Man or Bear Discourse Might Feel Familiar to Atheists
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- Опубліковано 2 тра 2024
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#manorbear #atheism #feminism #elevatorgate #richarddawkins #videoessay - Розваги
"Elevatorgate" was 2011, not 2017
You're right, of course. It even says "2011" in my script, but I misspoke when shooting it and didn't catch it. Thanks for the correction, my friend!
@@SteveShives any time, my dear friend
He does actually say 2011 the second time he identifies the year later in the video. I was going "wow it was as recent as 2017 it felt way further back than that" and then he said 2011 later and I went "oh yeah that makes a lot more sense".
I just assumed I (and UA-cam autocaption) had misheard what Steve said because he mumbled a little.
Thank you for this outspoken contribution. More content creators need to post videos like this one ❤
Don't worry easy mistake, it was 2017 forward when super bigot atheism personalities like RR had taken over the space and busted up the actual community organizing that was going on around ACA.
As a teenager I once ran into a bear on my bike ridding down a forest bike trail. Full on collided with an adult black bear. Scariest thing I'd ever seen at the time. Quickly got my self off the ground, grabbed my bike and took off faster than I've ever pedaled before. The bear made some huffs and scary noises, but it didn't chase me, or do anything other than be grumpy amd confused.
As an adult who bikes I've regularly had men tailgate my bike with their trucks. Honk horns or throw things at me as they pass me in my bike lane.
Not sure what this adds to the discussion, but as a cyclists I know which one I'd pick.
That bear really was just mildly annoyed and baffled, huh xD
Damn can't believe you hit and run'd that poor bear
Just you wait, that bear is getting together a crack legal team to make sure you pay for that transgression!
im sure tha bear never chased you or honked at you woot bear for the scary win happy you're safe tho
It's pretty much a take on Pascals wager, which itself seems so ridiculous given the atheists' answer to that wager.
The argument of "you can't complain because other people have it worse" is such a terrible non-argument. I can't imagine saying that with a straight face and thinking "yes, I definitely made a good point there".
And it's such an emotionally manipulative tactic too. Weaponising one's own empathy against oneself, either having to argue the straw-man(which sucks), trying to argue how the argument is disingenuous(thereby allowing them to shift the conversation away), or giving up and feeling like shit.
Yeah. There's "worse" and there's "bad enough". As it happens, both are (amazingly!) bad enough.
Especially when it was said by a rich, straight, white male.
Some people believe that the most important thing to do with any movement calling for change is to limit how fast that change has to happen. They usually think that, by doing so, they're going to limit the amount of extremism in the world.
Someone should politely inform them that the status quo that they're measuring from _is_ an extreme position.
I don’t think it’s an argument made in good faith. It’s usually made to derail the conversation and make the “complainer” appear entitled or whiny.
As a man, I think I'd rather be alone in the woods with a bear than another man as well. I also have 40 acres where I am routinely in the woods alone with a bear that is not interested in being anywhere near me. I guess the bear is more afraid of men, too.
Yep men can be super dangerous to other men as well (iirc statistically men kill men of the same race in greater numbers than any other demographic but I could be wrong). The difference I think is that men are taught to believe that they can protect themselves (even if the individual can't) while women are taught the opposite (even if the individual can) and thus the fear response is stronger in women.
@@thealrightygina5725 You leave out the main difference; the average woman is outweighed and outpowered by the average man. It's not only what you learn, it's physics.
@@thealrightygina5725men are 3x more likely to be murdered (at the hands of other men) than women. I’ll also take the bear. Unless I have a food bear wont be interested in me
@@Laura-kl7vi I left nothing out. That's why I said "the individual". Not every woman will be out of her weight/strength class against a man, and not every man will be at the top of the same in an encounter with a woman. But they sure as hell are taught that, per your saying it's "physics" when there's a huge amount of overlap between xx and xy people, not even getting into intersex individuals. There's a reason people can easily be led to believe someone is of the opposite sex with a bit of a makeup and a costume change, irrespective of that person's gender identity.
@@thealrightygina5725 Very good point. I will use this to talk to men around me who think these talks are of a smaller concern to them just because they are men too.
The author wrote a response saying "I've gotten dozens of angry messages and threats from men after writing this story, I've gotten zero threats from any bears" and it pretty much validates her fears.
that's an Oof of gargantuan proportions.
In the USA statistically one to three people per year are killed by black bears. One to three people per year are killed by brown bears.
In the USA statistically a man murders his current or former female partner twice per day.
To be fair, most bears can't get any reception or WiFi out in the woods, and even if they did, they don't have thumbs. Or Cellphones.
Because bears have heard the argument and have the ability to respond over social media? Goodness, the stupidity of you people really knows no bounds.
Why would a bear be offended? They too would probably prefer to meet a bear over a human.
When this discourse started I initially thought that “bear” meant a large hairy gay man… needless to say I was confused
I mean, it'd still be the right answer no matter which! :P
As the other kind of bear, I initially thought the same thing.
@@VoteBidentoSaveDemocracyAlso preferable.
I once went to a gay bar with friends because I just wanted to dance and have fun without being hit on. My ass was pinched as I walked in.
I saw a reddit thread about the "man vs. bear debate" and had questions about a debate between a man and a bear.
I was a big “not all men” guy until my niece was born. The first time she and I were at Walmart and she was approached by a stranger while I was a few yards away it hit me: “Maybe not all, but some. Who are unidentifiable and look just like the rest.”
I so hear you. My oldest niece just turned 13, looks older, and is suddenly having to deal with guys. Adult men acting vile at her on the street wherever she goes. She's taken to wearing oversize, baggy clothes as much as possible, and I just wish I could be her full time bodyguard.
More than some, too many
Not all snakes are venomous... only takes one, though.
The same for me. I grew up a sheltered conservative and saw things differently when my first girlfriend shared her experiences with me.
I was too until I was told by a woman on a double date that thanked me that I was a normal person. That changed my point of view.
The thing that gets me about the Elevatorgate and the muslim woman argument is that we know that being permissive about mild misogyny leads to the normalisation of moderate to severe misogyny, if I can put it that way. It's been scientifically proven, and it's been dubbed the Pyramid of violence and of course it doesn't apply just to misogyny but also other types of targeted violence. Essentially, the more you tell women to shut up about being uncomfortable in elevators, the closer you get to not allowing women to drive or leave their homes without a male relative. It just blows my mind how many people just don't know about both the Pyramid of violence and the Paradox of Tolerance, cause, at least in my opinion, concepts like these are essential when politics are discussed. Fundamental, even.
Exactly
I feel like it's less that people don't know about them and more that they're being obtuse on purpose. I can't talk too much about women's experiences because, yk, not really my forte, but something I've noticed is that the issues LGBT people face today are identical to the ones that racial minorities used to (and sometimes still) face back in the day.
There's a reason people like Rosa Parks are so important. It doesn't really matter where you sit on the bus, but only in a vacuum. Within the context of the time, something so innocuous as not being allowed to sit here or there was significant not because of the action itself, but because of what else it allowed and the normalization of worse behaviours.
People who claim not to understand the Paradox of Tolerance are either stupid or, most likely, just arguing in bad faith. Of course we shouldn't tolerate certain views. Of course we shouldn't tolerate Nazis and KKK. Fucking of course. Anyone with a fucking brain can figure out why. People who say shit like "I thought you were the ToLeRaNt OnEs" are acting stupid on purpose.
It's always been mind boggling to me, why can't people understand this simple concept. Why is it so hard for people to be empathetic towards others. It's a bit sad
Tolerance is a Contract. the Paradox can be resolved if you realize that it's not a Law, it's a Contract. If you refuse to abide by the terms, you are not covered by them. But absolutely, yes, you are correct on all points.
