Dare I ask what the man vs bear meme is all about and why it seems to be upsetting men so much? [CW: sexism]

There was a guy who responded to this.
His mom was attacked by a bear and wrote a book about it. He said that she felt safer around men than around bears in response to this trend.
Thing is though, she did an AMA on Reddit a few years back and someone trawled through the answers and found a question where she was basically asked her this exact thing. She said that she feels safer around bears than men and that she carries a gun when she goes hiking but not because of the risk of running into a bear again.
There have been some really good responses from women defending choosing a bear. Here's a few that stuck out to me that I remember:
[CW: assault/SA]
"At least a bear sees me as human"
"Nobody would ask me what I was wearing if I got attacked by a bear"
"The worst that a bear can do is kill me"
"If I got attacked by a bear people would believe me"
"When I got attacked by a bear I screamed at it and it ran away, when I got attacked by a man he smiled, covered my mouth, and said that he was just going to enjoy it more"
"A bear would only take 5 minutes"
"A bear wouldn't kill me for pleasure"
A lot of "defensive" men have been missing the point (shocker, I know) and they seem to think that it's a question about whether women would prefer to be attacked by one or the other, or that they are saying they'd rather be alone with a bear than any man including ones they know and trust.
The question is very specifically worded to ask women if they would rather be alone in the woods with a bear or with a man.
I saw one really good response from a man who clearly wasn't quite over the line with regards to women's liberation and feminist values - think a middle of the road kinda guy - and his partner asked him if his daughter was in the woods alone would he rather there be a bear or a woman in the woods. He immediately said "With a woman" almost reflexively.
When he got posed the same question except with a bear or a man you could see him really wrestling with the question as he considered the implications and the risks. I think he settled on the bear but the point wasn't about getting him to agree with women, it was getting him to understand some of the risks that women, trans people, and femme people weigh up on a near constant basis due to the risk that men pose.
In a similar vein, on a wild tangent, because I'm amab/masc presenting when the opportunity is right (either when there aren't women around or when a guy has escalated a discussion) I will often drop the question on them and ask what their rape plan is. Generally they squirm and have to, for the first time, think through what they would do to mitigate their risk of being raped and what they would do if they were in that situation.
Often the answers are really poorly thought through, such as "I'd fight back" or "I wouldn't get myself into that situation" 🙄
Sometimes it cuts through though and you can get a man to reflect on how pretty much any woman/trans person/femme person is going to have a very well developed rape plan with all sorts of strategies for mitigating the risk and how they carry these plans with them and enact them all of the time.
Which leads into my next tangent. An autistic femme presenting person talked about their experience trying to mask to fit in due to growing up undiagnosed and how it's a response to a constant pattern of being ostracised, judged, and harassed for not fitting in but the moment that you drop the mask, people tend to respond really poorly to that so it's a real double-bind where you either compromise your needs (and often your health) to get treated badly fairly often or you don't make that compromise and you get treated badly for it.
I jumped in the comments and said "Y'know there's a parallel here - women often report a similar double-bind where when a guy hits on them they either have to very gently and politely try to decline without coming off as being coy or they can be blunt and straight-up refuse but a blunt rejection very often gets an abusive response whereas a polite rejection gets ignored and compromises her own needs."
That wasn't anything widly political to say. I was just trying to invite allistic women to be like "Hey yeah! I understand that kind of experience where you are confronted with the choice of being treated like shit for just expressing yourself directly or you have to placate someone else's needs and expend all of this energy just trying to get them to not treat you badly (and often they end up treating you badly after all that effort anyway). That sucks. I didn't realise that's what it was like for autistic people for most of their social interactions."
But of course some ex-military jerkwad guy who was late self-identifying as autistic had to charge headlong into the replies to turn it into being all about men, all about him, and all about his own experience (and ableist perception) of autism to the exclusion of others. It was a perfect example of male fragility and it was yet-another example of guys doing that thing where they think they're defending men by arguing that they aren't capable of determining whether someone consents and that they cannot help but sexually harass women. Imagine how monstrous I am to argue that men are very much capable of knowing better and they can do things like "controlling their impulses like a mature human" being rather than being like wild animals that need to be physically restrained in order to protect the people around them. These dorks think the absolute worst of men and my hunch is that this kind of reply is mostly a self-report.
Dudes rock /s
- "If I got attacked by a bear people would believe me"
  That one really hits close to home, as a victim of SA and as someone who has several friends, I've personally witnessed several SAs that went unbelieved, many men opened the conversation with damage control and downplaying for a dude they've never even met, but if a bear/snake/black guy was so much as spotted, you'd bet your ass 5-10 males are going to get off their assessment and do something about it.
- A lot of "defensive" men have been missing the point (shocker, I know) and they seem to think that it's a question about whether women would prefer to be attacked by one or the other, or that they are saying they'd rather be alone with a bear than any man including ones they know and trust
  I have no clue why men are so regularly offended when women talk about being unsafe in relevant conditions. I especially do not understand that when they themselves want to push the 'real men must be dangerous/strong/etc.' sort of BS.

