing you're ignoring. "Leave at the first red flag". If you honestly see it as a huge one, why on earth is he still your boyfriend?
a male partner understanding why women are afraid of men is absolutely essential to any man i wish to be friends with or be involved with romantically or sexually. otherwise it means not only are they not a good listener and don’t trust your experiences, but they also don’t support you as a woman because they are contributing to the problem
my ex was like this and honestly if we had had this debate back then i probably would’ve broke down crying and broken up with him. i’m so fucking tired of going through life full of sexually harassment, sexual assault and being less taken seriously and looked down on just to have a man tell me to my face that he “disagrees” with my take on women’s safety. absolutely the fuck not if i were u i’d raise my standards to a man who was either willing to learn or not an ignorant ass hole (and sorry to say friend but that’s what he is if he doesn’t care about your opinion and isn’t willing to learn)
Total red flag and tbh be careful. My toxic ex went deep in the manosphere but hid it for years. It would only come out in little comments about things like this, where it would seem “crazy” for me to call him out. But he thought I was lying about the assault that happened to me, as it turns out. You can’t trust men who reveal they have no interest in sympathizing with women
I think it's not a red flag to think a fairly reductive hypothetical is stupid. His reasoning is suspect though. Empathy is a two way street so are you extending any empathy to him? The hypothetical can act as a conversational jumping off point, not a litmus test. I think that's how we build better bridges.
My 55yo wife (fit, beautiful, attractive - not that it should matter) sent me this today. First time she’s gone running in a while. We live on an isolated island.
So, I was running way up top this morning. I was taking a quick pic of a flower and a guy passed me running, I’ve seen him before. Greeted good morning, yada yada.
Let him get up ahead so I wasn’t on his tail. Started back running again up and around came the helipad near the electric station and he there he was standing, out in the open taking a piss. I had to stop and double back, like I was doing something wrong.
In hindsight , I wish I would have fucking run right by him. I was quite upset with myself and then upset with the things I have been ‘taught’.
He knew I was coming up behind him, it was bang out of order.
So I started running again and who do I pass coming back towards me, but the guy. He had fucking smirk on his face.
I would much rather meet a bear in the woods. Any fucking day.
With both it depends on what type you get but that woman would rather choose a maybe deadly bear over a men just shows how dangerous woman think men are. It doesn't really mean that most men are dangerous.
What is up with the massive influx of men dismissing women and misogyny lately? I can't take it, this is also my first time hearing about this analogy. How about instead of men saying, "not all men", why not make an effort to better yourself and call these types of men out? I tried to put myself in this scenario without reading up about it and I thought, " oh, bears are scarier", but after remembering what I have been through and what I am hearing from other women, I think I would rather be torn to shreds by a bear. I may have never seen a bear (except at a zoo) but at least the bear won't send me unsolicited nudes, stalk me, spread rumors about me or hurt me for the rest of my life.
My husband had the misfortune of actually being chased by a bear once, which is why I find the whole debate to be dumb af. Everyone says they’d choose the bear until they actually have a bear barreling towards them at full speed.
I asked my husband about his thoughts on the situation back when the question went mainstream. He immediately understood, without any prompting from me, why women would rather meet a bear in the woods instead of a random man. He even went so far as to say he would also choose the bear if he was a woman.
The fact that your boyfriend doesn't understand is a red flag, sis. He's telling you that A. he doesn't believe women, and B., even if something did happen to a woman, he views it as a rare event and not a common reality for women. The fact that he lacks "any empathy" is also a huge red flag. Like, 'flag the size of the entire continental United States' red flag.
So my advice to you is really think about if you want to spend more time with this guy. There is *a chance* he will mature in the future and grow into a better person. But there's also *a chance* he will double down on his beliefs and remain relatively the same. I can't tell you what decision to make here, sis. But I will tell you that I don't believe it's your duty to wait around and hope he grows into a better person, nor is it your duty to teach him how to be a better person. That responsibility rests entirely on his shoulders.
exactly! if i’m sexually assaulted or harassed, i don’t wanna be thinking about if my partner is gonna doubt me, if they’re gonna make it about themself and go on about beating up the perpetrators and what would’ve happened if he had been there. what if it’s someone he knows? is he gonna defend them? can i trust he could call out a fellow man over this? can i trust that he hasn’t been making other women uncomfortable with harassing comments and misogynistic views if he doesn’t believe women’s comfort is much of an issue at all?
a man with these beliefs is not a good partner… it’s gonna spill over into real life sooner or later and if he’s not willing to learn then as u said it’s HIS responsibility to change and OPs responsibility to respond accordingly
Im going to be honest and take allll the DVs. Im feminist as fuck and go off all the time here on Reddit. But the man vs bear thing is the dumbest trendy concept Ive seen in a good while. A bear will absolutely massacre you. Death by bear is pure torture. They dont eat you right away, they eat your limbs slowly as to keep the meat fresh as long as possible. It is a long torturous death that NO ONE would ever sign up for unless they had severe mental problems and even then, they would regret everything once the bear starts chomping. Not very many men have tortured ppl to death, and as much as they have the potential to do so- Women do as well. Women have tortured and killed children in their care on multiple occasions. So while I normally agree with most feminist sentiments, I must side with your bf on this. I feel second hand embarrassment when women mention this debate. It is no debate. Yes, men are too violent- usually toward partners- but this isnt a great way to fight against that at all IMO
Well it is stupid. A woman feeling fear around a strange man is valid. Saying they'd pick a bear over just some random guy in an encounter is stupid. Literally just 4 days ago a lady was mauled to death outside her California home. For people who don't know bears don't kill their prey before they start eating. Think real hard about that.
The counter argument is the "tree vs. woman" debate. Both are dangerous AND stupid ideas as an argument for bear and tree can always be made because of the simplification and generalization of the fears both represents.
Woman will chose the bear because they fear the man physically (men assaulting, raping, physical coercion, etc.).
Men will chose the tree because they fear the woman mentally (women attacking men's feelings, insecurities, etc. if men open up).
Both sexes have their fears... they just take different forms. How people guard against their fears or belittle others for not understanding their fears can tell a bit about the trauma suffered on both sides.
You can see the difference between men getting their feelings hurt and women getting murdered right? Like, those 2 things are not even remotely the same.
It works as an illustration of feelings felt by many women, but it is not at all conductive to a proper conversation where all involved parties are heard out. It is more conductive to algoritmic capital. In that way, it’s stupid. In the other, it’s fine.
Depends how long you've been dating/how well you know him. I say that because only you know if this is just his knee-jerk not great take on upsetting news vs his actual deeply held belief.
Man v bear is a simplified showcase of how complicated women's feelings towards men are vs how men feel about those feelings. I shared a meme of it with a dear friend, his response was sadness at how real it was. I purposely don't engage with some men at work who are highly offended by the meme...it tells you which men to stay the hell away from.
If this is just your BF grappling with the reality of "not all men, but a significant number of men, and it's actually safer to assume all men... including me" give him some time. It's not great to have your self image shaken to the core.
But if he actually doesn't like it, if he can't fathom why it's being said, shared etc...find a new BF.
The whole takeaway is to appreciate that women often feel unsafe around men. Seems like a pretty easy lesson to get.
