First, please be respectful in the comments. I have no idea what the topic was, but apparently it caused a lot of divide. I prefer just the claims and facts, backed by citations, and let me draw my own conclusions. I can think for myself. 😅
I’m curious because it seemed to have happened about a year ago, and then there were concerns of Lemmy being a worse place for women than Reddit.
I don’t really see that now. Granted, I’m new, and maybe it’s the specific communities I subscribed to, but I haven’t really seen much women-hating in posts or comments. If anything, I’ve seen a bias towards liberal viewpoints (many of which I personally agree with, but sometimes the justifications use poor reasoning and almost comes off as a bad defense or covert sabotage).
I’m hoping Lemmy changed for the better in the past year, and I’m not about to be side slammed with some misogyny. 🙏🏼
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I have no idea what the topic was
The bear vs man story was a social commentary thing where women were trying to show men how dangerous and confusing men often seemed to be with an anecdote about whether or not they would want to run into a bear in the woods or a man in the woods.
Women tried to make clear that they would most often want to run into a bear, because they know what a bear will do. They don’t have to constantly second-guess themselves about the nature of the bear. The bear can be scary, but if you’re prepared and know what to do, you can make it out alive.
The opposite is how they feel with men. They feel like they cannot know a mans actual intentions in the woods and it could be anything from wanting to help her if she’s lost all the way to leading her to a rape/kill dungeon in the woods.
Thus, they would rather run into the bear where they can always know the bears intentions, and thus always know how to properly respond to the sight of the bear, they don’t ever need to second guess themselves on the intentions of the bear. Whereas they have to treat all men as though they are their worst iterations just to be safe, and that can be frustrating and confusing and they also know that it’s hurtful to treat men who may not be terrible that way. Yet they feel the need to do so to feel safe and secure and not be taking a risk.
Now, as for a specific conversation on Lemmy that lead people to believe Lemmy was worse for women than reddit. I couldn’t point you to that, but that also would not surprise me in the least. Lemmy overall does seem to skew heavily on the side of cisgender men. The blahaj lemmy is pretty small compared to others, for example, and probably hosts the largest number of genders other than cisgender men.
So honestly, I would not be shocked if there was a discussion around the “man vs bear” thing and that a lot of men on Lemmy had negative views on the whole thing instead of being able to see the other perspective. It seemed that men in general had a very negative view on the whole thing, probably because it made them feel personally attacked. Which was never the goal by women, but rather to just try to get men to hear them, really hear them on why they felt so sketched out about strange men approaching them in public.
I think a lot of it boils down to men having their own issues with women, especially men who try to be decent people. That can be seen in the response meme from men “Would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or with a tree?” The implication being that while men are often told to “open up” and “just talk about their feelings,” a large number of men have had very negative experiences when actually doing so. The number of women who think a man who cries is weak and will dump him is, well, too damn high. So emotional availability and vulnerability are things men feel that women want, and women indeed often say they want… but when faced with them, women will often get an “ick” and dump a guy over it. So men would rather be emotionally vulnerable with a tree so they don’t get judged for being emotionally vulnerable.
The real issue is that “man vs bear” or “woman vs tree” are entirely different issues which don’t really cross paths nor address the same issues or ideas. It leads to both sides sort of talking past each other instead of listening and hearing what the other side is actually saying. I think both of these positions have value to their respective genders, but both sides could do with a healthy amount of actually hearing the other side in this regard, instead of being dismissive.
Also, personal opinion, it says a lot that men also cannot feel safe being emotionally vulnerable with each other. Why would they go to a tree first instead of another man? Because other men will treat them as weak, too.
While I think that’s a great way to view the question, and can definitely see the reasoning and sort of agree with it, there’s one test that can be made for some arguments to know whether they’re inherently prejudiced or not, that is the black switch. This works because our society has internalized racism, at least the talking of it, to a point where we can easily recognize racist statements, while the same is not true for sexist statements yet.
With that in mind how would it be if the question was “would you rather be in a forest with a bear or a black person?”. You immediately recognize the inherent racism there, and the person asking that question could very easily show statistics on the number of crimes committed per ethnicity to prove his point of why he would choose the bear, and even argue the same you did that a bear is predictable humans are not. Still you understand that the question is inherently racist.
This is not to say there’s no issues to be discussed here, or that women don’t suffer at the hands of monsters out there, and if you can’t understand why women would choose the bear you need to read more into what they go through… But still, regardless of all of that, the question is inherently sexist.
you can’t be sexist against the people who invented sexism, that’s just silly
Most men didn’t invent and don’t uphold sexism, and most men don’t benefit from the patriarchy. Some women still enforce sexism, and benefit from the patriarchy. This is the deeper understanding of feminism you need to seek out.
