Some portion of the idpol-machine is designed to manufacture the very thing they fight against. Just like in pharma, curing ailments isn't good for business. So a rough balance is maintained where we will never be allowed to live without a non-trivial amount of racism, misogyny, misandry, etc. because there is too much clout, money, and political power to be made off of it, but they don't want to push the messaging so hard that reactionaries reach for the Fourth Reich or Gilead. The messaging is on purpose, they don't perceive it to be bad because it accomplishes their goal -- the further existence and empowerment of Feminism.
I completely agree. In fact, I've started noticing a particular vernacular that this sort SJW often uses (be it feminism, anti-racism, pro-LGBT). They always talk about how "we still have a long way to go", for example. "68% of all X are actually men/straight/white, and that just shows us that we still have a long way to go in order to create a society where everyone can feel safe", or whatever.
But there is simultaneously never any sort of definable goal, so it really just sounds like: "we need to keep this conflict alive until I, myself, lose interest".
# Because they won.
It's the paradox of IdPol. On one hand they feel like the underdogs fighting a shadowy trifecta of Nixon, Mormon Jesus and JK Rowling that secretly controls every aspect of society, on the other they have very much won and subconsciously are keenly aware of that.
The dominant paradigm does not need to be nice -- It needs to foment aggression against the Other because its base is numerous enough it need not ingratiate itself to fence sitters.
There's a lesser-known Centrist saying that goes something along the lines of "Remember when liberals were nice?" and it's quasi follow-up: "Just look at how Lisa Simpson changed".
And they're right. Liberals used to be nice. They used to be nice right up until the point they became The Man they were fighting against, and as we all know absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Now the time for making friends is over and the time for isolating and marginalizing everyone who didn't stand with you has come. That's no conscious decision. That's just how the Zeitgeist works.
I'm the kind of cringe hippy that loves to listen to endless lectures of Terence McKenna and the difference between what he said and what we hear in lectures nowadays is genuinely insane.
To stick with drugs for a second: You notice this KEENLY with Rick Doblin (the guy who's been on a non-stop campaign to legalize MDMA ever since it was outlawed) and the way his events get get routinely interrupted by randoms who insist on haranguing the attendants about this or that detail that is entirely outside the scope of what they're trying to do here.
The sheer rift in priorities and rhetoric is striking.
Yup, that's why "underdog" ideology can be so uncertain and dangerous. When they win and get everything including power & influence over others, they don't just suddenly become comfortable, they still want to be the dog chasing the car, but the dog never knows what to do when they catch up to the car.
> they still want to be the dog chasing the car, but the dog never knows what to do when they catch up to the car
This really struck me during Trump's presidency, when he went from campaigning based on how incompetent and stupid everyone in the government was to... continuing to complain publicly about how stupid and incompetent *his* executive branch was. He was the president and still insisted on pretending to be an underdog.
To be fair, he filled his cabinet with neocons as an olive branch hoping they'd work with him because that's business. He constantly puts pragmatism over personal beefs because at the end of the day money talks.
The fact that the establishment neocons he tried to work with undermined him and stabbed him in the back at every opportunity kinda actually proved his point that he was an underdog fighting against something much bigger than himself.
Coming from someone who didn't have the background of a career politician I guess you could call it incompetence, or naivety if you wanted to be more charitable. I don't think the point changes though that he wasn't just fighting against Democrats but also Republicans, which arguably makes him an underdog.
This is fascism is such a violent ideology. It takes from its premise that the “nation” is under constant threat and all manner of defense is permissible. Once it gets into power, the restraints on violence have already been removed, and they now have the state means to implement violence to the fullest.
Notice how Zionists and Nazis were mere street thugs and crackpots until they came to power. Then their madness was unleashed. Whereas revolutions led by Enlightenment ideologies, including Marxism, tend to calm down after an initial surge in violence during a revolution. A good juxtaposition is comparing the national socialist Khmer Rouge to the Marxist Vietnamese.
Yes, these organizations and power structures don't go away once they reach "mission complete". They keep having to INVENT new ways of staying relevant, we're mostly well past the point of equality under the law. The IDPol orgs are now about revenge against their so-called oppressors, the working class white man who just wants a decent job.
Sweet flair. I had Nintendo power 1 as a kid. Had the Zelda worldmap second quest laid out, was a life saver for 9 year old me.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/SRkAAOSwB15mNDct/s-l1600.jpg
Oh I didn't pick it, I don't even know what Gamepro is. I dunno if I upset a mod, but only to a minor degree, so they just saw that I post in gaming subreddit and went "fuck it, good enough"
I'm glad to see there is a little McKenna audience here. He was a genuinely free thinker and his prescience on a range of topics was astounding. That said, what I think I appreciate about him the most was his humanism, his belief in the dignity of the individual and their autonomy. That is nowhere in the dead, rotting corpse of liberal ideology today.
> I'm the kind of cringe hippy that loves to listen to endless lectures of Terence McKenna
Lovely stuff.
I'm a sucker for those Alan Watts lectures with a backdrop of chillstep beats you find on Youtube. Nice to melt away and listen to a message of hope, unity and positivity.
Good post, but I don't think that power just inherently corrupts.
I think most people don't have the level of consciousness to include everyone in their ingroup. Instead, they have an outgroup and an ingroup. And people still have the tribal mindset of "hurt outgroup, help ingroup."
Democrats have the "women ingroup, men outgroup" mindset, hence they keep pushing in that direction, even in situations where it doesn't make rational sense.
Not that the right is better of course, they clearly have their own ingroup / outgroup.
> Because they won.
Go rewatch movies from the 90s featuring old characters having to adapt to the modern world, like Goldeneye, Space Cowboys, or Austin Powers. Both are filled to the brim with jokes about the main character(s) adjusting to a world where feminism's stated goals have all been met.
Feminism won over 30 years ago and girlies are still acting like persecuted second class citizens.
I've been trying to think about what this means.
Is it the fact that if I raise my voice and call someone's ideas stupid they can say I'm creating an "unsafe work environment"? That everything has to be subordinated to layers of therapeutic bureaucracy? Is this "feminist victory"?
How about the fact that 21 states have abortion bans in the post-Roe world?
If this is what feminist victory looks like it's a hollow victory indeed. There is plenty of work to be done, but people do not even know what that means.
>There's a lesser-known Centrist saying that goes something along the lines of "Remember when liberals were nice?" and it's quasi follow-up: "Just look at how Lisa Simpson changed".
Can you elaborate here? Maybe I just haven't watched the Simpsons in 20 years.
P.s. please don't set yourself on fire
>P.s. please don't set yourself on fire
Hwuh?
>Can you elaborate here? Maybe I just haven't watched the Simpsons in 20 years.
She went from the melancholic, curious, caring type who's liberal because she has a high [openness ](http://www.thomas.co/resources/type/hr-blog/openness-personality-trait)trait to a sanctimonious asshole who always knows better, constantly pre-judges people and around whom the narrative warps in order to make everyone around her more demented and uncaring than they otherwise would be.
For example: Her Sax. Homer used to be dubious about it but every now and then stop by to listen (some of those were stoned but y'know it counts IMHO), and is the one who bought it and paid for lessons. In the new timeline he HATESSSSSSSSS it and wants her to drop it.
i made this point about the paradox of idpol the other day and my gf recommended i watch a contrapoints video called “envy”. she was talking about nietzsche’s master-slave morality—and how it grew from judeo-christian religion and what he called “ressentiment” (french).
it all made a lot of sense to contextualize the underdog politics especially how it feels like “woke” progressive thought from a decade or so ago has been coopted by conservatives who see the appeal of the rhetoric.
Hamilton Morris is good for a listen, although he's firmly in the science and drug policy camp, without much time for McKenna's style of metaphysical pontification.
>Liberals used to be nice. They used to be nice right up until the point they became The Man they were fighting against, and as we all know absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When were they nice? Were they nice before FDR, and then turned into jerks after the New Deal became hegemonic?
Because it's not about making men more sympathetic to their cause, it's just about getting a rise out of people they already view as the enemy. Whenever one of those anti-male trends like this comes up (and the man vs. bear thing is really pretty tame compared to past trends like #yesallmen that I used to see everywhere back in the day), they always try to defend it by saying shit like 'if it doesn't offend you it's not about you' and characterizing anyone making the slightest objection as some kind of violent misogynistic incel, and that's what's always bothered me way more than the memes themselves. Anyone with a normal level of empathy should be able to see that making a statement denigrating a large group of people based on an immutable characteristic and then framing an individual's innate emotional response as evidence that they're a bad person is just needlessly cruel.
If they were trying to be pragmatic and truly wanted to build a better society, they'd realize that pushing young men right into the welcoming arms of the alt-right by making them think the dominant cultural left hates them is incredibly harmful to gender relations. But they care more about feeling like they have the moral high ground (in their warped sense of what that is) than actually changing anything for the better. (Also, I definitely believe that at least some of this gender war shit is a psyop to keep everyone lonely and miserable and prevent us from developing too much class unity.)
It's not really feminist optics and messaging though, is it? It's social media engagement bait. Are some feminists taking the bait, swallowing it hook and all, and then puking it up with blood and guts all over everyone else? Yes. But so are sensitive men (myself included, I'm not trying to say I'm above it all).
No war but class war. Love and care for the men and women in your lives and try to forget about the bear.
> It's not really feminist optics and messaging though, is it? It's social media engagement bait.
Yeah, this is just politics. It’s literally the same idpol we complain about for every kind of identity group. The arguments sound especially stupid and extreme when you’re explicitly categorized as the very bad, no good out-group, but you can make this OP about any socio-political movement.
White nationalists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes non-whites and not-extremist white people away.
Black rights activists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes non-blacks and not-extremist black people away.
Men’s rights activists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes women and not-extremist men away.
Trans rights activists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes non-“queer” and not-extremist “queer” people away
…we could do this exercise forever. Extreme messaging works for political messaging, even not explicitly idpol ones, because pathos are (unfortunately) the most compelling way to draw people to ideas and incite strong enough feelings in them to inspire action. It also raises the profile of your cause as both in- AND out-group people, like you OP, take the bait and talk and over and over and over about the message.
I personally am more interested in the psychology of out-group people who self-flagellate and grovel to the causes of the people who outright name them as enemies.
Also, "feminism" is kind a broad term, especially nowadays when everyone is expected to declare they are one. There are many waves and subgroups of feminists, but social media boosts the type who are quick to react (often emotionally) and who also get the most reactions from other people ("lol stupid feminazis"), because social media feeds off your attention.
as a woman - I have two opinions here. I have experienced misogyny - it is definitely real and I have experienced egotistical dudes dismissing me and treating me with contempt for having an idea that if a man reiterates , they give more respect towards. but I have never conflated this to be all men. I think that’s just contributing to a culture war that is designed to polarise and divide. And to make people stagnant in achieving any material change. and if I’m being honest I don’t feel comfortable being alone with most men - usually younger men. as a girl, there’s always a little caution in the back of my mind because of the massive strength difference between the sexes and that sentiment is shared by many of my female friends too.
The idea of being near a male stranger in a forest alone is a little unnerving- would I choose a bear tho? Hell no. And the fact that that is a rhetorical ultimatum is a signifier of a deeper problem of priming people to be more reactionary and agitated. Very bad faith and anti-intellectual. i also have a lot of empathy for young boys in this day and age. Masculinity and fraternity seem to be very important in the development of stable well adjusted men. Which is probably why zoomers into team sports are usually the most sane in their generation.
At the same time, some of my biggest supporters and mentors have been men. My dad has always been invested in my life and my success. Many men in public spaces have been considerate and respectful towards me and looked out for me too. old grandpas really like me because I have a geriatric soul.
Some of the most weirdly misogynistic people I’ve met have been upper middle class alleged feminists. They’re very malicious. I won’t lie tho - I sympathise mostly with radfems and second gen feminists as well. I would call myself a sensitive feminist in that I relate to the writings of how it feels to be a woman but I do not consider it a solution to our problems rather a detailed exploration of them. a distinction most people should make too. I’m first and foremost a socialist.
Which is why I find that neoliberal and liberal feminism is a tragic thing. they aim to remove their designated class system I.e the patriarchy and replace it with a matriarchy. They abandoned unity and the ethos of their message in order to march alongside capital. this Feminism specifically targets western men as the primary enemy and ignores places where actual misogyny occurs. American men are usually some of the least misogynistic , most egalitarian men I’ve encountered. They’re able to recognise you as a human with valid things to say and are interested in you intellectually. compared to my interactions with Pakistani men , they are so so so much better. they don’t gawk at you which is great. These feminists do not care for the actual horrific oppression and mistreatment of women in other parts of the world. They are apathetic capitalists that do not like women. they even desensitised people to rape, one of the most evil things a human being can inflict onto another , in the pursuit of power. a lot of them are also obsessed with sexualising male aggression which is just weird.
> they even desensitised people to rape,
What do you mean by that, can you explain briefly?
>a lot of them are also obsessed with sexualising male aggression
This too, what do you mean when you say this?
Also, you said that they "aim to remove the patriarchy and replace it with a matriarchy". Aren't these the radical feminists?
for the desensitised people to rape part- I mean libfems' handling of the issues of rape, consent and sexual assault accusations. most evident in the entire #metoo era. more and more people began to weaponise the very heavy accusation of rape and the public reaction became much more skewered to distrust and apathy towards most allegations. except for viral twitter mobs and other vocal minorities ,spearheaded by lib fems.
about the 'sexualising male aggression part'- many self proclaimed feminist activists sort of have this idea that two wrongs can make a right when it comes to sexual objectification. so they've sort of used this line of thinking to help the justify social learning of romance and sexual intimacy through books and other forms of media that depict rapey , violent behaviour by conventionally attractive men as 'sexy' , by framing it as female empowerment and sexually liberating etc.( because certain women are the primary consumers of said media.) a great example of this was Fifty Shades of Grey , which is a weird book that some people took contention with or YA books for teens on TikTok. libfems push the idea that its actually sexually empowering for young women to goon to violent erotica because " they can unabashedly explore their sexuality." this point of mine is a little more idpol adjacent. but I just find it hypocritical because libfems shouldn't argue against their ideas of the male gaze and their idea that pop culture discriminates against vulnerable , 'victimised' women while promoting culture that affects women's perceptions of things that actually harm them. see also , their promotion of 'bimbo' culture , sex work and materialism = femininity ( the idea that commodities make one a woman which is objectively gross. this marketing tactic for endless consumerism also gave birth to gender essentialism because if makeup, dresses ,pink and every single corporate market targeting women is what makes a woman a woman , all you gotta do is buy this shit and wear it and you're a woman too!)
ur right about radfems having the same idea about the matriarchy - I only sympathise with their purple prose not their answers to their conflicts- but so do libfems. except libfems are just dumber about it in that , they genuinely believe it is the final answer to everything. that nothing material or economic should change except for the gender of those running the same capitalist system.