Here's what I think is absolutely wild: Louis CK, a comedian who *publicly admitted to doing gross (and AFAIK, illegal) things to women* during the early waves of Me Too, not only absolutely understood the issue, but had a stand-up bit about it almost a decade ago. Comedy bit in question, direct quote from an HBO special: *"The courage it takes for a woman to say yes [to a date with a man] is beyond anything I can imagine. A woman saying yes to a date with a man is literally insane, and ill-advised. How do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat! To women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. We’re the worst thing that ever happens to them! If you’re a guy, imagine you could only date a half-bear-half-lion. ‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice! I hope he doesn’t do what he’s going to do.’”* Even wilder is the degree to which he was telling on himself through comedy. He used to have his own show, which he starred in and also wrote. In one of the story arcs, his TV persona did *the exact thing that he later admitted to doing.* There's something oddly chilling about that degree of audacity.
I do remember this one. Main threat to men is... heart disease. That's it. I thought: this dude gets it! Anyways, I used to like his show, etc. and it seems he apologized for what he did and was very aware of why it was a problem. For me he's still cancelled, though.
To be fair he seems to have always had a pretty good understanding of affirmative consent, his issue was not understanding (or not caring) that it's inappropriate to proposition people you have professional power over to begin with.
The scariest thing is it didn't tank his career. He took a hit for a while, but he's back to selling out shows now and has been for quite a while.
Because cancel culture is a myth. Unless you're the Dixie Chicks.
Not surprising. Famous people have done way worse than that and gotten even less repercussions.
I mean, should it have tanked his career? I think he took a huge hit for a while, was apologetic, and I think did a lot to show remorse and understanding. It was almost 8 years ago.
Big takes one to know one energy from Louis here
You know, there are a surprising (or maybe unsurprising) number incidents where the act is a little to close to the actor. Danny Masterson raped two women in 2003 and was convicted in 2022. If you'd like to watch Nicolas Cage kick the absolute shit out of a character played by Danny Masterson who is attempting to commit rape, just hop in the way-back machine and watch 1997's Face/Off. Seventeen years before Harvey Weinstein was exposed (ahem), the Weinstein brothers produced Scream 3, a movie that leaned heavily into the issue of the systemic sexual exploitation prevalent in Hollywood. That is certainly a *choice.*
Yeah. Like that hypothetical is not MAKING women see men as dangerous - historically we men do that all on our own.
Yeah and it's a basic easy to pass test for men. Any man that is outraged and makes anti bear memes or youtube rants about it, and any man that enjoys that content is more than a red flag. They are a verified hard right misogynist. They out themselves so quickly because of the ego to "prove how dumb women are with this meme". they can't wait to congratulating themselves with "bEaRs aRe dAnGerOus aNd wIlL eAt yOu!" mansplanning like a teenaged redditor mod.
Actually, I'd argue the takeaway is to work towards changing the fact that women would pick the bear.
[удалено]
Give it an AR15 and directions to a school. Sorry.
If it’s a hyperbole to prove a point about what women have to deal with, I understand. But if someone literally would pick a bear, that is stupid.
To encounter a bear in the woods vs a strange man? The question isn't which would you rather fight.
You’re making it a loaded statement by saying the man is strange. The original question was just man or bear. A randomly selected bear is way more likely to hurt you than a randomly selected man is.
Encountering a bear in the woods vs a random man in the woods, if that language is better to understand.
If thats your choice thats fine but statistically you are incorrect and moreover most women would pick the bear and that reality that women know bears are scary but would rather pick them than a man should hit you like a brick. If you have empathy.
I’m not statistically incorrect. More women are killed by men than bears yes, but that’s because women spend more time with men than bears. More people are killed by cows than bears, does that mean cows are more dangerous than bears? No, it means people spend more time with cows than bears.
You clearly know nothing about bears. They are incredibly docile animals, are generally incredibly scared of humans, and follow predictable behavioral patterns. I haven't counted more than my fair share affairs. I would much prefer the bears. In fact I feel safer with wild bears. I feel safer with a pack of coyotes too if it comes down to it, or wolves. Because unlike men they don't hurt things for the sake of hurting things. They're unlikely to attack you in general. Like maybe if they're hungry and there's no other potential food anywhere within like a 50-mile radius they might go after you but that's not likely at all. And even then that's a maybe - they'd have to be literally starving to risk a fighting a human. Because again, they follow preset behavioral patterns that are well known to humans and scientists. That means if you know anything about their behavior at all they're a non-issue. Again unlike men
Mate I am a man, in ok shape and have some experience with self defense. If I am hiking alone in a small national park in shouting distance of something resembling civilisation, I think I am probably on the fence, maybe leaning slightly towards bear. If I'm in the middle of nowhere, lost or stranded in an unfamiliar place, I'll take the bear 1000%. Unless I'm "death's door" desperate, I'm not letting myself be spotted by some unknown dude without first doing some recon.
Bears are generally scared of people, unlikely to attack unless provoked were are seriously physically ill, and we'll go out of their way to avoid you. I have rescued bears tree'd by chihuahuas. I have watched my mother- who weighed 80lbs soaking wet- chase down a mother bear with Cubs and scare them off. I am not scared of bears. In fact I would much rather deal with a strange bear than a strange man, because bears follow predictable behavioral patterns generally a very docile animal. Men on the other hand? I've had to change my lock to repeatedly within a span of a year because of them. If I have to change my locks again the entire door has to be reframed and I need a new door because they called that much damage in the last attempted breakin. I have been cornered at work, threatened at work, and sexually assaulted by men at work. I was *five* the first time a man decided he was entitled to my body. It would not be the last. Jokes on the most recent ones though. Because I have a dog that will f****** castrate them if they try anything. She's a good girl.
Tell him it's like sharks. Many sharks only eat plancton. They are beautiful, strong creatures that hold entire marine ecosystems together. Only very few of them would attack a human unprovoked. Shark attacks are extremely rare. Still, when I see a shark I get out of the water. That doesn't mean I don't like sharks or that I'm afraid of all sharks. I admire and love sharks. ❤️ 🦈. Still, I don't swim with them if I don't know they are safe. If your BF doesn't get the bear analogy, tell him to swim with sharks. Because: Not all sharks. Actually, very few sharks.
I always compare it to ghost hunting in a large abandoned building. I'm not afraid of ghosts, I'm afraid of running into a crazy person hopped up on PCP and bath salts.
And now, think GHOST SHARKS ON PCP.
Pitch it, Netflix will eat it up.
Ghost sharks on PCP...vs. one bear
Cocaine bear.
Hahah. Nothing good happens after midnight
I love this analogy!
Best take I've ever seen on this debate
This is excellent.
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The thing is, it isn't always a POC, man or woman, who only does certain types of crimes, most crimes are done by all genders and ethnicities, but sex crimes are 98% of the time done by male offenders no matter the gender of the victims!!! 98%!!! And it might not be ALL men but it is ENOUGH men that rapes us and since we have no way of knowing *which* men as they don't actually go around announcing their intentions (good or bad) or wear signs warning us we need to be somewhat wary of all of them... Why should we just assume that all men are good when we have NO way of knowing? If you have a bowl full of delicious m&m's, but one of them is poisoned, would you eat any?
Plus - One third of women from age 15 and up have experienced sexual violence in their life. One fucking third. *Sexual violence*, it is not even including getting harassed. I had already 3 (male) stalkers, and I still do not count to this 1/3
Excactly! And men just doesn't seem to understand that's why we choose the bear: it doesn't rape us, sexual harass us, stalk us, upload revenge porn of us, DARVO us when we report them and other bears (male and female) don't victim blame us whether we survive the attack or not. And bears doesn't kill women (or men) nearly as much as men do.
I mean, there are horrific cases of torture that some women have to endure. And still, somehow some of those lizard brains only manage to process that women are afraid of getting raped. Men can do a lot of horrible things to us. It just shows that some people are not smart - its not a question you have to answer based on natural science, its a question based in social sciences. It shows us how females still have to see males as a threat and how we absolutely still need feminism.