When I mentioned in another comments section about how the trope of "man who won't take no for an answer" was romanticized and shouldn't be, I got some man "schooling" me that it was all women's fault because we played the "no means yes or at least no means ask again" game, a game I've never played. Now I know that this game does exist - but not nearly as much as men think it does. But I just love how women can't seem to state how we're uncomfortable with things without being blamed for it, even by our fellow women.
For instance, at eighteen, I was grabbed and groped and had to run away from some 40-something guy whose response to my casual "hey, do you have a watch, what time is it?" (pre-cellphone era) was to grab me and proclaim it was "kissing time." I never told anyone, because I knew that I would be blamed for talking to a stranger (I'd been painting a mural at the time and he just stopped by), being alone somewhere (the place I'd been hired to paint the mural was an empty dorm during summer break), or somehow 'leading him on' by chatting with someone who turned up while I was working (I hadn't even looked in his direction and was talking to him while painting).
But even now, four decades later, I know that there's many men - and women - who would still find blame with 18-year-old me somehow, rather than blame a society where a 40ish man feels entitled to grab a teenage girl who only wanted to know whether it was time to break for lunch yet. See, until we know you, we don't know who's going to see us as a plaything, and who's going to respect our bodily autonomy.
So, yeah, I'd totally take my chances with a bear.
We won't even know once we know them!!!
I am so sorry to hear that. I hope you can heal from your past experiences. You are not alone. My grandmother was raped as a child/teen and got the blame for it.
My grandmother was 15 when she ran away from home. She extremely rarely talked about her past. The only thing she told was in voice that was only anger:
"I had tits this big! And an ass that large. I had to get out of there! I had to get out of there!"
The went to college age 15 and later joined the army. Education was free in Russia 2nd WW era. She studied something related to economics because it was lucrative and she never wanted to depend on men. She never trusted men. Leaving us to guess that she was either sexually abused by multiple men, or one multiple times. In any case. As china/russian border culture goes, it's all about keeping face and rubbing elbows. She clearly got the blame for what happened and ran from home first chance she got. A common reason for stigma, is women believing rape is avoidable in the hopes it won't happen to them because of x reason. Same goes for disease.
While in the army, she met my grandad. Back then, alcohol was prohibited. And as young people with 0 experience with alcohol do, she and him got drunk. Now I, my mum and my grandmother all have very low blood pressure by nature. So she passed out. She got pregnant from that night. Grandad married her to save her image. But she became abusive. The one man she trusted knocked her up after one night. I give my grandad the benefit of the doubt. I think he made merely a very poor choice because he didn't strike me as the type to take advantage of someone. Not on purpose at least.
She had these moments where she'd be shouting, but with unfocussed eyes. Looking at someone. She would hit my uncle, and tell him to hit my mother from a young age. Even when my mom was pregnant she tried to get my uncle to hit her. Despite him being fucked up, he did not hit my mom while pregnant. My grandmother was a horrible person and I am glad she died when I was young.
Needless to say, my mom's psyche carried my grandmother's hatred and emotional abuse. My sister and I raised ourselves because our mom was messed up from a lifetime of abuse, and we had no dad we could count on. Except for a stepdad for about 3 years. All because some man/men wanted to take advantage of a little or teenage girl, and the stigma that followed mental health and having been raped.
Oh I so despise women who play "no means try harder". That is shitting on every other woman on the planet. If all the men would just take no as NO, this kind of games would quickly end. If woman is interested, then don't say no and absolutely DON'T PLAY EMOTIONAL GAMES!
Exactly bc stranger danger exists for a reason. Some of the reason is stuff like this
@@ElizabethGeiger-ye1sf
That can happen as well
Someone else said “men have left a lot more human bodies in the woods than bears and bears live in those woods”
Excellent point!
Well said
Someone will no doubt take that and argue its cuz bears eat the bodies; whilst entirely ignorin the pt 9,9
Because there are more humans than bears, you also encounter more humans than bears in your life so thats why there is more of a chance to get killed by a human.
@@bowsersbigbeanburrito LOL. Jesus, y'all just can't stop yourselves from proving the point, can you?
Every guy getting angry is picturing himself as the man in the woods/elevator, and never even attempt to empathise with the woman.
They can’t handle a hypothetical rejection.
You put it perfectly
The more interesting question is, what would I do if I empathise with her and _am_ the man in the woods? Run the other direction? Try not to look her in the eye? The truth is, realistically, I can't do anything. Aside from the pointless "tell the other men not to" recommendations. Why would they listen to me? They do not care about that woman's personal _integrity_, why would they care that I told them something? Just because I am a weak, cowardly person that happens to be male?
@@LarthV in the elevator situation it was made pretty clear -- don't proposition women in spaces they can't easily escape. In the woods is a hypothetical. It's not about what the man should do, it's about which the woman would prefer if given the choice.
@@LarthV as for your second bit, the answer is because a lot of men are more likely to listen to another man telling them "hey, this behavior is creepy/makes women uncomfortable" than they are to listen to a woman saying the same
From a woman:
"If i was attacked by a bear atleast society would believe me"
And no one would ask what you were wearing
Posthumously
the North American Bear Center cites that you are 167 times more likely to be killed by a man 18-24 years old than you are by a black bear.
Tbh, the killcount depends on the chance of human-human/human-bear contact, and in this situation you are placed with a man/bear in the woods by default. Or do the statistics in question take this into account?
I'm pretty sure a woman in her life cross path with hundreds of thousands more men than wild black bears tho...
😅
@@greyish7212 You're not taking to account laws and repurcussions that hold humans back from acting on impulse. Even with that in place doesn't stop men. Imagine the statistics if life was a free for all for men.
@@somepenguin508
The ratio is pointless since people also live in areas where there are bears.
Less than 200 kills from bears in over 200 years. Those 200 years included settlers moving across the states and meeting bears, destroying their homes, and killing them.
Thousands of women die yearly in the USA alone.
So yeah you can ratio that however you want.
I lived in the woods. Met bears. First 12 years of my life. I could get mail as a child with bears outside. They moved on once that door opened.
I was hurt far more by men those first 12 years. Even more after.
@@somepenguin508it does however take into account that bears are predictable...men aren't
To be fair unless the bear is preparing for hibernation, or protecting it's cubs, the chance that a bear would actually attack or hunt you is pretty low.
Which is one of the reasons we'd choose it.
EXACTLY! And if you you make enough noise, the bear will hide from YOU!
If it's less than 25%, then it's less than the percentage of men willing to admit to coercing women into sex.
@@zoushaomenohu
These are comforting ideas, but I don't know that I'd rely on them if I was face to face with a bear.
@@alanpennie8013, no one wants to be face to face with a bear, esp. not one you've somehow pissed off into attacking. The point is the amount of risk involved -- men are higher risk. Look at it this way: might it kill me? yes, bear/yes, men. Might it rape me? no, bear/yes, men. Obviously, team bear.
I knew my ignorance was complete when the conversation of “how many people do you tell when you go out with a new person for the first time?” My reaction was, tell someone? Why would I tell someone? Every, and I mean every woman at the table said they had a list of people they tell and who are waiting for a text/call indicating a safe arrival home post date. Never in my life have I even thought about doing something similar.
It is a normal farewell among women/enbies/fems to say something like "Call me/Text me when you get there?" the idea being to let you know that they are home safe and if you forget it is not abnormal to get a call from that friend checking on you, just in case.
It is not a *bad* idea for anyone, but it is a normal thing.
start. it's dangerous out there.