It's a TikTok thing. Hypothetically, would the woman being asked rather cross paths with a man she doesn't know in the woods, or a bear? Lots of women pick bear, because as an animal its behavior is more predictable and arguably less dangerous to a woman than some random dude who for all she knows is a serial murdering rapist or some shit. And think of it this way: you see a bear in the distance and calmly walk the other way, most of the time you'll be fine. It won't follow you back to the parking lot, and then get into a car of its own and follow you back to your apartment.
Some men are upset by this reasoning and instead try to mansplain how dangerous bears are. (Bears will also not send you aggressive messages on social media berating you for some stupid TikTok meme bullshit)
- So basically the offended men made a bunch of violent memes that kind of prove the women right lmao. Doesn't take much for some misogynists to get weirdly aggressive.
  
  anyways the correct answer is "threesome with bear"
- (Bears will also not send you aggressive messages on social media berating you for some stupid TikTok meme bullshit)
  I've heard enough of my friends' Grindr experiences to know that this isn't true.
- Ah thank you for that. I was confused about the random references I kept seeing all over the place.
- I get your point generally, and I agree generally, but women are taught and conditioned to be particularly cautious around men since very young due to the fact that men are the most dangerous facet of daily life to women. And if you're in some remote place, like a hiking trail where you're alone, then that may understandably heighten fears.
  Doesn't necessarily have to be a professional serial killer but some guy could very plausibly kill a woman on a trail just because he got angry that she turned him down or maybe because she told him that in response to the meme she said she'd rather pass a bear.

In short, a woman wrote a piece in which she asks several of her woman friends, if they were alone in the woods, whether they'd rather run into a man or a bear. The majority chose the bear.

Man upset that they are considered dangerous to women then proceed to prove the point by acting like homicidal violent maniacs. "I'm not dangerous, not all men" I plead while punching a hole in the wall and threatening violence.
Bears however
- It's kinda funny. CHUD men LOVE bragging about how much of a badass killing machine they are, and everyone around them should fear them. So when they finally get the fear they want, they don't like it.
  
  No no not like that
- Kuma would never do me as dirty as a white man could.
  ...wait that one's the true heir to the Mishima Zaibatsu idk he might; but he might also just drop me down a volcano so I'd still rather Kuma
- You have a good point i have not seen a single bear go on a misogynistic rant during this episode of "not all men"

i solely know of this from a vaush fan in my vague social circle talking about it and me having no clue what they were talking about so i went to r/vaushv and searched up bear to try and get what they meant bcs it was so obviously just some dumb shit they'd gotten from there and there's like half a dozen threads of """progressive""" men going full
ranting about leftist misandry and comparing being afraid of sexual harrasment to systemic racism against black men
.
here's the start of the current thread they've got going:
\
vaush fan
not some chud