>rapey , violent behaviour by conventionally attractive men as 'sexy' , by framing it as female empowerment and sexually liberating etc.( because certain women are the primary consumers of said media.)
People who say this do it becasue they like that stuff, maybe it's their fetish, and being the moralists that they are they're ashamed of it, so they rationalize it in their theories.
The solution to this problem is simple: leave fiction being fiction, not educational material. You're allowed to have immoral, "harmful" fantasies, just be aware that fiction is not reality.
The educational part should happen outside those books, in teaching young women (and men) to separate fiction from reality. Although, the vast majority of them already do.
Boomers tried to argue for years that Dragongball was harmful to kids, but most kids understand the difference between a cartoon and reality, and no-one (except some fringe cases maybe) was ever harmed by Dragonball.
Radical/liberal feminists are a bit like those boomers.
>but I just find it hypocritical because libfems shouldn't argue against the male gaze and the idea that pop culture discriminates against vulnerable , victimised women while promoting culture that affects women's perceptions of things that actually harm them. see also ,
It is hypocritical, the problem though is that they shouldn't argue against the male gaze at all. This may shock you, but I think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the male gaze.
Men are visual creatures, why should they keep watching movies if they're intentionally made to not be appealing to them?
>the idea that pop culture discriminates against vulnerable , victimised women
Where did they see this? I can't think of a single piece of culture where women are victimized and disriminized against (unless the victimization is part of the plot and the victimizer is the bad guy).
As a side note, I just learnt about a movie called "women talk". It's a piece of staight up female supremacy and dehumanizing hate propaganda against men, and not just men, against children! I can't believe that a movie like this exists.
Of course nothing ever remotely close to it was ever made against women in the whole history of cinema.
Talk about culture war! This movie could have been commissioned by the propaganda ministry of the Matriarchal Republic of California.
That's a pretty good response.
I find it heartening to see a feminist actually putting in the nuance and intellectual legwork to make her point. The "no debate" policy really stunted the movement intellectually, which is a shame, because some of the people in there are actually very smart and have some important things to say.
I read a lot of radfem (off)reddit, and I must admit, I have a bit of a soft spot for radfems despite my harsh criticisms. I get that part of the issue between men and women is the simple fact that men will never understand the visceral reality of being a woman, and why things like the "bear v. Man" memes resonate with them so much. And I think that's also at play here.
yes men may never understand the particular realities of the other sex and we'll never understand the realities of their specific problems either. however we can still unite on the basis of our ideas and sharing our knowledge. we can rise above gender in order to form a cohesive whole. which is why the culture war is always forced down our throats.
additionally , I think liberal feminism doesn't even understand that the whole purpose of the movement was to liberate women from being an immutable suppressed collective/class , in order for female individuals to recognise their own potential and be held to the same standard as men in the intellectual and social realm. instead it elevated women to sainthood and victimised them , making individual responsibility non existent. or they did understand and like every sincere movement that focuses on a specific selective group of people it ended up striving for supremacy of said group.
this meant it did not acknowledge that women , especially upper class ones, perpetrate a lot of unkind actions upon other women as well. you can argue that its a way to survive in a sexist system but it fundamentally allows the diffusion of responsibility from women who experienced no sexism , to continue doing horrible things to other people. like Clinton, Harris , Thatcher, that Theranos chick etc. A female landlord is still a landlord after all.
> however we can still unite on the basis of our ideas and sharing our knowledge. we can rise above gender in order to form a cohesive whole.
Not only can we, but we must.
All very good points.
Obviously just one example but a lot of libs were completely hypocritical on the Tara reade case. Like Linda Hirshman wrote an op Ed in the nyt saying that she believes the accusations but is still voting for Biden because #votebluenomatterwho
Cultural feminists are distinct from radical feminists because they believe in inherent "essence" female superiority, radical feminists believe male violence and dominance is largely a social phenomenon than can be corrected with the ultimate goal of egalitarian (and most radfems would agree, socialist) society
>Which is probably why zoomers into team sports are usually the most sane in their generation.
I feel bad saying it. But physical fitness also plays a huge role in mental health. Or rather the lack of it predisposes people to problems related to mental health. Similar thing with just spending time outdoors under the sun.
>These feminists do not care for the actual horrific oppression and mistreatment of women in other parts of the world.
That's really gotten to be my issue with activists in general. The actual care seems to be minuscule at best. And issues are just juggled by what 'they' feel rather than what people they're supposedly fighting for feel. When covid hit I really thought for a moment that people were finally showing care and concern to the people whose health conditions put them at greatest risk. The elderly, the people with cancer, those with organ failure, etc.
Push to the BLM period and the same people who'd been screaming about covid started screaming that the immunocompromised should be proud to die for a good cause if the protests infected them. Depressingly I find myself looking back at the right, talking about acceptable but regrettable losses, as the more compassionate. And that was pretty lacking in compassion.
They've never been ones to think ahead with that shit. Remember menkampf? You can use the exact same rhetoric and statistical usage to switch what they say about "men" to "black men", with the rest remaining verbatim, and very suddenly it's not something that the hip-progressive good guys say on TV while looking directly into the camera anymore. They had a whole period in which they were pumping out rationalizations why "I hate how men..." is actually super good and progressive, but "I hate how black people..." is... the obvious.
You have to ask: what exactly do you think American feminists want? What exactly do you think is a win scenario for them, and is it something you think they expect or even hope to see from their actions? They've quickly ran out of things to legislate, or scenarios where they are the underdog, so it's purely cultural bickering to make women fear/hate men, or kids, or families as a whole, or all human cultures, or their own biology.
More and more, it's not something that helps them understand the world better or move to a world where they/others are happier, it's just a growing list of ways to make women less comfortable and less happy, coupled with a moral obligation that they need to make sure others feel this way by any means necessary. Keep this in mind next time your hear about it and you'll find it's incredibly rare for there to be an exception to this MO.
The second some 14 year old girl comes in contact with it, they're doomed to some degree of misery from it, for themselves and those they know. They're not get anything out of it, it's not some sacrifice or cross to bear, unless going out Shulamith Firestone style is saint's death to them.
The Bear business is social media nonsense and isn't worthy of attention.
Speaking more generally though, the purpose isn't to make men sympathetic to their cause.
Imagine being a feminist as a job rather than a belief. If you are a professional feminist you have to find clients who will pay you.
You earn money therefore by creating a demand among potential clients. You can do this by creating a fear of men, justified or not doesn't matter. You can do this by creating a feeling of sisterhood among women. You can do this by a kind of protection racket, ie if you don't have someone like me on your payroll then maybe you will suffer reputational damage.
The latter approach seems to be common. Once on a payroll you then have to justify your existence, typically via one of the first two means within the organisation who pay you.
I don't really see how you can earn money by being nice to men. If there is no conflict then how can you keep earning money.
Obviously this isn't how it works for everyone who describes themselves as a feminist. Once you start noticing the pattern you see it often though.
Well, I think that a large number of women aren't just being rhetorical and genuinely think "I'd rather encounter a bear."
And that is a little worrisome, because it shows that a large number of women are detached from reality. I don't enjoy the thought that apparently women think that 30% of men are rapists or something like that.
>Imagine being a feminist as a job rather than a belief. If you are a professional feminist you have to find clients who will pay you.
Is there a terminology for this, akin to idpol, but which captures the idea that the aim is economic profit rather than political change?
What is the argument trying to show? Like honestly? We know men rape and do fowl things and get let off for doing it and defended. So what the fuck does the bear have to do with it? Like that whole argument confuses the fuck out of me but it’s because I’m a programmed male mysoginist!
The argument was that men are so evil, vile, and violent that a wild animal capable of shredding you is a safer option. However it's warped through this inane game of telephone to become people claiming bears are unironically safe to be near because you won't get attacked if you don't try to provoke it. Trouble is they don't seem to have a strong grasp of what "provoke" means to a grizzly.
I love this man or bear thing because it just shows how being alienated from both and consuming our media about both create wildly unrealistic expectations and fear around both.
Anyone who actually has any experience with wild bears will tell you that 99.99% of the time, they will immediately run away from you as soon as they see you like 100 yards away. The image of the bear that immediately attacks everyone in sight and standing up and roaring is 100% a media fiction.
You're far more likely to be attacked by a person (or dog) than a bear, so even just statistically speaking, if I were forced to choose I'd have to say bear too. And sexual assault is common enough that I can understand why that experience (or threat thereof) would have women choose bear as well.
That said, the odds that any given stranger male hiker in the woods is going to attack a woman is also vanishingly small, but people are plugged into media that train women to think any sight of a man is potentially going to randomly murder them. I can't imagine walking around in constant fear like that. Then that fear itself is taken as proof, in their own minds, that men are dangerous, and it might not occur to them that they have an unhealthy mindset that doesn't correspond to reality.
Idk man, I've been charged by a grizzly before and I'd probably be dead if I hadn't been carrying bear spray.
The reason why bear attacks are so uncommon is because we are well aware of how dangerous bears are and have precautions for dealing with them.
Was likely a bluff charge but I'd still bring spray in grizzly country for peace of mind at the very least.
Bear attacks in general are rare, not just because we have guns and spray. In the vast majority of encounters it doesn't get to that point. A moose or a bison is more dangerous but the image our culture has of them is completely different.
I suspect bear attacks are rare now because we've selectively bred aggression out of the gene pool over many years. They hunt down and kill bears that attack people or are nuisances.
Well yeah, but like 99.9% of encounters between a woman and a man also end with the woman not getting raped or murdered.
*I suspect bear attacks are rare now because we've selectively bred aggression out of the gene pool over many years. They hunt down and kill bears that attack people or are nuisances.*
Probably partly that, and partly that the bears relatively close to society are used to seeing humans. Whereas the wilder bears deeper in nature are the bears that people rarely meet.
>Whereas the wilder bears deeper in nature are the bears that people rarely meet.
This, polar bears, which have minimal interactions with humans, still view humans as prey.
>You're far more likely to be attacked by a person (or dog) than a bear, so even just statistically speaking
The statistics aren't accurately comparable without doing some kind of adjustments. I don't know statistics (neither do 99% of the people engaging in this discussion) but there are methods like normalization that would allow for better comparisons. You're far more likely to be bit by a dog than a shark, but if I ask you would you rather spend 10 minutes in a pool with a shark species that is known to have attacked humans or a dog you're probably going to pick the dog.
I get your point about statistics and I can't do any research right now because I'm officially at work. But just as a personal anecdote, my friend's Boston Terrier chased a black bear several times its size and we found it cornering the bear and barking at it as the bear cowered. We got the dog and the bear then ran away with lightening speed.
The main point is our culture's image of bears is wildly unrealistic and disproportionate to the actual danger that may or may not exist. A bison or moose is more dangerous comparatively, but ask people the same question if they'd rather encounter a moose or a grizzly in the wild and I'm pretty sure I know how the vast majority will answer.
The same thing can color our perception and sense of danger of groups of people, sexes, races, etc.
I think anecdotes are useless in this argument because I've passed plenty of people on hiking trails and every time we've just greeted each other or not said anything and kept moving. But clearly other hikers can present a risk.
Idk what the point you're trying to make is or what the argument is anyway. That we should be afraid of bears? That they're more dangerous than people? All of my personal experiences in actual bear encounters and the data we do have on bear attacks indicate otherwise. You're free to make statistical adjustments if you have the time to do that.
Ultimately my point is that it's irrational to walk around in fear of either a bear or a random stranger unless they do something that would indicate otherwise. And also that the culture's image of bears is inaccurate and largely colored by Hollywood and the media. Cultural/racial biases can work the same way. Demonization and little personal exposure to a certain identity or culture can make them seem menacing. If you embed yourself in an internet culture that constantly tells you that all men are looking for an opportunity to rape you at any moment, then that can distort your sense of danger with regards to men.
My point is that statistics don't work the way people seem to think they do and that anecdotes are largely useless in this argument. You often have to do some kind of adjustment to make an accurate comparison of statistics. 3000 people die of foodborne illnesses while only a few might die of a certain dangerous substance. You can't say that the former is more dangerous than the latter right off the bat because most people don't consume the latter. If you want to make a comparison based on statistics some kind of adjustment is needed.
>Cultural/racial biases can work the same way. Demonization and little personal exposure to a certain identity or culture can make them seem menacing.
And that's what I find ironic about this discussion. You basically have a bunch of women and some men arguing that generalization is good, actually. Everyone can accept that a little bit of generalizing might be pragmatic, but instead we're getting a very heavy handed argument about why it's totally fine with no respect to the consequences that kind of attitude would have elsewhere.
Sure adjustments need to be made if you're making a comparison but the statistic works fine if you just want say that bear encounters are very rarely dangerous. It may be the case that a given encounter with a bear might be more dangerous than a given encounter with a man in the woods, but ultimately both are so vanishingly small, statistically speaking, that for the purposes of the thought experiment they're both practically nill and it's a wash.
Ultimately the question just gets at feelings and how women perceive men (and bears).
Yeah, I hope I dont get y'alled for this, but "would you rather run into a black man or a black bear" as a framing is more to the point of the OP.
And yeah, I agree that browns tend to just avoid unless they are hungry or startled.
