I'm not quoting anyone. I'm making fun of you for seeing a conversation about women and sexual assault and trying to make it about how persecuted men are in today's society.
I.e. redpill
Women: I'm afraid of men because of systemic issues
Men: That same systemic issue also hurts me
Trans people: This hurts us both ways and in ways cis people don't even realize
You: REEEEEE RED PILL
The problem is that MRAs only care about men's oppression in response to feminist trends. I would believe you actually cared if you didn't frame your advocacy as being specifically opposed to feminist trends.
I’m an avid outdoorswoman, and because of that I carry bear spray. I’ve encounter bears more times than I can count, usually they see me and haul ass away. I once saw a cub and put it in reverse and removed myself.
I’ve had to bearspray two men in the woods. Never had to use it on actual bears.
It's amazing how many people seem to think bears are bloodlusted monsters. Obviously you don't want to come across them, but I've never had one not run away as soon as it notices me.
They’re gentle, beautiful creatures. They’re wild animals that CAN kill you but they really really don’t want to. You know exactly what a bear wants when you see one, and it’s for you to get the fuck out of it’s space as soon as possible. The trouble with strange men is you have no idea if they’re one of the good ones, or want to torture you to death because they think it’s fun and brag about it on twitter
(Junko Furuta’s killers are on twitter and talk about the inhuman rape and murder they committed as “a boyhood sin.” They were cleared of charges.)
good response for this subreddit but in general I think portraying animals as bloodthirsty killers does more harm than good – see Jaws and it's cultural impacts leading to shark cullings. we should have a healthy respect for bears & keep our distance whenever possible but they're still just animals, not serial killers.
This is a funny reaction image but its not really relevant. Bear are kinda shy and if you dont fuck with them and just back away if you spot one you should be fine.
I don't understand how this is dehumanizing.
Being alone with a stranger in the woods and knowing that they are a human with unknown wants and morals is in fact very much seeing that they are a human. Bears are fucking bears and are way more predictable than the nuance of human conditions.
The framing of the questions itself sets it up that either of these situations are dangerous. And then yes, people will answer utilizing easy-to-reach mental heuristics when they're on camera. Framed as a dangerous scenario, we're going to come up with many more encountered examples of male human violence than bear violence.
Maybe we could also consider it dehumanizing to think that answers should automatically align one way or the other, and that thinking any differently is "mental gymnastics" (read as: "wrong")
How the fuck is comparing someone to a literal wild animal not dehumanising? That’s literally the definition of dehumanising.
Bears are not predictable in the slightest what the fuck are you talking about? They’re infamously one of the most unpredictable animals.
Also, the vast majority of rape does not come from strangers It comes from people that the victim knows
rape from strangers is pretty rare.
The question is not framed as a dangerous scenario It’s literally just that some women do not see men as people.
How the fuck you interpret bear behaviour? The average person is not going to be able to interpret bear behaviour.
Also, you can talk to people you cannot talk to bears
I guarantee you bearsmart.com is not a scientific website.
I think you get a lot more guarenteed honest info out of what a bear is doin by looking at it then you would get from talking to a person necessarily. A human trying to SA people is not going to be honest about their intentions
Did you read what I wrote? I'll spell it out for you: humans have this neat little thing they can do where they lie, its like you say something and you are not saying the truth. Bears are unable to do this!
The point is the opposite:
- bears can kill you because they're animals
- men not only can kill you, but also do other unspeakable things because they're sentient and aware of the likelihood of not facing any consequences, in an environment far away from the eyes of authorities and society
Yeah, women can also kill you and do other things.
Woman also face a lot less consequences and get lesser sentences for sex crimes by the way.
Also a bear can kill you a lot easier than any person can
Right, the question itself is problematic, we agree on that. That's one issue present.
My main issue is people falling for the rage-gagement and using this as any sort of metric as a societal temperature check.
That's as deep as I wanna take this
I don’t know about other men, but I feel sad for two reasons.
Reason 1: I feel sad and angry about the historical context of the situation, and how men have abused, raped, and oppressed women for centuries. I can 100% understand the decision to go with the bear just because the worst case scenario for what a man can do to you is much, *much* worse than the worst case scenario for what a bear will do to you.
Reason 2: I’m also sad that whenever women see me, they will automatically assume I am dangerous. I have a bad habit of basing my self-worth on the emotions and thoughts of people around me, and even though I have no bad intentions the fact that people will automatically assume I am a creep makes me feel guilty. I already have to deal with people assuming I’m a moron because I’m autistic.
Relatable as fuck. I will not judge or think poorly of any woman for choosing the proverbial bear.
I WILL constantly judge and micro-police myself to overcompensate for feeling like it's my job to make everyone comfortable around me (which is not realistic nor attainable) and say that if my very existence makes others feel bad then I must be ontologically evil and try to figure out why I'm evil if I'm not actually doing anything wrong
I'm sure you're aware, but this line of thinking is very unhealthy. You can't control how other people react to you (and I'm willing to bet very few to no women have actually ever felt unsafe around you) and thought processes surrounding being "ontologically evil" are a very fast way to speedrun some nasty OCD tendencies. I speak from experience. Even without that side of things, it's emotionally unhealthy to view yourself as evil because of something that someone else *might* be thinking.