when women
- I love and hate that this emoji exists
  
  Also got
  and his buddy

My S.O. posited this question to me and I choose the bear also and am surprised people here are pushing back against it.
Granted: if I'm lost in the woods I might have a different answer but assuming I know where I am and I stumble on a bear it's incredibly statistically likely the bear is just minding its own business and isn't gonna get involved in my business and I can probably scare it off if it starts to approach me easily enough.
If I encounter a strange person I'm immediately wondering what their reasons for being there even are. Sure: they might be the same as mine....but maybe they aren't. Impossible to say for sure. The bear is a known quantity. It's supposed to be there. I and the other person in the woods, generally speaking, aren't.
- It really depends A LOT on the type of bear. The black bears of the northeast are basically Saint Bernard sized raccoons. They will almost always run from you unless they are really in ecstasy over a dumpster or something. They live concentrated around state parks like seagulls on boardwalks, even though the are periodically moved. They used to come scratch their backs on the side of our house, and I saw them hiking a handful of times.
- I think one thing with this question is that it's framed in multiple different ways, and also kinda ambiguous. Like, when I first heard in the woods, the first thing I imagined was hiking on a trail, since that's the reason I would most likely be in the woods. Seeing other people on the trail is just part of it that doesn't even register. But I would certainly be on edge if I saw a bear on the trail. But being "stuck" or "lost" like I heard does change context.
- Right? This is the most basic construction of "women feel unsafe around men". I'm surprised by some of the responses here, like "what kind of bear is it?". I would think from the context it would be clear that the bear is a symbolic large dangerous animal to highlight women's jusifiable fears of being alone with men.

- This actually highlights my issue with it. Both this and racism feel the same to me. Even though I aknowledge that they clearly aren't.
  End of the day I'm still being judged for something i didn't do and wouldn't ever do. And that sucks.
  But seriously fuck my feelings, do what you have to to stay safe
  
  Can I add to this the "tell your male friends not to r*pe" bit too?
  If I tell a rpist not to be a rpist, I doubt they'll have an epiphany and change their ways. And telling someone that wouldn't do it in the first place is obviously not gonna help against r*pists.
  I don't get it.

Idk how the choice is even controversial. Rather meet a bear in the woods than a man any day.
Any man who chooses to be out in the woods when video games exist is clearly mentally unwell and dangerous.
Bears simply don't have access to video games.
Oh, and bears tend to not have guns, and are easier to outsmart or evade. That stuff too, but mostly never trust an "outdoorsy type".
- I'm out in the woods playing ssbu with the bears
  
  for doing the needful.
  
  ...See, now I need deets; are they nice on the sticks?
- The man in the woods is probably hamas.

A bear buys a new motorcycle and he wants to show it off to his friend rabbit. They get on and slowly go up a big hill. Then on the way down they go 80, 90, 100, 110, 120 km/h! The bear then asks the rabbit:
”Are you scared?”
“Nope”, says the rabbit, so they finish the ride and get off the bike.
“May I try driving now?”, asks the rabbit.
“Sure, why not”.
So they slowly go up the hill again, this time with the rabbit driving. And then they go down 80, 90, 100, 110, 120km/h! and the rabbit asks the bear:
“Are you scared?”
“Nope!”
“Well you should be, cause I can’t reach the brakes.”
- My first encounter with this hypothetical was from a TERF, which strongly and no doubt incorrectly colored my impressions of it, so I am self-limiting to shitposts

i honestly dont know how men are getting so mad about the bear thing tbh. like how is your first thought when confronted with women expressing how unsafe rape culture makes them feel 'but what about men's feelings though'?/??
- Joe definitively crushed MeToo four years ago and I don't recall much discussion of rape culture since then. That almost certainly has something to do with this. It would have been a fairly normal part of discource in 2018 or 2019. But Joe had to be crowned, so MeToo had to go, and now we've got Weinstein skipping out of prison. So there's been four years of relative media silence about rape culture and patriachy and we've circled back to "not all men" bullshit.