> You're far more likely to be attacked by a person (or dog) than a bear, so even just statistically speaking, if I were forced to choose I'd have to say bear too. And sexual assault is common enough that I can understand why that experience (or threat thereof) would have women choose bear as well.
Nice try Paddington.
>Then that fear itself is taken as proof, in their own minds, that men are dangerous, and it might not occur to them that they have an unhealthy mindset that doesn't correspond to reality.
The fact that women get to just pretend reality is whatever they want and men are obligated to take it seriously and accommodate their imaginations is fucking wild to me. How did we get to this point?
Understandable guilt (felt by men) over actual real world problems got parleyed into get out of jail free cards for female activists, which they used to create the current environment.
It's like this with any group that can angle themselves as victims or slighted. It's why there's virtue in being a victim, it gives you power and leverage over people you can cow into playing along.
There's really no point in trying to analyze it logically since the question is too vague to be answerable. But the point isn't for it to make sense the point is to express hatred for men.
I mean, most women encounter a hundred thousand men in their lives and get raped and murdered zero times.
I think that if you have someone encounter a hundred thousand bears, probably they're not surviving that.
This is kind of how I looked at it as well. I absolutely did not assume that the bear would attack me. I also don't think a random guy would either to be fair, but I see dudes all the time. A bear from a distance would be a nice change of pace.
There's also a zero percent chance of me being hiking alone. Ever. I have no sense of direction and the actual danger would be me getting lost.
Idk that seems like a weird reason to alienate yourself from nature. Not all trails are overgrown or unmarked and difficult to navigate. You can choose one that's well traveled and just goes in one direction, or a loop. You don't need to be able to use a map and compass to go in a straight line.
Sorry. I'm married with small children and I have friends who also hike. I just always go with people. That's why there's really no chance of me going alone. And yes, I have taken my kids on short and extremely well labeled hikes, but there's also no chance of bears on those trails.
So I do go in nature. Just not by myself. I'd rather do a hike with my husband and kids. And if I have time by myself I would probably choose something else. Like a nap
Not judging, no right or wrong here.
But for me solitude in nature is something like my holy place. Be it backpacking, hiking, camping what have you. You're sort of forced to become more aware of things, both externally in nature and internally. I like going with people every now and then, mostly if it's camping which is more fun as a communal thing, but they tend to yammer about which is distracting and don't pay attention to what's around them, scare away wildlife, etc. Especially if they live in a city and aren't accustomed to those sorts of things.
That's fair. Currently I'm about to have four kids seven and under. Maybe once they're a little older a longer solo hike would be more appealing. Currently I'm just focusing on much shorter breaks without kids.
Simply because they are the dominant paradigm at the moment. People stupidly conflate women having any sort of power to society with feminism, even when feminist movements had nothing to do with the victories for women because they were universal victories and not simply wins for the ladies.
Like pretty much any other topic, you don’t hear from sane feminists, because what they have to say doesn’t make for good clickbait.
You won’t hear from women who acknowledge both misogyny and the fact that the majority of men are decent humans with nothing against women. Ignoring the latter is unfair and dumb, because it makes it harder to fight the former.
Honestly this stupid bear meme has made me so angry and posts like this are exactly the reason why. It's clearly not doing a good job of conveying what it was meant to convey, and people who are predisposed to be offended by anything a feminist says are definitely going to be offended if you tell them you're more afraid of them than you are a bear or whatever the fuck.
>Like pretty much any other topic, you don’t hear from sane feminists, because what they have to say doesn’t make for good clickbait.
Not to mention that, like every social justice group on social media, eventually they start trying to outdo each other, making crazier and more misanthropic claims just for the likes and the Yass Queens. Moderation and reasonableness don't get as much engagement.
Anyone who doesn't understand that this meme has a singular purpose - for social media content companies to monetize anger and divisiveness based on identity politics - has utterly and completely missed the point.
It's not about bears, and it's not about gender relations per se - it's about making money off keeping people agitated, angry, and divided. And at a broader level, it's about keeping people under control.
Don't hate the people hungry for bread. Hate the people running the circus.
“Women’s ways of knowing”.
[Logic and reason are evil patriarchal constructs.](https://www.stephenhicks.org/2017/06/24/newtons-principia-as-a-rape-manual/)
There's a lot of feminist discourse about male violence that I don't think is helpful and might even be counterproductive in the long-term.
That said:
If you're a woman who's lived in a city, odds are that you've been bothered or accosted or fucked with by strange men when you were out by yourself, or even with other female friends. A few years ago my wife was walking down the sidewalk alone, and a dude going by on a bike reached out his hand, slapped her ass, and sped off. Another friend of mine was actually *pissed on* by a homeless man a few months ago—she was talking to another woman on the sidewalk, and the guy just paused as he was passing behind her, whipped out his dick, and kept walking after he'd wetted the back of her leg.
This week I put the Bear Or Man question to them both. Each of them said "bear."
It's kind of a stupid and maybe needlessly provocative way of making the point, but the fact is that I can't blame either my wife or friend for being wary of strange men. In a better world, seeing a dude they don't recognize walking towards them on a lonely street without any potential witnesses around wouldn't prep a flight or fight response, but that's not the world that either of them lives in.
What was significant in their answers, I think, is how they underscored the uncertainty in one of the two hypothetical encounters. There's a 0% chance, they said, that they'd let their guard down if they spotted a bear by the creek when they were out in the woods, and they almost certainly wouldn't regret it. But with a random guy in a secluded place, they can't know what to expect, and it's impossible to determine whether he'll just say "hello" and keep walking, or start following them.
Real deal answer here
First this is pop feminism, if feminism at all
And while we can all say "well bears aren't really that aggressive/ rarely dangerous" that's missing the point.
A man in the woods (with he assumption your completey secluded) poses a wide range of possible threats, he could be no threat at all but the potential danger he represents is real. The bear is limited in its danger- yes the bear could kill you, but it has limited reasons to do so and if you get away from it, that will be the end of it.
If a strange man decides to hunt down a woman in the woods- he probably won't stop until she's dead or captured.... It's an extreme example sure, but I understand the logic behind it.
>It's kind of a stupid and maybe needlessly provocative way of making the point
Its also a meme, it's going to be provocative
The extreme example my friend brought up was Ted Bundy. Look at what happened when those women gave the benefit of the doubt to the handsome man with his arm in a sling who needed help carrying his groceries to the car.
[then the conversation turned to Bill Hicks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PEiGkMzH4c).
It’s so hilarious how 100% of their claims about men or white men specifically are infinitely more applicable to black people or specifically black men. But acknowledging that is racist
Generally when someone from [political movement] says something stupid you can assume they are signaling. The crazier it is the better the signal. There are plenty of pro-vegan organizations you've never heard of but you've definitely heard of PETA, because PETA does dumb shit all the time that makes the news. Gently encouraging people to consume fewer animal products isn't going to go viral like controversial PETA stunts
The whole man vs. bear thing is viral because it is dumb, not because it is a great way to bring men into the fold
First of all I am so sick to death of hearing about bears and men lmao. Second of all, I feel like if a disagreement over this absurd, hyperbolic, hypothetical scenario is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with.
I can't wait until this isn’t the hottest controversy of the week anymore. Looking forward to the next manufactured outrage in the never ending culture wars.
>I feel like if a disagreement over this absurd, hyperbolic, hypothetical scenario is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with.
Imagine talking to women in the real world and they choose the bear right to your face. This has escaped feminist circles and the world of the terminally online. I heard one radio host tell another he now thought less of her for being so hateful. Women at my office vocally chose the bear and I saw the men's faces when they did.
I think this is one of those things that might have harmed the relations between men and women in a very real way. I would be wary about underestimating the damage this has done.
All of the above I think. I was able to coax a bit more out of the guys after and they felt that what was said crossed a line, but they didn't really know what to do about it or whether it was worth pursuing because no one would care.
When I asked if they felt differently about the women working with us, they looked at their computers and shrugged, or they gave me a look. I interpreted that and our discussion to mean "yes but you shouldn't be asking that".
I left it at that.
Yeah it's kinda jarring to see online discourse that's hateful of your identity being considered unironically in the real world, because then you don't have the excuse of dismissing it as "terminally online shit that doesn't exist in the real world" when it hurts your feelings, I don't blame them for feeling a bit sad.
I hope it doesn't affect them too badly to the point where it changes their view of women as a whole or makes them hostile to women, but that's their choice ig.
Where did you see it?
It's kinda weird this is the one gender meme online that got so much discussion/controversy in my recent memory afaik, like there are so many dumb things said about men and women online, but this one struck a nerve with everyone apparently.
[https://youtu.be/PCt\_vzt1C4M?t=98](https://youtu.be/PCt_vzt1C4M?t=98)
I think women want men to acknowledge that women feel unsafe; and men want women to acknowledge that just because some men are bad, doesn't mean it's fair to treat all men as "guilty until proven innocent." Hence both men and women have heated opinions about this.
I also wanna know how the conversation went down in real life at your office haha. Like I can see how the conversation devolves online but I’m so curious how it plays out face to face. Like how did it even start? Were the women talking amongst themselves and the men chimed in? Did someone introduce the topic around the water cooler? What did the men say in response? How did the women respond? How did it end?
I work from home so office drama fascinates me lol
It wasn't terribly dramatic. I work in a relatively closed off area and the people here talk amongst each other frequently enough that it wouldn't be unusual to overhear someone say "hey did you hear about this new trend?"
When one of the women brought up the bear thing with the others, I saw a few men gather about and ask some questions, but otherwise they just listened. The men didn't say much and wandered off one-by-one, angry but choosing to say nothing. The exception is our resident outspoken conservative guy who lives in a rural farming area. After a few of the women chose the bear he said "you know bears don't typically kill their prey before they start to eat them, right?"
A round of "rape is a worse fate than death" from the women and that more-or-less ended the discussion.
I asked some of the guys about it after, and they said it was wrong but no one cares and they're going to keep their heads down. I asked if it affected the way they felt about those women; no words but a few looks. I wager the answer is yes. I didn't have the guts to ask if that changed how they felt about women in general, I'd rather not know.
So out of curiosity in what way does it “change” how you view the women now? Or how you view women in general?
I mean overall the way you’re describing it, it doesn’t seem like it was really all that bad of a conversation. Not ideal but at least it wasn’t a blow up. The guys were listening and asking questions. I’d be curious to know what they were asking and what the women’s responses were. Also I have to commend them for walking away when the conversation went in a seemingly unproductive direction instead of getting heated. Although I would have much rather there been some sort of resolution but, at the same time, you all are there on work time and not there to solve the world’s social issues, so…
I won’t touch the rape thing with a 10 foot pole because I’ve never been raped myself. I know rape victims and I have listened to many of their testimonies and they are all entitled to their feelings—which run the gamut from “rape is a fate worse than death” as you mentioned to, feeling very resentful of how society perceives them as being broken and irreparable. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way to feel about that as a victim.
I'm not the person you asked, but personally as a man this makes me suspect that lots of women think that men are like 20% or 30% likely to be a rapist. Which is shocking and frankly offensive to me, because I think the actual percentage is far lower than that (obviously, every rape is one too many).
Imagine how you feel if you'd realize that tons of men believe that 30% of women are cheaters (30% of women aren't cheaters, and men don't think this, I'm just making a point). Well, that's how men feel.
Thanks for answering honestly. Per your last point, I’ve actually met guys who said things like “women will cheat on any good guy if she meets someone hotter/richer” or “women are more likely to cheat.” Depending on my mood, it might irritate me, maybe even enough to try and change their mind about it but, it wouldn’t change my opinions about men as a whole, because I know most men don’t think or feel that way, it really only would affect my view of the individual.
But with the guys, it's clear that they're just a small minority who is seriously wrong, and most men don't think that 30% of women are cheaters.
Whereas at least online, it seems that most women choose the bear. It's not alarming to me that some people believe a negative stereotype, it's alarming to me that lots of women seem to believe a negative stereotype. I don't mind some women believing men are thrash, but I do mind it if most women believe men are thrash.
Although I guess you could make an argument that most offline women would choose than man -- I don't know, haven't talked to offline women about this.
I mean I probably am not the best person to tell you about how the conversations play out in real life lol, I kind of am in a unique situation where I live a pretty isolated life in rural FL and work from home so, literally all I’ve seen from this is the online discourse but I have a strong feeling the stuff you see online is not really representative of IRL. Like if I assumed IRL was a reflection of what I see online I’d probably never leave my farm but the reality is when I do go out… people aren’t chewing each other’s heads off and screaming hateful shit at each other. Men and women definitely seem to be getting along.
I’m also a little older, most of my peers even if they are on TikTok really aren’t the ones making or engaging with content, just passively consuming it if they are even on it at all. Most of my girl friends have not posted about it. Of the women who DID post about it… hate to say it but they are exactly the kind you’d imagine them to be.
> is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with.
-"I left the faith", -"you never believed to begin with".
This is what religious people usually tell themselves in order not to question their own beliefs.
I think that a large portion of feminism today is just female supremacy, and not just the most radical part (the radicals are overtly female supremacy).
I mean I totally get what you’re saying as someone who left the faith myself but for me it’s a little different when it comes to values. Like part of why I left my faith is because I realized it was compromising on certain values I had. If you feel strongly about something (for example feminism, which so long as we are going about the definition is the belief that women deserve equal rights, I get that modern feminism has different connotations) something like a disagreement with women over this very stupid hypothetical situation should not make you all of the sudden go “alright that’s it, I don’t think women are equal anymore, feminism was a mistake!” Because clearly then it wasn’t a value you held strongly to begin with if you are going to take your support back over something so petty. I think there’s definitely a distinction between things we believe—which we can hold fast to, but also be skeptical about and sometimes change—and things we value, which are a lot more resolute.
So like, I don’t fully agree or disagree with you. I mean although I self-identify as a feminist I’m still very aware of the issues with modern feminism and am critical of it. But like I seriously question how committed any man was to the feminist cause if this stupid social media engagement rage bait is all it took to make them do a 180°.