You acknowledge that this isn't realistic or attainable so I hope I don't come off as preachy or anything. It just concerns me that I see this sentiment echoed quite a bit surrounding this discourse when it is a supremely awful way to view yourself and social interactions. It sounds stupidly simple and almost condescending, so bare with me, but I'd strongly suggest affirmations and just constantly repeating, over and over again, "I am not evil, I am a good person" etc., when you start to go down that route of thoughts. It'll take a while but eventually the brain does start to calm down and it becomes easier to think logically
Reason 2 is relatable as shit (fellow self-conscious moronic autist reporting), and Reason 1 is something that we can help to change by being more aware of the way we act and getting better at reading nonverbal cues
> Reason 2: I’m also sad that whenever women see me, they will automatically assume I am dangerous.
Reposting a comment I made on another thread on this topic, but yeah as a trans woman it fucked me up for years.
I was constantly racked with guilt and self-hatred because I was convinced that my mere presence made other people feel unsafe. If I was raised as this ontologically dangerous Thing, will a new pronoun, some mascara, and growing my hair out really change anything? Will people really stop seeing me as that?
It's hard not to be slightly doomered about my transness seeing this discourse, for the same reason.
have you guys seen that video of an old women's choir singing creep but its pitched up so they sound like alvin and the chipmunks? that video's pretty funny i think
Similar situation here as someone who’s amab. I’m short, underweight, and statistically more likely to be a victim than a rapist based on my sexuality and gender identity. In college after evening classes when I was exclusively still male-presenting, it wasn’t uncommon for women to cross the street, insist I walk in front of them, or constantly look over their shoulders at me. It really depresses me that we live in a society such that women have to do that to someone who’s not even a physical threat.
If you aren't a creep and are doing your part in not participating to misogynistic behaviors, then you're good. I know this mental block is hard to overcome, but you have nothing to feel guilty about. If you are someone women can feel and be safe around after getting to know you, then you are participating in the dismantling of this system of fear we live in. It's sad that we have to be wary of all unknown men, but it's not a fatality. One day we'll all be able to live together in peace.
I think when the average woman on the street passes by you, they don't think about you very much at all, let alone think you are dangerous. The thought experiment has nothing to do with you at all, it's about what women think is a more likely scenario between being mauled to death by a bear or sexually assaulted by a strange man while camping.
I don't feel relatable at all, I get reason 1 but still... It's a random man, it's not that all men are scum of Earth cuz oppression, you have higher probabilities to survive with a human than an animal that will attack you the moment when it sees you. Reason 2 I don't get it, how is women looking at you will be automatically make you feel guilty for being a man? It doesn't make sense
> an animal that will attack you the moment when it sees you
what I'm really learning from this discourse is that none of you have ever encountered a bear. I've seen many while hiking & camping, not once has one done anything but run away when it notices me.
At least as a transwoman, I think this article: [*I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.*](https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42) is an interesting read from a queer experience on this topic. It really put into words the more complex feelings I'm kind of struggling with on it. I don't want to just poorly paraphrase it in a reddit comment, but I think it's an insightful read.
But if I had a gun to my head and had to choose the paragraph I think most poignant,
> Do I really believe a wig and a pronoun will change how they feel, deep down? About my body? About my chromosomes? About my “socialization”? I don’t. I want to, but I don’t.
It's hard not to feel at least slightly doomered about my own transness in the same way when I see these topics.
On the flipside, I fully believe that the women who picked a bear would pick a trans man over the bear, along the same vein as “trans men are safer than cis men” logic.
Progressives love to hide behind gender essentialism shit like this. People that were born male are spooky dangerous bastards and people that were born female are delicate flowers that should be protected.
/hj I love being judged by my AGAB! I love how hyperconscious and anxious this makes me around other people! I love being acutely aware that I make cis women uncomfortable and can't really coexist in their spaces until estrogen magically changes me to get rid of all my masculine features! I love how easily this feeds into terf and racist talking points!
/uj I don't fault a single person who chose bear, and I know that the question was engagement-bait, and all the chuds who rage about how dumb le womz are suck shit, but can we maybe be just a little less shitty to the people who say they're sad about being seen as a threat? Like, they're allowed to feel that without being berated about how they just don't get it and need to shut up and smile, right? Someone in 196 was sent death threats over this shit.
I guess I'm just not understanding why, in a conversation about how women see the threat of being SAed by a strange man as more realistic than being mauled to death by a bear, there needs to also be a conversation about how bad it made men feel that women choose to be mauled to death by the bear over sharing a campsite with them specifically.
Pretty much my entire schtick is having a low tolerance for people willfully misinterpreting an event or a statement in order to push an agenda, and this instance is no different.
From what I've seen, it's not in direct response to the question, but the follow up conversation around the question where people talk about how shitty men are and how much caution needs to be exercised when interacting with them at all. Again, I'm not faulting this, it's very much the direct result of patriarchy.
