“b-but bears are actually dangerous!” Shut the hell up.
People’s safety is more important than people’s feelings.
Indeed. It strikes me as pointlessly gendered. All people, safety is more important than feelings.
The whole thing was meant to be rage bait.
or it’s purposefully gendered in response to the man vs bear thing
I have some extra emotional capacity today so(see edit*) I’ll post some wrong think: but can we stop antagonizing populations that feel disenfranchised by society and therefor giving the truly evil fucks out there an easy population to brainwash and feed extra scummy ideologies to?Young nerdy men who feel excluded from society that dont have any strong female figures in their life are barraged by a constant stream of messaging that could easily be interpreted as “(white) men are evil and the source of all problems with society”
By constantly antagonizing them for not being able to navigate the political nuance of those messages, we give an incredibly easy pathway to the more toxic ideologies that the Tates of the world will pull them into to profit off of them, because they are the only figures who will give them praise and a sense of belonging.
Edit: Its a new day now, and I no longer have the energy. If you want to vent, understanding that venting in this manner will bring about little to no positive change, you do you, I will no longer be responding
Man are not evil and I don’t think anyone is making that statement here, but the problem is that we can’t know which men are evil. Of course we should avoid antagonizing them, since, like you said, it often drives young lonely men towards the manosphere, but also men should try actually listening to why most women pick the bear.
I mean yeah, that was my point. Currently though our messaging is insanely antagonistic and there are a LOT of men without women in their lives who can explain this to them. People dont listen to those antagonizing them, the throw their shields/walls up, and seek those who are friendlier to them, which, in this case would be the manpsphere, posts like this only preach to the choir, and push away the men who need to know why women would choose the bear the most.
These young men can … listen to women??? They don’t need to be spoon fed feminism by friends, there is a ton of information available if they care to learn. The fact that they choose to listen to sexist assholes rather than have their feelings hurt for two seconds is part of the problem dumbass
The thing is, I’ve seen statements like this before. Except when I heard it, it was being used to justify ignoring women’s experiences and feelings in regard to things like sexual harassment and feeling unsafe, since that’s “just a feeling” as well. It wasn’t okay then, and it’s not okay the other way around. The truth is that feelings do matter, on both sides. Everyone should feel safe and welcome in their surroundings. And how much so that is, is reflected in how those people feel.
The outcome of men feeling being respected and women feeling safe are not mutually exclusive. The sad part is that someone who is reading this here is far more likely to be an ally than a foe, yet the people who need to hear the intended message the most will most likely never hear it nor be bothered by it. There’s a stick being wedged here that is only meant to divide, and oh my god is it working.
The original post about bears has completely lost all meaning and any semblance of discussion is lost because the metaphor is inflammatory by design - sometimes that’s a good thing, to highlight through absurdity. But metaphors are fragile - if it’s very likely to be misunderstood or offensive, the message is lost in emotion. Personally I think this metaphor is just highly ineffective at getting the message across, as it has driven people who would stand by the original message to the other side due to the many uncharitable interpretations it presents. And among the crowd of reasonable people are those who confirm those interpretations and muddy the water to make women seem like misandrists, and men like sexual assault deniers. This meme is simply terrible and perhaps we can move on to a better version of it that actually gets the message across well, instead of getting people at each other’s throat.
Honestly I am so goddamn tired of this shit, everytime something like the bear question comes up it blatantly tilted in one side or the others favor and dissent is crushed in both sets of spaces and no one learns anything.
