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I've been trying to bite my tongue on this whole bear thing from the beginning but these comments...
Every. Single. Post. The comments are a shit show. I'm a woman who has been through SA multiple times, I've experienced DV several times, I've been sexually harassed countless times, and experienced other frightening situations where I could have been harmed but managed to get to safety. I never reported any of it so I know first hand statistics are bullshit and revictimization is extremely common.
I will a billion times over take the damn bear. I would take sure death over the possibility of being raped again and left praying for death. I've tried to end my life by my own hand many times in the past because of the violence I've experienced. If you don't get why a lot of women pick the bear, shut the fuck up and listen to why.
I can guarantee if you ask women in your life that trust you if they have ever experienced SA, DV, or harassment they have at least once or know someone who has.
From your last paragraph, that's what I was discussing with my spouse. She has been harassed/assaulted. All the women she knows have been as well. Hell my mom was as well. She was telling me about how men started to look at her when she was 12. I cannot put myself in her shoes, but because it's so wide spread it's a no brainer to me that women will choose the bear, and I don't blame them. I hate that there is a hesitation, and I hate that you, and all the women I know went through shit like that.
It's so insanely common but most of us never report, if ever tell anyone at all. It took me decades before I could even say it outloud. My heart goes out to your wife. Seems she has a good support system, thankfully.
Like her, it started at 12 for me and around the same age with most women I know. My mom was also assaulted, as well as my grandmother. I don't know any women who haven't experienced some form of harassment/assault
I appreciate your kind words. Her sharing her experiences with me has been eye opening, im sure a decade ago I would have scoffed at the women choosing the bear, but listening to her stories, and the stories of others has thankfully helped me mature.
Im a little shocked at the general sentiment in this thread, I'm not a woman but most of my friends are afab and just hearing stories about how men will act normal until they're in an isolated situation like the scenario describes makes it a no-brainer why so many people pick bear
There are some issues & experiences that women go through that men will just simply never "get", and that's fine. But invalidating the answers & experiences from women is why I believe there are no longer many women participating in conversations on Lemmy anymore.
I mean.. looking at all this, why would they want to?
Is it controversial to say that I'd rather converse with a bear? Or do you suppose folks get upset about it?
Maybe, just maybe, folks who do not understand it should listen to what women have to say about it? But many are thinking about it completely removed from the contextual experiences of women. It's.. awful.
I realized this a long time ago when I made a simple complaint that I thought women's issues were downplayed a lot here, and in response I was downvoted, ridiculed, people demanded sources for my claims then claimed my sources were invalid for whatever reason they could pull out of their ass, and one person even, and trigger warning on this, told me I should die giving birth to a rapists baby.
I've even picked up a downvote stalker during the course of this whole bear thing. Same time every day somebody goes through and downvotes every single new thing on my profile.So yeah, Lemmy's never been a great place for women. I only continue to participate because I'm disabled and have so few connections to the outside world that I'll take anything now.
I completely agree. I don't feel many women want to participate in discussions anymore because of what it turns into. I myself don't want to because it's a train wreck and it's not like the people who don't get it want to try to understand. Each post thread makes that more and more aparent. They seem more concerned with ripping it apart and making women's very real concerns about their safety seem irrational and invalid.
Giving up on participating won't help, but at this point it doesn't seem anything will. It's just easier to not waste the energy to argue something that a sadly large portion of people aren't willing to try and comprehend.
Part of the reason many SA victims don't report is exactly what's happening with these posts. We aren't taken seriously. We aren't believed, we are gaslighted, we are blamed. We get dragged through the mud the entire way for being a victim and might not even get justice. Why go through that
And bears will most likely leave you alone if you leave them alone.
If you don’t get why a lot of women pick the bear, shut the fuck up and listen to why.
ok so im spitballing a little bit here, since this is a cultural divide. Perhaps instead of trying to "empathize, or sympathize" with women, it would be more beneficial for both parties to be capable of meeting on a "level playing field", where experience isn't a factor, because the fundamental problem with experience is that nobody cares until they have it themselves. You ever watch a video of someone who is a master at their craft doing something and going "wow, that must be hard" but then have that subconscious thought of "i could totally do this if i wanted to" which you probably could, but you're almost certainly going to underestimate the amount of effort required. As is a pretty typical for a human.
you have to remember that you exist inside a small bubble, specifically a small bubble made of three inch thick plate steel, like it's the pressure hull of a submarine. You need to come outside of that bubble in order to be able to interact with others. Which in this case, probably means explicitly identifying that the very real fear that you have is completely insane/unfounded, and shouldn't exist. And then it would probably be beneficial to cover why. Because the why is the underlying problem. Nobody cares about the problem at hand, they only care about the solution that fixes it.
The only thing that normal people with an outside perspective, and the inability to have the experiences listed (i.e. men in this case) are going to see is (to use an example from my life) is that i don't like interacting with people, as I'm dysfunctional (for no particular reason, i just don't like people) and as a result, when i have to interact with people, it's often very weird and uncomfortable. But instead of someone else seeing me as a person who doesn't like social norms and rules and just doesn't follow them, they see someone who is quite literally a dysfunctional human being, who cannot do the one job that they are supposed to be able to do.
The difference here is that i am acutely aware of this fact, and often like to abuse it, because it makes other people uncomfortable, and i think being uncomfortable is a healthy thing. Social rules? Yeah turns out you can just not follow them, nobody cares. You wash your hair regularly? Stop doing it, see how many people actually care, which if they do care, you don't have to care about them either. As long as you aren't being an actual asshole people simply do not have the time of day to think about it. Most people don't even understand this, because they don't even understand the concept of social rules. Social rules are how you interact, not a way to interact, for most people.
if you don't understand the spiel i've given just prior, it's the same exact reason people don't understand you. And if you understand it, than good on you, it's the reason you think that this is going to understood by everybody. It's important to remember that everybody is not capable of understanding everything, nor are they capable of experiencing everything. It's really difficult to communicate across that gap effectively, but once you can, it works really fucking well. (the underlying problem here is the same reason that racism continued to exist for so long, and does to this day in smaller capacity. It's the same reason people were scared about gay marriage, and it's the same reason people are scared of trans people now. These people don't know how to understand these things, so they just don't. That's where bigotry comes from.)
Anyway, i only left this comment after seeing how much of an apparent cultural misunderstanding there seems to be around this. I know i certainly didn't understand it initially. I could see the reasoning behind it, but that doesn't mean i understood it properly, to me it was just people yelling about nonsensical shit in lieu of making a good point, and it seems like that was almost what was happening, but that's besides the point now. I see no other reason for this to be so hotly debated otherwise.
- Suicidal person never eaten alive by a bear.
Ok so you seem to have missed the point that living with the violence I've experienced made me want to die.
The worst outcome with a bear is being mauled to death. Some things are much worse than death. Some things are so difficult to live with that you would rather die. Unless you have experienced something like that first hand not sure you can truthfully say I'm wrong on that
You read the comment but were not listening. Try again. Disapointing.
Stop antagonizing all men. There is a low probability that random men will sa you, there is very high probability that bear will eat you alive while you experience both pain and violence role-playing a KFC meal
It is fucking atrocious that you attacked a person sharing their experiences with “stop antagonizing all men.”
Right there she was expressing how every time she speaks up she gets immediately shut down, and there you were to do it again. This is me calling you out for it. Shame.