For those that haven't seen it, the bear meme is an article some lady wrote. A majority of women would rather be alone in the woods with a random bear, than a random man. Then she posted about getting hate mail for that.

I think a lot of men believe “I’m one of the good ones” and don’t stop to think that a random woman on the street (or in the woods, in this case) has no way of determining that.

It’s not a maybe, that’s literally the entire point of the message. Unknown men are all too often kinda shitty because we have zero systems in place to teach men how to be good people and many systemic ways in which we’re told that we’re automatically better. We’re generally physically bigger, generally stronger, and, for the most part, taught to be entitled to a woman we happen to fancy.

But yes, you’ve read it correctly and we shouldn’t be getting upset but instead working on making ourselves more trustworthy. And it won’t happen in our lifetimes but it’ll be progress.

If you took it personally, you might be part of the problem

My take is that the people that would benefit the most from the introspection this hypothetical is meant to illicit are the furthest from being able to take it to heart. It works better as a way to make the worst people around you out themselves, so now you know to avoid them.

Made me realize (hyperbole) how literal people are, how ready some are to dig their heels in and not interested in listening at all. If one ever had a conversation with a women (hyperbole), the unsafe feeling is something that comes up pretty often (I guess the women has to feel safe around you - so maybe there is that) and is sadly based on personal negative experiences they had.

This whole scenario makes total sense to me. Try to put yourself in the role of the woman:

Man vs bear, random encounter alone in the woods. Both can easily overpower and harm you.

With the bear, you know it's one or the other, it either is going to be scared off by you yelling at it, or it's not and it will very quickly kill you.

The man, if he intends no harm, cool. But if he does intend harm, it can be impossible to tell. He can lie to you, appear friendly and helpful, all the while plotting to harm you horrifically. The bear can have no such malice.

The bear will not target you because of your race, sex, political views, gender identity, sexuality, or nationality.

The bear won't pretend to be your friend to lure you into a sense of false security. The bear won't become enraged at something you say and all of a sudden turn on you.

The bear has no fragile sense of ego that it will attempt to assert if it feels you "wounded" it in some trivial way.

A bear cannot be brainwashed by toxic propaganda or cultural norms about gender roles. A bear will never have any sense of sexual entitlement.

A bear won't drug you and assault you, a bear won't call its friends to join in when you are vulnerable. A bear won't hold blackmail against you after getting you drunk and manipulating you.

If all women had to do 99.99% of the time to scare away dangerous men was stand up tall, puff our their chests, and yell loudly, I doubt we would be having this conversation.

i had to google this because i am not a tiktok-er, and apparently women (? sample size?) are commonly stating that they would rather encounter a bear than a man if they were alone in the woods

interesting point that men often also chose the bear for the question of if they would rather have their wife / daughter stuck in the woods with a bear or a man, so that says a lot about men, as well, i think

we can derive some other mildly interesting points from this, like viewing sexual violence as potentially worse than non-sexual but fatal violence. or like, that one might have to live with societal judgement of having been sexually assaulted because there's still a lot of assumptions that you initiated it somehow (rape culture) vs people universally having sympathy for the victim of an animal attack

overall, the unfortunate reality is that women generally view men or people who look like men as dangerous. i'm a transgender man and i've observed this phenomenon in a very real way as women have gone from generally friendly or neutral to detached. it sucks, but it's not personal

however, if this really bothers you, there are actually some things you can do to help women feel more comfortable around you. this is not like... a guarantee. at the end of the day, you're gonna have to live with jumpscaring some women if you round a corner too quick at them. that's how life is. but, if you want to give them some signs you are not a violent person, not as a way to trick them into trusting you, but as a genuine attempt to help them feel safe:

if you change your style to be more feminine, even in subtle ways, like wearing a pink shirt or pink shoes. if you have a man purse. you don't really need to go full femme but if you express yourself in a way that makes you look like someone secure in your masculinity (actual), it will help women understand you're not really a threat

which i think, generally, reflects that women understand that patriarchy isn't about men as a whole, but rather that most men haven't confronted the ideas they were raised with in order to "be a man", and those are the dangerous ideas they need to avoid to be safe

i think there is also an idea that expressing yourself as a softer or more feminine man will make it harder for you to get laid, and i think this may be true. however, i would suggest that women who only wanna fuck you because you're traditionally masculine are not really the women you wanna be fucking, because they're (probably) going to bring their own ideas of toxic masculinity to enforce on you. those are the women who are more concerned with whether or not e.g. you can change the oil on their car, that you are a "real man", and hopefully it goes without saying that those are the ideas you want to avoid reinforcing / internalizing, even if that means turning down a sexual partner

maybe the real message is women saying: “We are scared of unknown men.”

It's not unknown men, it's alone with men, period. Most sexual assaults are not stranger-rapes; they're sexual assaults being committed by a person that was known to the victim. Often it's an intimate partner, a date, a close friend, or someone that they went to class/church/etc. with. If people you know aren't safe, then how could you trust strangers?