Sure you can, it’s like saying you can’t be racist against white people, and having lived in a neighborhood that was 99% black I can assure you that’s a thing.
People need to decouple the ideas of discrimination and institutionalized discrimination. Discrimination can happen in any direction and it’s on an individual level, institutionalized discrimination can only happen from the people “in control” towards the rest, e.g. cis, hetero, white, males. Obviously institutionalized discrimination is way worse and should be fixed, however antagonizing people and claiming you can’t discriminate against them will lead them to close down into “well, if I can’t be discriminated against then neither can you”. It’s important to teach people that anyone can be discriminated, and to show how our society as a whole discriminates certain groups, this way the message becomes less of “you’re an asshole for being in the same category as people who are assholes, and there’s nothing I do to you that will make me an asshole” and more “it sucks when some people are assholes to you, imagine if the majority of people treated you like this”
you’re silly because you’re getting offended by mean words. we have to worry whether we’ll make it home alive. idk, maybe unshove your own head out of your own ass?
Maybe stop and listen to what I said, unless you have lived in very specific cities it’s almost assuredly I’ve had more risk to my life walking home in a week than you ever did in your entire life, having lived for a good chunk of my life in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
I’ve lived in places where you can get shot because you turned the wrong corner, places where you need to talk to people with machine guns to let you pass. Maybe you should unshove your head out of your own ass and see that other people also have problems, and alienating them is not going to make any friends. Unlike you I recognize the struggle that minorities face, I’m not looking only at myself and forgetting others exist and trying to pretend they don’t suffer. If your first response when someone says “I suffer” is “your suffering doesn’t matter because I suffer more” the person will reply (or at least think) “if you don’t care about my suffering, then I don’t care about yours”, and that’s not constructive, everyone suffers and everyone deserves to be treated equally.
I feel like Lemmy has a high number of cis men and trans women (maybe also trans men), but very very few cis women.
Real talk, I agree. I think trans men are still deeply in the minority, too.
I think you may have missed a small but important part of the concept. I believe women also felt the LIKELIHOOD of a man being dangerous was higher than the bear’s, for all the reasons you stated.
If women had overall very favorable interactions with men they might choose the man in the woods because a bear is very unlikely to help her. So the man would be the obvious choice with such a low probability event. But to them, it isn’t low probability and that speaks volumes.
Whereas they have to treat all men as though they are their worst iterations just to be safe, and that can be frustrating and confusing and they also know that it’s hurtful to treat men who may not be terrible that way.
It’s more complicated than that. They have to treat men with unearned respect while planning for the worse. Treating man as a threat can make him a threat if he feels his masculinity is threaten he may act erratically.
To put it the other way, they don’t have to worry about managing the bear’s feelings.
Excellent point. Men becoming angry and lashing out verbally at women online because they felt attacked by the “man vs bear” issue neatly illustrates that point as well.
Thank you so much for explaining all of this. 🙏🏼
Yeah, Snot did a really good job. I’m actually saving this to forward on to other people. Thank you for making this post and thank you Snot for your reply.
Also, somewhat off-topic, but since you mentioned sharing important explanations to others, I have some that have worked for me. Feel free to disregard if they’re not helpful for you.
What I personally found persuasive when speaking with men is citing the research that 87% of rapes against women by men are explained by repeat offenders, which is 3% of men. That means 5 out of 6 rapes are done by a very, very small portion of men.
And it might explain some of the disconnect. 95% of men didn’t rape anyone, so they might be genuinely confused at the strong reaction.
I also explain that rape causes the equivalent of $122,461 in damages to the victims. This is just what is quantifiable and measurable via econometrics - the subjective damage is obviously much higher (and I am personally seeking reparations for much higher than this based on my own calculations).
5% odds with a random man might not initially seem that bad to some until I explain that it’s equivalent to rolling a nat 1 in D&D. That and you are literally rolling a 1d20 for each man you encounter, so unless you only meet at most 19 men in your lifetime, you’re expected on average to roll at least 1 nat 1.
I also explain that addressing rape culture benefits men, too. About 1 in 3 men are raped in their lifetimes, and about 40% of women blame victims and survivors (of all genders). Also, in the majority of states and countries across the world, it is not legally possible, either in theory or in practice, for cis men to be raped. That, and a lot of (anecdotal and not measured, but I’ll be measuring this one day) individuals, both men and women, believe that as long as no penetration happens, it’s not rape. This belief is not just used to the benefit of cis male rapists against cis female victims (“It’s not rape as long as I don’t penetrate her.”), but also been used against both cis male victims and lesbian cis female victims (by other cis women).