@@MirrimBlackfoxhe's referring to something else. He's referring to specifically telling people you are going on a date with a person you don't know well enough to trust, it could be a rapey murderer. So women will Specifically Tell Friends Who They Are With, Where They Are Going, When They Should Be Home. Because when a woman goes missing, the first 24 hours are often the difference between life & death.
This has little to do with pleasantries regarding driving home safely.
Bless you for understanding.
And yet, men will be ANGRY about this rather than ever even thinking to be grateful for just how much risk and effort women make to keep giving them chances.
IIRC the elevator guy came out and said "My bad. Don't do what I did." So good for him.
Indeed.
I recall him being tracked down and interviewed by Integral Math. Did not get around to watching it, but Integral Math was a big Watson detractor.
If only that would have been the end of it.
Instead we got fuel for the "alt-right"
Yep. And was promptly called a simp and white knight.
@@ChristyAbbey Oh, FFS. 😒 People suck.
I'm a serious hiker and mountain climber, who has done extensive backpacking in Wyoming, we're talking 78 mile hikes in back country. I take these trips alone and I'm a woman. So I have literally dealt with the 'man vs bear' scenario MANY times, as have many serious hiking friends I have. Every single time, I have chose to hike on and build my camp for the night away from strange men, knowing that it increases my risk of encountering a bear. Never regretted that choice, but I have heard really terrifying stories from fellow female hikers about creepy men on the trail. Also, I got lost one time hiking rural Michigan (it's so flat and monotonous in parts it's really easy to lose your sense of direction) so accepted a ride from a strange dude, long story short, I ended up throwing myself out of the car at 40 mph when I realized he was taking me deeper into the woods for God knows what. So, I am an expert in this question, who has put my life on the line with this one, and I am 100% TEAM BEAR.
oh god, that's terrifying, I'm so sorry
I can understand that Elevator Dude may have been uncomfortable asking her something like that in front of others; rejection is already unpleasant, and PUBLIC rejection is even MORE unpleasant.
But what that means is that he chose to put his own comfort ahead of hers. Even if it was thoughtless rather than deliberate, that's still not a great way to present yourself.
I think that last point is the biggest issue, a lot of guys don't know how to present themselves with a woman. If I don't see angry responses I see defeatist ones
"So I should never approach a woman?"
"Guess I'll stay single forever"
"If I don't make a first move nothing will happen"
Black and white logic with no room for nuance and no awareness for when it is or isn't appropriate to ask someone out/how.
The elevator guy could have just said that he would love to discuss more with her, would she be interested of doing so sometime in the future?
Instead of suggesting her to come in his hotel room when she have already stated she is going to sleep.
@@Susirajantakaa This. Asking someone to go to your room whether you mean it to or not, means wanna have sex. Even if it's not the motivation or personal implication, that is the colloquial one.
All he needed to say is that he enjoyed her talk and would like to talk some more. Wanna grab lunch/coffee (in a public place is the implication) sometime and talk?
If she said no, then well, obviously rejection hurts, even if there was no romantic/sexual inclinations, being rejected sucks and it's awkward, but you respect someone's feelings as they respect yours.
No doubt if this scenario did take place, as people often are, she would have been super polite and said thanks for the offer, but she's busy or just plain doesn't want to.
He says, that's alright and to have a good night.
I swear, rejection scenarios and how to mitigate and reduce the awkward/socially rebuffed feeling should have been practiced in high school as mandatory. Because it's an emotion most people don't know how to deal with. It would be better for everyone, including the person rejected in order to not feel so terrible and to empathize with the zillions of hypothetical reasons someone might say no. Either in purely platonic endeavours or romantic/sexual.
love the other replies explaining what he could have done instead. This could have been such a good learning opportunity for socially awkward men in the skeptics community to learn what are appropriate ways of asking women out, but noooo, people had to immediately get offended and lament that "you can't even ask a woman out these days without being labeled a predator".
A bear did not approach me at the pool at 14 and flirt with me because I was wearing a two-piece for the first time, a bear did not approach me at work and ask when I got off because he wanted to have sex (I was 18, he was 60something), a bear did not introduce me to his parents and admit to having a crush on me while being twice my age, and a bear did not require me as a female employee at the time to be alone behind a desk in front of him while he towered over me and threatened me because my manager wasn't in today... and I couldn't throw him out unless he got physical. A bear did not break my leg for being "insubordinate" to him.
No, un oso sólo te comería viva.
To be fair and balanced (TM) breaking a leg is a bear thing. If one met an equivalent number of bears it's not unlikely for a bear to do that. But then a bear breaking one's leg isn't even close to the top 10 threatening situations you mentioned. Still a net positive with bears and broken legs.
One of my earliest memories was the girl beside me being grabbed out of a fountain we were paddling in since we were basically toddlers. Not a bear just some random man who decided to grab her and run off.
@@hayuseen6683 If I'm getting my leg broken either way. Might as well pick the bear.
@@cardemis7637 Really, bears are more predictable. You probably aren't getting your leg broken with the bear. They'll protect cubs first, then food, then themselves. Let them protect what's valuable and you're good, with the caveat that polar bears and those weakened from injury are more dangerous.
So in short: A bear is predictable in how it reacts to you unlike a man. Sure, i could draw a man who i‘d have the time of my life with in the forest. But i could also draw a man who‘d have the time of his life hurting me and i cannot reliably scare the man off by flailing my arms around and screaming loudly.
The worst a bear can do is kill you.
I think that that is good reasoning and while I disagree with you I can see where you’re coming from. However, using this reasoning, you must also choose a bear over a woman you don’t know. I think that this question does pose an interesting position about men, but also humanity in general and their ability to hurt people for the sake of hurting them or for self enjoyment. A bear would not torture you because it has no reason to, while a human may torture you for no reason at all. That is what can make humans scarier than bears in some situations.
And if a woman actually is attacked by a bear, she won't have to endure legions of complete strangers coming out of the woodwork to ask if she led the bear on or was dressed too provocatively.
I think the words _predictable_ and _reliably_ are carrying far too heavy a load in your comment.
No they don't. Women don't encounter bears. The do however encounter Men, an known bad actor vs a unknown? I might take my chances with the bear too.
I am a man, and I would pick the bear. I'd pick the bear over almost any random unknown human being, male or female. Bear might hurt you if it's hungry or threatened. Humans will hurt you just for fun.
I'm a 6'5" tall man, and I was regularly the tallest boy in my class or school. I was also a fairly shy and introverted person for various reasons, but would notice how when I'd come around a corner and almost run into a girl or woman, most of the time they will flinch or look scared, and that affected me from a young age. About the only thing intimidating about me is my height, but to be reacted to in such a way was a shock to me too.
I was raised by a mother who had been assaulted by a family member, and learning about that from her at a fairly young age horrified me and made me empathetic about her, and eventually towards other women and girls--I had no sisters and only one female cousin, but it didn't take long for me to put two and two together over how females would react towards me, and I reacted by becoming the stereotypical "gentle giant". I've noticed a fair number of other tall men behave like this, too, and I don't think it is an accident. It doesn't feel good to be reacted to out of fear just over your size, but a lot of tall men probably have learned to expand their empathy through this way. The good thing is I've been able to use my size to intimidate men who were messing with women--the fact that so many people, male and female, react to someone tall with fear or deference is another sad commentary on how some people have used their size or strength to harm other people.
Plus if you see a bear in the woods, you can immediately get out your bear spray to protect yourself. If you come across a human and do that, you risk breaking social rules and potentially offending/angering the man so that he does attack. Also, defending yourself by immediately spraying a man like you would with a bear might not hold up in court.
Or worse -- claim that hurting you is the ethically right thing to do.