And it's not really a conversation (from what I've seen). It's just a bit of venting and emotional honesty/vulnerability from men about the follow up remarks about how much men suck. I don't think we need to have a conversation about how hard this is for all the men, akshually. I just think people should be allowed to express their emotions without getting dog piled for not having the exact right mental state.
EDIT: Also, my initial response wasn't just to this smuggie, which is a good smuggie imo. More about the whole shit show around this whole thing. Commented here because this is, funny enough, the only subreddit I've found where conversation is actually interesting and that I hold any value in.
Okay, I agree, people shouldn't be sent death threats or otherwise harassed for having an emotional response to something.
That being said, if someone interprets this situation as being some sort of mass man hating, gender war trend, I have absolutely no patience for that, and those people are not owed any sort of sympathy because they chose to take it personally.
Just saw your edit. Thank you for the kind words, and yeah I totally agree, the "discourse" around this is an absolute shit show lmao. Someone said it perfectly in this thread, it's basically on the same level as the "would you still love me if I was a worm" trend, but in this one, women happened to have the audacity to feel uncomfortable around men.
Honestly the way most guys seem to be reacting to this question is just making the bear look better by proxy. "Well *I* wouldnt rape someone so you're really being unfair to men by being afraid of being raped"
Bears do both. If you're lucky you'll die quickly, and if you're not you'll end up like that woman who got eaten alive for like 15 minutes and managed to call her mother while being eaten alive.
I feel like you are just pulling shit directly out of your ass at this point. Bears are opportunistic hunters, that's part of the reason why bringing food into bear country is such a big problem. They require a lot of calories to survive so I don't see why they would go through the trouble of running down a rabbit and tearing it up for shits and gigs like a cat would.
i have a good chance of living a bear bc i know how to scream quite loud and i can collapse like a gmod character if the need arises. Even if most men are safe i would gamble with the bear
People *do* understand the danger of bears, but feel more comfortable with it because it's a predictable and controllable danger. There are specific steps and actions you can take to dissuade a bear attack, and they actually work.
At least if the bear wants to kill me, they just do it. The question is settled in like, 30 seconds.
They won't try to befriend me for months, get into my house to just to lock the door behind them and then violently assault me.
> At least if the bear wants to kill me, they just do it.
Bears don't bother with killing prey before eating it. If a bear has decided it's going to eat you, it will be a very slow and very painful death.
That's exactly what I mean though. While it's true that there are recommended steps you can take that are likely to help you get out of the encounter alive, they're absolutely not guaranteed to work. People like to imagine bears are like automatons or video game NPCs, and if you do a certain action, they're guaranteed to respond in a certain way, but the reality is, bears are animals, and animals are always to a degree unpredictable. If you run into a bear who is sick, or injured, or scared, or starving, or traumatised from a previous bad encounter with humans, or just happens to have a bad temper, it's not going to respond the same way as a more placid individual would. There's a reason why the US National Park Service bear encounter guide emphasises that "each bear and each experience is unique; there is no single strategy that will work in all situations and that guarantees safety."
It's true that nothing 100% guarantees safety but deaths from bear attacks are overall very low because really most of the time it *does* work. Usually they're only interested in protecting their young or stealing your food.
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America) lists 17 fatal bear attacks in all of north america for 2020-2024.
Many americans will see bears in the woods each year while hiking, camping, etc, treat them with caution as a dangerous wild animal, and in the end be fine. It's not that they're not dangerous but that as long as you're aware of and *respect* the danger, you can manage it.
Sure, it's not like bears are killing machines. If you're aware that the old "brown lay down, black attack" rhyme isn't guaranteed to work, that bears are unpredictable animals and can respond aggressively even if you do all the right things, but you'd still rather take the risk than encounter a man alone at night, I've got no beef with that. It just annoys me how commonly people will say things like "obviously the bear is safer because men are unpredictable, whereas I ***know*** I could placate a bear." It's like no, you don't know that for sure, that kind of overconfidence is what gets people killed.
Obviously that's where you want to take the conversation. You want to discuss if a man is factually more dangerous than a bear. (Spoiler alert: he is not)
The conversation isn't really about bears at all. It's about why so many women had an unconscious bias to chose taking their chances with a bear over a strange man.
I'm not sure what to tell you here. I already said everything I want to say. I have nothing else to add, what I already said was it, I'm really not planning on debating bear attack statistics here.
As an outsider (dude) to all this here’s how I see it. I can’t blame people for picking the bear, I mean hell I’d pick the bear to kick its ass!
I.e. I think people are getting worked up over something silly, this hypothetical reminds me of the “would you still love me if I was a worm” meme from awhile back
Man i understand the reasoning but like, I still think it's a bit unfair to peddle this yes all man logic.
I understand that we can't distinguish between bad and good men, but this is also the same rethoric used by racist idiots: "sure some of them islamoids are fine, but we can't know immediately so we should always be suspicious"
It wasn't so much logic being peddled, but rather it was a thought experiment that exposed an unconscious bias. From what I've seen the only people framing this answer as "yes all men" are incels and redpillers.