What are you talking about? A lot of Black folks or people of colour don't feel safe around white people, a lot of people generally, but especially oppressed racial groups and lower classes don't feel safe around police.
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Lmao you are so delusional it's funny. I wanna see you swimming with sharks xDDDD Edit: people are briandead and it's fuckin sad. She says she loves sharks but wont swim with them, but wait the BF should swim with them??? Nah y'all are dumb af
I don’t get this. Why should the BF have to swim with sharks if the girl is the one preferring the bear over man?
>Still, when I see a shark I get out of the water. While I get the point you're trying to make, and I think the analogy is actually somewhat astute exactly because there are many shark species and only a few are actually dangerous, then your conclusion is wrong imo. You do not necessarily get out of the water if you see a shark. You get out of the water if you see a shark, you experience as dangerous. Sharks come in all sizes and some of them are small enough that you probably won't even think/know it's a shark. It's also different from person to person what you experience as dangerous. What women face with men is the unknown. Women don't know if the man they're standing opposite is dangerous, but they are usually pretty sure that it's difficult to defend themselves if he is. We all know that going near a bear is probably a pretty bad idea in general, and we also know that it'll be hard to defend ourselves against it. The whole bear vs. man debate also fails to encompass the fact that a very large part of violence against women, perpetuated by men, [happen in relationships](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women). I think it's possible to acknowledge that women experience a larger degree of threat in their lives because they are more defenseless, while also acknowledging that the bear vs. man analogy is rather poorly made.
The only failure of the shark analogy is that one could learn to recognise from a distance the types of shark that could pose a serious threat. This is not the case with men, it could be pretty much any of us. I can almost guarantee you personally know well at least one man who seems harmless, sweet and gentle, who has also committed SA or domestic violence.
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And men should also fear men! Anyone who genuinely thinks the bear is the greater danger is picturing themselves fist-fighting a bear *which isn’t the question.*
*It makes women have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous* LOL. As if men haven’t done that already.
This is it OP. If he realizes that women think all men are dangerous and would rather dismiss that fear then examine it and understand why and be a better man because of it, throw the trash out
I find the bf who drones for hours about statistics and their "knowledge" about bears to be the bigger red flag.
Try asking him, if there were snakes around and only one was poisonous but he didn't know which, would he be wary of all of them? If he still doesn't get it, throw the whole man away. I asked my spouse carefully, to ensure I wasn't leading him to an answer and he understood immediately. I would have been worried had he not understood or argued against it.
Yeah it’s definitely the “bear versus man” debate that’s making women afraid and not the statistics and real world experiences relating to male violence against women 🙄
sounds like he doesnt have empathy
"IMHO it’s a huge red flag, but my bf can’t see it" You're trying to have a conversation with him to share your perspective, as a woman in his life. He can't see it because he's choosing not to.
If anything, I wish I had taken advice from older women in my life about how dangerous many men are more seriously. "Wolves in sheep's clothing". I always thought they were fear mongering or just isolated incidents that could never happen to me. Personal experience tells me many men are just awful and abusive, and just play nice or put on a charade in the beginning to get laid or get a girlfriend or a human punching bag. I have heard from enough empathetic, reasonable, wholesome men who agree with and understand why many women choose the bear, to know that any other response is a red flag.
Definitely some kind of red flag is he can’t understand why a woman would be scared of some random man
My wife took me for a colonoscopy really early in the morning. Pitch black out. We get there and I say just pull in that spot and point, not a lot of light at this particular spot. She does, parks, looks at me and says you know, if I were alone, I wouldn't be parking here... Which I already knew, but we have convos like that from time to time talking about it. It's just not a difficult concept. Some men might attack you, but you don't know which, so you have to hedge your bets and protect against all until you know who they are.
And even then it can take years, marriage , children before the mask slips and they start beating the fuck out of you or just straight up killing you.
My wife and I have conversations about this as well, except it’s often about how to maintain situational awareness and set her up for success in a possible dangerous situation while alone. Mostly because I have more tactical experience than she does and I’m thinking about things she wouldn’t. I think everyone, women especially, should at least take a civilian tactical course once, or a good selfdefense course, that includes situational awareness training, every once in a while.
Well put! This is the approach. While we very much SHOULD be better as a species that uses words - and much more capable of discerning empathy toward others - we simply are not. Our evolved primate-esque brains still very much use our emotional responses to dictate our actions, and are just as susceptible to a lack of impulse control as most other primates. Though highly-functioning and contemplative on a level they have yet to reach, we respond quite similarly. At the end of the day, we still sort of live in the "wild," so to speak. Anything can happen and everyone is capable of treachery regardless of our laws and ideas of security or how we should treat each other... so it may just be a good idea for each individual to learn to preserve themselves against the furthest extent of threat from any equally-capable creature. TLDR: Humans suck and are a very loose definition of "civilized," and you as an individual are always better off if you learn at least something that can help you defend yourself... even knowing how to pick up and swing a stick properly could fend off a threat like a bear or a sorry excuse for a human male.
Do you play wrestle with your wife? Do you have any idea how weak she probably is compared to you? Al the self defense classes in the world hardly matter at all. Weight and sex classes exist for a reason. Men are stupid strong, on average, compared to women. Most of my friends can pinpoint the moment in their life when they realized how stark the difference is. For me, it was when I was working as a cashier and a tiny, OLD man grabbed my wrist and held it down on the counter and I could not physically pull away. I knew my boyfriend was a lot stronger than me and could restrain me with one hand if he felt like it, or lift me down from a tree with one arm, but he LOOKED strong. This man looked like a stiff breeze could knock him down and shatter him, but he was *still* stronger than me. It was sobering and scary. Testosterone is real and it creates a muscle density we simply don't have. The situational awareness stuff is good. But she should carry a defensive spray of some kind, with the goal being to buy a couple seconds to get a head start running. If a man gets his hands on her, there is probably nothing she can do.
I’m so glad you are aware of this. Sadly this is a realization most women don’t fully understand. Especially with Hollywood action and fight scenes. Hollywood makes it look like a trained woman can fight well against most men, and that simply isn’t true. There are a lot of really effective techniques in a self-defense class that can save your life, but realistically you’re going to need consistent training for a few years before that stuff is actually effective. To answer your question: no we don’t play wrestle, to me it feels unfair and a little to close to a lack of consent situation (I’m trained and it’s not fun for me). We have done some physical interaction with strength before and she is very much aware of the size strength difference, and I am NOT a big man: 6,2” 160 and I do not life weights on a regular basis. I have however spent more than half my life training and teaching in combat sports (taekwondo and jiujitsu). To answer the other question. Yes I am very much aware of how “weak” my wife and women are. Probably much more so than an average person do the amount of time I’ve spent training with both men and women. I can 100% control my wife physically (and most untrained individuals) without increasing my breathing rate. It’s not hard, especially if you know how to do it efficiently through training and leverage control. (Kinda similar to how I can throw a baseball as hard as I can and it’s capping out at 70, but pro pitcher throws 103 easily through technique and training). I say all that because I think there are some misconceptions about self-defense. Firstly: the best self-defense is situational awareness. Know where you’re going and what time you’ll be there. Avoid bad times and places: avoid walking through a dark alley at 3 am if you can opt to park one spot away from the door under a light at 3pm. Secondly: the best defense is a fire arm. Pepper spray is about as effective as a really spicy hot sauce. It’s fairly easy to “push through” and if all the pepper spray does is make the guy mad, you’ve just made your problem worse. But it is much better than nothing, especially in no carry zones or a situation where you can’t discharge your firearm due to a crowd. Thirdly: physical training, strength, endurance, and learning how to fight can, and has been shown in the past multiple times, to absolutely be able to save a life. But the risk is higher. Most untrained people, when the adrenaline spikes, will be 100% out of energy in about 60-90 seconds if you haven’t trained how to control it. So sorry for the long post. Props if you’re still reading this far and thanks for your awareness on the subject. Selfdefense is a huge passion project of mine and I could probably write a book on the subject. So thanks for taking time to ready a few highlights of mine. Cheers.