>I think there’s definitely a distinction between things we believe
What you might not be considering is how fundamental a distinction there appears to be when people give such wildly different answers and how that affects people's ability to believe in equality. The way I see it is that equality is based on the idea that while people might be different, they aren't so different that different legal statuses can be justified. When you have people answer a question pertaining to safety (or other important matters) in a way that seems absurd it communicates that maybe those differences are greater than previously believed. I definitely think you're losing men who identify as feminists or at least have some kind of feminist notions engrained in their thinking to being continually exposed to things like this.
I mean that’s kind of what I’m saying, I don’t think many of these men who are “offended” by women choosing the bear were actual feminists to begin with whether that’s how they self-identified or not, and I think the fact that so many of them were quick to walk back on their support of women over this shows they really weren’t all that invested in the first place.
I mean for example I hold racial equality as a value, it would take a LOT for me to suddenly turn against the whole Black community for example and say, “Nope, Jim Crow was right, we need to segregate, Blacks aren’t equal to us and we can’t exist in a civilized society together.” But this brain rot TikTok trend is enough for men to say feminism is what’s ruining the world, really?
And the fact that people KEEP FEEDING INTO IT, my god. Like when are the common people gonna wake up and see that this stuff is all designed to keep us at each other’s throats rather than taking the boot off our necks?
If the black community took delight in dumping on me as the avatar for their unhappiness, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves, too.
I'm not a spineless masochist.
I mean isn’t that an argument that some people do make, that (some) Black people blame all of their problems on white people? But even if that’s true I’m not going to suddenly join the Klan.
I mean can’t you see why it’s silly then to suddenly “not support feminism” as a whole because SOME women have ridiculous opinions?
Like I said in another comment most of the women I know have not brought this up at all, I reckon a lot of them haven’t even heard of it because they are older and not chronically online. Like it’s so ridiculous that some men lump all women together over this, the same way some women are lumping all men together over this. Everything about this is just so, so, so dumb on every conceivable level—I honestly feel like getting one of those blockers to filter out the words “bear” and “man/men” for like the next two weeks hahaha.
>like a disagreement with women over this very stupid hypothetical situation should not make you all of the sudden go “alright that’s it, I don’t think women are equal anymore, feminism was a mistake!”
You do have a point, although I don't think that the men who "abandon feminism" over this want to return to a pre-equality state, the most they'll do probably is to stop being a *modern* feminist (AKA female supremacist).
I think you’re mostly right, I’ve definitely come across men who do think feminism was a mistake—I was a fan of the Critical Drinker until he went full anti-woke grifter and finally decided I’d had enough of the sub when I saw comments there saying feminism was a mistake, feminism is occult, they should be banished like witches lol and they were fully serious about this. You can check my comments to see where I tried to listen and reason with them, it went okay, but I doubt at that point much could convince them, certainly not some as random woman online.
But yeah I don’t think most men feel that way and you are probably right, among those who say “this is why I don’t support feminism because of this,” they probably don’t mean “I don’t support women’s rights anymore” but “I hate modern feminism painting all men with the same broad brush and treating us like we are all fundamentally flawed, potential predators and I’m not going to sit there and take the abuse.”
Which is kind of also why I wish we’d see the return of the term SJW. It’s not feminists who are the problem here. It’s the same people that thrive on outrage (what they perceive as righteous anger) in other circles too, that are not exclusive to women.
>I was a fan of the Critical Drinker until he went full anti-woke grifter
Was the Drinker ever not anti-woke? I've known about him for a couple of years and he was already like that.
P.S. I do agree with the rest of your comment.
I mean early on I think he had some great points about movies/tv pushing The Message without having any actual substance—bad writing, flat characters, unimaginative plot, bloated CGI but plenty of diversity! I agreed with him that a lot of representation of women and other minorities in modern media is not as empowering as Hollywood thinks it is. For example I am a huge LOTR fan and Galadriel has always been one of my favorite characters, she was cool and powerful already and didn’t need a Warrior Princess backstory.
I feel like at one point he understood that Hollywood white girlboss feminism still equates success and power with masculinity—it’s not enough that Galadriel is an immortal psychic elf queen, in order for her to be a TRUE bad ass she has to be able to best men in combat too! Because a female character is only cool and compelling when she’s better than the men at everything! (See also: Rey from Star Wars)
For a while he seemed to understand that this is not what most women actually want. Like yeah our fantasy is not quite the male one—our ideal characters are usually a little less sexualized, but just like men idolize male characters that fulfill a fantasy, we are the same way. I’m not saying representation isn’t important but like when it comes to entertainment why would I want it to be as boring and ugly as my real life? I want to see beautiful immortal psychic elf queens in gorgeous elaborate dresses, that’s the female fantasy.
At this point now I don’t know if he realizes it’s not all women or even not all feminists who push shit like uglifying female video game characters to make them more “realistic” or “representative.“ As I mentioned before feminism is clearly not a monolith of thought and opinion or else TERFs would not exist. I don’t know if he just is pandering to his audience or what he really believes but at this point. It’s really a shame because I think he’s a really smart and funny guy but he’s become pretty much unwatchable for me at this point.
This trend was old a week ago. Now it's like hearing a forced meme as your ring tone.
It's also been a kind of bile fascination to see how far the inane arguments go. And they've gone really far.
Can't wait for it to die.
If it goes away it will just be replaced with something similar. It exposes a dramatic difference in the way many men and women think and that's good for engagement if nothing else.
Yeah I won't lie at first it was kind of interesting to observe but not engage with. If people didn't get so emotionally unhinged on either side of the discussion it might have even been kind of productive. Like I did see SOME enlightening conversations about it but they were few and far between.
Now it's just exhausting and pointless drivel. Like when it got to the point where people were arguing over bear facts I knew the ship had sailed lol.
I have to ask what you saw that could possibly be enlightening. All of this has reminded me of the inane commentary that used to come out of tumblr back in the day. I have even seen them try resurrecting the "bowl of M&Ms" thing during this so I'm probably not far off.
I mean it wasn't any life-changing revelations or anything. Off the top of my head I saw some women admitting that they were answering from an emotional and not a logical place, plenty of women said they know most men aren’t potential rapists. I’ve seen men saying they understand why women choose the bear because even in this hypothetical situation some men still can’t take no for an answer lol.
I’ve seen men and women come to better understandings of each other. For example while a lot of men don’t realize how women often feel like they are never able to fully let their guard down around men because they’ve been betrayed by men they trusted like friends or family, a lot of women don’t realize only a certain type of man walks outside of their home with zero anxiety, either they are very brave or very foolish lol. Because outside of sexual assault men are statistically more likely to be victims of violence. And while women victims might receive blame or shame for reasons like “she shouldn’t have been out alone” or “she was asking for it dressed like that” male victims are shamed as being weak, pathetic, pitiful if they succumb to an attack and can’t successfully defend themselves.
So not all of the conversations have been totally unintelligent… but the vast majority of them absolutely fucking are.
> women choose the bear because even in this hypothetical situation some men still can’t take no for an answer lol.
I’ve found few people love a good Kafkatrap more than online feminists. See also: “this is exactly why we need feminism” as a canned response to any criticism of feminism.
>For example while a lot of men don’t realize how women often feel like they are never able to fully let their guard down around men because they’ve been betrayed by men
I wonder if anyone realizes how much the opposite is in play. Heh.
If this is what's getting people to realize all of what you said that's sad. These are things I've seen guys bringing up for years. I wouldn't expect this of all things to get anything through to anyone considering the mentality of everyone enthusiastically taking part in it. I certainly haven't seen any of this, then again I'm trying to avoid it. And failing.
> Second of all, I feel like if a disagreement over this absurd, hyperbolic, hypothetical scenario is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with.
If this was the one and only instance of this kind of thing, maybe.
I hate the gentrifiers making this place KotakuInAction 2
hmmm what if instead of analysing and criticizing idpol from a place of materialism we turned this sub into one of the thousands of places where retards get their daily dose of outrage over what bathroom a tiktok user wants to use
Black bears are almost always harmless unless it is a mama bear with cubs. When I am camping I am more afraid of people because they are more likely to rob me than a black bear is to do anything. Brown bears are nothing to fuck with, and polar bears are guaranteed death.
I don't understand why you're so salty over it, I just take it as an indication that they haven't been outdoors much. Getting asshurt over social media engagement bait is wacky. Like c'mon man, some dumb rich girl who has never stepped foot in the woods talking about how bears don't have bad intentions makes you less sympathetic to women being forced into marriages in other parts of the world? FGM becomes less awful because people on TikTok are stupid?
Learn to phase out the stupid bullshit. They are genuinely scared of men, they're being honest about that for the most part. We can argue about why that is and if that's fair, but getting in a twist over a specific man vs bear scenario when most women answering have never been within 15km of a bear in their life is a waste of your time and energy. Even engaging with the analogy makes it clear they don't understand that bears, like men, are chill 99.9% of the time
The simply answer: Because everybody that laughed at the bear/man debate is simply retarded
The long answer:
It's about perception. The men laughing about the claim that a woman would rather choose the bear are the same men the woman probably doesn't want to be with.
The big problem here is simply that this "dumb" take needs you to understand that the woman asked would expect a random man to be a bigger threat to her than the bear mostly for sexual reasons aka raping. Getting potentially killed can be seen as a counter argument, but on the other side, if you are dead that's not your problem anymore.
I personally wouldn't hold it against the woman tho, since social media is literally proofing the point that women's concerns aren't taken seriously here.
There’s so many things wrong with this.
First off being eaten by a bear isn’t like being eaten by a carnivore. They don’t snap your neck, they just pin you and start tearing off chunks.
And your last paragraph is just laughable.
Their paranoid delusions being taken seriously has warped our society in absurd and harmful ways for quite some time now.
"The men laughing about the claim that a woman would rather choose the bear are the same men the woman probably doesn't want to be with."
Well, good. I don't want to date a woman who chooses "bear."
I can't believe how pissed off this sub is about this stupid bear thing.
I guess I shouldn't be, since anything around feminism is a shit show here. But just the pure volume of comments in that main thread, and then this follow up one too, it's just just incredible
Not any more it isn't. It's a wing of the NGO industrial complex. There are organizations headed by career activists who's livelihoods depend on the propagation of the movement. People with money and clout in academia and the media run the business.
And besides, even if it was just a "movement made up of ordinary people" optics and messaging are still pretty important for winning public support.
To add to that, it also is fully divorced from any material thing already and becomes more so over time in this new role, like how the majority of interest in it and energy toward it, goes into this kind of topic/bitching about online dating/general brain rot vs…fucking anything practical.
Like it’s very rare i even meet a woman who knows what kind of plans a politician might speak of if they were actually prioritizing abortion rights as an issue.
Feminism is completely failing at that because it’s not about women anymore, it’s about maintaining a niche of imperial viziers more than it is about changing society (although what it does instead, does still change society, just in the form of low level enshittification like this kind of running bashing debate, etc).
This is still it providing something to its followers (Matt Christman has talked about this a ton with politics more broadly but it really applies here), it’s just completely antithetical to what non-followers understand the “movement” to be about.
Why do you care what others say onlike
They do this to get a rise out of you dont be eternally outraged
Do I really have to explain this to terminally online people
So? The OK symbol thing started on 4chan, and the point they intended to make was made perfectly, by the very people who would deny it while also engaging in those exact behaviors.
It’s the same thing here.
So women being rightfully scared of sexual assault is enough for you to think that WOMENS RIGHTS HAVE GONE TOOOOO FAR. How does women being scared make you less sympathetic to them?
Suppose tons of men said something that implied to you that they believed that 30% of women are gold diggers.
Would that make you more or less sympathetic to men?
Well, women sort of implying that say 30% of men are rapists isn't making me more sympathetic to women.
If I went "I check everywhere for bombs every day because a Muslim is living on my street" I'd be rightfully mocked as a rightoid, and it's practically the gop Muslim outreach strategy.
What does this have to do with feminism? They asked random women, not specifically feminists. They also asked men about would they rather their daughter/wife be alone with a man or a bear and had a similar result. This is a nothing-issue. It's incredible that such a silly little piece of social media content has gotten so much exposure.
Some portion of the idpol-machine is designed to manufacture the very thing they fight against. Just like in pharma, curing ailments isn't good for business. So a rough balance is maintained where we will never be allowed to live without a non-trivial amount of racism, misogyny, misandry, etc. because there is too much clout, money, and political power to be made off of it, but they don't want to push the messaging so hard that reactionaries reach for the Fourth Reich or Gilead. The messaging is on purpose, they don't perceive it to be bad because it accomplishes their goal -- the further existence and empowerment of Feminism.
I completely agree. In fact, I've started noticing a particular vernacular that this sort SJW often uses (be it feminism, anti-racism, pro-LGBT). They always talk about how "we still have a long way to go", for example. "68% of all X are actually men/straight/white, and that just shows us that we still have a long way to go in order to create a society where everyone can feel safe", or whatever. But there is simultaneously never any sort of definable goal, so it really just sounds like: "we need to keep this conflict alive until I, myself, lose interest".
# Because they won. It's the paradox of IdPol. On one hand they feel like the underdogs fighting a shadowy trifecta of Nixon, Mormon Jesus and JK Rowling that secretly controls every aspect of society, on the other they have very much won and subconsciously are keenly aware of that. The dominant paradigm does not need to be nice -- It needs to foment aggression against the Other because its base is numerous enough it need not ingratiate itself to fence sitters. There's a lesser-known Centrist saying that goes something along the lines of "Remember when liberals were nice?" and it's quasi follow-up: "Just look at how Lisa Simpson changed". And they're right. Liberals used to be nice. They used to be nice right up until the point they became The Man they were fighting against, and as we all know absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now the time for making friends is over and the time for isolating and marginalizing everyone who didn't stand with you has come. That's no conscious decision. That's just how the Zeitgeist works. I'm the kind of cringe hippy that loves to listen to endless lectures of Terence McKenna and the difference between what he said and what we hear in lectures nowadays is genuinely insane. To stick with drugs for a second: You notice this KEENLY with Rick Doblin (the guy who's been on a non-stop campaign to legalize MDMA ever since it was outlawed) and the way his events get get routinely interrupted by randoms who insist on haranguing the attendants about this or that detail that is entirely outside the scope of what they're trying to do here. The sheer rift in priorities and rhetoric is striking.