Often times, the counterarguments I receive are against the impressions left by bystander intervention training. I actually suspect that bystander intervention training is at best a profitable way to exploit funds for victims and survivors, and at worst a covert sabotage to create a bad defense for addressing rape culture. We don’t have good evidence yet that perpetrator-focused strategies actually work, and most strategies that have been rigorously evaluated are not only ineffective at preventing rapes, but sometimes increase false rape accusations against black men and decreases women’s empowerment by reinforcing harmful stereotypes. Please, please stop funding, promoting, or supporting bystander intervention training, or at least fund a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a bystander intervention training program to measure its impact (and it would give strong, nearly irrefutable evidence in support of it if it actually works). As stated earlier, 95% of men don’t even rape, so the training doesn’t do anything for them. And for the 3% repeat offenders who explain 87% of rapes, well, I, and many others, suspect that serial rapists are probably not going to stop just because some training to tells them to. That, and ~80% of rapes are done by people you know, in private or secluded spaces. It’s very rare for some random man to jump out of a bush and rape you then and there. Bystanders can only intervene if they are actually nearby.
I don’t have the names of research papers memorized off the top of my head, but all of these are Google-able.
I did a lot of edits trying to recollect all the discussions I’ve personally had. Hopefully these cover 80% of those conversations.
Haha, no need to thank me!
It was more out of survival instincts and gauging my environment.
Too many people definitely took it personally, but I don’t think I ever saw it explained as well as you just did. All too often we just react, rather than constructively understand what was trying to be communicated
You are such a great writer.
One thing I would not agree is the unusual prevalence of cis men on lemmy. I saw many more trans discussions on lemmy than any other platform. At least when I joined the amount of posts in my timeline from blahaj was so high that I had to mute it after a while. It looked to me that there’s no other topic of discussion on lemmy than Linux and trans rights. And while I support trans people with all my heart, it got just boring and repetitive after a week, it’s not a topic that I want to fill my free time with.
You hit it pretty perfectly.
It was a repeat of #MenAreTrash and a little bit of #MeToo using different words this time. And just like any other time there is an awareness campaign that highlights the general statistics and truth of things, instead of inspiring men to take a stand and push for any change or correcting of shitty, toxic behaviour; the so called loud minority rushes in to say “not all men” and defend the status quo while the so called silent majority lets them.
Thank you for your insight.
I was more concerned about how men reacted to it than the legitimacy or analysis of the ‘bear vs man’ hypothetical.
SnotFlickerman nailed it, so I’ll just add that the “man or bear” saga taught me what a “scissor statement” is.
For me, that was the biggest revelation of the whole thing.
You had people encountering the same general words in the same general order, but understanding them to mean completely different things, and not being able to comprehend how anyone could disagree with them.
It was like a rehash of “the dress”, but not so whimsical.
It was really kind of distressing, the extent to which it laid bare (no pun intended) how poorly we’re actually communicating with each other online, even though it otherwise seems like we’re communicating more than ever.
Aaaaand then we just kinda shrugged that off and went back to internet as usual.
Jesus Christ. Even if I do think the story is fictional, I could believe that our current media landscape has been ruined by advertising firms.
Here’s an example of a scissor topic that I’ve been calling out for years: the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s designed to be something that divides people. Not inviting your israel-supporting aunt to Thanksgiving and blocking your Palestine-supporting nephew is what the Man wants. That conflict, for as strongly as people feel about it here, does not matter to Americans. Nearly as many people have died fighting in the Myanmar civil war, and I don’t know a single person who even has an opinion on that.
That link is fucking crazy. Thank you for sharing, fuggen bookmarked.
Yeah, I’m not engaging with the bear vs man debate, lol.
I’m more concerned about how some reacted to it than the debate itself.
Maybe I’m generalising it a bit but it does seem like the main issue is the lack of open mindedness, compassion and an inclination for aggressive responses rather than simply agreeing to disagree.
Which unfortunately is a difficult thing to achieve since you need both sides to have the same mindset for any healthy discussion to happen. The moment one side decides to be antagonistic, it quickly derails the tone of the conversation regardless how open the other side may be. Heck this happens all the time here. It’s called no stupid questions but people will still flame others for asking questions lol.
The scissor statement just serves to accelerate whatever problem already exists.
Cool link but the blog writer is clearly mentally ill.
I mean that’s kind of the point. What types of experiences can make someone “mentally ill”? Can it be weaponized against an otherwise cohesive society?