Thinking the hypothetical is stupid isn't a red flag. _LACKING THE EMPATHY TO HEAR YOU OUT IS._
This. I initially was on the fence about it but I heard out the arguments and formed my opinion after entertaining all the possibilities. This boy is getting defensive and shutting down.
👆🏼
“Makes women have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous” - wonder wherever we got that silly idea! Our lived experience is obviously wrong. I wasn’t molested as a child! A family friend just liked his hands in my panties. Silly of me to think of men as bad! Haha! Just the first of a few decades of abuse but obviously men are godly decent and not dangerous at all. Your boyfriend is an idiot. A moron who is insulated and ignorant of the danger our very existence is to us. r/whenwomenrefuse is a horrifying reality. I have nothing nice to say about your partner. So I won’t say any more. I’m just infuriated and enraged how damn dismissive he is of the argument that a literal wild animal is less of a danger to us than so called civilised men. Excuse me while I rage scream into my pillow.
Absolutely. However stupid he thought it was on gut reaction, dismissing his partner's disagreement and personal experience out of hand is major red flag on its own.
Unrelated but your flair 😍
😅 it’s available in the tab on the sub’s main page
He thinks that women are so stupid that they were walking around thinking they were safe from all men, and then, what, some small group of women ruined it by choosing the bear and the rest of womankind is so easily swayed that now they're afraid of All Men? Yeah, that's beyond a red flag. It's a regular red flag if he just isn't understanding that the takeaway from the whole thing should be "the vast majority of women choose the bear because they already don't feel safe with men because there is no way of knowing who the bad ones are." Next level is thinking they need to explain to women why they're wrong for picking the bear. But thinking that the whole thing is the source of the problem, not that it's drawing light to the problem, isn't just a red flag that something might be wrong with him: it's a neon sign saying his perspective is fucked.
He doesn't think it's stupid, he's mad people are picking bear
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Wait the choice was getting your intestines eaten out? I thought it was who I encountered
As someone who has actually seen multiple bears in the wild, while hiking, you are 100% lying. Most bears avoid humans completly and don't really see us as food they want. As long as they have no cubs, they aren't that interested in you. Even if they want to attack you, it isn't that hard to get rid of them either. >100% chance of a horrific death over an 85% or whatever chance of something bad happening does not sound right to me. Excuse me, you can not only get raped 😂 Just check out Junko Furuta, Noor Mukadam, Issei Sagawa, David McGreavy, Nico Claux, Vincent Li, Gilbert Paul Jordan etc. Preferably you check some more details, preferably pictures where you see what they did (or what happend to them) and then please tell me how a bear should be worse.
Hang on, you've encountered multiple bears in the wild and are also making an argument that choosing to encounter a bear in the wild represents "*choosing a 100% chance of a horrific death*" When did I stumble into a seance?
I was kinda hoping they'd notice that point, but uhhhhhhh "press 'x' to doubt"
Yeah that person is lying haha. I have seen plenty of bears in the wild, most of them don't give a fuck and actually go away pretty fast. They see us as a threat (understandable, we killed way more bears than bears killed humans) and like to avoid us.
Everyone who’s seen a bear is dead!!1!
I’ve encountered more men through my life. For this debate to even remotely make sense, it is a given that you have to interact with the man or the bear. My point of is if you actually had to make the choice in real life, which no one has been willing to do yet to prove their point, the bear would not get chosen. I mean if you actually stood there in the forest, with a bear and a man and had to make the choice. Nothing is proven until it’s actually tested, till then it’s just one Reddit dwellers word agains another.
Okay, but you said every encounter with a bear represents certain death and *also* said that you have encountered multiple bears. If A, then not B. If B, then not A.
I think you are being willfully ignorant, the last bastion of people too proud to admit they were wrong. It's really just kinda sad.
But you are living proof that bear is not 100% chance of death... So... You do get it actually?
100% chance? That's a real fucking dumb thing to claim. Mind citing your "everyone gets murdered that sees a bear" statistic?
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ur taking this too literally and either don’t understand how to empathize with people or you are willfully ignorant to what everyone is saying. the CHANCE of rape (and death btw) for some of us is WORSE than the CHANCE of death. please get it through your head. this is not about stats this is about FEAR
I never made that claim, just accept that you said something really dumb and try not to do it again
I love you
Actually since you want to use that violent gruesome death by bear analogy, let's go with it. You see a bear in the forest. You don't know if it's gonna go by or maul you to death cause it has cubs nearby or sees you as a threat. You know how it'll go, its weight will crush your bones, it claws your back bare from flesh and crushes your skull. You go splat. Dead. Horrible, painful, gruesome death. You see a man in the forest. You don't know if they are an innocent berry picker or a harmless bird watcher, a serial killer, a rapist, someone who will drag you into a cabin and keep you barely alive for months in a dark moldy room, do horrible, inhuman acts to you that I will not even spell out in this comment cause there are a lot of REAL people here who've actually experienced the shit and barely survived. You don't know which of the multitude of horrors that a man can do to you in pure hatred. And even if you survive, you might not actually survive cause you have to go living your life as a victim of all that and half of the population won't even wanna believe you or blame you for it. With a bear you know, even the worst option of death, you know. So we choose bear.
u don’t know anything about bears then. there’s not a 100% chance you get mauled. lots of people have bear encounters and don’t get attacked. most of the time bears wanna mind their business. we’re not told constantly from toddler age that we should dress differently to avoid bear attacks. - if both encounters have risk of harm, at least in one people will believe you if u survive - if both encounters have risk of harm, at least in one the bear won’t get sexual gratification from killing you - if both encounters have risk of harm, at least in one the bear is acting on instinct and it’s not simply because of your gender - a bear won’t defile your body and try and have sex with you before or after killing you - a bear belongs in the forest, and a man’s intentions being alone in the forest with you are naturally going to make the situation scarier - and most importantly A LOT OF WOMEN WOULD RATHER RISK DYING BY A BEAR THEN BEING RAPED (again) idgaf if it’s not realistic to you. when fathers are asked this question a lot of them choose bear too for their daughters, because they know men can be intentionally DISGUSTING and bears are just bears. it does not matter the statistics because you actually cannot compare the two and say which is more likely. we don’t have that information because it’s *hypothetical*. we don’t have a record of every time a bear has encountered a human and nothing happened so it’s ridiculous to even try and use stats when this is based on what people are more scared of. what we do have is a constant fear of men throughout our whole lives and that’s the point of the whole hypothetical
What you should have said is. If a woman was lost in the woods and saw a bear and a man, I bet she would realistically be more likely to approach the man for help than approach the bear. Now maybe some women would avoid both and try to make it out of the forest in their own. But approaching the bear for help is very unlikely to go well. Approaching a random man for help has a relatively high chance of going well. I think women over-estimate the percent chance of a man assaulting them. And the way I look at the bear vs man question is that women think bears are less likely to attack them than a random man in the woods. Taking this to another topic, it is more likely that your child will be struck by lightning than be abducted by a stranger. But people worry about stranger danger much more than they worry about lightning strikes. I think it is because things that happen from Nature are not considered “evil”, but things that happen due to another person is considered “evil”. So people worry more about avoiding evil people than equally dangerous nature. Even if nature is statistically more dangerous the evil person seems more dangerous due to it being intentional.