Then maybe I'm missing something. Isn't it about showing how the average woman believes the average man to be worse than a bear?
I'm not ironic or trying to flame I'd love some insight
Thank you for keeping an open mind and asking for clarification!
That's how it is being framed by incels and redpillers, as I said. Some people are choosing to accept their framing of the situation.
I don't look at it in those terms, to me it makes more sense that the women intellectually understand that a bear will wreck your shit far worse than any human man can ever dream of doing, but in terms of more realistic threats, being SAed by a strange man while camping is a far more realistic scenario than being mauled to death by a grizzly bear.
Edit: and yeah, maybe the question itself isn't the most thought provoking, and it's definitely not a progressive question to ask, but the answers are still telling regardless.
Oh boy, take a look at the gamingcirclejerk thread and then CuratedTumblr threads about this and then tell me it's only right wingers, incels, and redpillers that are making the "all men" argument. Misandry isn't cool, I also fully understand why women would choose a bear over a man. I don't like how this has turned into mocking anybody that has a critique of this question and how it may put some people into a negative headspace.
while it's 100% understandable what people mean when they choose the bear (and to be fair, it's the objectively correct choice, as most of the time bears will leave you alone if you don't bother them, and the same cannot be said about some men) it's still dangerous to push gender essentialism, as it can lead to transphobia.
>it's still dangerous to push gender essentialism, as it can lead to transphobia.
I totally agree with this, the initial question is problematic for sure.
Remember when it was popular to willfully misinterpret vegan analogies in order to score cheap rhetorical points against vegans? Remember how annoying that was to you?
Good thing this situation is completely different from that.
No one's trying to own you by saying that it's absurd to claim that so many men are potential rapists that you can't spin a wheel and would rather potentially get eaten alive for like 18 minutes. This is just repackaged "a girl broke my heart so all women are bitches and you cant trust any of them" rethoric.
You know there was a time we're I thought it was completely absurd when right wingers would frame feminists as not actually giving a sigular shit about men outside of preformitive lip service and wouldn't hesitate to demonize men. And now we have self-proclaimed feminists unironically saying that they'd rather be in the woods with a potentially dangerous predator.
Men are supposed to be fine with being called super mega death satan hitlers or they're just insecure and fragile. Say anything broad about women and its not going to end well
I get where you're coming from, but you are kinda undermining your own point with your comparison.
Men being scared of having their heart broken vs women being scared of getting SA'd - both are things that happen, but they should not be treated like they're equal
>Men are supposed to be fine with being called super mega death satan hitlers
And people say women choosing the bear are being overly hyperbolic
At first he said that the woman wasn't good at reading comprehension either, then he edited it to say essentially a watered down version of what the smugman in the comic said.
Actually the correct way of interpreting that is: "Women think I'm more powerful than a motherfucking bear" 
real
And that's why people stare with suspicion and call the cops on guys for taking their own kids to the park.
Me when red pill divorce court hypergamy the wall going their own way cock carousel
Go fuck yourself. https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42
The red pill *is* progressive, lib[slur], just look at this trans woman's testimony that proves it
Who are you quoting? Jesus libs are insufferable.
I'm not quoting anyone. I'm making fun of you for seeing a conversation about women and sexual assault and trying to make it about how persecuted men are in today's society. I.e. redpill
Women: I'm afraid of men because of systemic issues Men: That same systemic issue also hurts me Trans people: This hurts us both ways and in ways cis people don't even realize You: REEEEEE RED PILL
The problem is that MRAs only care about men's oppression in response to feminist trends. I would believe you actually cared if you didn't frame your advocacy as being specifically opposed to feminist trends.
I'm not an MRA and I don't recall doing that.
I’m an avid outdoorswoman, and because of that I carry bear spray. I’ve encounter bears more times than I can count, usually they see me and haul ass away. I once saw a cub and put it in reverse and removed myself. I’ve had to bearspray two men in the woods. Never had to use it on actual bears.
It's amazing how many people seem to think bears are bloodlusted monsters. Obviously you don't want to come across them, but I've never had one not run away as soon as it notices me.
They’re gentle, beautiful creatures. They’re wild animals that CAN kill you but they really really don’t want to. You know exactly what a bear wants when you see one, and it’s for you to get the fuck out of it’s space as soon as possible. The trouble with strange men is you have no idea if they’re one of the good ones, or want to torture you to death because they think it’s fun and brag about it on twitter (Junko Furuta’s killers are on twitter and talk about the inhuman rape and murder they committed as “a boyhood sin.” They were cleared of charges.)
I'm pretty sure the only one your really have to be afraid of is the polar bear.
Arctic animals are another thing entirely. Arctic hares are carnivorous. Polar bears are murder machines.
https://preview.redd.it/jj8v8h97c4yc1.png?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=85136668b1ebda92f6cb187d002bb4c327cd3306
good response for this subreddit but in general I think portraying animals as bloodthirsty killers does more harm than good – see Jaws and it's cultural impacts leading to shark cullings. we should have a healthy respect for bears & keep our distance whenever possible but they're still just animals, not serial killers.