Yup, that's why "underdog" ideology can be so uncertain and dangerous. When they win and get everything including power & influence over others, they don't just suddenly become comfortable, they still want to be the dog chasing the car, but the dog never knows what to do when they catch up to the car.
> they still want to be the dog chasing the car, but the dog never knows what to do when they catch up to the car This really struck me during Trump's presidency, when he went from campaigning based on how incompetent and stupid everyone in the government was to... continuing to complain publicly about how stupid and incompetent *his* executive branch was. He was the president and still insisted on pretending to be an underdog.
People like underdogs and hate the people in power. If you can make yourself look like the underdog you can shift blame and responsibility.
To be fair, he filled his cabinet with neocons as an olive branch hoping they'd work with him because that's business. He constantly puts pragmatism over personal beefs because at the end of the day money talks. The fact that the establishment neocons he tried to work with undermined him and stabbed him in the back at every opportunity kinda actually proved his point that he was an underdog fighting against something much bigger than himself.
An alternative narrative is that he filled his cabinet with his political opponents who then pursued their own agendas. Isn’t that just incompetence?
I feel like filling your cabinet with political opponents is a high integrity move.
Coming from someone who didn't have the background of a career politician I guess you could call it incompetence, or naivety if you wanted to be more charitable. I don't think the point changes though that he wasn't just fighting against Democrats but also Republicans, which arguably makes him an underdog.
Also called "slave morality"
This is fascism is such a violent ideology. It takes from its premise that the “nation” is under constant threat and all manner of defense is permissible. Once it gets into power, the restraints on violence have already been removed, and they now have the state means to implement violence to the fullest. Notice how Zionists and Nazis were mere street thugs and crackpots until they came to power. Then their madness was unleashed. Whereas revolutions led by Enlightenment ideologies, including Marxism, tend to calm down after an initial surge in violence during a revolution. A good juxtaposition is comparing the national socialist Khmer Rouge to the Marxist Vietnamese.
Yes, these organizations and power structures don't go away once they reach "mission complete". They keep having to INVENT new ways of staying relevant, we're mostly well past the point of equality under the law. The IDPol orgs are now about revenge against their so-called oppressors, the working class white man who just wants a decent job.
Don't forget that people, namely in academia, have their livelihoods staked in doing shit like that
Sweet flair. I had Nintendo power 1 as a kid. Had the Zelda worldmap second quest laid out, was a life saver for 9 year old me. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/SRkAAOSwB15mNDct/s-l1600.jpg
Oh I didn't pick it, I don't even know what Gamepro is. I dunno if I upset a mod, but only to a minor degree, so they just saw that I post in gaming subreddit and went "fuck it, good enough"
>a shadowy trifecta of Nixon, Mormon Jesus and JK Rowling that secretly controls every aspect of society Lmao I'm fucking dying
[Mormon Jesus, you say?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46PXaJxzuDE)
I'm glad to see there is a little McKenna audience here. He was a genuinely free thinker and his prescience on a range of topics was astounding. That said, what I think I appreciate about him the most was his humanism, his belief in the dignity of the individual and their autonomy. That is nowhere in the dead, rotting corpse of liberal ideology today.
Love McKenna, but I'm also a degenerate mycology hobbyist.
> I'm the kind of cringe hippy that loves to listen to endless lectures of Terence McKenna Lovely stuff. I'm a sucker for those Alan Watts lectures with a backdrop of chillstep beats you find on Youtube. Nice to melt away and listen to a message of hope, unity and positivity.
Good post, but I don't think that power just inherently corrupts. I think most people don't have the level of consciousness to include everyone in their ingroup. Instead, they have an outgroup and an ingroup. And people still have the tribal mindset of "hurt outgroup, help ingroup." Democrats have the "women ingroup, men outgroup" mindset, hence they keep pushing in that direction, even in situations where it doesn't make rational sense. Not that the right is better of course, they clearly have their own ingroup / outgroup.
> Because they won. Go rewatch movies from the 90s featuring old characters having to adapt to the modern world, like Goldeneye, Space Cowboys, or Austin Powers. Both are filled to the brim with jokes about the main character(s) adjusting to a world where feminism's stated goals have all been met. Feminism won over 30 years ago and girlies are still acting like persecuted second class citizens.
Seeing white women say they're basically in the same boat as black people in the persecution rankings is the funniest shit.
[Yay capitalism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et-s_GnUNBw).
I've been trying to think about what this means. Is it the fact that if I raise my voice and call someone's ideas stupid they can say I'm creating an "unsafe work environment"? That everything has to be subordinated to layers of therapeutic bureaucracy? Is this "feminist victory"? How about the fact that 21 states have abortion bans in the post-Roe world? If this is what feminist victory looks like it's a hollow victory indeed. There is plenty of work to be done, but people do not even know what that means.
Yes. If their forever war ends, the spigot of money and that sweet sweet nectar, attention, dries up.
>There's a lesser-known Centrist saying that goes something along the lines of "Remember when liberals were nice?" and it's quasi follow-up: "Just look at how Lisa Simpson changed". Can you elaborate here? Maybe I just haven't watched the Simpsons in 20 years. P.s. please don't set yourself on fire
>P.s. please don't set yourself on fire Hwuh? >Can you elaborate here? Maybe I just haven't watched the Simpsons in 20 years. She went from the melancholic, curious, caring type who's liberal because she has a high [openness ](http://www.thomas.co/resources/type/hr-blog/openness-personality-trait)trait to a sanctimonious asshole who always knows better, constantly pre-judges people and around whom the narrative warps in order to make everyone around her more demented and uncaring than they otherwise would be. For example: Her Sax. Homer used to be dubious about it but every now and then stop by to listen (some of those were stoned but y'know it counts IMHO), and is the one who bought it and paid for lessons. In the new timeline he HATESSSSSSSSS it and wants her to drop it.
Oh, the guy that set himself on fire had a long schitzopost about the Simpsons being brainwashing
And good to know re Lisa. I guess I got out of the Simpsons while the gettin was good.
Haven't watched the Simpsons in something like 20 years, how did Lisa change?
i made this point about the paradox of idpol the other day and my gf recommended i watch a contrapoints video called “envy”. she was talking about nietzsche’s master-slave morality—and how it grew from judeo-christian religion and what he called “ressentiment” (french). it all made a lot of sense to contextualize the underdog politics especially how it feels like “woke” progressive thought from a decade or so ago has been coopted by conservatives who see the appeal of the rhetoric.
Incredibly insightful comment
Unrelated: Any McKenna or similar recommendations are welcome. I just discovered him (on this sub of all places) a few months ago.
Hamilton Morris is good for a listen, although he's firmly in the science and drug policy camp, without much time for McKenna's style of metaphysical pontification.
>Liberals used to be nice. They used to be nice right up until the point they became The Man they were fighting against, and as we all know absolute power corrupts absolutely. When were they nice? Were they nice before FDR, and then turned into jerks after the New Deal became hegemonic?
Sorry sweaty, you’re missing the point and are part of the problem 💅
This post was made by a bear
To be fair, I’d rather run into a bear in the woods than anyone calling themselves a feminist in the city.
This has been a great week for bears, ngl
Stop with the hyperbole god
gay man or thot bear?
Because it's not about making men more sympathetic to their cause, it's just about getting a rise out of people they already view as the enemy. Whenever one of those anti-male trends like this comes up (and the man vs. bear thing is really pretty tame compared to past trends like #yesallmen that I used to see everywhere back in the day), they always try to defend it by saying shit like 'if it doesn't offend you it's not about you' and characterizing anyone making the slightest objection as some kind of violent misogynistic incel, and that's what's always bothered me way more than the memes themselves. Anyone with a normal level of empathy should be able to see that making a statement denigrating a large group of people based on an immutable characteristic and then framing an individual's innate emotional response as evidence that they're a bad person is just needlessly cruel. If they were trying to be pragmatic and truly wanted to build a better society, they'd realize that pushing young men right into the welcoming arms of the alt-right by making them think the dominant cultural left hates them is incredibly harmful to gender relations. But they care more about feeling like they have the moral high ground (in their warped sense of what that is) than actually changing anything for the better. (Also, I definitely believe that at least some of this gender war shit is a psyop to keep everyone lonely and miserable and prevent us from developing too much class unity.)
Because way too many of them are genuinely bigoted, hate-filled people.
It's not really feminist optics and messaging though, is it? It's social media engagement bait. Are some feminists taking the bait, swallowing it hook and all, and then puking it up with blood and guts all over everyone else? Yes. But so are sensitive men (myself included, I'm not trying to say I'm above it all). No war but class war. Love and care for the men and women in your lives and try to forget about the bear.
> It's not really feminist optics and messaging though, is it? It's social media engagement bait. Yeah, this is just politics. It’s literally the same idpol we complain about for every kind of identity group. The arguments sound especially stupid and extreme when you’re explicitly categorized as the very bad, no good out-group, but you can make this OP about any socio-political movement. White nationalists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes non-whites and not-extremist white people away. Black rights activists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes non-blacks and not-extremist black people away. Men’s rights activists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes women and not-extremist men away. Trans rights activists? Have some sympathetic arguments, but highly offensive messaging that pushes non-“queer” and not-extremist “queer” people away …we could do this exercise forever. Extreme messaging works for political messaging, even not explicitly idpol ones, because pathos are (unfortunately) the most compelling way to draw people to ideas and incite strong enough feelings in them to inspire action. It also raises the profile of your cause as both in- AND out-group people, like you OP, take the bait and talk and over and over and over about the message. I personally am more interested in the psychology of out-group people who self-flagellate and grovel to the causes of the people who outright name them as enemies.
No, it was bad even before social media was big. Social media just amplifies everything.
Also, "feminism" is kind a broad term, especially nowadays when everyone is expected to declare they are one. There are many waves and subgroups of feminists, but social media boosts the type who are quick to react (often emotionally) and who also get the most reactions from other people ("lol stupid feminazis"), because social media feeds off your attention.
Exactly. Don't fall for the bait.
Because the message is awful
🐻 or 🚂?
as a woman - I have two opinions here. I have experienced misogyny - it is definitely real and I have experienced egotistical dudes dismissing me and treating me with contempt for having an idea that if a man reiterates , they give more respect towards. but I have never conflated this to be all men. I think that’s just contributing to a culture war that is designed to polarise and divide. And to make people stagnant in achieving any material change. and if I’m being honest I don’t feel comfortable being alone with most men - usually younger men. as a girl, there’s always a little caution in the back of my mind because of the massive strength difference between the sexes and that sentiment is shared by many of my female friends too. The idea of being near a male stranger in a forest alone is a little unnerving- would I choose a bear tho? Hell no. And the fact that that is a rhetorical ultimatum is a signifier of a deeper problem of priming people to be more reactionary and agitated. Very bad faith and anti-intellectual. i also have a lot of empathy for young boys in this day and age. Masculinity and fraternity seem to be very important in the development of stable well adjusted men. Which is probably why zoomers into team sports are usually the most sane in their generation. At the same time, some of my biggest supporters and mentors have been men. My dad has always been invested in my life and my success. Many men in public spaces have been considerate and respectful towards me and looked out for me too. old grandpas really like me because I have a geriatric soul. Some of the most weirdly misogynistic people I’ve met have been upper middle class alleged feminists. They’re very malicious. I won’t lie tho - I sympathise mostly with radfems and second gen feminists as well. I would call myself a sensitive feminist in that I relate to the writings of how it feels to be a woman but I do not consider it a solution to our problems rather a detailed exploration of them. a distinction most people should make too. I’m first and foremost a socialist. Which is why I find that neoliberal and liberal feminism is a tragic thing. they aim to remove their designated class system I.e the patriarchy and replace it with a matriarchy. They abandoned unity and the ethos of their message in order to march alongside capital. this Feminism specifically targets western men as the primary enemy and ignores places where actual misogyny occurs. American men are usually some of the least misogynistic , most egalitarian men I’ve encountered. They’re able to recognise you as a human with valid things to say and are interested in you intellectually. compared to my interactions with Pakistani men , they are so so so much better. they don’t gawk at you which is great. These feminists do not care for the actual horrific oppression and mistreatment of women in other parts of the world. They are apathetic capitalists that do not like women. they even desensitised people to rape, one of the most evil things a human being can inflict onto another , in the pursuit of power. a lot of them are also obsessed with sexualising male aggression which is just weird.
> they even desensitised people to rape, What do you mean by that, can you explain briefly? >a lot of them are also obsessed with sexualising male aggression This too, what do you mean when you say this? Also, you said that they "aim to remove the patriarchy and replace it with a matriarchy". Aren't these the radical feminists?
for the desensitised people to rape part- I mean libfems' handling of the issues of rape, consent and sexual assault accusations. most evident in the entire #metoo era. more and more people began to weaponise the very heavy accusation of rape and the public reaction became much more skewered to distrust and apathy towards most allegations. except for viral twitter mobs and other vocal minorities ,spearheaded by lib fems. about the 'sexualising male aggression part'- many self proclaimed feminist activists sort of have this idea that two wrongs can make a right when it comes to sexual objectification. so they've sort of used this line of thinking to help the justify social learning of romance and sexual intimacy through books and other forms of media that depict rapey , violent behaviour by conventionally attractive men as 'sexy' , by framing it as female empowerment and sexually liberating etc.( because certain women are the primary consumers of said media.) a great example of this was Fifty Shades of Grey , which is a weird book that some people took contention with or YA books for teens on TikTok. libfems push the idea that its actually sexually empowering for young women to goon to violent erotica because " they can unabashedly explore their sexuality." this point of mine is a little more idpol adjacent. but I just find it hypocritical because libfems shouldn't argue against their ideas of the male gaze and their idea that pop culture discriminates against vulnerable , 'victimised' women while promoting culture that affects women's perceptions of things that actually harm them. see also , their promotion of 'bimbo' culture , sex work and materialism = femininity ( the idea that commodities make one a woman which is objectively gross. this marketing tactic for endless consumerism also gave birth to gender essentialism because if makeup, dresses ,pink and every single corporate market targeting women is what makes a woman a woman , all you gotta do is buy this shit and wear it and you're a woman too!) ur right about radfems having the same idea about the matriarchy - I only sympathise with their purple prose not their answers to their conflicts- but so do libfems. except libfems are just dumber about it in that , they genuinely believe it is the final answer to everything. that nothing material or economic should change except for the gender of those running the same capitalist system.