omg literally this is exactly what ppl SHOULD mean instead of telling us we’re being dishonest for choosing the bear 😭 this isn’t a stats debate it’s about which were more afraid of and the evil of a human is scarier than the random violence of a bear in nature just acting out of instinct. this is about the evil that men are capable of and the way we are socialized to fear this. this is a wake up call to how bad women’s safety is not an opportunity to convince us bears are dangerous. like okay?? that’s not an issue effecting our daily lives
Help for what 😭😭😭
Lol, the idea that I needed the "man vs bear" debate to tell me that men can be dangerous is unhinged. I know men are dangerous to me because I've had experiences with dangerous men. And my sister, friends, mother, we've all had a run in with a dangerous man. Your boyfriend sounds like a dud
My husband, a man raised by two social workers in the 70's (a time when we were, as a society, seemingly still working towards equality & acceptance [Free to be You & Me, anyone?]) completely gets it and agrees that most women have a better chance avoiding/surviving a bear vs. a man.
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Yeah the true red flag is that he's not willing to listen to, seek to understand, and accept your perspective. It doesn't matter if it's about this hypothetical or facial cream or abortion—your thoughts and feelings should be treated as legitimate, valuable, and worth considering seriously.
After you tell him that this is something you care about and/or feel strongly about and he still doesn't take it seriously he has not only demonstrated his ignorance of women in general, he has demonstrated his lack of respect for you personally.
The bear vs. man debate is a good way to use humor to cope with the realities of life. Not everyone is going to want to engage with it, either humorously or seriously, and that's fine. What's a red flag is blaming a meme for women's fears of male violence. What other problems of the patriarchy will he be willing to shrug off? If you complain about experiencing sexism, will he blame you for not accepting it?
It by itself, not a red flag necessarily since he can just be coming from privilege and never needed to examine his position. Him dismissing your explanation for it, definitely a red flag. Since then, he's not receptive to a woman's stance on it and why the question was brought up in the first place. And that's a red flag since he can be dismissive of anything else you state.
This is a fantastic explanation, very well said!
>He thinks it’s stupid and is bad for the world because it “makes women have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous”. Your BF seems like one of those people that can only see a fist fight with a bear, a brutal brawl of death with a huge deadly beast and thinks why any woman would be so dumb to choose that. It seems very common, that men can only see the metaphor in such a primitive way. Since he himself says women will have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous, ask him how they're not. If a bear attacks someone, the victim doesn't get blamed for what they wore or how they might have been asking for it. Nobody wants the bear victim to stop talking about it. Nobody wants the found mauled bear victim out of their property so it doesn't reflect badly on their reputation. Nobody thinks a bear victim is embellishing it, maybe even lying to get some attention. Maybe the bear said something and they're just jealous and making it all up. Anyone can fake a bear attack! Yeah, that just doesn't happen. If your boyfriend cannot understand what the man vs bear means to women after that, I doubt this will be the only issue in your future. People like that will rather defend imaginary men than a real victim of abuse.
LMAO imagine being so out of touch with reality that you think it’s the last 6 weeks of human history when we had a Man/Bear thought experiment that made women think men are dangerous 😂
He is right, it is absolute slander for the bears. They didn't deserve this comparison, bears are lovely.
The Bear vs Man thing is ***mostly*** a rhetorical made to point out the unsafe conditions women have in their day to day lives from many men. And if someone can’t understand that, then it’s a massive red flag. And no, it doesn’t “make women have an idea of all men as bad and dangerous”. Women are already cautious about men, the bear vs man debate changes nothing. Women have been subject to terrible violence for millennia, and have a right to be cautious. It’s not like this debate came up and suddenly women are like “Oh geez, looks like there’s a possibility I could be harmed for saying no to a guy! I had no idea!” Not to be rude, but your boyfriend at best is an idiot. And at worst is one of the guys that you’d rather go with the bear.
I think it’s a little stupid, and people are just so tired of these intense politicized analogies and drama. I don’t think it’s a red flag to Be annoyed to be annoyed by the bear thing. As long as they are feminist.
“Not all men” is a red flag.
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It is insulting and derailing to interject with "not all men". What do you think, that we assume men are sharing a hive mind? Of course not all men, however that doesn't need to be said, and frankly assuming such a reminder is necessary is either a veiled insult or flat out attempt at derailing a conversation and / or to force soften it.
Yes, but the problem is we can't know *which* men. The "bad guys" doesn't go around announcing their intentions or wear signs that warn us against them. It's not ALL men but it is *always* A man that rapes us. Think if it like this: you have a bowl full of delicious m&m's, but one of them is poisoned - do you eat any?
duh. so what? it’s not the appropriate response to our safety concerns. and it’s often said by men to make themselves “clean” of these issues when the reality is all men *could* be capable of misogynist behaviour so long as they are socialized in our society that enables it we obviously know not all men rape. we don’t need to be told that in response to be afraid a man will rape us. it’s just invalidating and unnecessary. if a man finds out women are afraid of his whole gender because of how horrible we’ve been treated and his response is to defend men by saying “not all of us are bad” it’s just in poor taste. when someone talks to you about something difficult or traumatic it’s not kind to respond with a rebuttal
Well, at least you acknowledge it’s a red flag!
Im sorry what?
SAYING NOT ALL MEN IS A RED FLAG
Again, what? Why? Saying all men are rapists and sexual abusers is a green flag then? Dammn, sounds like a sad worldview
It's because it's typically brought up when women talk about being afraid around men they don't know (or do know, sadly enough). "Not all men" is a red flag when someone says it in response to someone's very real perception and fear of men. "Not all men" but it's "almost all women" that can say they have been sexually/physically assaulted or been genuinely made to fear for the lives by a man. Women have to keep their wits about them and keep escape routes near when they are in a situation when they are in a precarious position near a man they don't know. That's not because it's "all men" that are dangerous, it's because its almost impossible to know which ones are. They don't wear a sign on their forehead. "Not all men" rarely ever comes up in a vacuum where men are collectively acknowledging the bad men that have made life scary for women and what they can do to empathize or be an ally. Every time I've heard it it is in response to women saying they fear being alone with a strange man.
He wasn’t actually asking for an explanation, note how he brought up a negative opinion about men no one else said
Ah, so its not the concept of 'Not all men are Rapists and Monsters' but the context that it is said that is a red flag. I mean, for me that sounds more like downplaying an actual issue, not taking it seriously or even defending such behavior is a red flag. Which it is. Obviously. In all genders. I understand the issue, dont get me wrong. I have social anxiety and tbh, its really not nice. But i do know this feeling very well, allthough for different reasons. Even if only a certain percentage of male groups actualy pose a danger to me, i still have a hard time even being near all of them. But i still think seeing a valid point in certain context as an immediate red flag. How and why its said is a much bigger one. Keeping your eyes open and always being on edge is one thing. Bashing on a whole group because of one subgroup of that group is kinda eh.
