Men's Liberation
This community is first and foremost a feminist community for men and masc people, but it is also a place to talk about men’s issues with a particular focus on intersectionality.
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Everybody is welcome, but this is primarily a space for men and masc people
Non-masculine perspectives are incredibly important in making sure that the lived experiences of others are present in discussions on masculinity, but please remember that this is a space to discuss issues pertaining to men and masc individuals. Be kind, open-minded, and take care that you aren't talking over men expressing their own lived experiences.
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Recommended Reading
- The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, And Love by bell hooks
- Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements by Michael Messner
Related Communities
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Yeah I absolutely still don't understand what this supposed Bear meme thing is.. like I guess some girl chose to be in a room with a bear instead of in a room with a man? Was it just a meme? I have no idea what is going on or why everyone is so upset about it it seems like something to just divert attention away from something else
A bear is a known a danger and really doesn’t care about you unless you piss it off. In fact, loud noises might just scare it away even if a brown bear.
While most men are probably safe enough to have around, enough are unsafe or just generally give off that vibe that women don’t want to be alone with them and a loud noise won’t scare them away. You might “know” you’re safe but they have zero reason to trust you.
Sure she might get someone who wants to work together to be mutually safe and will make efforts to leave her be otherwise, but she might also get someone who stands just a bit too close, who starts trying to “help” just a bit physically, or even who starts to get frustrated when they don’t get some kind of reward for just being some minimum level of decent. And if they’re really unlucky they get someone who just sees the isolation of the situation as an opportunity.
The bear is a known quantity. The man could be anything and there are far too many examples of every part of the spectrum. At least the bear won’t sexually assault her even at the worst.
Well that's just ridiculous.. a bear is a wild animal who will fucking maul you to death and eat you and doesn't care about you at all ... a man is a human being, and human beings can be reasoned with.. I don't knoooooowwwwww........ this whole thing just, again, sounds like a way to get the masses riled up about something that really doesn't matter and doesn't really even make any kind of logical sense really in the grand scheme of things... it just seems like something to argue about for argument's sake.. it's a good debate topic but that's about it.. be it resolved that men are worse than bears?? LOL I don't know whole thing is kind of silly to me.. but thank you so much for your explanation of it
I like how they took the time to explain it extremely well as to why us women feel this way, and your response was simply "lol nah that's bullshit".
I'd much rather run into a bear in the woods than run into a man like you in the woods.
Wildly enough.... get ready for this one.. I'm a chick. I took the time to say thank you so much for explaining it. But you can't honestly genuinely tell me that you would rather be faced with a literal wild bear from actual nature, than another human being..... that's something for a therapist and not for the internet.... and if you're one of those chicks who genuinely feels that terrified of men, you need to speak to somebody because it's not natural. And if you're one of those chicks that gets wildly crazily madly offended to the point where they think they'd rather be trapped in a room with a wild animal with teeth and Claws that see you as food then be around another human being with an opinion, you also need a therapist, because it's the internet. It's not life or death.. which it absolutely would be with a whole actual bear in the room.
A bear wouldn't possibly beat or torture me or rape me. A bear wouldn't try to kidnap me and lock me in its basement as its personal sex slave. A man might. A bear would simply try to eat me or run away, it's predictable. But go off about how it's totally safe to run into a strange man in the woods as a woman. 🙄
As a guy, I don't know shit about women, but bears are absolutely famous for being unpredictable. That's why they're considered dangerous. Not like moose, which are dangerous for being gigantic and incredibly dumb.
Bears also love in the woods, so it's pretty normal for bears to be there. There's a decent chance it's just minding its business. I wouldn't want to be around a bear, but I also wouldn't want to be around a man with bad intentions.
Humans are also absolutely famous for being unpredictable, fwiw
Like just rearrange your sentence... men also live on planet Earth so it's pretty normal for men to be there there's a decent chance it's just minding it's business I wouldn't want to be around a man but I also wouldn't want to be around a man with bad intentions do you see how shitty that sounds when you say you don't want to be around all men? Because of men with bad intentions? All bears will eat you not all men will rape you
This means nothing. We're talking about wild animals in their natural habitat. Most animals in their natural habitat want to be left alone. Humans are not natural prey or threats to bears, so they generally wouldn't want to fight or hunt a human.
I think that's something that needs to be taken up with men (because it's impossible to pick out just the ones with bad intentions).
That's part of the problem.
The other part of the problem is the fact that being alone in the woods and spotting a bear minding its business sounds like a normal event. Being alone in the woods and spotting a strange man sounds like an abnormal event.