The major issue I had with this is that it plays into the alpha male misogynistic ideal of strength.
Some of them will almost certainly see it as a badge of honour. That they are so dominant that some stupid women (their opinion) will misinterpret that and get into trouble with a bear.
I was trying to come up with a way to rephrase it.
Something like would you rather be alone with a man or separate but you both have to eat a bowl of dog shit.
If women choose the bowl there are nasty consequences for both and it’s clearer they would rather deal with that than the man.
Nowhere near as catchy though…
Thank you for your insight.
I was more concerned about how men reacted to it than the legitimacy or analysis of the ‘bear vs man’ hypothetical.
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I don’t know anything about its history on Lemmy and I haven’t really seen it discussed online at all. I guess I live under a rock.
The one place I have been exposed to it is in this amazing write-up, which I encountered via Mastodon some time ago. For me it provided a perfect introduction to the argument, and gave me a lot to think about even though I am by no means ignorant to feminism and my position as a man in society.
Highly recommend the read, both to men and women. It’s extremely well written.
Thanks for the read.
A question that put further division between men and women. I fuckin hated reading these debates
I don’t think there was ever a serious systematic concern that Lemmy was a worse place then Reddit for women but it was that viral thing about who you’d rather come across in the woods a man or a bear.
The main person accusing Lemmy of being a terrible place still posts here constantly so take that as you’d like.
I’m confused, can you provide some context?
I know about the bear vs man thing that went viral for awhile- “Would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man?”, but I haven’t ever seen it in a Lemmy vs Reddit context.
Unfortunately, I don’t even know what the argument is, so I’d need you to provide context.
I’m just trying to understand how irrational or aggressive Lemmy is towards women.
Thank you for describing the bear vs man thing to me. So it was basically a question posted on social media, and then the reactions to the question (and maybe others’ comments) was divisive?
I’m just trying to understand how irrational or aggressive Lemmy is towards women.
While I also don’t know:
- Lemmy tends to be geeky. While I don’t know the stats, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s very male dominated
- different Lemmy servers have different social tendencies. If there are some worth not federating because of toxicity, it’s likely some of that toxicity makes women uncomfortable
Thank you for this.
For some reason, I thought Lemmy had more women specifically because of how Reddit treats women. 😅
Still, it’s not like people are incapable of understanding others who are different from them. I’m hopeful the men here will listen to reason.
Since I have no clue what argument you’re talking about I definitely can’t provide context.
I think maybe we’re all confused lmao.
But yeah, you summed up the original context pretty well. It was a TikTok trend asking women if they’d rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man. A lot of people, primarily women, basically pointed and said “see how much women don’t trust the average man.” A lot of men pointed at it and said, “see how much women hate men.” And it was a whole gender argument for awhile. I just sort of thought it was all around sad and depressing.
LOL I hear you on that. 😭
Ah, I see. 😅 Thank you for explaining it. 🙏🏼
They asked Women if they’d rather be alone in the woods and come across a bear, or a man; and many of them chose bear because they thought men were untrustworthy.
It’s more an expression of misandry than misogyny. Men are defaulted in many minds to be violent sexual predators.
A viewpoint from someone who would choose the bear:: I don’t think all men are by default violent sexual predators. It’s much more about the fear that we won’t be believed.
Nobody questions whether you wanted to be attacked by a bear. Nobody makes the case that the bear just made a mistake and we don’t want to ruin his future. Nobody suggests that you lead the bear on then changed your mind. It behooves us to be wary of being vulnerable with men until we have more information about the specific man we’re engaging with because of things go sideways there’s a good chance we’ll be blamed.
The person you’re responding to entirely missed the point and the accusation of misandry is misguided
A viewpoint from someone who is a man and not a sexual predator:: this statement is so incendiary because the odds of being mauled to death by a bear you meet are so high, while the odds of being sexually assaulted by a man you meet are so low.
As someone who doesn’t live somewhere that has bears I don’t really know how it works, at first glance the phrase “come across a bear” implies a certainty of a revenant style bear fight, but I suppose if you know something about bear behavior can identify the type of bear maybe it’s not a big deal?
Alternatively, how many encounters between lone women and lone men in the woods result in sexual assault? There’s some places in my area where people walk daily. There would be dozens of such encounters, and IDK the “sexual assault rate” but it would be a big deal if someone had been raped in the woods. Notwithstanding unreported assaults, I don’t think it’s something that’s happened? I’m guessing but I wouldn’t be surprised if the rate is less than 1 encounter in a million.
As someone who spends nearly every weekend in the backcountry of vancouver island, most bears aren’t going to mess with you. But I’ve also been charged by a bear before like 10 years ago and I still sometimes have nightmares about it. When they are having a hard time finding easy food you bet they will spend the energy to eat you.