I'd just like to add that as a regular ol' cis dude, I'd much rather encounter a black bear than a random guy in the woods. I know how to deal with a black bear 99% of the time, I know how to deal with the random guy 85% of the time. I'm not particularly afraid of either scenario but I'd definitely take the bear.
Make it a grizzly bear and idk, I've never been anywhere that has wild grizzlies so I don't know the proper protocol for dealing with them. Also in the 1% of cases where I can't defuse the situation I think a grizzly just wins that fight. I feel like I can make a black bear give up on killing me.
I still think I'd rather take the grizzly bear that inexplicably hates me than the random guy that inexplicably hates me though. At least the grizzly will tell me how it really feels in very unambiguous terms.
- I've never been anywhere that has wild grizzlies so I don't know the proper protocol for dealing with them
  Play dead until you aren't playing anymore, basically
  
  For a polar bear or mountain lion, however, by the time you see it, you're already dead. It already knew you were there, and specifically decided that it wanted to be in your presence.
- well, first of all, i did say "random guy." as in, a completely random draw of any guy out there. idk how the category of "hikers" self-selects for being more or less violent/unpredictable. but if it's a totally random guy, from what I've personally experienced in my day-to-day life, 15% seems like a pretty reasonable number for "guys who might just snap and kill me for any or no reason"
  Obviously not all guys in that category will snap and kill me for any or no reason, if they were that unstable they wouldn't still be out there. But any of them could decide I'm the first at any time. I've had strangers try to kill me for imagined slights before. Only men, at that. Like just to be clear, because I've seen a little more discussion about this, my comment is not of the "well I choose bear only because bears are pretty safe to encounter" variety. If it's a bear vs a random woman I choose the woman any day. No woman ever tried to murder me in broad daylight on busy streets for no reason.

I'm a guy and I'd prefer the bear, and think everyone should choose the bear.
I've seen several bears back when I lived in China, they're docile as fuck. I don't think they'd ever attack a person since, y'know, they're herbivores. They just sit around eating bamboo all day. It'd be like asking "Oh would you rather encounter a man in the forest or a wombat?"
- I think my list of least dangerous to most dangerous is Blackbear, fellow hiker man, Grizzly Bear, man in woods not hiking, and man who owns property next to said hiking trail.
- I think you're joking here, but pandas are absolutely not safe animals to be around. They can get very territorial and WILL fuck you up. Beautiful, yes. Safe? Absolutely not.
  
  Source? Growing up in China we were taught they were afraid of humans and flee if they catch our scent, which is why footage of wild pandas was near impossible to get. Males get aggressive around a short breeding season but even then they have never killed a human in recorded history.
- Pandas probably since he mentioned them eating bamboo
  
  Wild? I saw the dumb fucks at a zoo/breeding preserve. They were falling all over the place. Extremely clumsy animals.

imo 60% of this discourse could be resolved if it was specified just what type of bear we're talking about.
Black bear? Panda? Sun bear? basically big herbivores who are no more threatening than a cow or a large sheep. Black bear might try some bullshit but they weigh about as much as a heavier human anyway, very unlikely to hurt you
Grizzly? Polar bear? yeah you're dead
- American tourists went for a walk in the Russian forest. As luck would have it, they encountered a bear. Screaming, panic, they run away. The bear is behind them.
  Nearby, in a clearing, a group of Russians is feasting. A blanket, vodka, a snack, bottles are cooling in the stream. Full culture, they don't bother anyone.
  Suddenly, a screaming mob bursts into the clearing and runs through the middle of the picnic. Blanket trampled on, vodka spilled - big deal! So the Russians chase the intruders and beat the crap out of everyone.
  Already a little calmed down, they return to the place of the event. One remarks in passing: "The one in the fur coat fought quite well"
- Gay bear.
  Gay bear just wants to give you a big hug
- We also don't know what type of man we're talking about. Or the distance you encounter them, or whether you're lost in the woods or on a trail. There's a lot of ambiguity in the question in general.
  