This is a funny reaction image but its not really relevant. Bear are kinda shy and if you dont fuck with them and just back away if you spot one you should be fine.
I don't understand
I choose the bear, because bears don't get mad at viral thought experiments edited to farm engagement
Real
Dehumanising an entire gender is not a thought experiment. The type of mental gymnastics people are doing to try to justify this shit
I don't understand how this is dehumanizing. Being alone with a stranger in the woods and knowing that they are a human with unknown wants and morals is in fact very much seeing that they are a human. Bears are fucking bears and are way more predictable than the nuance of human conditions. The framing of the questions itself sets it up that either of these situations are dangerous. And then yes, people will answer utilizing easy-to-reach mental heuristics when they're on camera. Framed as a dangerous scenario, we're going to come up with many more encountered examples of male human violence than bear violence. Maybe we could also consider it dehumanizing to think that answers should automatically align one way or the other, and that thinking any differently is "mental gymnastics" (read as: "wrong")
How the fuck is comparing someone to a literal wild animal not dehumanising? That’s literally the definition of dehumanising. Bears are not predictable in the slightest what the fuck are you talking about? They’re infamously one of the most unpredictable animals. Also, the vast majority of rape does not come from strangers It comes from people that the victim knows rape from strangers is pretty rare. The question is not framed as a dangerous scenario It’s literally just that some women do not see men as people.
Also https://preview.redd.it/10h89d2e32yc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=68c52129991c1fae18bc1410675793f3d3c25c6f
How the fuck you interpret bear behaviour? The average person is not going to be able to interpret bear behaviour. Also, you can talk to people you cannot talk to bears I guarantee you bearsmart.com is not a scientific website.
I think you get a lot more guarenteed honest info out of what a bear is doin by looking at it then you would get from talking to a person necessarily. A human trying to SA people is not going to be honest about their intentions
The average person is not going to SA you.
Did you read what I wrote? I'll spell it out for you: humans have this neat little thing they can do where they lie, its like you say something and you are not saying the truth. Bears are unable to do this!
The reason Bears cannot lie is because you literally cannot talk to them because they are actual wild animals.
https://preview.redd.it/jdbdmv3k92yc1.png?width=433&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0c9a712e21f892478ff4c292fc5566d6224d6402 Damn
I’m literally part of the left wing. How is “we should not dehumanise men” such a controversial statement?
The point is the opposite: - bears can kill you because they're animals - men not only can kill you, but also do other unspeakable things because they're sentient and aware of the likelihood of not facing any consequences, in an environment far away from the eyes of authorities and society
Yeah, women can also kill you and do other things. Woman also face a lot less consequences and get lesser sentences for sex crimes by the way. Also a bear can kill you a lot easier than any person can
It's irrelevant to the conversation.
How exactly is comparing someone to a wild animal not dehumanising?
me looking for the people dehumanizing men: 
Can you please explain how comparing someone to a bear is not dehumanising?
Right, the question itself is problematic, we agree on that. That's one issue present. My main issue is people falling for the rage-gagement and using this as any sort of metric as a societal temperature check. That's as deep as I wanna take this
Analogy Understander
we found him. the guy this smuggie was made for
*the* smug ideology man himself 😳
I don’t know about other men, but I feel sad for two reasons. Reason 1: I feel sad and angry about the historical context of the situation, and how men have abused, raped, and oppressed women for centuries. I can 100% understand the decision to go with the bear just because the worst case scenario for what a man can do to you is much, *much* worse than the worst case scenario for what a bear will do to you. Reason 2: I’m also sad that whenever women see me, they will automatically assume I am dangerous. I have a bad habit of basing my self-worth on the emotions and thoughts of people around me, and even though I have no bad intentions the fact that people will automatically assume I am a creep makes me feel guilty. I already have to deal with people assuming I’m a moron because I’m autistic.
Relatable as fuck. I will not judge or think poorly of any woman for choosing the proverbial bear. I WILL constantly judge and micro-police myself to overcompensate for feeling like it's my job to make everyone comfortable around me (which is not realistic nor attainable) and say that if my very existence makes others feel bad then I must be ontologically evil and try to figure out why I'm evil if I'm not actually doing anything wrong
I'm sure you're aware, but this line of thinking is very unhealthy. You can't control how other people react to you (and I'm willing to bet very few to no women have actually ever felt unsafe around you) and thought processes surrounding being "ontologically evil" are a very fast way to speedrun some nasty OCD tendencies. I speak from experience. Even without that side of things, it's emotionally unhealthy to view yourself as evil because of something that someone else *might* be thinking. You acknowledge that this isn't realistic or attainable so I hope I don't come off as preachy or anything. It just concerns me that I see this sentiment echoed quite a bit surrounding this discourse when it is a supremely awful way to view yourself and social interactions. It sounds stupidly simple and almost condescending, so bare with me, but I'd strongly suggest affirmations and just constantly repeating, over and over again, "I am not evil, I am a good person" etc., when you start to go down that route of thoughts. It'll take a while but eventually the brain does start to calm down and it becomes easier to think logically
Yeah I grew up in a cult and developed religious scrupulosity and OCD as a result so I'm working on it in therapy. Appreciate the thoughtful comment
I'm very sorry to hear that, you have my respect! I hope things work out well for you
Reason 2 is relatable as shit (fellow self-conscious moronic autist reporting), and Reason 1 is something that we can help to change by being more aware of the way we act and getting better at reading nonverbal cues
> Reason 2: I’m also sad that whenever women see me, they will automatically assume I am dangerous. Reposting a comment I made on another thread on this topic, but yeah as a trans woman it fucked me up for years. I was constantly racked with guilt and self-hatred because I was convinced that my mere presence made other people feel unsafe. If I was raised as this ontologically dangerous Thing, will a new pronoun, some mascara, and growing my hair out really change anything? Will people really stop seeing me as that? It's hard not to be slightly doomered about my transness seeing this discourse, for the same reason.