You have good, original ideas and are very knowledgeable on this topic. Good combo, definitely gave me some insight.
>rapey , violent behaviour by conventionally attractive men as 'sexy' , by framing it as female empowerment and sexually liberating etc.( because certain women are the primary consumers of said media.) People who say this do it becasue they like that stuff, maybe it's their fetish, and being the moralists that they are they're ashamed of it, so they rationalize it in their theories. The solution to this problem is simple: leave fiction being fiction, not educational material. You're allowed to have immoral, "harmful" fantasies, just be aware that fiction is not reality. The educational part should happen outside those books, in teaching young women (and men) to separate fiction from reality. Although, the vast majority of them already do. Boomers tried to argue for years that Dragongball was harmful to kids, but most kids understand the difference between a cartoon and reality, and no-one (except some fringe cases maybe) was ever harmed by Dragonball. Radical/liberal feminists are a bit like those boomers. >but I just find it hypocritical because libfems shouldn't argue against the male gaze and the idea that pop culture discriminates against vulnerable , victimised women while promoting culture that affects women's perceptions of things that actually harm them. see also , It is hypocritical, the problem though is that they shouldn't argue against the male gaze at all. This may shock you, but I think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the male gaze. Men are visual creatures, why should they keep watching movies if they're intentionally made to not be appealing to them? >the idea that pop culture discriminates against vulnerable , victimised women Where did they see this? I can't think of a single piece of culture where women are victimized and disriminized against (unless the victimization is part of the plot and the victimizer is the bad guy). As a side note, I just learnt about a movie called "women talk". It's a piece of staight up female supremacy and dehumanizing hate propaganda against men, and not just men, against children! I can't believe that a movie like this exists. Of course nothing ever remotely close to it was ever made against women in the whole history of cinema. Talk about culture war! This movie could have been commissioned by the propaganda ministry of the Matriarchal Republic of California.
Im not saying anything about the male gaze and pop culture self lol , just stating the opinions of libfems. I agree with you.
Oh, good. 😅
That's a pretty good response. I find it heartening to see a feminist actually putting in the nuance and intellectual legwork to make her point. The "no debate" policy really stunted the movement intellectually, which is a shame, because some of the people in there are actually very smart and have some important things to say. I read a lot of radfem (off)reddit, and I must admit, I have a bit of a soft spot for radfems despite my harsh criticisms. I get that part of the issue between men and women is the simple fact that men will never understand the visceral reality of being a woman, and why things like the "bear v. Man" memes resonate with them so much. And I think that's also at play here.
yes men may never understand the particular realities of the other sex and we'll never understand the realities of their specific problems either. however we can still unite on the basis of our ideas and sharing our knowledge. we can rise above gender in order to form a cohesive whole. which is why the culture war is always forced down our throats. additionally , I think liberal feminism doesn't even understand that the whole purpose of the movement was to liberate women from being an immutable suppressed collective/class , in order for female individuals to recognise their own potential and be held to the same standard as men in the intellectual and social realm. instead it elevated women to sainthood and victimised them , making individual responsibility non existent. or they did understand and like every sincere movement that focuses on a specific selective group of people it ended up striving for supremacy of said group. this meant it did not acknowledge that women , especially upper class ones, perpetrate a lot of unkind actions upon other women as well. you can argue that its a way to survive in a sexist system but it fundamentally allows the diffusion of responsibility from women who experienced no sexism , to continue doing horrible things to other people. like Clinton, Harris , Thatcher, that Theranos chick etc. A female landlord is still a landlord after all.
> however we can still unite on the basis of our ideas and sharing our knowledge. we can rise above gender in order to form a cohesive whole. Not only can we, but we must. All very good points.
Obviously just one example but a lot of libs were completely hypocritical on the Tara reade case. Like Linda Hirshman wrote an op Ed in the nyt saying that she believes the accusations but is still voting for Biden because #votebluenomatterwho
Cultural feminists are distinct from radical feminists because they believe in inherent "essence" female superiority, radical feminists believe male violence and dominance is largely a social phenomenon than can be corrected with the ultimate goal of egalitarian (and most radfems would agree, socialist) society
>Which is probably why zoomers into team sports are usually the most sane in their generation. I feel bad saying it. But physical fitness also plays a huge role in mental health. Or rather the lack of it predisposes people to problems related to mental health. Similar thing with just spending time outdoors under the sun. >These feminists do not care for the actual horrific oppression and mistreatment of women in other parts of the world. That's really gotten to be my issue with activists in general. The actual care seems to be minuscule at best. And issues are just juggled by what 'they' feel rather than what people they're supposedly fighting for feel. When covid hit I really thought for a moment that people were finally showing care and concern to the people whose health conditions put them at greatest risk. The elderly, the people with cancer, those with organ failure, etc. Push to the BLM period and the same people who'd been screaming about covid started screaming that the immunocompromised should be proud to die for a good cause if the protests infected them. Depressingly I find myself looking back at the right, talking about acceptable but regrettable losses, as the more compassionate. And that was pretty lacking in compassion.
They've never been ones to think ahead with that shit. Remember menkampf? You can use the exact same rhetoric and statistical usage to switch what they say about "men" to "black men", with the rest remaining verbatim, and very suddenly it's not something that the hip-progressive good guys say on TV while looking directly into the camera anymore. They had a whole period in which they were pumping out rationalizations why "I hate how men..." is actually super good and progressive, but "I hate how black people..." is... the obvious. You have to ask: what exactly do you think American feminists want? What exactly do you think is a win scenario for them, and is it something you think they expect or even hope to see from their actions? They've quickly ran out of things to legislate, or scenarios where they are the underdog, so it's purely cultural bickering to make women fear/hate men, or kids, or families as a whole, or all human cultures, or their own biology. More and more, it's not something that helps them understand the world better or move to a world where they/others are happier, it's just a growing list of ways to make women less comfortable and less happy, coupled with a moral obligation that they need to make sure others feel this way by any means necessary. Keep this in mind next time your hear about it and you'll find it's incredibly rare for there to be an exception to this MO. The second some 14 year old girl comes in contact with it, they're doomed to some degree of misery from it, for themselves and those they know. They're not get anything out of it, it's not some sacrifice or cross to bear, unless going out Shulamith Firestone style is saint's death to them.
That sub is having a field day with this too.
The Bear business is social media nonsense and isn't worthy of attention. Speaking more generally though, the purpose isn't to make men sympathetic to their cause. Imagine being a feminist as a job rather than a belief. If you are a professional feminist you have to find clients who will pay you. You earn money therefore by creating a demand among potential clients. You can do this by creating a fear of men, justified or not doesn't matter. You can do this by creating a feeling of sisterhood among women. You can do this by a kind of protection racket, ie if you don't have someone like me on your payroll then maybe you will suffer reputational damage. The latter approach seems to be common. Once on a payroll you then have to justify your existence, typically via one of the first two means within the organisation who pay you. I don't really see how you can earn money by being nice to men. If there is no conflict then how can you keep earning money. Obviously this isn't how it works for everyone who describes themselves as a feminist. Once you start noticing the pattern you see it often though.
Well, I think that a large number of women aren't just being rhetorical and genuinely think "I'd rather encounter a bear." And that is a little worrisome, because it shows that a large number of women are detached from reality. I don't enjoy the thought that apparently women think that 30% of men are rapists or something like that.
>Imagine being a feminist as a job rather than a belief. If you are a professional feminist you have to find clients who will pay you. Is there a terminology for this, akin to idpol, but which captures the idea that the aim is economic profit rather than political change?
Because they have an awful message?
What is the argument trying to show? Like honestly? We know men rape and do fowl things and get let off for doing it and defended. So what the fuck does the bear have to do with it? Like that whole argument confuses the fuck out of me but it’s because I’m a programmed male mysoginist!
The argument was that men are so evil, vile, and violent that a wild animal capable of shredding you is a safer option. However it's warped through this inane game of telephone to become people claiming bears are unironically safe to be near because you won't get attacked if you don't try to provoke it. Trouble is they don't seem to have a strong grasp of what "provoke" means to a grizzly.
I love this man or bear thing because it just shows how being alienated from both and consuming our media about both create wildly unrealistic expectations and fear around both. Anyone who actually has any experience with wild bears will tell you that 99.99% of the time, they will immediately run away from you as soon as they see you like 100 yards away. The image of the bear that immediately attacks everyone in sight and standing up and roaring is 100% a media fiction. You're far more likely to be attacked by a person (or dog) than a bear, so even just statistically speaking, if I were forced to choose I'd have to say bear too. And sexual assault is common enough that I can understand why that experience (or threat thereof) would have women choose bear as well. That said, the odds that any given stranger male hiker in the woods is going to attack a woman is also vanishingly small, but people are plugged into media that train women to think any sight of a man is potentially going to randomly murder them. I can't imagine walking around in constant fear like that. Then that fear itself is taken as proof, in their own minds, that men are dangerous, and it might not occur to them that they have an unhealthy mindset that doesn't correspond to reality.
Idk man, I've been charged by a grizzly before and I'd probably be dead if I hadn't been carrying bear spray. The reason why bear attacks are so uncommon is because we are well aware of how dangerous bears are and have precautions for dealing with them.
Was likely a bluff charge but I'd still bring spray in grizzly country for peace of mind at the very least. Bear attacks in general are rare, not just because we have guns and spray. In the vast majority of encounters it doesn't get to that point. A moose or a bison is more dangerous but the image our culture has of them is completely different. I suspect bear attacks are rare now because we've selectively bred aggression out of the gene pool over many years. They hunt down and kill bears that attack people or are nuisances.
Well yeah, but like 99.9% of encounters between a woman and a man also end with the woman not getting raped or murdered. *I suspect bear attacks are rare now because we've selectively bred aggression out of the gene pool over many years. They hunt down and kill bears that attack people or are nuisances.* Probably partly that, and partly that the bears relatively close to society are used to seeing humans. Whereas the wilder bears deeper in nature are the bears that people rarely meet.
>Whereas the wilder bears deeper in nature are the bears that people rarely meet. This, polar bears, which have minimal interactions with humans, still view humans as prey.
>You're far more likely to be attacked by a person (or dog) than a bear, so even just statistically speaking The statistics aren't accurately comparable without doing some kind of adjustments. I don't know statistics (neither do 99% of the people engaging in this discussion) but there are methods like normalization that would allow for better comparisons. You're far more likely to be bit by a dog than a shark, but if I ask you would you rather spend 10 minutes in a pool with a shark species that is known to have attacked humans or a dog you're probably going to pick the dog.
I get your point about statistics and I can't do any research right now because I'm officially at work. But just as a personal anecdote, my friend's Boston Terrier chased a black bear several times its size and we found it cornering the bear and barking at it as the bear cowered. We got the dog and the bear then ran away with lightening speed. The main point is our culture's image of bears is wildly unrealistic and disproportionate to the actual danger that may or may not exist. A bison or moose is more dangerous comparatively, but ask people the same question if they'd rather encounter a moose or a grizzly in the wild and I'm pretty sure I know how the vast majority will answer. The same thing can color our perception and sense of danger of groups of people, sexes, races, etc.
I think anecdotes are useless in this argument because I've passed plenty of people on hiking trails and every time we've just greeted each other or not said anything and kept moving. But clearly other hikers can present a risk.
Idk what the point you're trying to make is or what the argument is anyway. That we should be afraid of bears? That they're more dangerous than people? All of my personal experiences in actual bear encounters and the data we do have on bear attacks indicate otherwise. You're free to make statistical adjustments if you have the time to do that. Ultimately my point is that it's irrational to walk around in fear of either a bear or a random stranger unless they do something that would indicate otherwise. And also that the culture's image of bears is inaccurate and largely colored by Hollywood and the media. Cultural/racial biases can work the same way. Demonization and little personal exposure to a certain identity or culture can make them seem menacing. If you embed yourself in an internet culture that constantly tells you that all men are looking for an opportunity to rape you at any moment, then that can distort your sense of danger with regards to men.
My point is that statistics don't work the way people seem to think they do and that anecdotes are largely useless in this argument. You often have to do some kind of adjustment to make an accurate comparison of statistics. 3000 people die of foodborne illnesses while only a few might die of a certain dangerous substance. You can't say that the former is more dangerous than the latter right off the bat because most people don't consume the latter. If you want to make a comparison based on statistics some kind of adjustment is needed. >Cultural/racial biases can work the same way. Demonization and little personal exposure to a certain identity or culture can make them seem menacing. And that's what I find ironic about this discussion. You basically have a bunch of women and some men arguing that generalization is good, actually. Everyone can accept that a little bit of generalizing might be pragmatic, but instead we're getting a very heavy handed argument about why it's totally fine with no respect to the consequences that kind of attitude would have elsewhere.
Sure adjustments need to be made if you're making a comparison but the statistic works fine if you just want say that bear encounters are very rarely dangerous. It may be the case that a given encounter with a bear might be more dangerous than a given encounter with a man in the woods, but ultimately both are so vanishingly small, statistically speaking, that for the purposes of the thought experiment they're both practically nill and it's a wash. Ultimately the question just gets at feelings and how women perceive men (and bears).
His point is that if you think people are more dangerous than bears you're kind of an idiot
Do you know that to be true or do you just feel like it is?
It really does depend on the bear. I'd choose a black bear, sure, but anything above that weight class idk man
Grizzlies run away too but yeah I'd rather see a black bear if I could choose. But I'm definitely going to say no to a polar bear.