"You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape -- the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes -- we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality." -- Guards Guards, Sir Terry Pratchett.
@@rikk319 And, frankly, that is definitely a thing that we are all grateful for.
As male presenting I'm often asked by women to walk them to their cars at night. I used to think of this as me doing a good deed, and I felt good about myself. Then I thought about how women need someone to walk them to their car, and it's not out of fear of bears, and I'm sorry that they need that
My wife hadn't heard of this "man vs bear" thing. When I explained it to her she said "yeah, I'd choose bear".
It’s been drilled into our heads our entire lives to never put yourself in a situation where you’d be isolated with a strange man. Don’t park far away in parking garages, don’t walk down dark streets at night, don’t go jogging on isolated paths, careful if you travel alone, careful getting gas alone, never go near a van, and on and on and on… since before I knew what s3x was, I was taught to never be kidnapped, once I was older I was taught to plan all my activities to avoid being isolated w men, so yeah if I’m hypothetically alone in the woods I’m not picking to see a man I don’t know. My dad would be like did I teach you nothing?!?!
And if you did not assume the worst and plan against it, a huge amount of the response would be an accusation that you were, “asking for it” even if you did not survive the encounter.
If the bear killed you, almost no one would have accused you of that.
And then it turns out that the vast majority of assaults and abuse are actually perpetrated by family members and friends, not scary strangers. But we _really_ don't like to think about that.
I like your dad
As a man who was raised by a single mother and who has two older sisters, these lessons were drilled into me as well.
My experiences with other men growing up has only shown me that these are reasonable lessons for people to learn. As an adult man I have a lot less to worry about now, but I still prefer the company of women I know (or bears!) to just some random person. So I can definitely understand the preference.
How many men will tell you they don't trust other men, but still get angry at you if you don't?
Straight men well understand boundaries... when surrounded by gay men. Also, love Rebbeca Watson. I'm subscribed to her channel and recommend it.
This is truly the best comment ever. If a guy is acting like he doesn't understand boundaries, put him in a gay bar.
I'm subscribed to her channel and didn't even know about this. I appreciate the skeptics, especially in these times.
Lovely thought. Too bad these are the same kind of people who decide homosexuality is evil. Cognitive dissonance dodged.
@@HonoredMule We're talking about atheists, who are much less likely than other subsets to have an issue with the concept of homosexuality. In fact, that was part of the point in the beginning of this video, when he was talking about how surprising the lashing out at Rebecca Watson was, considering the folks who were doing it are historically less likely to be bigots (at least in the same ways as those who are religious).
@@jwhite-1471 My bad for leaving my statement open to religious interpretation. Nevertheless, "(at least in the same ways as those who are religious)" covers a multitude of similarities based on power dynamics regardless of whether they're codified as religion. And "less likely" to be bigots doesn't make the ones who are less bigoted, but bigotry isn't even the root cause here. It's discomfort with sharing and possibly losing status as topping the sexual food chain.
Because it's about power, not ideology.
Ideology is the justification - not the motive - which is why atheism _doesn't_ cure sexism, nor should that ever have been expected.
I'm a talllish fat guy. I'm pretty close to a bear already. It's alarming that as a big guy I make people uncomfortable just by existing. I hate that and I hate that it's a reasonable worry for them.
honestly, with men it's kinda like with dogs: the big ones are usually harmless, its the small, angry ones you have to worry about ;)
Yeah sorry. Just imagine being small and less strong and being confronted. Its rough on all sides. THanks for being aware though
@@tamatebako_yt My ex was tall and had a lot of weight. He liked Star Trek and Doctor Who like me :(. Seriously, all indicators suggested he hated women. I was struggling to understand why he asked me out. I dodged an argument by using massive qualifiers on Kirk being a womanizer. I postpooed my own judgement on his behaviours until I saw the other side of these rage matches he talked about. Believe me, there was no match. He simply screamed the most terrifying incoherent and pointless things and cast a permanent judgement on the person. He stormed off without ever acknowledging or apologising that he screamed at a fragile traumatized person. I lost every friend I'd managed to find up here as well as my entire social life because he played the victim so fg well. In this story, I was the bad guy.
If it worries you, if you’re in a situation where it seems you’re particularly concerning, be visibly disinterested in the woman, by playing a game on your phone or otherwise concentrating on a task. It also helps to intentionally get distracted for a bit if you’re incidentally following so as to provide a space bubble.
Were I asked that same question, I'd've also picked the bear. Partially because I'm aware that bear attacks usually occur when they feel threatened, but also because "man in the woods" is a classic horror trope for a reason.
Yeah, as a man, my response to the question depends a bit on how "in the woods" I am. Are we talking on a hiking trail in broad daylight passing another tourist in a national park? Or am I deep in the middle of nowhere and suddenly encountering hill folk?
It’s the entire thought process. I’m alone in the woods, I see a bear, I think oh crap there’s a bear, does he look angry? I think I’m supposed to be loud and he’ll hopefully go away. I see a man, I think oh crap did he follow me? Does he want to hurt me? How badly? Will it just be here or does he want to chain me up in his basement. Oh god am I about to spend the rest of my life being tortured? The bear walks away, I think oh phew, wow I just saw a bear! I wish I’d gotten a pic. The man walks by, I think ok was that it? Is he following me? Is he going to be waiting at my car? I’m miserable the rest of the time. The bear decides to attack, either I die or I survive and receive a ton of support from my community. Maybe the whole country. The man attacks, I hope he kills me. But if he doesn’t, I now live with immense emotional trauma and a world who oscillates between not believing me and blaming me. It’s the bear, I choose the bear whether it passes me by or attacks me, live or die, I choose the bear. What’s so hard to get?
Well, you've certainly thought this through!
Nice victim complex, have you ever considered therapy or are you americant?
Only the creeps are going to understand your motivation.
Not for nothin, this is why I have a walking stick. Not so much to lean on when my knees hurt, but because men who follow Not Men to their cars look for people unlikely to hurt them. If you carry a big stick, you are less likely to be followed because not only do you have something to hit with, *it extends your reach past his.*
It's also helpful for dissuading feral dogs. Not bears so much tho. But bears don't tend to invade your personal space or ask if anyone is waiting at home for you.
Maybe he's thinking the same about YOU.
A bear can be deterred through fairly reliable methods. Make yourself seem like enough of a threat, or even too much trouble, and the bear will usually go away. And even then, I have yet to hear of anyone being r*ped by a bear.
As another respondent to this question said, "The bear can only kill me."
Bears Going Their Own Way are IMO on average better than men who join the reddit for Men Going Their Own Way.
Bears actually will eat you alive... just saying... but understand the argument.
With a black bear, maybe. Never try pulling that with a grizzly.
@@ExtremeMadnessX If you understood the argument, you wouldn't have left this reply. Just saying.
@@mytmouse57 Has a grizzly bear ever raped and THEN killed a woman?
Meanwhile, are there any known incidents of a man in the woods r*ping a woman and then killing her?
Well, are there?
You can also pull up stats on polar bears, but that still doesn't address the point.
Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson showed the ability to read the room and show intellectual humility; Dawkins has none; he always came across as smug at best, arrogant in an "I am intellectually superior to you," at worst. Sagan and deGrasse want to educate you, to convince you, while Dawkins TELLS you what is true, and if you disagree, he doesn't want to try to convince you, he'll just dismiss you as "You just don't get it." And I say this as a cis, hetero male, who is a scientist.
100% correct take on Dawkins, as evidenced by his transphobia - the man is literally rejecting the scientific discoveries made in biology during the decades since his own most recent publishings in the wider field out of sheer egomanic resentment against anything feminist and progressive. Instead, he uses the supposed authority bestowed upon him by a book as old as I am and (at least) as out-dated as my taste in popular music to shit on trans people, all the while knowing nothing about the scientific aspect of trans-ness.