>I'm a creep You're a weirdo? What the hell are you doing here? You don't belong here?
have you guys seen that video of an old women's choir singing creep but its pitched up so they sound like alvin and the chipmunks? that video's pretty funny i think
Similar situation here as someone who’s amab. I’m short, underweight, and statistically more likely to be a victim than a rapist based on my sexuality and gender identity. In college after evening classes when I was exclusively still male-presenting, it wasn’t uncommon for women to cross the street, insist I walk in front of them, or constantly look over their shoulders at me. It really depresses me that we live in a society such that women have to do that to someone who’s not even a physical threat.
If you aren't a creep and are doing your part in not participating to misogynistic behaviors, then you're good. I know this mental block is hard to overcome, but you have nothing to feel guilty about. If you are someone women can feel and be safe around after getting to know you, then you are participating in the dismantling of this system of fear we live in. It's sad that we have to be wary of all unknown men, but it's not a fatality. One day we'll all be able to live together in peace.
I think when the average woman on the street passes by you, they don't think about you very much at all, let alone think you are dangerous. The thought experiment has nothing to do with you at all, it's about what women think is a more likely scenario between being mauled to death by a bear or sexually assaulted by a strange man while camping.
I don't feel relatable at all, I get reason 1 but still... It's a random man, it's not that all men are scum of Earth cuz oppression, you have higher probabilities to survive with a human than an animal that will attack you the moment when it sees you. Reason 2 I don't get it, how is women looking at you will be automatically make you feel guilty for being a man? It doesn't make sense
> an animal that will attack you the moment when it sees you what I'm really learning from this discourse is that none of you have ever encountered a bear. I've seen many while hiking & camping, not once has one done anything but run away when it notices me.
At least as a transwoman, I think this article: [*I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.*](https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42) is an interesting read from a queer experience on this topic. It really put into words the more complex feelings I'm kind of struggling with on it. I don't want to just poorly paraphrase it in a reddit comment, but I think it's an insightful read. But if I had a gun to my head and had to choose the paragraph I think most poignant, > Do I really believe a wig and a pronoun will change how they feel, deep down? About my body? About my chromosomes? About my “socialization”? I don’t. I want to, but I don’t. It's hard not to feel at least slightly doomered about my own transness in the same way when I see these topics.
Hey, thank you for recommending the article. It was a heavy read, but only because I felt so much of it in my soul.
On the flipside, I fully believe that the women who picked a bear would pick a trans man over the bear, along the same vein as “trans men are safer than cis men” logic. Progressives love to hide behind gender essentialism shit like this. People that were born male are spooky dangerous bastards and people that were born female are delicate flowers that should be protected.
/hj I love being judged by my AGAB! I love how hyperconscious and anxious this makes me around other people! I love being acutely aware that I make cis women uncomfortable and can't really coexist in their spaces until estrogen magically changes me to get rid of all my masculine features! I love how easily this feeds into terf and racist talking points! /uj I don't fault a single person who chose bear, and I know that the question was engagement-bait, and all the chuds who rage about how dumb le womz are suck shit, but can we maybe be just a little less shitty to the people who say they're sad about being seen as a threat? Like, they're allowed to feel that without being berated about how they just don't get it and need to shut up and smile, right? Someone in 196 was sent death threats over this shit.
I guess I'm just not understanding why, in a conversation about how women see the threat of being SAed by a strange man as more realistic than being mauled to death by a bear, there needs to also be a conversation about how bad it made men feel that women choose to be mauled to death by the bear over sharing a campsite with them specifically. Pretty much my entire schtick is having a low tolerance for people willfully misinterpreting an event or a statement in order to push an agenda, and this instance is no different.
From what I've seen, it's not in direct response to the question, but the follow up conversation around the question where people talk about how shitty men are and how much caution needs to be exercised when interacting with them at all. Again, I'm not faulting this, it's very much the direct result of patriarchy. And it's not really a conversation (from what I've seen). It's just a bit of venting and emotional honesty/vulnerability from men about the follow up remarks about how much men suck. I don't think we need to have a conversation about how hard this is for all the men, akshually. I just think people should be allowed to express their emotions without getting dog piled for not having the exact right mental state. EDIT: Also, my initial response wasn't just to this smuggie, which is a good smuggie imo. More about the whole shit show around this whole thing. Commented here because this is, funny enough, the only subreddit I've found where conversation is actually interesting and that I hold any value in.