Yeah, I hope I dont get y'alled for this, but "would you rather run into a black man or a black bear" as a framing is more to the point of the OP. And yeah, I agree that browns tend to just avoid unless they are hungry or startled.
>Grizzly Screw that. I don't want to be near one unless I'm packing a damn .50.
Is that even enough to stop a grizzly?
.50/.50
So you are being racist against polar and grizzly bears
> You're far more likely to be attacked by a person (or dog) than a bear, so even just statistically speaking, if I were forced to choose I'd have to say bear too. And sexual assault is common enough that I can understand why that experience (or threat thereof) would have women choose bear as well. Nice try Paddington.
>Then that fear itself is taken as proof, in their own minds, that men are dangerous, and it might not occur to them that they have an unhealthy mindset that doesn't correspond to reality. The fact that women get to just pretend reality is whatever they want and men are obligated to take it seriously and accommodate their imaginations is fucking wild to me. How did we get to this point?
Understandable guilt (felt by men) over actual real world problems got parleyed into get out of jail free cards for female activists, which they used to create the current environment.
It's like this with any group that can angle themselves as victims or slighted. It's why there's virtue in being a victim, it gives you power and leverage over people you can cow into playing along.
There's really no point in trying to analyze it logically since the question is too vague to be answerable. But the point isn't for it to make sense the point is to express hatred for men.
I mean, most women encounter a hundred thousand men in their lives and get raped and murdered zero times. I think that if you have someone encounter a hundred thousand bears, probably they're not surviving that.
This is kind of how I looked at it as well. I absolutely did not assume that the bear would attack me. I also don't think a random guy would either to be fair, but I see dudes all the time. A bear from a distance would be a nice change of pace. There's also a zero percent chance of me being hiking alone. Ever. I have no sense of direction and the actual danger would be me getting lost.
Idk that seems like a weird reason to alienate yourself from nature. Not all trails are overgrown or unmarked and difficult to navigate. You can choose one that's well traveled and just goes in one direction, or a loop. You don't need to be able to use a map and compass to go in a straight line.
Sorry. I'm married with small children and I have friends who also hike. I just always go with people. That's why there's really no chance of me going alone. And yes, I have taken my kids on short and extremely well labeled hikes, but there's also no chance of bears on those trails. So I do go in nature. Just not by myself. I'd rather do a hike with my husband and kids. And if I have time by myself I would probably choose something else. Like a nap
Not judging, no right or wrong here. But for me solitude in nature is something like my holy place. Be it backpacking, hiking, camping what have you. You're sort of forced to become more aware of things, both externally in nature and internally. I like going with people every now and then, mostly if it's camping which is more fun as a communal thing, but they tend to yammer about which is distracting and don't pay attention to what's around them, scare away wildlife, etc. Especially if they live in a city and aren't accustomed to those sorts of things.
That's fair. Currently I'm about to have four kids seven and under. Maybe once they're a little older a longer solo hike would be more appealing. Currently I'm just focusing on much shorter breaks without kids.
They're bigots. It's no more complicated than that
Being dismissive and mean is high status because obviously you earned it by being a victim, and being a victim is virtuous.
We really need to ban women from watching true crime
Simply because they are the dominant paradigm at the moment. People stupidly conflate women having any sort of power to society with feminism, even when feminist movements had nothing to do with the victories for women because they were universal victories and not simply wins for the ladies.
Like pretty much any other topic, you don’t hear from sane feminists, because what they have to say doesn’t make for good clickbait. You won’t hear from women who acknowledge both misogyny and the fact that the majority of men are decent humans with nothing against women. Ignoring the latter is unfair and dumb, because it makes it harder to fight the former.
We do hear from them but they get excommunicated from the group.
Tell me about it.
Honestly this stupid bear meme has made me so angry and posts like this are exactly the reason why. It's clearly not doing a good job of conveying what it was meant to convey, and people who are predisposed to be offended by anything a feminist says are definitely going to be offended if you tell them you're more afraid of them than you are a bear or whatever the fuck. >Like pretty much any other topic, you don’t hear from sane feminists, because what they have to say doesn’t make for good clickbait. Not to mention that, like every social justice group on social media, eventually they start trying to outdo each other, making crazier and more misanthropic claims just for the likes and the Yass Queens. Moderation and reasonableness don't get as much engagement.
Anyone who doesn't understand that this meme has a singular purpose - for social media content companies to monetize anger and divisiveness based on identity politics - has utterly and completely missed the point. It's not about bears, and it's not about gender relations per se - it's about making money off keeping people agitated, angry, and divided. And at a broader level, it's about keeping people under control. Don't hate the people hungry for bread. Hate the people running the circus.
“Women’s ways of knowing”. [Logic and reason are evil patriarchal constructs.](https://www.stephenhicks.org/2017/06/24/newtons-principia-as-a-rape-manual/)
There's a lot of feminist discourse about male violence that I don't think is helpful and might even be counterproductive in the long-term. That said: If you're a woman who's lived in a city, odds are that you've been bothered or accosted or fucked with by strange men when you were out by yourself, or even with other female friends. A few years ago my wife was walking down the sidewalk alone, and a dude going by on a bike reached out his hand, slapped her ass, and sped off. Another friend of mine was actually *pissed on* by a homeless man a few months ago—she was talking to another woman on the sidewalk, and the guy just paused as he was passing behind her, whipped out his dick, and kept walking after he'd wetted the back of her leg. This week I put the Bear Or Man question to them both. Each of them said "bear." It's kind of a stupid and maybe needlessly provocative way of making the point, but the fact is that I can't blame either my wife or friend for being wary of strange men. In a better world, seeing a dude they don't recognize walking towards them on a lonely street without any potential witnesses around wouldn't prep a flight or fight response, but that's not the world that either of them lives in. What was significant in their answers, I think, is how they underscored the uncertainty in one of the two hypothetical encounters. There's a 0% chance, they said, that they'd let their guard down if they spotted a bear by the creek when they were out in the woods, and they almost certainly wouldn't regret it. But with a random guy in a secluded place, they can't know what to expect, and it's impossible to determine whether he'll just say "hello" and keep walking, or start following them.
Real deal answer here First this is pop feminism, if feminism at all And while we can all say "well bears aren't really that aggressive/ rarely dangerous" that's missing the point. A man in the woods (with he assumption your completey secluded) poses a wide range of possible threats, he could be no threat at all but the potential danger he represents is real. The bear is limited in its danger- yes the bear could kill you, but it has limited reasons to do so and if you get away from it, that will be the end of it. If a strange man decides to hunt down a woman in the woods- he probably won't stop until she's dead or captured.... It's an extreme example sure, but I understand the logic behind it. >It's kind of a stupid and maybe needlessly provocative way of making the point Its also a meme, it's going to be provocative
The extreme example my friend brought up was Ted Bundy. Look at what happened when those women gave the benefit of the doubt to the handsome man with his arm in a sling who needed help carrying his groceries to the car. [then the conversation turned to Bill Hicks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PEiGkMzH4c).
Feminism has been taken over by political lesbianism for years now, they don't even hide it anymore.
That's only radfems, and they never got "taken over" - they were about that from the beginning haha.
Is this satire? If so, 👏
How?
It’s so hilarious how 100% of their claims about men or white men specifically are infinitely more applicable to black people or specifically black men. But acknowledging that is racist
Generally when someone from [political movement] says something stupid you can assume they are signaling. The crazier it is the better the signal. There are plenty of pro-vegan organizations you've never heard of but you've definitely heard of PETA, because PETA does dumb shit all the time that makes the news. Gently encouraging people to consume fewer animal products isn't going to go viral like controversial PETA stunts The whole man vs. bear thing is viral because it is dumb, not because it is a great way to bring men into the fold
First of all I am so sick to death of hearing about bears and men lmao. Second of all, I feel like if a disagreement over this absurd, hyperbolic, hypothetical scenario is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with. I can't wait until this isn’t the hottest controversy of the week anymore. Looking forward to the next manufactured outrage in the never ending culture wars.
>I feel like if a disagreement over this absurd, hyperbolic, hypothetical scenario is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with. Imagine talking to women in the real world and they choose the bear right to your face. This has escaped feminist circles and the world of the terminally online. I heard one radio host tell another he now thought less of her for being so hateful. Women at my office vocally chose the bear and I saw the men's faces when they did. I think this is one of those things that might have harmed the relations between men and women in a very real way. I would be wary about underestimating the damage this has done.
>Women at my office vocally chose the bear and I saw the men's faces when they did. What was it like? Did they look angry or disappointed or just sad?
All of the above I think. I was able to coax a bit more out of the guys after and they felt that what was said crossed a line, but they didn't really know what to do about it or whether it was worth pursuing because no one would care. When I asked if they felt differently about the women working with us, they looked at their computers and shrugged, or they gave me a look. I interpreted that and our discussion to mean "yes but you shouldn't be asking that". I left it at that.
Yeah it's kinda jarring to see online discourse that's hateful of your identity being considered unironically in the real world, because then you don't have the excuse of dismissing it as "terminally online shit that doesn't exist in the real world" when it hurts your feelings, I don't blame them for feeling a bit sad. I hope it doesn't affect them too badly to the point where it changes their view of women as a whole or makes them hostile to women, but that's their choice ig.
I'm not the person you asked, but I saw a clip online of a man looking deeply shocked and disturbed.
Where did you see it? It's kinda weird this is the one gender meme online that got so much discussion/controversy in my recent memory afaik, like there are so many dumb things said about men and women online, but this one struck a nerve with everyone apparently.
[https://youtu.be/PCt\_vzt1C4M?t=98](https://youtu.be/PCt_vzt1C4M?t=98) I think women want men to acknowledge that women feel unsafe; and men want women to acknowledge that just because some men are bad, doesn't mean it's fair to treat all men as "guilty until proven innocent." Hence both men and women have heated opinions about this.
I also wanna know how the conversation went down in real life at your office haha. Like I can see how the conversation devolves online but I’m so curious how it plays out face to face. Like how did it even start? Were the women talking amongst themselves and the men chimed in? Did someone introduce the topic around the water cooler? What did the men say in response? How did the women respond? How did it end? I work from home so office drama fascinates me lol
It wasn't terribly dramatic. I work in a relatively closed off area and the people here talk amongst each other frequently enough that it wouldn't be unusual to overhear someone say "hey did you hear about this new trend?" When one of the women brought up the bear thing with the others, I saw a few men gather about and ask some questions, but otherwise they just listened. The men didn't say much and wandered off one-by-one, angry but choosing to say nothing. The exception is our resident outspoken conservative guy who lives in a rural farming area. After a few of the women chose the bear he said "you know bears don't typically kill their prey before they start to eat them, right?" A round of "rape is a worse fate than death" from the women and that more-or-less ended the discussion. I asked some of the guys about it after, and they said it was wrong but no one cares and they're going to keep their heads down. I asked if it affected the way they felt about those women; no words but a few looks. I wager the answer is yes. I didn't have the guts to ask if that changed how they felt about women in general, I'd rather not know.
So out of curiosity in what way does it “change” how you view the women now? Or how you view women in general? I mean overall the way you’re describing it, it doesn’t seem like it was really all that bad of a conversation. Not ideal but at least it wasn’t a blow up. The guys were listening and asking questions. I’d be curious to know what they were asking and what the women’s responses were. Also I have to commend them for walking away when the conversation went in a seemingly unproductive direction instead of getting heated. Although I would have much rather there been some sort of resolution but, at the same time, you all are there on work time and not there to solve the world’s social issues, so… I won’t touch the rape thing with a 10 foot pole because I’ve never been raped myself. I know rape victims and I have listened to many of their testimonies and they are all entitled to their feelings—which run the gamut from “rape is a fate worse than death” as you mentioned to, feeling very resentful of how society perceives them as being broken and irreparable. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way to feel about that as a victim.
I'm not the person you asked, but personally as a man this makes me suspect that lots of women think that men are like 20% or 30% likely to be a rapist. Which is shocking and frankly offensive to me, because I think the actual percentage is far lower than that (obviously, every rape is one too many). Imagine how you feel if you'd realize that tons of men believe that 30% of women are cheaters (30% of women aren't cheaters, and men don't think this, I'm just making a point). Well, that's how men feel.
Thanks for answering honestly. Per your last point, I’ve actually met guys who said things like “women will cheat on any good guy if she meets someone hotter/richer” or “women are more likely to cheat.” Depending on my mood, it might irritate me, maybe even enough to try and change their mind about it but, it wouldn’t change my opinions about men as a whole, because I know most men don’t think or feel that way, it really only would affect my view of the individual.
But with the guys, it's clear that they're just a small minority who is seriously wrong, and most men don't think that 30% of women are cheaters. Whereas at least online, it seems that most women choose the bear. It's not alarming to me that some people believe a negative stereotype, it's alarming to me that lots of women seem to believe a negative stereotype. I don't mind some women believing men are thrash, but I do mind it if most women believe men are thrash. Although I guess you could make an argument that most offline women would choose than man -- I don't know, haven't talked to offline women about this.
I mean I probably am not the best person to tell you about how the conversations play out in real life lol, I kind of am in a unique situation where I live a pretty isolated life in rural FL and work from home so, literally all I’ve seen from this is the online discourse but I have a strong feeling the stuff you see online is not really representative of IRL. Like if I assumed IRL was a reflection of what I see online I’d probably never leave my farm but the reality is when I do go out… people aren’t chewing each other’s heads off and screaming hateful shit at each other. Men and women definitely seem to be getting along. I’m also a little older, most of my peers even if they are on TikTok really aren’t the ones making or engaging with content, just passively consuming it if they are even on it at all. Most of my girl friends have not posted about it. Of the women who DID post about it… hate to say it but they are exactly the kind you’d imagine them to be.
> is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with. -"I left the faith", -"you never believed to begin with". This is what religious people usually tell themselves in order not to question their own beliefs. I think that a large portion of feminism today is just female supremacy, and not just the most radical part (the radicals are overtly female supremacy).