I know more than one of these men that women would rather not take a chance with... The JR/AT/JP/TradWife/dudebro types. When I asked my girlfriend about the choices, she chose 'bear' immediately, and specifically called out someone we knew, saying, "Would YOU want me to encounter in the forest if I didn't know him?" And she was right -- I'd prefer she choose the bear...

And that's tragically fucking sad that someone I know is so far down the 'dudebro' rabbit hole that I wouldn't leave my GF alone with him in a compromised position.

As someone who has suffered heavy physical and verbal abuse [including threats of false rape and even an instance where she said she'd hurt herself and tell everyone including the police I was the one who did it to her] from a female for 3 years and has since developed severe mental and trauma issues from it, if I said:

"If I was given a choice to be stranded in the woods with either a bear or a woman, I would choose the bear, because the bear wouldn't accuse me of raping it if I ignored it."

How would you feel? See, I've said this before, and I just got downvoted to oblivion because guys can't be abused! It's discrimination against women! It's sexist. How dare you not support women! It invalidates their feelings and experience with abuse! Statistically, its more likely to happen to females, so we're more understanding with their situations! HOWEVER, these same people are 100% all in on dogpiling any male with the audacity to say, "This is offensive. Not all men are like that!", and they're all too happy and eager to invalidate male experiences simply because it's "Not as common."

Which makes it pretty obvious at this point, to me at least, that comments like this stupid "bear" comment serve only one purpose: to shit on men, simply to shit in them. It's MISANDRY but nobody wants to talk about it, because fuck men, we don't deserve support, we don't deserve validation and we don't deserve any rights. As men, we are BIG and STRONG and TOUGH and SCARY. How DARE we want to be met equally when it comes to being abused. Just shake it off!

And there they are. The downvotes. Thanks for literally proving my point, folks.

In corporate contexts, black women feel about white men the way that women felt about bears in the first question... and this prompted a similarly negative reaction from white women.

If men were a minority group, this would lead to calls for the male community to police itself and report suspicious behaviour to the authorities.

Bluntly, I wouldn't want to have some lady I've never met, trapped in the forest with me either. Not because I'm a bad person, far from it.

I feel like I'd be rather handy if I was lost in a forest, but she wouldn't know that.

Fact is, any lady weighing in on the discussion doesn't have any reasonable guarantee or even a reasonable probability of getting someone half as helpful as me, and a nontrivial chance of getting a date rapist, so I get it. The worst that a bear would do is kill and eat them, and if they're lucky, it'll happen in that order. There are fates worse than death.

I don't take any offense at someone answering "bear". At all. It's an age old question, of the devil that you know, versus the devil that you don't. Sure, there's a non-zero chance you'll end up in the woods with bear grylls (or someone with a similar skillset), or Mr. Rogers (or similarly kind person), but the far more likely scenario is not that.

It's not a statement against me personally as a male, it's a statement about the average man. If that offends you, there's a good chance that you're part of the problem.

I'm not here to judge. So I'll let you decide for yourself.

The fact is, unknown men is basically a gamble most aren't willing to make. What can we do about it? Probably somewhere between Jack and squat. Unless we can "fix" the socially inept and creepy men, as well as the rapists, would-be (opportunistic) rapists, date rapists, and just all around shitty men, pretty much all at once, this stereotype isn't going anywhere. Just be the change you want to see in the world, and try to encourage your brothers to be better.

As one commenter stated perfectly well, the problem with "man or bear" posts is that in subtext it introduces the hostility and division towards men.

It's not just women discussing their fears, it's women signaling "men are more dangerous than bears".

And this rightfully insults and angers many men, as it is a direct attack based on a wide immutable identity that omits any nuance.

Such posts do not promote any understanding of the situation, do not explore any root causes, and, from what I've gathered, comment threads are full of people telling men to shut up, either because "it's not about them" or because "women's safety are more important than men's feelings" (as if those posts promote women safety).

This is not alright.

There is a book I will mention that will get me downvoted to oblivion, but it is very relevant to this discussion. It is called "White Fragility" and it discusses the following phenomenon: When vulnerable groups express criticism of societal problems, individuals will take that criticism personally and redirect the conversation towards their feelings. This has the effect, whether intended or otherwise, of shutting out the voice of the vulnerable group and forestalling any meaningful change. The book identifies this phenomenon in discussions of race, but I hope you can identify the parallels.

If you've spent any time alone in the woods, any gender would fear running into a sketchy person. I've had bear encounters. Only humans have made me wish I had a firearm to protect myself alone in the woods. I'm a man that can handle himself, and I still treat strange men as a threat.

I don’t understand why this is a problem. I would choose an animal over a human, man or woman.

My grandparents would say something similar to this TikToker about certain "kinds" of people, and I rightfully consider them fucking abhorrent for it. I consider someone who would unironically say this kind of shit to be the same kind of abhorrent.