  Which is the point. Respect to the fellow autistics in this community, but the point is not whether you could fight off a bear, the point is that the motivations of men can lead to far worse than solely animal instincts

There was a hypothetical about women’s safety, leading to women explaining why they would feel safer encountering a bear in the forest than a man they didn't know.

He was a bear of a man, 6'2" and uncut
-Ben Shapiro

It's because men are the fucking worst

black bears are just giant raccoons, they arent gonna bother you, and its fun to see them. grizzlies are generally avoidant of people, but i would be nervous of one. i literally do not ever want to see a polar bear near me in the wild, their whole thing is eating other large mammals. no thanks!
men make me nervous as fuck. black bears are chill
- Where I'm from there is a "rule of thumb" with grizzlies. Hold your thumb at arms length and try yo cover the bear, if he's still visible you are too close

- No, please no more unfamiliar people hiking in the woods. Especially folks arguing about stuff like this. The two most dangerous things in the woods are sprained joints or broken bones from an accidental fall and being exposed to extreme weather.

- Are you lost? Lemmy.world is that way
  
  They'll probably be making an account there soon enough and give them a "how I left the left" post because people here wouldn't tolerate their misogyny and abrasive behaviour.

i would choose a bear over a hexbear user
- Fair enough tbh. Most of us are feds.
- What about the actual hexbear?
  
  i would go wow what a dopeass bear before getting brutally mauled

I honestly wonder how much of it is like, men figuring if you see a bear your only option is to run up to it and start throwing punches.
- I'd pay to see chuds do that. Bear will be fine.
  Forgot, kinda already happened https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OFrnuWhLvQ
  
  Bear safety rant mode on.
  Screaming at Americans who feel the need to assert their masculine prowess by carrying a giant gun everywhere in the back country to stop being a stupid ass and get some bear spray is one of my maladaptive hobbies. Like bro you're not at the north pole or salmon fishing in the Alaskan interior. You're in Wyoming. Put the giant six shooter away and get something that actually works in the very rare case that you're charged by a bear. And they always want to take the dumbest guns. If you're worried about defense from bears you should have a semi-automatic shotgun loaded with magnum slugs. That's it. No rifles, certainly no pistols. In the extremely unlikely case that you're actually attacked by a bear you're going to be charged by a bear you probably didn't see, the bear is going to be running at you at thirty miles an hour, and it's going to be probably 100 feet away. You're not going to get a second shot with your dorky giant revolver, you're not going to drop it with your tacticool rifle. Assuming you can even get the gun on target in time, which is unlikely, and that you can hit a moving target, which is also unlikely, you've got a window of a very few seconds to put enough slugs in the bear to kill or incapacitate it.
  And sometimes, that's something you should consider. If you're salmon fishing someone in the party should have a real big gun in case things go south. You almost certainly won't need to shoot the bear, but sometimes yelling "hey bear!" And throwing rocks isn't enough to dissuade a bold yearling and you might want to add some warning shots to keep it at a healthy distance.
  But in any case where you don't havea hundred pounds of delicious fish that you refuse to share you're almost certainly better off using bear spray to make everyone in front of you miserable instead of trying to land enough shots in a very fast moving animal who just erupted out of the undergrowth to actually stop it.
  Plus, like, lets be real - almost all charges are bluff charges so your party can just stand there, hold your arms up, and yell "hey bear" until the bear decies you're not worth the trouble and ambles away.
  Idk, this is a huge pet peeve. Bear safety rant mode off.
  
  Bear was like "Did he really just do that?"
  
  I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  Link 1:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video
  Link 2:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video

Its upsetting men so much cause it means that they might actually have to acknowledge that there's a problem.