Bears don't really hunt humans. Some men do hunt women. And there's enough of them (and it could be any man) that a lot of women are afraid of strange men.
Take it up with the men.
Another part of the problem is seeing a man in the woods and Assuming he's a murderer instead of thinking oh maybe he's geocaching or maybe he's hunting or maybe he's collecting mushrooms or maybe he's a photographer or maybe he just likes being in the woods or maybe he's going fishing or maybe he has a family that he's providing for or maybe he's an artist like there are so many other things to think of a man in the woods then oh my God this man is going to rape murder and stalk me to death I'm going to die. The 'othering' of men is an actual danger to society.
Men aren't raised by bears.. maybe we should take it up with the women who are raising the men.
Lmao, so you're just sexist, huh?
Sounds like everyone on this thread is.. men aren't inherently fucking dangerous just because you are scared of them
I think you need to work on your perspective-taking skills.
It seems like what's happening is that women on social media are sharing that they feel inherently unsafe around strange men in remote and unexpected places, and your reaction is "That hurts my feelings as a man, and those women are wrong!"...
If you're not dangerous, that's great. Your feelings for assuming you're being generalized are valid.
If a woman reacts to you, unprompted, with fear, I think it's important to understand the reasons why she might react that way, rather than be angry about her fear. Frankly, getting angry at someone's fear would most likely reinforce that fear. And I think understanding would help reduce the anger you feel.
It's very interesting to me that everybody thinks I'm a man.
You're right, my apologies for assuming.
.....yikes. Have fun living in your world. So glad I don't live there.
I see you're one of the 2/3 of women who haven't been sexually assaulted by a man. That's good, I'm glad for you. But, as a man and in view of those statistics, I have to say it's entirely justified for most women to prefer the bear.
That there is not true as well... I've been assaulted more than most. I've been a sex worker. But I've also been in the woods and seen what an actual bear looks like and did not fucking stick around. It's a bear.. I don't know what everybody doesn't get about that it's a bear.
Alright, so I'm on team "alone in the woods with a bear", but since you want to talk statistics, let's talk statistics and the heteronormativity embedded in your statistics.
The figure I'm familiar with is that 1/4 of women have been sexually assaulted. Maybe you have a figure that says 1/3, that's fine. But crucially, these figures do not say who did it. What you've made is an assumption that women only get sexually assaulted by men. Personally, I think that the vast, vast majority of sexual assaults on women are done by men. But not all. I don't believe you can transfer those two statistics - women sexually assaulted and women sexually assaulted by a man - 1:1.
Let me explain where I'm coming from. Half of transgender and nonbinary people have been sexually assaulted. That's double the number of women! This factor, double, is consistent across sources I've seen that investigate both figures with the same methodology. You might have a source that says 1/3 of women are sexually assaulted, that's fine, but the ones that investigate rates for both women and trans people say it's twice as many trans people.
I could go ahead and assume, if I wanted, that half of all trans people have been sexually assaulted by a cis person. That's the same assumption you made that 1/3 or 1/4 of women have been sexually assaulted by a man. But it's a bad assumption. I know lots of trans people who've been sexually assaulted, and most of the time it was by a fellow trans person. You see, trans people have our own community that's isolated from the cisgender dating scene as a matter of safety, and that means isolated, lonely people let their guard down around fellow transes and the victims can't get away from their abusers, nor are trans friends of trans abusers willing to give up a social network in which the abuser is embedded. It's messy and disgusting and it wouldn't be a problem if cis people just accepted us, but it's where we are. I would be wrong to assume all rapists of trans people are cis people.
And I read way too deep into your comment and got a vibe that you were making the assumption that all sexual abusers of women are men. You probably don't actually think that and didn't mean to make any kind of implication along those lines. So I'm just leaving this comment as a general reminder not to use heteronormativity to inform our statistical analyses.
and it's entirely justified for a devout religious person to avoid sin.
and i will think they are an asshole if they go around telling me how sinful and awful i am for not believing what they believe.
It's just a way to illustrate how a lot of women feel around men. No one is actually going into the woods to meet a bear.
It's rage bait. It just a polarizing content meant to rile up the masses and make us argue and bicker. It takes some societal grievances and amplifies them needlessly.
There's plenty of polarizing content, especially online. I think it's a good idea to talk about how we react to it. There are reactions which amplify the polarization, but perhaps also reactions that bring people together in understanding each other? At least I hope so. I just don't know what is best, to ignore suspected bait, to argue a point, to listen, to call out bad faith actors. I don't know.
Well it sure worked haha even on Lemmy good old social conditioning