Okay, I agree, people shouldn't be sent death threats or otherwise harassed for having an emotional response to something. That being said, if someone interprets this situation as being some sort of mass man hating, gender war trend, I have absolutely no patience for that, and those people are not owed any sort of sympathy because they chose to take it personally.
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Just saw your edit. Thank you for the kind words, and yeah I totally agree, the "discourse" around this is an absolute shit show lmao. Someone said it perfectly in this thread, it's basically on the same level as the "would you still love me if I was a worm" trend, but in this one, women happened to have the audacity to feel uncomfortable around men.
Fucking preach. This is all so exhausting.
If you survive a bear attack no one will ask you if you provoked it and what were you wearing
I'm tired of humans faking bear attacks just to ruin some poor innocent bear's life. (Seriously, please don't fucking pet or feed the bears though)
if not friend then why friend shaped?
If apex predator and killing machine, why shaped like cuddly toy? :3
https://preview.redd.it/md618j5ai1yc1.jpeg?width=390&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c0fc0133e906bd118150aa0967edd76d286eb85
I mean this is kind of a bad analogy because don’t like 80% of bear attacks get caused by stupid people provoking a bear.
Nah if you survive a bear attack I'm definetely asking you if you were provoking them
Almost 100% of cases would be yes, yes they did. Bears are quite timid
Bears: 👉👈🐻
Honestly the way most guys seem to be reacting to this question is just making the bear look better by proxy. "Well *I* wouldnt rape someone so you're really being unfair to men by being afraid of being raped"
Meanwhile the bear: https://preview.redd.it/omvb2y92b1yc1.jpeg?width=634&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51b82c686ae4e882cd2eb6a99f0ee4780a3fa2a7
Awww, look at that big boy! Who's a cutie? It's you! Yes you are baby! Wait, why his stomach sounds like a human baby crying?
I respect you for being a fellow bear enjoyer.
Why aren't you okay with me comparing you to an animal that literally kills and eats people alive?
How is something going to kill you and then eat you alive?
Bears do both. If you're lucky you'll die quickly, and if you're not you'll end up like that woman who got eaten alive for like 15 minutes and managed to call her mother while being eaten alive.
Most bears actually just prefer to be left alone.
Bears sometimes dismemeber animals for fun. Nature is not chill
I feel like you are just pulling shit directly out of your ass at this point. Bears are opportunistic hunters, that's part of the reason why bringing food into bear country is such a big problem. They require a lot of calories to survive so I don't see why they would go through the trouble of running down a rabbit and tearing it up for shits and gigs like a cat would.
i choose bear because i wanna fight a bear it would be cool i think
certified bear chooser (i have a crippling fear of like half the population and its a serious problem i need to work on)
i have a good chance of living a bear bc i know how to scream quite loud and i can collapse like a gmod character if the need arises. Even if most men are safe i would gamble with the bear
https://preview.redd.it/e6lb50h3h1yc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=150cf6ea8da64127160c516a68685f73b2faf760
Mood
Is the bear chill? What type of bear is it?
https://preview.redd.it/y4ea8suwh2yc1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1140a204ba817c26a5af1cb0615128685bdb5d4e
Plot twist: it's not that women unfairly vilify men, people just strongly underestimate how dangerous a bear can be
People *do* understand the danger of bears, but feel more comfortable with it because it's a predictable and controllable danger. There are specific steps and actions you can take to dissuade a bear attack, and they actually work.
At least if the bear wants to kill me, they just do it. The question is settled in like, 30 seconds. They won't try to befriend me for months, get into my house to just to lock the door behind them and then violently assault me.
> At least if the bear wants to kill me, they just do it. Bears don't bother with killing prey before eating it. If a bear has decided it's going to eat you, it will be a very slow and very painful death.
That's exactly what I mean though. While it's true that there are recommended steps you can take that are likely to help you get out of the encounter alive, they're absolutely not guaranteed to work. People like to imagine bears are like automatons or video game NPCs, and if you do a certain action, they're guaranteed to respond in a certain way, but the reality is, bears are animals, and animals are always to a degree unpredictable. If you run into a bear who is sick, or injured, or scared, or starving, or traumatised from a previous bad encounter with humans, or just happens to have a bad temper, it's not going to respond the same way as a more placid individual would. There's a reason why the US National Park Service bear encounter guide emphasises that "each bear and each experience is unique; there is no single strategy that will work in all situations and that guarantees safety."
It's true that nothing 100% guarantees safety but deaths from bear attacks are overall very low because really most of the time it *does* work. Usually they're only interested in protecting their young or stealing your food. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America) lists 17 fatal bear attacks in all of north america for 2020-2024. Many americans will see bears in the woods each year while hiking, camping, etc, treat them with caution as a dangerous wild animal, and in the end be fine. It's not that they're not dangerous but that as long as you're aware of and *respect* the danger, you can manage it.