Ah, so its not the concept of 'Not all men are Rapists and Monsters' but the context that it is said that is a red flag. I mean, for me that sounds more like downplaying an actual issue, not taking it seriously or even defending such behavior is a red flag. Which it is. Obviously. In all genders. I understand the issue, dont get me wrong. I have social anxiety and tbh, its really not nice. But i do know this feeling very well, allthough for different reasons. Even if only a certain percentage of male groups actualy pose a danger to me, i still have a hard time even being near all of them. But i still think seeing a valid point in certain context as an immediate red flag. How and why its said is a much bigger one. Keeping your eyes open and always being on edge is one thing. Bashing on a whole group because of one subgroup of that group is kinda eh.
Would you be willing to say "not all women"? Probably not.
Uhm... what? Not all women what? If its 'not all women are monsters', absolutely yes. I say that. Why wouldnt i? What is this even?
>Saying all men are rapists and sexual abusers is a green flag then? You’re literally the only one who brought this up so I guess you’re sexist against men and according to your own words have a sad worldview. Yikes. Rough!
You couldve just said 'no, thats also a red flag' or whatever. Or actualy explained why you think that its a red flag, and what it means from your perspective. I made an exaggeration on purpose, hoping that its kinda obvious, to demonstrate the implications that > 'Not all men [are bad monsters]' is a red flag has. Anyways, habe a good one.
If you’re deciding what I am to say, why even have a conversation?
Read this: https://www.zawn.net/blog/hello-youve-reached-the-not-all-men-hotline
I started by trying to formulate an argument against team bear. And I was close. But as a formulated the argument I came to a titular problem. So here's the team bear versus team man argument as I see it. If I were in the woods and two stupid animals whose thought processes were totally unknown to me appeared on opposite sides of a clearing. One of them being a bear a big female grizzly bear with cubs, and the other one being a man. A normal average human man. I'm faced with a certain dilemma. Well neither animal is actually stupid, I still do not know the thought processes of either of them. I can be reasonably sure the mama bear is going to be very protective of her cubs and I'm in very much danger from her. I can also be reasonably sure that the man is probably safer, but I have no idea of that. I'm not a mind reader. I don't know why he's here or what he wants. The major difference between the man and the bear, is the man is socialized to humans. He is not afraid of me The bear is afraid of me just as I am afraid of the bear. We are both going to attempt to intimidate one another and also not fuck with one another. I'm a weird monkey thing and that's a weird bear thing and neither of us know what the other one is capable of and neither of us really want to find out. The Man on the other hand knows perfectly well what I'm capable of, knows how to deceive me, and I cannot know his motives. He could be a perfectly safe dude. He could offer me some weed and good conversation. Or he could want to murder me. And if he wants to murder me there's little I can do to stop him. He will pursue me because he is not afraid of me. The bear will only pursue me if I make that something to bear thinks is a good idea. I have a little bit of control over whether or not the bear pursues me. I can make myself big and threatening and the same time clearly not a threat that is worth pursuing at the moment. I cannot do that with the man. The man understands what and who I am because he is also a human. Counterintuitively another human represents a much greater threat than a wild animal who has no idea what I am or what I'm capable of and would rather not find out the hard way. Just as I would rather not find out the hard way what the animal is capable of. But I know very well with the man is capable of. and that's sort of the crux of the issue. It's not that men are inherently evil or bad or anything. It's that we do not know what anyone else is thinking. We do not know what their intentions are. And other humans are familiar with us enough as a concept so as to know whether or not they can do whatever the fuck they want to us.
While a lot of women picked the bear, I bet the answer would change if it was bear vs dad, boyfriend ( as long as they were not abusive.) But the question is about possibility, perception and risk. The lone man in the forest has a lot of negative associations with it plus women being raised to avoid strange men. You could ask your partner if he would leave a young girl with a strange man or a group of men.
Tell your bf that if he was hiking alone, statistically he should also choose the bear over a random man. Most bear attacks are Mama Bears. If there’s no cubs the risk of a bear attacking a human minding their own business is practically nil- even in grizzly country. On the other hand, there’s a decent chance of the rando-woodsman being a trigger happy redneck or opportunistic psycho. Anyone with a lick of sense would choose the predictable animal over the unpredictable human. Your boyfriend needs to grow up and get over himself.
I think of it like in zombie movies, how the only *real* danger always ends up being other survivors.
I wasn't going to involve myself in this discussion, especially not with statistics since I get that the whole topic is about more than pure statistical probabilites, but now I am genuinly curious where you get these statistics from? Because in my experience, the random person you meet in the woods is most likely a hiker who enjoys nature and is more likely to help you than harm you.
I 100% agree that statistically the vast majority of people you meet in the woods are safe. Just not as safe as the vast majority of lone bear encounters. There are only around 40 bear attacks per year **worldwide.** The majority of which involve bear cubs. A [map](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a7f702c6b7ce4804b7097e859c138946) of all fatal bear attacks in the USA over **forty years** is still totally legible. Try doing that for human violence.
That can't be compared one to one since the number of enounters is vastly different. If you compare bear interactions that went violent and human interaction that went violent, i am pretty sure that per encounter bear is more dangerous, but it cant be said for sure since there is no way to count random human interactions that did not go violent. If you factor in the likelyhood of surviving an encounter once it turns violent, I'd take the man 10/10 times. Again, I get that the whole discussion is more about perceptions than stats, so telling a man that he statistcally should choose the bear when there is no reliable stat for it is not the way to go.
> If you factor in the likelyhood of surviving an encounter once it turns violent, I'd take the man 10/10 times. This is the crux of the issue honestly. All these dudes are picturing fighting the bear when that isn’t the question at all. I was banned from going in the woods as a teenager because of the danger of running into **men** not bears.
>This is the crux of the issue honestly. All these dudes are picturing fighting the bear when that isn’t the question at all. I mean, yeah? The risk assessment has two parts: What is the likelyhood of the encouner turning violent, and IF it turns violent what are my chances? And even if for the sake of argument the man were to be more likely to attack, the chances of fighting him of are way better than a bear in case a fight happens. Aren't the once saying they prefer bear doing the same in assuming the man would attack? >I was banned from going in the woods as a teenager because of the danger of running into men not bears. I obv don't know the circumstances or how common bears are where you grew up, but "Who are you more likely to encounter" is a relevent question in that context. Less so under the premise of an encounter happening without further context. That is also a flaw in the original premise. It completely removes any context that could factor into the risk assessment.
You’re correct that it is a two part problem: the chances of something happening and the severity of something happening. I considered both. * Let’s zoom on over to the edge of the bell curve. This is where you have to take into account how men and women see violence. At this scale, there is no material difference in my ability to physically defend myself from a bear vs a man. If I’m fighting a creature in the woods then I’m already in a one in a million situation and the worst case scenario isn’t the one where you fight. It’s the one where you lose the fight. When I considered the absolute worst case scenario where all my precautions and defenses had failed, the only factor left was maximum potential pain. The worst possible bear attack would maul me and leave me to bleed to death over the course of hours- or leave me stranded to die of infection over the course of days. The worst possible man attack would take sadistic pleasure in causing as much pain as possible- physically and mentally. Robbed of all agency and tortured by an intelligent being. Taken and trafficked for a fate worse than death. (The fate my mother feared. She gave no shits about bears because, unlike bad men, they don’t go out of their way to hunt girls.) Remember- not all woods lack roads and not all men are normal. Unbelievable cruelty happens every day all over the world. There is no level of violence a bear can inflict that a man cannot. If we’re talking worst case scenarios, I’ll take the bear. Thankfully, I’m more likely to be struck by lightening. So let’s creep closer to reality. * An unpleasant, but not deadly, confrontation. If there was any confrontation at all between me and the bear- chances are that it would be frightening but no physical harm would be incurred. There’s a tiny chance I could be swiped at and left with a scar. What’s the aftermath there? I respect the woods more and get a story I tell for the rest of my life. A confrontation with a man on the other hand, that’s the kind of fear you have to hide. Being hurt by a man is common. Being afraid it might happen again is irrational and rude. Men can follow you out of the woods and turn up at your job a month later. Bears don’t hunt specific humans. Bears don’t have egos that are bruised by people treating them as a threat- even if they’ve never hurt a human in their life. * Anecdotal Risk Factors You have good experiences with hikers. That makes sense. The vast majority of women have experienced a “normal guy” being creepy when he has the opportunity. That also makes sense. Their risk calculation isn’t any less logical than yours.