...Neil DeGrasse Tyson is also probably a r*pist, and has been accused by many women of various sorts of sexual harassment.
It never fucking ends 😔
One of the major reasons Sagan is infinitely superior to Dawkins.
It came across even in his books, much as I enjoyed and continue to enjoy them -- especially when he strayed from biology to more general points, especially about religion. I remember in several cases running into virtually the same point in books by Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, but finding Dennett's formulations much more nuanced and well-reasoned, and therefore much easier to accept or at the very least consider.
@@gozerthegozarian9500 That's what I meant by Dawkins lacking any intellectual humility; he won't admit ignorance on a topic and/or have the willingness to critically evaluate his own views. As a person, he's probably a nice enough fellow, unless you cross into a topic he's hardheaded about, then he becomes Mr. Hyde. At the end of the day though, he's just another Upper-Class, over-educated, up-his-own-behind Tory, and his mask has now totally slipped off.
Thanks for that. I'm going to be honest and come right out and say it: I am viewed as creepy by many women. I can't help it. Which is why I have instituted the following safeguards: 1) not trapping women alone... EVER. 2) a social seeing eye friend who is neurotypical who can tell me when I am acting creepy and -- most importantly -- 3) not going into social situations alone and generally avoiding group activities whenever possible. This has greatly helped. Everyone needs to work on their self-awareness. Sometimes you cannot change... so you need someone else to help.
A seeing eye friend 😂
Do you have to petition for one of those or does it work like the cat distribution system?
Which really pairs down what you can do in life and comfortably participate in society.
The same time through i think we need to remind and make more effort, to not generalize man. Ther eis a difference between being careful, and plain generalizing.
Ok i just hate the stupid gender generalizing fighting , not helping
Through nothing against being careful.
And yeah yeah toxic masculinity, but it should never generalize so many people , as people, dehumanizing still bad. Same way dudes should look at woman as people first.
And womrn not being called out, for that , without playing in the gender war bs, is still nessesary too igf its really too far, thats, terfs grew out of the not feminist, just manhating , school of feminism. Ther is real harm if that isnt adressed aproviate too, as we see. Or hateful bigots can weaponizr tolerated, manhate, and transphobia and bathrooms, its literally from manhating, straight.
Men, are people too, ok that should neve rbe forgotrten, and women. and enbys. Hateful women too nrrd to be called out of they spread harmful hate, and i dont mean reactionary sexuists just wanting excuses to stoak gender wars, who make it harder to adress that .
Another reason why women's safety is everyone's problem. If there was less reason to be constantly fearful guys like you wouldn't need to constantly follow such constraining rules because there would be less fear and distrust all around. And, let's face it, nobody is happy following constraining rules just to exist in a social context. It's not how anyone want to or should have to live.
Thank you for being so self-aware, and taking steps to make women feel safer / more comfortable around you! I guarantee that you're less "creepy" than a lot of the neurotypical guys in these comments telling women that we're stupid & irrational for being cautious around strange men - even though 1 in 4 women is sexually assaulted, by a man. Thank you for being a decent person!
She literally just gave a helpful hint wrt human interaction. You could tell the dudes who were genuinely socially awkward from the dudes who used the pretense of social awkwardness to get away with creepy/transgressive behaviour because the former's reaction was "Huh. Noted!" and the latter's was the frothing geyser of entitled rage that tore the Deep Rifts into New Atheism and eventually drowned that movement's positive potential in a slime pit.
All the Woman I've ever asked has some story of sexual harassment or worse.
ALL OF THEM.
Hell I feel uncomfortable just thinking about it while they live it every day, what a huge asshole would I be to blame them.
I don't know what percentage of men have ever asked ANY woman whether she's ever been harassed or worse.
I suspect it's less than 50%.
We're part of a system, and even if we're individually innocent (most of us), our role in the system gives us a moral obligation to seek improvement in the system.
This is uncomfortable for many of us.
@@rileymclaughlin4831 I personally never asked. And I am pretty sure I never will. I try to be the kind of person people can open up about things like this on their own and I fear asking a person who is not ready to talk about it would just push their boundaries.
Every woman I've ever known enough to have more than a casual conversation with has at least one horror story. Apparently I have a therapist's face, and ears, because complete strangers will open up to me about these things too. I have five stories myself. None of those stories are counting anything less than actual assaults.
The statistics are easy to find, and the people working those stats say that they fall short due to the unknown cases. I find it hard to believe that anyone can't figure out why women feel this way. Thanks for the empathy.
@@Alresu if you ask something easy like what age was the first time you got cat called that will probably start the covo without pressure. (spoiler, most women it's, like, 9 to 12 years old). my mother in law told me she had never been cat called, but was flashed by a man at 9 and groped on the bus at 12. I got the cat calls starting at 10 years old walking past men on my way to school. these old men said it was because I was wearing shorts. Never wore them again. That was normal for us, at least for my generation it was. Some of my friends didn't even consider it harassment because it was such an everyday thing in grade and middle school.
When I make a new woman friend in my age group, I am 51, and always wait for the two stories I usually hear when our friendship grows trusting enough. The rape story and the 20+ year old boyfriend they had when they were about 15 or 16. I know exactly why they choose bear.
I had completely forgotten what a turning point that was. For me, I always think about the age old trope of fathers being protective of their daughters and distrustful of the boys in their lives. All you have to do is examine where that feeling comes from to realize it's a mirror.
Absolutely agree. That’s what I’ve always said.
Fathers that aggressively defend their daughters from “bad boys” are just saying, “I was a shit bag to women so I know what men are capable of.” My father never behaved like this because he trusted me to choose my partners and he didn’t just automatically assume the worst of others.
Im protecting my child from the children of my peers
I know who their fathers are, what they’ve done and what they teach.
To do less would be to put them in a danger I am well aware of
Great point. Men know what men are capable of.
For some people it's a mirror, for others it's their own past experiences with other people.
As a man myself I can say that I'd rather not be alone with some unknown man in the woods. Not because I'm "aware of what I, and therefore other men, am capable of" (because, and this really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, women are capable of the same things), but because my experiences with other men have taught me that they're more likely to be a threat.
That said, I probably wouldn't want to be alone in the woods with some unknown woman, either... but the last few dates I've had were nature walks, so maybe it's not so cut-and-dry for me.
I've known at least 3 men in my life that were sexually assaulted by other men. I wish we could hear more stories from men on this too. Who knows how many other guys I know that have been assaulted and are too embarrassed to say anything.
My favorite reaction to this question is all my fellow queers who answer with "the bear please 🥰"
Yeah that question does mean something rather different in that context.
I see what you did there!
The sad part is that even those of us who aren't into big hairy dudes will still take a literal bear because for a lot of us, it's also still the safer option, especially for AFAB queers of every flavour and trans women.
Edit: just asked my trans BFF and her enby roommate. Both chose the bear without hesitation. Not surprised, since all three of us have had bad experiences (to put it mildly) with cis-het men. Why all the hate, guys? Just why?
OK, that’s 100% different. A big burly guy is definitely someone you would rather have with you in the woods instead of a regular skinny guy.
Not knowing the context, I thought this video was some "anti-gay" bullshit video lol
Furry community: "don't mind if I do"
Asked my wife if she had heard about the man or bear TikTok. She said "my love, I'm still on Twitter. I've known about it for a week". So I became the person who knows about stuff a week later on UA-cam because long-form videos take time to make...
"my love, I'm still on Twitter."