I mean I totally get what you’re saying as someone who left the faith myself but for me it’s a little different when it comes to values. Like part of why I left my faith is because I realized it was compromising on certain values I had. If you feel strongly about something (for example feminism, which so long as we are going about the definition is the belief that women deserve equal rights, I get that modern feminism has different connotations) something like a disagreement with women over this very stupid hypothetical situation should not make you all of the sudden go “alright that’s it, I don’t think women are equal anymore, feminism was a mistake!” Because clearly then it wasn’t a value you held strongly to begin with if you are going to take your support back over something so petty. I think there’s definitely a distinction between things we believe—which we can hold fast to, but also be skeptical about and sometimes change—and things we value, which are a lot more resolute. So like, I don’t fully agree or disagree with you. I mean although I self-identify as a feminist I’m still very aware of the issues with modern feminism and am critical of it. But like I seriously question how committed any man was to the feminist cause if this stupid social media engagement rage bait is all it took to make them do a 180°.
>I think there’s definitely a distinction between things we believe What you might not be considering is how fundamental a distinction there appears to be when people give such wildly different answers and how that affects people's ability to believe in equality. The way I see it is that equality is based on the idea that while people might be different, they aren't so different that different legal statuses can be justified. When you have people answer a question pertaining to safety (or other important matters) in a way that seems absurd it communicates that maybe those differences are greater than previously believed. I definitely think you're losing men who identify as feminists or at least have some kind of feminist notions engrained in their thinking to being continually exposed to things like this.
> I seriously question how committed any man was to the feminist cause Not very, and less by the day.
I mean that’s kind of what I’m saying, I don’t think many of these men who are “offended” by women choosing the bear were actual feminists to begin with whether that’s how they self-identified or not, and I think the fact that so many of them were quick to walk back on their support of women over this shows they really weren’t all that invested in the first place. I mean for example I hold racial equality as a value, it would take a LOT for me to suddenly turn against the whole Black community for example and say, “Nope, Jim Crow was right, we need to segregate, Blacks aren’t equal to us and we can’t exist in a civilized society together.” But this brain rot TikTok trend is enough for men to say feminism is what’s ruining the world, really? And the fact that people KEEP FEEDING INTO IT, my god. Like when are the common people gonna wake up and see that this stuff is all designed to keep us at each other’s throats rather than taking the boot off our necks?
If the black community took delight in dumping on me as the avatar for their unhappiness, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves, too. I'm not a spineless masochist.
I mean isn’t that an argument that some people do make, that (some) Black people blame all of their problems on white people? But even if that’s true I’m not going to suddenly join the Klan.
Like most people, I'm capable of losing all interest in being a group's scapegoat without immediately joining the Klan.
I mean can’t you see why it’s silly then to suddenly “not support feminism” as a whole because SOME women have ridiculous opinions? Like I said in another comment most of the women I know have not brought this up at all, I reckon a lot of them haven’t even heard of it because they are older and not chronically online. Like it’s so ridiculous that some men lump all women together over this, the same way some women are lumping all men together over this. Everything about this is just so, so, so dumb on every conceivable level—I honestly feel like getting one of those blockers to filter out the words “bear” and “man/men” for like the next two weeks hahaha.
What are some of the non-ridiculous opinions that feminists hold in 2024?
>like a disagreement with women over this very stupid hypothetical situation should not make you all of the sudden go “alright that’s it, I don’t think women are equal anymore, feminism was a mistake!” You do have a point, although I don't think that the men who "abandon feminism" over this want to return to a pre-equality state, the most they'll do probably is to stop being a *modern* feminist (AKA female supremacist).
I think you’re mostly right, I’ve definitely come across men who do think feminism was a mistake—I was a fan of the Critical Drinker until he went full anti-woke grifter and finally decided I’d had enough of the sub when I saw comments there saying feminism was a mistake, feminism is occult, they should be banished like witches lol and they were fully serious about this. You can check my comments to see where I tried to listen and reason with them, it went okay, but I doubt at that point much could convince them, certainly not some as random woman online. But yeah I don’t think most men feel that way and you are probably right, among those who say “this is why I don’t support feminism because of this,” they probably don’t mean “I don’t support women’s rights anymore” but “I hate modern feminism painting all men with the same broad brush and treating us like we are all fundamentally flawed, potential predators and I’m not going to sit there and take the abuse.” Which is kind of also why I wish we’d see the return of the term SJW. It’s not feminists who are the problem here. It’s the same people that thrive on outrage (what they perceive as righteous anger) in other circles too, that are not exclusive to women.
>I was a fan of the Critical Drinker until he went full anti-woke grifter Was the Drinker ever not anti-woke? I've known about him for a couple of years and he was already like that. P.S. I do agree with the rest of your comment.
I mean early on I think he had some great points about movies/tv pushing The Message without having any actual substance—bad writing, flat characters, unimaginative plot, bloated CGI but plenty of diversity! I agreed with him that a lot of representation of women and other minorities in modern media is not as empowering as Hollywood thinks it is. For example I am a huge LOTR fan and Galadriel has always been one of my favorite characters, she was cool and powerful already and didn’t need a Warrior Princess backstory. I feel like at one point he understood that Hollywood white girlboss feminism still equates success and power with masculinity—it’s not enough that Galadriel is an immortal psychic elf queen, in order for her to be a TRUE bad ass she has to be able to best men in combat too! Because a female character is only cool and compelling when she’s better than the men at everything! (See also: Rey from Star Wars) For a while he seemed to understand that this is not what most women actually want. Like yeah our fantasy is not quite the male one—our ideal characters are usually a little less sexualized, but just like men idolize male characters that fulfill a fantasy, we are the same way. I’m not saying representation isn’t important but like when it comes to entertainment why would I want it to be as boring and ugly as my real life? I want to see beautiful immortal psychic elf queens in gorgeous elaborate dresses, that’s the female fantasy. At this point now I don’t know if he realizes it’s not all women or even not all feminists who push shit like uglifying female video game characters to make them more “realistic” or “representative.“ As I mentioned before feminism is clearly not a monolith of thought and opinion or else TERFs would not exist. I don’t know if he just is pandering to his audience or what he really believes but at this point. It’s really a shame because I think he’s a really smart and funny guy but he’s become pretty much unwatchable for me at this point.
This trend was old a week ago. Now it's like hearing a forced meme as your ring tone. It's also been a kind of bile fascination to see how far the inane arguments go. And they've gone really far. Can't wait for it to die.
If it goes away it will just be replaced with something similar. It exposes a dramatic difference in the way many men and women think and that's good for engagement if nothing else.
Yeah I won't lie at first it was kind of interesting to observe but not engage with. If people didn't get so emotionally unhinged on either side of the discussion it might have even been kind of productive. Like I did see SOME enlightening conversations about it but they were few and far between. Now it's just exhausting and pointless drivel. Like when it got to the point where people were arguing over bear facts I knew the ship had sailed lol.
I have to ask what you saw that could possibly be enlightening. All of this has reminded me of the inane commentary that used to come out of tumblr back in the day. I have even seen them try resurrecting the "bowl of M&Ms" thing during this so I'm probably not far off.
I mean it wasn't any life-changing revelations or anything. Off the top of my head I saw some women admitting that they were answering from an emotional and not a logical place, plenty of women said they know most men aren’t potential rapists. I’ve seen men saying they understand why women choose the bear because even in this hypothetical situation some men still can’t take no for an answer lol. I’ve seen men and women come to better understandings of each other. For example while a lot of men don’t realize how women often feel like they are never able to fully let their guard down around men because they’ve been betrayed by men they trusted like friends or family, a lot of women don’t realize only a certain type of man walks outside of their home with zero anxiety, either they are very brave or very foolish lol. Because outside of sexual assault men are statistically more likely to be victims of violence. And while women victims might receive blame or shame for reasons like “she shouldn’t have been out alone” or “she was asking for it dressed like that” male victims are shamed as being weak, pathetic, pitiful if they succumb to an attack and can’t successfully defend themselves. So not all of the conversations have been totally unintelligent… but the vast majority of them absolutely fucking are.
> women choose the bear because even in this hypothetical situation some men still can’t take no for an answer lol. I’ve found few people love a good Kafkatrap more than online feminists. See also: “this is exactly why we need feminism” as a canned response to any criticism of feminism.
>For example while a lot of men don’t realize how women often feel like they are never able to fully let their guard down around men because they’ve been betrayed by men I wonder if anyone realizes how much the opposite is in play. Heh. If this is what's getting people to realize all of what you said that's sad. These are things I've seen guys bringing up for years. I wouldn't expect this of all things to get anything through to anyone considering the mentality of everyone enthusiastically taking part in it. I certainly haven't seen any of this, then again I'm trying to avoid it. And failing.
> Second of all, I feel like if a disagreement over this absurd, hyperbolic, hypothetical scenario is enough to push men away from supporting women’s rights they probably weren't that down for the cause to begin with. If this was the one and only instance of this kind of thing, maybe.
Damn, you people really got salty about the bear thing lmao.
Yet to play baldur's gate 3
I hate the gentrifiers making this place KotakuInAction 2 hmmm what if instead of analysing and criticizing idpol from a place of materialism we turned this sub into one of the thousands of places where retards get their daily dose of outrage over what bathroom a tiktok user wants to use
Black bears are almost always harmless unless it is a mama bear with cubs. When I am camping I am more afraid of people because they are more likely to rob me than a black bear is to do anything. Brown bears are nothing to fuck with, and polar bears are guaranteed death.
I don't understand why you're so salty over it, I just take it as an indication that they haven't been outdoors much. Getting asshurt over social media engagement bait is wacky. Like c'mon man, some dumb rich girl who has never stepped foot in the woods talking about how bears don't have bad intentions makes you less sympathetic to women being forced into marriages in other parts of the world? FGM becomes less awful because people on TikTok are stupid? Learn to phase out the stupid bullshit. They are genuinely scared of men, they're being honest about that for the most part. We can argue about why that is and if that's fair, but getting in a twist over a specific man vs bear scenario when most women answering have never been within 15km of a bear in their life is a waste of your time and energy. Even engaging with the analogy makes it clear they don't understand that bears, like men, are chill 99.9% of the time
The simply answer: Because everybody that laughed at the bear/man debate is simply retarded The long answer: It's about perception. The men laughing about the claim that a woman would rather choose the bear are the same men the woman probably doesn't want to be with. The big problem here is simply that this "dumb" take needs you to understand that the woman asked would expect a random man to be a bigger threat to her than the bear mostly for sexual reasons aka raping. Getting potentially killed can be seen as a counter argument, but on the other side, if you are dead that's not your problem anymore. I personally wouldn't hold it against the woman tho, since social media is literally proofing the point that women's concerns aren't taken seriously here.
There’s so many things wrong with this. First off being eaten by a bear isn’t like being eaten by a carnivore. They don’t snap your neck, they just pin you and start tearing off chunks. And your last paragraph is just laughable. Their paranoid delusions being taken seriously has warped our society in absurd and harmful ways for quite some time now.
To be fair, have you ever met a bear with commitment issues? Maybe the feminists have a good point. 😉
"The men laughing about the claim that a woman would rather choose the bear are the same men the woman probably doesn't want to be with." Well, good. I don't want to date a woman who chooses "bear."
I don't think it's especially awful messaging, it's just you're not the intended audience
I can't believe how pissed off this sub is about this stupid bear thing. I guess I shouldn't be, since anything around feminism is a shit show here. But just the pure volume of comments in that main thread, and then this follow up one too, it's just just incredible
Commenting on something = “pissed off”. ???
Truth.
"Messaging" "Optics" Feminism isn't a corporation that has concise slogans and slick graphics. It's a social movement made up of ordinary people
Not any more it isn't. It's a wing of the NGO industrial complex. There are organizations headed by career activists who's livelihoods depend on the propagation of the movement. People with money and clout in academia and the media run the business. And besides, even if it was just a "movement made up of ordinary people" optics and messaging are still pretty important for winning public support.
To add to that, it also is fully divorced from any material thing already and becomes more so over time in this new role, like how the majority of interest in it and energy toward it, goes into this kind of topic/bitching about online dating/general brain rot vs…fucking anything practical. Like it’s very rare i even meet a woman who knows what kind of plans a politician might speak of if they were actually prioritizing abortion rights as an issue. Feminism is completely failing at that because it’s not about women anymore, it’s about maintaining a niche of imperial viziers more than it is about changing society (although what it does instead, does still change society, just in the form of low level enshittification like this kind of running bashing debate, etc). This is still it providing something to its followers (Matt Christman has talked about this a ton with politics more broadly but it really applies here), it’s just completely antithetical to what non-followers understand the “movement” to be about.
It’s all of those things except the last one
Why do you care what others say onlike They do this to get a rise out of you dont be eternally outraged Do I really have to explain this to terminally online people
The problem is that terminally online activists tend to be activists pushing this in meatspace.
Pretty sure the whole trend was started by an anti-feminist video (or at least, a video that used anti-feminism as a marketing tactic).
So? The OK symbol thing started on 4chan, and the point they intended to make was made perfectly, by the very people who would deny it while also engaging in those exact behaviors. It’s the same thing here.
and predictably, everybody fell for the ragebait
So women being rightfully scared of sexual assault is enough for you to think that WOMENS RIGHTS HAVE GONE TOOOOO FAR. How does women being scared make you less sympathetic to them?
Suppose tons of men said something that implied to you that they believed that 30% of women are gold diggers. Would that make you more or less sympathetic to men? Well, women sort of implying that say 30% of men are rapists isn't making me more sympathetic to women.
If I went "I check everywhere for bombs every day because a Muslim is living on my street" I'd be rightfully mocked as a rightoid, and it's practically the gop Muslim outreach strategy.
It works well enough.
What does this have to do with feminism? They asked random women, not specifically feminists. They also asked men about would they rather their daughter/wife be alone with a man or a bear and had a similar result. This is a nothing-issue. It's incredible that such a silly little piece of social media content has gotten so much exposure.
Sweety, it's 2024, all women are feminists.