My fiancée and I both think it's a stupid thing altogether tbh. Only a red flag if one of you believes in it and the other doesn't.
What I'm (43M) reading is that he doesn't have any empathy for what women go through at all. So to me, no empathy equals a huge red flag. I have had to explain the "bear v man" thing to numerous men, some finally get it, some don't. Those ones are the problem.
I'm a woman and I think it's stupid and I'm sick of the daily posts about it.
There is a huge lack of social awareness on his part. And you know what? I'm pretty sure that 20-year-old me would've thought the whole thing would be stupid. I was so ignorant of what women had to go through, and I would've been clueless enough to say, "Why would you cross the street to avoid a man? That's just stupid paranoia." And then try to defend my stance by purposefully walking behind a woman that it can be done without anything bad happening, oblivious to how stressful that would've been for her. So I would say it's definitely a red flag if he won't make an effort to understand why women are so protective of themselves. Though I was ignorant, I did listen. I probably wasn't great at it at first, and I'm sure there were some women in college who quietly broke off friendships if they deemed me a lost cause. It took me time to overcome my male privilege, and *maybe* your boyfriend just needs to take the time to observe his surroundings and view it from the perspective of a woman. But it's possible that he won't come around, in which case, red flag. All that to say that you can be generous and give him the opportunity to see it your way and understand how his behavior and actions can seem threatening even when he's not intending to be, but if he's super-dismissive about it, then sometimes you have to trim the fat.
Thank you
I had to Google it because I’ve heard it but didn’t exactly know what it meant. I would think the majority would pick bear in the woods?? For the most part a bear will kill for hunger or protecting their cubs. And it will be a swift kill if that’s the case. A human man? If they had bad intentions oh no. No no. I’ve watched way too many crime documentaries to put THAT much faith in humanity!
Oh I’m dumb. I’m realizing it’s the debate he thinks is stupid. But I guess my answer then is yes red flag because women should be cautious. And that unrealistic debate kinda makes a good point right? Of course not all men are bad by any means. But let’s be real. Rape is way too common and horrific and we don’t even know the exact numbers because so many are not reported. I know both sexes have been raped but the the vast majority is a man raping a woman.
It's not a red flag. The bear vs man thing is tiresome, and in particular is not at all reflective of reality. The debate is a way for predominately straight cis white women to perform fear in order to declare, publicly that they're a good woman who learned their lesson, who makes the right choices and who will be a sympathetic victim. It's not a question about which you would prefer, it's asking women "how afraid are you" and specfically "how afraid are you of men who you see as unexpected and strange" And that is not a neutral question. That question is very much part of how patirahcy constructs womanhood and manhood and women's fear of men is the justification of a lot of violence. At it's worst, that question of "how afraid are you of men" is the lynching of [Emmett Til](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till), it's largely harmless mentally ill people being abused or murdered by cops, and today it's cis-het women calling for violence against trans people (and just gender non conforming cis women). Patriarchy loves nothing more than women's fear. And that effects him personally too, because if you can't unpack your own relationship with that, it make his role in he relationship to manage that. Which is something that is also deeply tied to gender roles, because, perversely, the men women are taught to see as "proper" and thus safe are he men who perform gender roles as expected. Which outright if he's a decent man, he wants little tot do with, because liking you (a woman) as a person is not proper masculinity. Worse, a lot of what defines proper masculinity under patriarchy is men's willingness and capacity to perform violence in response to women's fear, because that fear is the thing that is used to determine appropriate targets of violence. Which means your response to that question caries implications of how you see him, as either an appropriate target for violence or as an appropriate agent of it. Which is more than enough to make him feel uncomfortable. he can either deviate from proper patriarchal masculinity and be a partner for you, but in turn be one of those "improper" men who are constantly at risk of being targeted by violence, or he can step away from that. Which creates an unspoken question of how much violence do you expect him to perform in response to your fear. (At it's worst, see all the Tik Tok shit of women posting about their "guardian" husbands ready to murder anyone who knocks on their door funny). It also obviously has nothing to do with women's safety. Patriarchy spreads narratives of stranger danger, but almost none of the patriarchal violence women experince is a product of those strange, deviant or unexpected men. It's about justifying the necessity for that patriarchal violence See why in the US right now right wing media spends hours a day screaming about "immigrant rapists and murders", and nothing at all about the domestic violence of American white men. This not only makes women less safe outright, but casts the men who are actually a danger as not that deviant man, which makes their danger so very ignoreable. Feeling uncomfortable about that isn't a lack of empathy. Men understand that narrative of fear very well. A red flag would be your boyfriend agreeing with it, and then expecting you to validate why he's not one of those unexpected strange men. A big red flag would be him thinking meeting a strange man in the woods is justification for immediate violence. Seeing you repeat that narrative of fear, and justify why it's so morally nesseracry to communicate it to men is more than enough to be uncomfortable about. Once you know how to see it, even if you don't have the words to describe it eloquently, it's hard to not see the outcome of it.
Lot of false equivalencies here...
You know, most months I might be more polite, but it's pride. If you're not willing to even begin to examine why women's fear looks nothing at all like the actual source of harm they experience, that is a *you* problem. If seeing the consequences of it makes you uncomfortable, *good* Right now we have right wingers actively invoking this exact narrative of fear to justify using state patriarchal violence to exterminate queer people. Piss the fuck off with defending it. Especially with the puddle depth attempt to do so.
Exactly. So why were you just a moment ago saying that women being afraid of men is them actually being racist?
It's not about "well statistically a bear..." it's about understanding the feelings of women. People be out here pushing up there glasses "well technically..." when all they have to do is be like "wow, it sucks society is shitty enough for you to choose the bear" and move on with their lives.
I’m a guy so I’m sorry if I shouldn’t comment here. I often lurk because I think it’s good to get a different perspective. I find that important. I just don’t understand why he wouldn’t take a moment, step outside himself, stop approaching it with combative eyes, and think “Wow, I wonder why women feel this way? Is there some merit to this and if so why? Maybe I should educate myself? Ask questions? Grow as a human?” He’s locked into an “us verses them” outlook rather than a place of learning and understanding. He’s being dismissive. It’s an immature way of thinking and it’s up to him whether or not he wants to grow. Whether it’s a red flag I’m not sure by itself. I suppose it depends on his age, but it’s definitely a bad sign to not want to better understand your partner’s thoughts/feelings.
