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Why haven't you taken the bear pill?
(jlai.lu)
Tap for context
Some woman on the internet said she would feel safer spending a night in the woods with a random bear rather than with a random man
Look, I'm a man, I'm not feeling insulted by this at all. If you are, maybe it's time to ask why.
I have no problem being a man while also acknowledging that sexual assault by men is a problem that is big enough that it has created a "caution culture" where people teach their daughters to be vigilant and women will cross the street if someone is walking behind them to stay safe. It isn't like this is overblown, studies vary but all agree it's somewhere more than one in ten women are victims of sexual violence in their lifetime. That's a non-dismissible statistic.
Sure sexual assault by women is a thing too, but men tend to handle it differently than women do. All we are doing here is acknowledging that in our culture "male stranger danger" is a thing that exists and is pervasive and strong enough that many women would be willing to risk the bear because at least it won't rape them.
Why would you be taking that personally?
personally i'm not insulted, i get it, i understand the problems, but i also don't understand this at all.
It's like it's hyper polarized almost. The second someone says something or asks a question the response is almost verbatim "yeah but bear wont rape me" (incredibly shitty verbatim quoting but this isn't a fucking PHD paper so dont @ me lol)
Like i get that there's a problem we should be talking about. Why aren't we? We're just reiterating the same statement over and over again, expecting for something to change suddenly.
It's almost an over abundance of caution, similar to "stranger danger" when in reality, the person most likely to abuse your children, is you or someone you know. Not just a random stranger. Which in it of itself can breed an anti-safety culture, where people aren't concerned about people they know "because they would never do this" only to find out that, yes, in fact, they would do that.
I think hyper polarization is one of the greatest societal issues we face currently. Whether it be war of genders, politics, etc. We are losing the calm middle ground that should be the majority without outside influence.
It's so incredibly easy to polarize. We see it in this thread too. The top of this comment thread is a polarization too. Essentially dividing men into 2 distinct set of groups. You're either good or a villain. This dichotomy is ridiculous and every social community eats it up like crazy, this Lemmy included. These create effects of over abundance, as you mention of caution, fear and hate.
If anyone actually thinks that they'd be better off with an encounter with a wild bear than a man, they're just stupid and insane. Just walking down the street, I encounter 1000s of men. If there were 1000s of bears, I'm sure no one would go there. But we're not appealing to logic. We're appealing to feelings that's been derived from these polarizations and sadly I see no way for this to end.
yeah, i just don't understand how people engage in this and don't feel even the littlest bit of fascist tinge to it, because this is how fascist power structures come into play. This is literally how they work. You have an in group, and an out group, anybody in the in group is loyal to you, and anybody in the outgroup is fucking dead.
Well, because it's prejudice being directed and reinforced towards us! I am the average man, and so are you! I am down for all the #metoo movements ya'll need but it needs to be pointed towards specifics. I won't allow to be put in the same cage I supportedsome people to get out of.