That's going up there with "'Tis the East, and Juliet is the sun" when future historians look at Cute Shit Couples Say to Each Other™
I once came face to face with a black bear in the woods. He took off running. All the bears I’ve ever seen are running from humans
An old friend's mom (who lives in a rather rural and forested bit of Northern Ontario) regularly chases bears out of her garbage with a hockey stick. If only it were that easy with men.
@@thing_under_the_stairs I lived in a game land for a decade. Bears were not a big worry of mine. Wild hogs and drunk hunters were the big danger.
A bear will choose to be in the woods with a bear too
Mine ambled. Granted they were chilling in my yard and I was just a kid.
I’m a good natured and decent man and I know that if I approached a woman by herself in the woods I would be suspicious by implication alone. I’m not offended by this. I’m going to be a father soon and I know one of my responsibilities if it’s a boy is to raise him not to be an entitled predator. Too many fathers fall short on this responsibility. To be absolutely clear I would pick the bear, too.
Good on you sir. Men like you are the ones that restore trust in men. Not ones that call women crazy.
Best of luck to you, the wifey, and your son/daughter!
I once asked a young woman to come to my room at an atheist conference. It was because there was a crowd there doing a livestream, and they wanted her to participate. But I anticipated her feeling some caution about the situation, so I gave her my room number and left her to get a friend before coming up. I didn’t take it personally. People just need to use normal caution, and I can’t see being so obtuse or easily offended that you don’t give women room to do that.
Lol, you mean you let HER leave to find HER friend to bring along for her SAFETY. I read it wrong when I first scanned through and thought you meant you left her there while you brought a friend of YOURS to the room, and I thought OMG that's so horrible...
Then I saw who you were and realized I had totally misunderstood the inflection there. I know you from your channel and I know you would never be that kind of bad guy.
Thank you! It's astonishing that (too many) men take it personally when women who don't know them well use the basic precautions drummed into us from a young age! "But I'm a nice guy!". WE DON'T KNOW THAT!!! And the cost of finding out otherwise is just too high.
@@kanderson-oo7us that's because if it's about other men we don't have precotion like that so it can be baffling for us I guess because I don't talk to woman they are too scary except my mom of course
I'm a transgender woman. I choose bear all the way.
Yeah, it's wild how much we can intellectualize it, but then *living* it... I didn't know how bad.
Enby here, same.
Would you respect a woman's decision to not want a trans"woman" in a female space with her?
With you sister, bears are so much more resonable
Yep I'm also a trans women and I would choose the bear every time.
10 or so years ago I was listening to my female friends tell me that one of the scariest things they experience is having a strange man walking behind them . They simply didn’t know if he was following them or just going the same way. Worse still he he was catching up with them. Would he just pass, would he say something, touch them, something worse?
When I realized they all kept keys in their hands or something else like that because they were so worried I decided to adjust my behaviour especially at night.
Whenever possible if I am going the same direction as a woman I cross the road. That way they have lots of space.
I figure if we tell women that they always have to be vigilant about their surroundings that’s the least I can do.
I, for one, appreciate that. Many men would find offense at the notion of going a bit out of their way to make a woman actually feel safe. So thanks.
the thing is - most guys don't even realise that. If you're walking a direction, you're just walking.
Ever since a friend told me that - I *always* cross the road if I happen to walk behind a woman at night.
In my head "walking 10m extra distance vs potentially terrifying someone for 5-10-... minutes " isn't a complicated issue.
Trans woman here, but early enough in transition that I still present as a guy. I worry about this all the time, and I try to do the same thing if I'm ever walking in the vicinity of a woman/fem-presenting person at night.
This behavior, that is giving her lots of elbow room, respects the truth that humans live with a lot of unknowns, which seems a particularly atheist truth. She doesn't know whether you're dangerous, that uncertainty causes tension, so you change at least one variable in her calculus, allowing her to reduce her Oh Shit I'm In Danger level.
I walk with a cane, not rly bcuz i need it, tho it does mitigate some pain in the long term; but bcuz i know that if some man, or anyone rly, atks me out of nowhere... I alrdy have a wpn in my hand rdy to swing
I also know my cane means men are more likely to underestimate me and assume im weaker than i am; so they arent as rdy for when i pick that cane up and full sprint away from them
Tho notably, if i encountered a man comin at me with hostility in mind while out walkin around the streets, as opposed to woods; im not usin that cane to hit the man, im usin it to brk a window to get someone out there to stop the man from atkin now theres witnesses
Not that it always works mind you, some men dont care if theres witnesses. I had a man atk me at a bus station once with a dozen ppl around and he only cared about the witnesses when my fellow women got up and headed towards us to get him off of me.
Notably, that man got away with it too; even tho a cop was literally watchin the whole thing, she didnt do a thing to intervene, i had to rely on other women at the scene to protect me. So for him, atkin a woman in broad daylight was a safe thing for him to do with no risk; and bonus pts, itll make his gf think he's such a badarse bcuz he assaulted that lady who shouted at her for nearly hittin her with her car
Ha! No I haven't heard about either of these "events." To me the better choice would be "Would you rather be in an elevator with a man or a dog?" I'm convinced the dog would win every time.
I've been concerned with these issues for my whole life, to the extent that I never wanted to approach a woman to ask her to go out with me. It just feels entirely too pretentious.
I have, in fact, never gone out with a woman who didn't ask me first.
I've been married twice, and had other romantic relationships as well.
My first wife complained that I was not what she expected in a man, that I was all too eager to go along with whatever she wanted to do. "Doormat," she said, and left.
My second wife also said that I was not what she had come to expect in a man and she was delighted. We got along famously. She was the love of my life.
I am sorry for your loss. May she rest in peace, regardless of faith or lack thereof.
I'd rather the doggie too!
"I'm convinced the dog would win every time."
Are there Bingo games in every elevator, where you live?
Are there chess sets in elevators, and do you play chess with dogs?
do you mean win an election?
what's zero-sum about travel in an elevator?
...
...
---
... wait, do you mean a fight?
why would a fight happen?
why would you start a fight with a dog in an elevator?
why would you start a fight with a human in an elevator?
are fights 100% inevitable whenever two beings are both in an elevator, and one of those beings is you?
(fights are NOT inevitable, or even common, when I share an elevator with another mammal, whether that mammal is my species or any other)
My hubby was similar. Kind, adaptive, fun loving, empathetic, sweet, affectionate-- nothing I expected. We started dating as teens and *I* was the one intending to have s3x and run... but fell head over heels instead! 15 years later and we've been married for 12 of them :3
I have a huge fear of dogs and yet id still rather be in that elevator with a dog
Like, the last time i was on a walk and an unleashed dog got let out by a negligent owner, i froze up and shut my eyes and stood stock still as that dog came up to me bein all playful and friendly; until the owner got the dog under control and he had to come up to me and gently tell me the dog wasnt out there anymore before i cud even open my eyes... And id still choose an unknown dog bcuz i know that far less dogs mean me actual harm; ive been dealin with men meanin me harm since i was a bloody infant!
@@rileymclaughlin4831 srs or sarcasm?
I worked at a zoo and have even helped raise bears.
honestly my fear level of men and bears is about the same. Ive been in the woods with both.
living in the country. a seeing a bear is kind of one of the perks i have some really good bear photos. theyd get into our bird seed and trash, a bit of a nuisance at best.
if l looked outside and saw a random MAN id be legit worried. and watch him way more carefully than the bear.
Grew up with bears in my yard. Never got to work with them though. And they usually buggered off soon as I came out.
I’d pick bear in a heartbeat.