Every single person I’ve ever come across outdoors has been good. I mean someone stole booze from my cooler while I was asleep one time. But that’s the worst that’s ever happened. But I guess I am a man so I can fight back.
It’s really just a rage bait question because it lacks any detail. I think it would be a better question to ask would you rather be in an empty room with a random bear or with a random man.
Like, are we talking about solo hiking and encountering people on the trail? People you find in the woods are chill. Or are we talking about a random man from anywhere in the world spawning in?
It just pisses me off actually because it changed the way I act around solo lady hikers because now I just think I’m viewed as some creep. I don’t small talk anymore I just say hi and make it clear I don’t want to associate. My last solo trip to a remote beach had another solo lady camping there and I kept wondering if she was scared I was there even though I was like 200m down the beach. In the past I might have went to the bear food cache when she did and just say hello, ask if they forgot any gear they might need to borrow, etc etc, maybe make a new friend. Ask if they saw any bears on the way down, you know, lol.
Almost every woman I personally know who answered this question said they would rather come across a bear and that really sucks.
Bears aside, I was looking at satellite imagery of this area a few weeks ago. It looks dreamy.
I live in the south west corner of Western Australia which is obviously different but still a sparsely populated wilderness.
I spawned into a very small ultra conservative racist village in Alberta and managed to move out this way. I am grateful to say the least.
Have you ever been to Tasmania? It is a dream destination for me. Show me ya map of tassy
Yeah I have indeed been to Tasmania.
I managed to see a platypus in the wild which is not that easy to do in the last 30 years.
It’s probably more similar to Vancouver Island than Western Australia is just because it’s a few degrees cooler than here. We both have epic forests.
I always thought Tasmania is similar to Vancouver Island in many ways but the main difference is that Tasmania is like 10 hours ferry and Vancouver Island is 1.5 hours directly from Vancouver itself
Sadly, the reverse has come to be true for a lot of men.
Anyone who says bear literally doesn’t know what a bear is and lives in some concrete jungle
A common thing I’ve heard is “well the worst thing a bear can do is kill me”. Are we actually this stupid? Do these people actually believe what they say or is it just shock value?
Anyone so convinced of this has never been raped.
I have in fact encountered a bear in the wild, a mama bear with her cub. They weren’t interested in me, just crossing my path trying to get to the river. I stopped walking and started talking so they’d know I was there. They went on their way, I waited a little bit to make sure they weren’t coming back, and then I went on mine.
I’ve also been raped by a man I thought was my friend.
Wow you encountered one bear. How many men did you cross paths with just yesterday? Were they interested in you?
Wow.
The vast majority of men are not bad. Your single bear encounter was probably in yosemite or something where a bear is a tourist attraction and is used to people.
So your stance is that you would rather be eaten alive than raped?
You sure do assume a lot, huh? I’m not going to explain it better than the top comment of the thread already did. You should read it. You should also take some time to think about how you come across.
If you’re lost in the woods, would you rather run into a bear, or a man who is 10% larger than you and wants to have sex with you?
Hopefully this rephrasing of the question helps you understand the answer women tend to give a little better
See, this is a perfect example – this person very clearly thinks that all men only want to have sex. It paints that picture absolutely perfectly.
I’m really curious where I said that. Wanting something doesn’t mean you only want said thing, and the vast majority of men generally want to have sex with women. You can ask them, and they’ll tell you as much.
Besides that, you’ve managed to miss my point entirely: that the original question is different on a fundamental level when you ask a woman versus a man. Meeting a random man in the woods is significantly more dangerous if you are a woman than it is if you are a man, and that’s a bit of nuance that a lot of guys don’t consider. Instead of taking it personally, and feeling like women think you specifically are evil, you should try to understand why women are so cautious around men. It’s not some irrational prejudice against us.
You’re not going to get dinner and a movie out of a bear.
Lemmy isn’t safe for anyone, no matter their gender.
Every time I open Lemmy, I’m incredibly fearful of what pearl-clutching material is going to be thrust in my face, so I come back over and over
It’s also full of unapologetic Linux users.
Is that something I should be apologizing for?
Depends on the approach. All the Linux users that jump into a post asking for advice specifically for Windows and feel the need to scream “LINUX” in people’s faces are obnoxious and can fuck off.
LINUX
Don’t forget the ones who tell you its super easy to switch to and then you try and it turns out it there are about a dozen caveats and it might not even work reliably on about 80% of PCs on the market.
The horror!
We did it! 🎆