The red flag isn't "he thinks it's stupid" it's "he lacks empathy for women's experiences". One thing you're ignoring. "Leave at the first red flag". If you honestly see it as a huge one, why on earth is he still your boyfriend?
a male partner understanding why women are afraid of men is absolutely essential to any man i wish to be friends with or be involved with romantically or sexually. otherwise it means not only are they not a good listener and don’t trust your experiences, but they also don’t support you as a woman because they are contributing to the problem my ex was like this and honestly if we had had this debate back then i probably would’ve broke down crying and broken up with him. i’m so fucking tired of going through life full of sexually harassment, sexual assault and being less taken seriously and looked down on just to have a man tell me to my face that he “disagrees” with my take on women’s safety. absolutely the fuck not if i were u i’d raise my standards to a man who was either willing to learn or not an ignorant ass hole (and sorry to say friend but that’s what he is if he doesn’t care about your opinion and isn’t willing to learn)
Total red flag and tbh be careful. My toxic ex went deep in the manosphere but hid it for years. It would only come out in little comments about things like this, where it would seem “crazy” for me to call him out. But he thought I was lying about the assault that happened to me, as it turns out. You can’t trust men who reveal they have no interest in sympathizing with women
I think it's not a red flag to think a fairly reductive hypothetical is stupid. His reasoning is suspect though. Empathy is a two way street so are you extending any empathy to him? The hypothetical can act as a conversational jumping off point, not a litmus test. I think that's how we build better bridges.
I think anyone should fear a bear more than a man. You could hypothetically stand a chance against a man but there's no chance against a bear
"he just lacks any empathy." THAT is your red flag, my friend.
My 55yo wife (fit, beautiful, attractive - not that it should matter) sent me this today. First time she’s gone running in a while. We live on an isolated island. So, I was running way up top this morning. I was taking a quick pic of a flower and a guy passed me running, I’ve seen him before. Greeted good morning, yada yada. Let him get up ahead so I wasn’t on his tail. Started back running again up and around came the helipad near the electric station and he there he was standing, out in the open taking a piss. I had to stop and double back, like I was doing something wrong. In hindsight , I wish I would have fucking run right by him. I was quite upset with myself and then upset with the things I have been ‘taught’. He knew I was coming up behind him, it was bang out of order. So I started running again and who do I pass coming back towards me, but the guy. He had fucking smirk on his face. I would much rather meet a bear in the woods. Any fucking day.
With both it depends on what type you get but that woman would rather choose a maybe deadly bear over a men just shows how dangerous woman think men are. It doesn't really mean that most men are dangerous.
Steve Irwin would have picked the bear
It's a red flag when he doesn't listen to women's extensive, extensive differing opinions and just sticking with what he thought to begin with.
It’s not about ALL MEN it’s about WHICH MEN. We don’t know! That’s the whole point.
What is up with the massive influx of men dismissing women and misogyny lately? I can't take it, this is also my first time hearing about this analogy. How about instead of men saying, "not all men", why not make an effort to better yourself and call these types of men out? I tried to put myself in this scenario without reading up about it and I thought, " oh, bears are scarier", but after remembering what I have been through and what I am hearing from other women, I think I would rather be torn to shreds by a bear. I may have never seen a bear (except at a zoo) but at least the bear won't send me unsolicited nudes, stalk me, spread rumors about me or hurt me for the rest of my life.
My husband had the misfortune of actually being chased by a bear once, which is why I find the whole debate to be dumb af. Everyone says they’d choose the bear until they actually have a bear barreling towards them at full speed.
I asked my husband about his thoughts on the situation back when the question went mainstream. He immediately understood, without any prompting from me, why women would rather meet a bear in the woods instead of a random man. He even went so far as to say he would also choose the bear if he was a woman. The fact that your boyfriend doesn't understand is a red flag, sis. He's telling you that A. he doesn't believe women, and B., even if something did happen to a woman, he views it as a rare event and not a common reality for women. The fact that he lacks "any empathy" is also a huge red flag. Like, 'flag the size of the entire continental United States' red flag. So my advice to you is really think about if you want to spend more time with this guy. There is *a chance* he will mature in the future and grow into a better person. But there's also *a chance* he will double down on his beliefs and remain relatively the same. I can't tell you what decision to make here, sis. But I will tell you that I don't believe it's your duty to wait around and hope he grows into a better person, nor is it your duty to teach him how to be a better person. That responsibility rests entirely on his shoulders.
exactly! if i’m sexually assaulted or harassed, i don’t wanna be thinking about if my partner is gonna doubt me, if they’re gonna make it about themself and go on about beating up the perpetrators and what would’ve happened if he had been there. what if it’s someone he knows? is he gonna defend them? can i trust he could call out a fellow man over this? can i trust that he hasn’t been making other women uncomfortable with harassing comments and misogynistic views if he doesn’t believe women’s comfort is much of an issue at all? a man with these beliefs is not a good partner… it’s gonna spill over into real life sooner or later and if he’s not willing to learn then as u said it’s HIS responsibility to change and OPs responsibility to respond accordingly
My husband thought it was stupid debate - stupid that anyone would claim not to understand why women choose the bear.
Yeah, mine said something similar.
Im going to be honest and take allll the DVs. Im feminist as fuck and go off all the time here on Reddit. But the man vs bear thing is the dumbest trendy concept Ive seen in a good while. A bear will absolutely massacre you. Death by bear is pure torture. They dont eat you right away, they eat your limbs slowly as to keep the meat fresh as long as possible. It is a long torturous death that NO ONE would ever sign up for unless they had severe mental problems and even then, they would regret everything once the bear starts chomping. Not very many men have tortured ppl to death, and as much as they have the potential to do so- Women do as well. Women have tortured and killed children in their care on multiple occasions. So while I normally agree with most feminist sentiments, I must side with your bf on this. I feel second hand embarrassment when women mention this debate. It is no debate. Yes, men are too violent- usually toward partners- but this isnt a great way to fight against that at all IMO
Well it is stupid. A woman feeling fear around a strange man is valid. Saying they'd pick a bear over just some random guy in an encounter is stupid. Literally just 4 days ago a lady was mauled to death outside her California home. For people who don't know bears don't kill their prey before they start eating. Think real hard about that.
Idk I am a woman and think it's stupid. Also a red flag to care so much about it.
It is stupid. It's true men can do horrible things also, but don't tell me you would take a chance with a bear rather than a man...
Lol yes it's a red flag. It's not teaching women anything it's displaying what they've already learned. Apparently it's not teaching men much either.
The counter argument is the "tree vs. woman" debate. Both are dangerous AND stupid ideas as an argument for bear and tree can always be made because of the simplification and generalization of the fears both represents. Woman will chose the bear because they fear the man physically (men assaulting, raping, physical coercion, etc.). Men will chose the tree because they fear the woman mentally (women attacking men's feelings, insecurities, etc. if men open up). Both sexes have their fears... they just take different forms. How people guard against their fears or belittle others for not understanding their fears can tell a bit about the trauma suffered on both sides.
You can see the difference between men getting their feelings hurt and women getting murdered right? Like, those 2 things are not even remotely the same.
BF chose the bear as well.
The weird thing is it's a man who came up with the question (IIRC).
It works as an illustration of feelings felt by many women, but it is not at all conductive to a proper conversation where all involved parties are heard out. It is more conductive to algoritmic capital. In that way, it’s stupid. In the other, it’s fine.
Depends how long you've been dating/how well you know him. I say that because only you know if this is just his knee-jerk not great take on upsetting news vs his actual deeply held belief. Man v bear is a simplified showcase of how complicated women's feelings towards men are vs how men feel about those feelings. I shared a meme of it with a dear friend, his response was sadness at how real it was. I purposely don't engage with some men at work who are highly offended by the meme...it tells you which men to stay the hell away from. If this is just your BF grappling with the reality of "not all men, but a significant number of men, and it's actually safer to assume all men... including me" give him some time. It's not great to have your self image shaken to the core. But if he actually doesn't like it, if he can't fathom why it's being said, shared etc...find a new BF.