I find it very difficult to empathize with the ‘bear thing,’ because, as my fiance (who is a man) put it, ‘I don’t know why anyone would pick any other human over the bear. Bears tend to avoid you and do your own thing. Humans are unpredictable.’
From that perspective, it seemed like a lot of people just got mad because they identify with the word ‘man,’ here, and don’t want to think of themselves as capable of evil. Which would be naive, because everyone is capable of anything.
Bears don’t “tend to avoid” any more than people do. There’s dangerous people that would assault you, and there’s species of bears (i.e. Polar Bears) that would definitely attack you on sight.
But the whole thing is not about the technicality. The videos were very clearly framed with emphasis on the gender of the human, they got extremely viral and millions of young males saw women saying stuff like “at least the bear would kill me instantly”. How do you think they felt, as kids that probably never even had a relationship before? You think that “helped them understand the women’s point of view” like they said was the purpose of the video, or brought them in the opposite direction, making them feel like they’re some different species, impossible to relate with, planting a seed that will only grow through the indoctrination of all the online toxic masculinity gurus?
Enough with the “Men vs. Women”, especially online where young kids will see them without any context of why is that happening. Both sexes need to do their best to stop prejudices towards the other inside their groups, and only then we can have a serious and understanding conversation. Of course that’s hard to do between algorithms and bad actors, but there’s really nothing else we can do at this point, since the large majority of both camps is entrenched in their opinion and will only listen to people of their own gender.
I find it very difficult to empathize with the ‘bear thing,’ because, as my fiance (who is a man) put it, ‘I don’t know why anyone would pick any other human over the bear. Bears tend to avoid you and do your own thing. Humans are unpredictable.’
From that perspective, it seemed like a lot of people just got mad because they identify with the word ‘man,’ here, and don’t want to think of themselves as capable of evil. Which would be naive, because everyone is capable of anything.
Bears don’t “tend to avoid” any more than people do. There’s dangerous people that would assault you, and there’s species of bears (i.e. Polar Bears) that would definitely attack you on sight.
But the whole thing is not about the technicality. The videos were very clearly framed with emphasis on the gender of the human, they got extremely viral and millions of young males saw women saying stuff like “at least the bear would kill me instantly”. How do you think they felt, as kids that probably never even had a relationship before? You think that “helped them understand the women’s point of view” like they said was the purpose of the video, or brought them in the opposite direction, making them feel like they’re some different species, impossible to relate with, planting a seed that will only grow through the indoctrination of all the online toxic masculinity gurus?
Enough with the “Men vs. Women”, especially online where young kids will see them without any context of why is that happening. Both sexes need to do their best to stop prejudices towards the other inside their groups, and only then we can have a serious and understanding conversation. Of course that’s hard to do between algorithms and bad actors, but there’s really nothing else we can do at this point, since the large majority of both camps is entrenched in their opinion and will only listen to people of their own gender.