Tiktok yuppies saying something they don't believe in order to seem cool.
The whole man vs bear meme is literally a repurposed right wing argument used against Muslims and other minorities. If you're literally spouting Nazi propaganda but erasing the "Muslim" in front of "Muslim man" than the question is probably inherently flawed.
- What do you mean? There's another, older meme where the choices are bear or Muslim?
  
  Not a bear exactly but the poisoned bowl of candy, which is also referenced a lot, is literal Nazi propaganda.
- Similarly, the first known use of the "bowl of Skittles, some poisoned" analogy was Nazi propaganda in the 1930s, in which the Skittles were Jews.

Women: I feel unsafe
Neckbeards online: This is exactly why the suicide rate for men is so high! (Note: it’s not.)

it's been a few years, time to rehash not all men -> yes all women
- I mean, yeah I don't want to say that all men are like that, but damn it seems pervasive enough to be concerning.
  Edit: lol wait I just got what you're saying, damn I'm dumb
  
  you're not dumb you're just an owl

Does pepper spray help vs bears?
- yes! there are literally bear sprays but iirc most of the deal with those is they're setup for wider dispersal because bears are tall
  
  More distance on the squirt also. Human pepper spray assumes you're pretty close to the person you're spraying. Bear spray has a range of more like 20'. It sprays out more like a line.
- Yes, in fact, bear spray is one of the things you're supposed to bring to national parks.

Imma be honest picking the bear feels like True Crime Brain, unless your point is only “Bears aren’t dangerous and it would be cool to see one”
It is the exact same as the white women who have told me they felt afraid for their lives and don’t feel safe in this city because homeless man talked to them in the park once (to be clear this is not an exaggeration, this is a story one of my friends has told me about “almost” getting attacked walking through the park, it was just a homeless man spoke to her once and then walked on the same path for a few minutes)
If I’m walking through the woods and I come across a man, I assume he’s in the woods for the exact same reason I am. Are y’all panicking every time you pass another hiker going the opposite direction?
Bears aren’t scary, but neither are people and if you get scared upon seeing a random guy you need to go to therapy and to stop listening to My Favorite Murder
- actually that other comment wasn't enough, are you seriously suggesting that the only reason women are paranoid about SA and the culture around us permitting that is because they are too gullible? got too much anxiety from listening to podcasts and forgot about the real world?
  seriously, Hexbear was the last place I expected to run into an argument trying to put it on women for being paranoid, this actually feels like a fucked comment to be making, i would genuinely reconsider what you're trying to put forward here
  
  [CW: rape]
  It's wild that people think women just make this kind of shit up or exaggerate.
  By the time I was 16, two of my underage friends had been raped. And I know it was true because one of them came from a very regious Christian family that forced her to keep the baby.
  And that was just two close friends that I know about. Most people obviously aren't going to tell people they were raped.
  Women are being killed, raped and left in dumpsters like trash all the time and people are still like "lol stop being hysterical". It's wild.
- haha women True Crime, SA doesn't real
- Bruh. You should probably read the effort posts in this thread and reflect on some misogyny you are dropping in this comment. Read the room dude.

Well known path: man; assume he’s just another hiker
Obscure/empty path: bear; he will likely leave me alone if I leave him alone

What if the man you run into is also a bear?

okay let's talk about what you should actually do about this. you are presenting hella masc, women are more afraid of you than a bear. you're on a forest path. if you flee from the forest path, that will look worse. do you turn around acting like you forgot something? use your AGGRESSIVE HYPERMASC STOMP to mime going back for your phone? do you say hello as you pass them? do you completely ignore them?
generally when I am on trails alone I just start jogging again if I spot someone way up ahead, but isn't that like charging at them? I just want to make sure we don't interact with each other. because silently ignoring people feels rude when I do it, I am happy to discover people might have thought I was a Netflix serial killer
look, I promise I know what to do in actual social situations. well, I know of SOME things to do. but stuff like this, I don't know.