I left xtianity and became an atheist at the start of 2016. I'm a white, cis-het married mom. Your channel is one of the first that I came across after my deconversion. I watched the last several "An Atheists Reads" episodes. I'm not a cinephile, so when you moved on, so did I. Your series introduced me to skepticism and critical thinking. You laid a foundation that has enabled me to grow into what I am today; I'm a secular humanist. I had to do a large amount of introspection so that I could weed out my selfish attitudes and self-righteous indignation aimed at the "others" in my life. Bad thinking and bad behavior are human traits. I'm delighted to stop by here and see your own personal growth. Well done, Steve. Thank you for helping me how to learn and grow as a human. Be well.
I have to admit I would choose the man, but only because I have an irrational fear of getting eaten alive by a bear. Plus, the bear mace should work against the man too.
Better probably.
I'd say any fear of getting eaten alive by a bear is pretty rational.
Bears just want to be left alone. They really don't want to come anywhere near humans unless the humans are irresponsible campers. Like, obviously don't run up to one! But if you're tromping through the woods singing Christmas carols they'll steer clear. Make sure to hang your food up. You can take bear safety courses. (you can also take man safety courses, but they are longer and involve more like how to get out of zip ties, ways to escape being choked out, pressure points)
So dude walks up friendly from the opposite way to you and you’re gonna immediately spray him when he’s close? Have fun with the lawsuit.
Bears don’t sue.
@@magnarcreed3801 Dude, you got some hidden aggression there. You should work on that. Micro-aggressions ain't cool. Therapy helps.
I know this isn't the point of the video, but this is a perfect example showing Atheism isn't a world view.
You are quite right and you are quite right
Absolutely! The social connection absolutely ends with the lack of belief. Other than that atheists are as different as all of the people of the earth.
Please explain?
Meh, kinda. It is not an all-encompassing paradigm with rules for behavior from birth to death. On that axis, it's very different from Orthodox Judaism or the more conformist forms of Islam. That said, looking at a night sky and thinking "That's God's creation" versus looking at a night sky and thinking "does red-shifting really prove that the Universe is expanding?".. the former views the world significantly differently than the latter.
What is it then in your opinion?
The amount of men trying to dissect and "prove" that choosing the bear is actually scientifically wrong and women should feel bad for doing it is too damn high.
Like, I'm an autist struggling with rhetorically questions, and even I got that it's obviously not meant to be literal.
Maybe spend more time analyzing why women feel that way instead of getting pissy about it; maybe you could actually learn something.
_learn something?... US MEN?!!_
HOW DARE YOU!
NOT IN MY MURICAH!!
The problem is that they don't want to learn, they just want to be right.
For real. How devoid of empathy must these guys be to enter a discussion of a women's issue and make it about themselves?
It's a retreat to literalism that lets them be smarmy and appear smarter than they really are. The sad part is how many people fall for it.
I low-key got gamergate brainrot back in the day. Having your views threaten really feels like being actually threatened, if these guys had a choice between a bear and someone like Steve to be alone in the woods with, they'd probably choose the bear too.
My understanding of the Man or Bear thing is not that women would prefer to "take their chances with a bear." The key to the Man or Bear thing is in the provided reasoning for the choice of the bear: "when the bear attacked me at least I would be believed."
It's both.
It's not just being believed. There also being questioned about what we did to provoke that attack, and what the bear is limited to in its attack. A bear might maul you, and leave you injured or dead, but it won't SA or torture you in all the unimaginable ways that some men will before it mauls you. There are things worse than death. Thanks for being empathetic.
Same thing. And damn right bear.
There's another important element of the question that gets overlooked... the woman in the woods *does not want* to encounter either a strange man OR a bear. She just wants to do her hike through the woods in peace, being bothered by nothing and no one. Both the unknown man *and* the bear are potential threats, so it's not really a question of which one she would "prefer" to encounter, but the mental calculus of which one of those two threats could cause worse potential harm.
And last I checked, bears don't sexually assault humans, they don't torture humans, and they don't carry guns. People do all those things.
Ah, elevatorgate, and by extension the larger shameful episode that was gamergate, that was the time I learned that, just because some other people had also reached the correct conclusion on a question that society at large tended to be wrong about, that didn’t mean they were right about anything else… or even very smart… or hell, it didn’t even mean that they were decent human beings.
Dawkins doesn't like the idea that there's anything at all wrong without our society OTHER than theism. He wants the simple morality of "if you become an atheist, you are now a Good Person and have no further room for personal growth"
The atheism of a Stalinist gulag is not a universal cure for injustice.
If we burn down religion, including the Golden Rule, was anything of value lost? do we need to find or build a better alternative?
That's a pretty deep split.
Not only is it unlikely the bear would attack, but most women understand that the likelihood a man would attack increases over time when stressed and isolated. Like a regular dude might be fine to be trapped in the forest for a day. But by day 2-4 of looking through the forest for civilization? When the man is stressed, sleep deprived, and starving/dehydrated? The average man has extremely poor emotional regulation skills. And many women are forced to intuitively understand that the more a man gets stressed, the more likely he is to take his frustrations out on you.
Yup. Quark and Garak, having a discussion about humons over root beer.
The number of men who can't take no for an answer in a thought experiment only highlights why they pick the bear
When a black person enters a store and the shop keeper follows them around is that wrong?
@@frederf3227bait used to be believable.
@@frederf3227 When you get your teeth kicked in for being a smug little shit, is that wrong?
@@frederf3227
Being followed for possible theft vs being avoided to avoid being beaten, sa’d, kidnapped append, etc.
Not even close bro.
And sure. Follow the mf. When they don’t steal anything you can feel silly.
Women won’t feel silly for being alive.
@@magnarcreed3801 unless you are Latasha Harlins and get blasted for existing. but go on..
Thank you so much for that glorious ending. These things hurt my soul because I wish that women didn't have good reason to feel the way they do, and every time something like this comes up it's a reminder of the unsavoriness of the world we live in. We men so easily forget what it used to be like, to be made to feel small and vulnerable. Remember middle school? Yeah. Puberty did us men a favor. We stopped being targets. One day I realized, what if I never stopped feeling the looming threat of being a target? What if everywhere I went, I had eyes on me from people, large imposing people, whose motives I couldn't discern? That was the day I chose to be a feminist. I appreciate your take here, Steve. Thanks.
One of the most eye opening things I've learned from being a trans woman is the limit of empathy. Before coming out, I thought I got it. Then, as now, most of my friends were women, and of course I listened when they talked about their feelings and experiences. I read feminist theory and enjoyed feminist art and I thought I got it. I was so wrong. Once I and the world started seeing me as a woman, I started living it. I began seeing things through new eyes. Innocuous stuff suddenly wasn't, and I look back with regret at ways I used to behave. There's stuff I don't wanna go into detail about in an internet comment, but needless to say I've learned extra caution. Not because it is all men, but because it could be any man.
None of this is to say that empathy isn't a virtue to be cultivated, or that it's bad to listen and try to understand. Just that there are more serious limits on understanding experiences so different from your own than most of us seem to think, and we should all have humility about it.
When Elevatorgate happend I was one of those who actually read the discussions about it (FTB, the Randi Forum, a few others) as they happend and tried to explain why exactly the response from women not just to the events Rebecca described but the later harassment and hostility were so suprising and frightening to many women in the atheist community. It was...an experience. Certainly eye-opening. Dehumanising. Our experiences, our thoughts and reasons were just called emotional, irrational, unreasonable, delusional. Wiminzamiright? Talk about unconscious leftover religious indoctrination.
One of the ways some tried to explain our perspective was the Schrödinger's Rapist analogy. Sort of an empathy thought experiment thing.
