(Content warning, discussions of SA and misogyny, mods I might mention politics a bit but I hope this can be taken outside the context of politics and understood as a discussion of basic human decency)
We all know how awful Reddit was when a user mentioned their gender. Immediate harassment, DMs, etc. It's probably improved over the years? But still awful.
Until recently, Lemmy was the most progressive and supportive of basic human dignity of communities I had ever followed. I have always known this was a majority male platform, but I have been relatively pleased to see that positive expressions of masculinity have won out.
All of that changed with the recent "bear vs man" debacle. I saw women get shouted down just for expressing their stories of being sexually abused, repeatedly harassed, dogpiled, and brigaded with downvotes. Some of them held their ground, for which I am proud of them, but others I saw driven to delete their entire accounts, presumably not to return.
And I get it. The bear thing is controversial; we can all agree on this. But that should never have resulted in this level of toxicity!
I am hoping by making this post I can kind of bring awareness to this weakness, so that we can learn and grow as a community. We need to hold one another accountable for this, or the gender gap on this site is just going to get worse.
Nobody needs my comment but here it goes. I don't take it personally, it has nothing to do with me. I don't have any issue with people's answers. I know that many people have PTSD and bad experiences and they'd prefer to avoid weird situations like this.
But privately there's a part of me that likes to solve problems and consider everything for myself. I think the question is set up to imply danger by comparing a wild bear to a strange man. If the scenario were different I would expect different results: You are hiking in the desert and you become lost and you have no water. After several days you see a man who offers you water and directions. Do you choose to turn away and continue into the desert or do you accept the man's offer to help provide water and directions to safety?
I have had traumatic experiences with people and one day I realized that I was negatively effected by them and I chose to start practicing Jiu-Jitsu where you need to be in close contact with people as you struggle to gain advantage and win points. I no longer feel the same fear and apprehension about being close to people like I did before.
If people feel a certain way I just wish them healing.
Yeah I really think you hit the nail on the head my biggest problem is that the question is worded and staged to make half the population look comparable not to mention how we already have tick tockers and Twitter phycos that are simply bigoted towards men so it's not entirely uncommon for people to just shit on men online and try to silence talk about men's issues because men's issues just aren't valuable in any way apparently I'm honestly tired of seeing this crap as a man and having so many people comparing people like me to a wild animal that doesn't even kill you before eating you alive and having everyone universally prefer to be with the wild animal is just rubbing salt in the wound
That actually is what happens when you get lost for a long time. It's called "Rescuer Syndrome"
Finally, an honest answer
one of the ways that i interpreted it was that you were quite literally teleported into the woods at random, either ending up with a bear, or a man. Because that was one of the only ways it would make any conceptual sense. Idk about you guys, but i wouldnt walk my ass into the woods with someone i'd be worried about causing me harm.