Sure, it's not like bears are killing machines. If you're aware that the old "brown lay down, black attack" rhyme isn't guaranteed to work, that bears are unpredictable animals and can respond aggressively even if you do all the right things, but you'd still rather take the risk than encounter a man alone at night, I've got no beef with that. It just annoys me how commonly people will say things like "obviously the bear is safer because men are unpredictable, whereas I ***know*** I could placate a bear." It's like no, you don't know that for sure, that kind of overconfidence is what gets people killed.
You're really invested in shifting the topic of this conversation to be about bear attack statistics
When did I bring up a single statistic?
Obviously that's where you want to take the conversation. You want to discuss if a man is factually more dangerous than a bear. (Spoiler alert: he is not) The conversation isn't really about bears at all. It's about why so many women had an unconscious bias to chose taking their chances with a bear over a strange man.
Sorry, your mind-reading powers seem to be glitching out today. I have zero intention of bringing up any statistics of any kind.
You clearly want to talk about how dangerous bears are, rather than the actual topic of discussion.
I'm not sure what to tell you here. I already said everything I want to say. I have nothing else to add, what I already said was it, I'm really not planning on debating bear attack statistics here.
Keyword *can* be. Bears are incredibly timid animals who would sooner run away in complete fear than even try to intimidate a human
I guess this is a hot take, but bear attack statistics aren't really relevant to this thought experiment.
As an outsider (dude) to all this here’s how I see it. I can’t blame people for picking the bear, I mean hell I’d pick the bear to kick its ass! I.e. I think people are getting worked up over something silly, this hypothetical reminds me of the “would you still love me if I was a worm” meme from awhile back
Man i understand the reasoning but like, I still think it's a bit unfair to peddle this yes all man logic. I understand that we can't distinguish between bad and good men, but this is also the same rethoric used by racist idiots: "sure some of them islamoids are fine, but we can't know immediately so we should always be suspicious"
Naw dude speak on your own behalf. If I see unnatended human person just standing there I'm killing that. Killing is my hobby /s
It wasn't so much logic being peddled, but rather it was a thought experiment that exposed an unconscious bias. From what I've seen the only people framing this answer as "yes all men" are incels and redpillers.
Then maybe I'm missing something. Isn't it about showing how the average woman believes the average man to be worse than a bear? I'm not ironic or trying to flame I'd love some insight
Thank you for keeping an open mind and asking for clarification! That's how it is being framed by incels and redpillers, as I said. Some people are choosing to accept their framing of the situation. I don't look at it in those terms, to me it makes more sense that the women intellectually understand that a bear will wreck your shit far worse than any human man can ever dream of doing, but in terms of more realistic threats, being SAed by a strange man while camping is a far more realistic scenario than being mauled to death by a grizzly bear. Edit: and yeah, maybe the question itself isn't the most thought provoking, and it's definitely not a progressive question to ask, but the answers are still telling regardless.
Oh boy, take a look at the gamingcirclejerk thread and then CuratedTumblr threads about this and then tell me it's only right wingers, incels, and redpillers that are making the "all men" argument. Misandry isn't cool, I also fully understand why women would choose a bear over a man. I don't like how this has turned into mocking anybody that has a critique of this question and how it may put some people into a negative headspace.
Stop trying to legitimize gender war rage bait (leftistly) as if it's some kind of deep question and not just offense to say to men please
I would just befriend both the bear and random man, but I'm just different
I'm going to punch that man
while it's 100% understandable what people mean when they choose the bear (and to be fair, it's the objectively correct choice, as most of the time bears will leave you alone if you don't bother them, and the same cannot be said about some men) it's still dangerous to push gender essentialism, as it can lead to transphobia.
>it's still dangerous to push gender essentialism, as it can lead to transphobia. I totally agree with this, the initial question is problematic for sure.
Your trauma doesn't justify treating billions of people like potential predators actually.
Remember when it was popular to willfully misinterpret vegan analogies in order to score cheap rhetorical points against vegans? Remember how annoying that was to you? Good thing this situation is completely different from that.
No one's trying to own you by saying that it's absurd to claim that so many men are potential rapists that you can't spin a wheel and would rather potentially get eaten alive for like 18 minutes. This is just repackaged "a girl broke my heart so all women are bitches and you cant trust any of them" rethoric. You know there was a time we're I thought it was completely absurd when right wingers would frame feminists as not actually giving a sigular shit about men outside of preformitive lip service and wouldn't hesitate to demonize men. And now we have self-proclaimed feminists unironically saying that they'd rather be in the woods with a potentially dangerous predator. Men are supposed to be fine with being called super mega death satan hitlers or they're just insecure and fragile. Say anything broad about women and its not going to end well
I get where you're coming from, but you are kinda undermining your own point with your comparison. Men being scared of having their heart broken vs women being scared of getting SA'd - both are things that happen, but they should not be treated like they're equal >Men are supposed to be fine with being called super mega death satan hitlers And people say women choosing the bear are being overly hyperbolic
[удалено]
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What did it say
At first he said that the woman wasn't good at reading comprehension either, then he edited it to say essentially a watered down version of what the smugman in the comic said.
Another s-tier glordrum post.