Goes like this:
Just as Schrödinger does not know if the cat is dead or alive until he checks, a woman does not know whether a man is a rapist (or otherwise violent) until they reveal that they are (murderers also don't kill everyone they meet, so not being threatening in some situations is not proof someone is safe - you know, the whole absence of evidence is not evidence for absence thing).
The idea was to get those men to empathise with the situation of not-knowing, not being able to know.
But the men, all of the ones I talked to about this, without fail, empathized and identified not with the logical, obvious option of the human in the thought experiment (Schrödinger/woman), but with the cat (rapist/not-rapist). Which told me that for some reason those men were either more rapey than they let on, or would go out of their way (some even violently considering the harassment, and excuses for the harassment) to not have to empathise with a woman.
Like I said, it was eye-opening.
"unconscious leftover religious indoctrination"
I don't think you should try to blame the misogyny of atheists on religion tbh. Assholes exist everywhere, not just in the ideological groups you don't like.
Misogynists will always pick shooting themselves on the foot over doing anything that would benefit any woman (even if it's just a small amount of good for ONE woman) because they're so brainwashed into seeing women as "the bad -guy- gal" and the source of all their tragedies, that anything that could be seen as a "win" for women feels worse than an actual bullet destroying their foot for them.
Example: a spoiled rich boy in my country, with a history of violent crimes committed against women, men, and even animals, is finally going to jail on attempted feminicide charges. Now, a normal person would not give a damn about why he goes to jail, so long as he's put away for a long time (hey, one can dream!) But all the "men's rights "activists"" have come out to say that "ItS uNfaAaaair", absolutely not giving a sh that if he goes free, he'll go on screwing over as many people as possible (including the men whose rights they claim to care so much about).
I can only imagine it's because on some level those atheistic men still hold deeply misogynistic views. That they see women as beneath them, so to even attempt to see things through their perspective means it first gets filtered through the misogynistic mindset to lower ones self to the status of a woman. Those men know women are treated as lower class citizens, and they can't even subject themselves for one thought experiment what it must be like to exist as a woman everyday. For women not only does that telling response show you who the potential threats are, but also shows who are the cowards that won't stand up for the ladies they supposedly claim to support.
Or, mayhaps, they have even just a shred of understanding of statistics and can understand how this fear, as understandable as it may be on an emotional level, is also extremely bigoted and irrational.
It’s funny that in your analogy it’s men, not women, that should be afraid of the other person (the potential murderer/rapist) given how much more likely men are to be assaulted than women.
@@nathanjora7627 Wow, I'm impressed by how you could read an entire paragraph about how men dismiss the women's experience because of bias and lack of ability to see different perspectives and then respond to said paragraph with bias and lack of understanding just as OP described.
Must be a breeze to live with such low awareness.
As someone with social anxiety who overthinks a lot, nothing terrifies me more than unintentionally making someone uncomfortable. It doesn’t help that I have a tendency to miss social cues. So yeah, I live in constant fear of being the guy who comes off as worse than a bear.
That's unfortunate for you. I hope that the opinion that people have of others which aren't you and is applied to you just because you resemble those others doesn't hold you back from enjoying living. That sounds sarcastic but I absolutely mean it genuinely.
I can say with confidence that you are not part of the problem. It has been shown that people who are convinced they have no biases are more prone to bias! I think that kind of applies here as well!
Also, practical tip: Words are a powerful tool, use them. Most people think they will "ruin" a conversation by voicing their fears, but it has actually the opposite effect and people very much appreciate it, at least in my experience!
One of the best ways to help mitigate is to provide outs during discussions and interactions. Being honest about your fear is also good. If you instigate something, make sure the other person knows they can say no without reprisal or offense. Also, notice your surroundings. If it's a private and/or enclosed space, the other person may be feeling pressured to not offend you since so many men respond to offense with violence. Your even little shows of compassion and understanding will go a long way to making a lot of women less fearful about communicating their fear or discomfort. You still might make mistakes from time to time but so many guys don't even do the bare (haha) minimum that you'll be doing a lot to help yourself.
The men who have made me cautious would follow me all throughout public events, or strip down to their underwear and circle me. If you're not doing that I think you'll be okay.
A few years ago I came home from work with the bus and a woman left the bus at the same stop I did. As she was walking home I noticed she looked at me afraid and started walking faster. As I noticed that it was dark and late and it was also raining which means I was wearing a raincoat with a cap on, I could understand why she'd feel unsafe... Yet there wasn't much I could do except walking slower.
It's not a nice feeling to be aware of how uneasy or even afraid you make others feel, even if it is completely unintentional... And it must have been even a lot worse for her.
If it happens again, you could say something like "hey - I'm sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable. I'm going to cross the street now". (Or "I'll wait while you go ahead" )
Aaand that was when my admiration of Dawkins died on the vine. He then trampled the vine into the dust by becoming a terf.
I had the same reaction to the author of Harry Potter. I admired her and thought her of as an ally when she revealed that Dumbledore was gay. When it came out that she was a TERF it broke my heart and every shred of admiration I had for her went up in flames. I don't even say her name anymore.
It was a hard knock when I realised not all atheists were Trekkies.
😂😂😂😂😂
My wife asked me a version of this, "Would you rather (daughter's name) was trapped with a bear or a man?"
I responded "Bear" without hesitation.
I have practically no social media presence, didn't know this was a thing, was answering cold, with no background.
And it was easy.
I'm also sorta amused at the thought of an "atheist community". The idea of defining oneself an one's associations by something one doesn't believe in has some humor to it.
The community bit came about because of a lot of anti-atheist bigotry from Christians (look up Jessica Ahlquist for one such example that was occurring around the time the movement was at its peak). Getting discriminated against at school, in jobs, etc. tends to cause people to join together who otherwise wouldn't; as an example, there probably wouldn't be an LGBT movement if there were no discrimination against people who are in it.
The immediate followup was a bunch of guys proving the joke response of "There's two types of guys, the ones who understand why women said bear, and the ones who make women choose bear." and it's still going so great work uploading relatively relevant content
Intellectual men: Yes, I can see why she would choose bear. (Vertical cooperative relation)
Emotional men: That woman better pick me over a bear, or else *_jealous rumble_* (Horizontal competitive2reel)
Wow. You just destroyed every tiny bit of respect I ever had for Dawkins. Thank you.
Y’know what struck me when I watched Rebecca Watson’s original video about “Elevatorgate”? Her tone of voice when she said “guys, don’t do that”. It was like “I know I don’t have to tell YOU guys this, but…”
Truly, we don’t deserve nice things.
Maybe she knew there are more than 1type of guy out there, ...but there is a paradox in telling people at large how to behave around YOU (as if YOu represent everyone else of your own group)
Paradoxical filtering .... Live Narration: ua-cam.com/video/lo-bMs0FhEc/v-deo.html
Lets just say ... saying and shouting rules only works for people that are willing to listen, so you end up talking to the wrong crowd, since the people that would not have done you harm, end up listen, but those that end up pushing boundaries, would have and won't listen either way.
When my wife was 21 (before I met her) she was grabbed from behind by a man. The next thing she remembers is standing over this crying man. She walked to the nearest pay phone (remember those?) and called 911. When the police arrived one of those 'clever' guys asked what happened to her "boyfriend." She replied, of course, he wasn't her boyfriend. Then one asked what happened. She replied she hit him with her stick. My wife was legally blind. She had one of those blind sticks that fold up. Because she was going to catch a busy to her joy being the night operator at a hotel it was dark - like 10 p.m. - and the form of her blindness was such she could see better in the dark than in the light. She had the blind stick folded once down the middle. The police officer asked her to put it down, which she did. Now, about this time another officer, who had heard the call, drove up. He gets out of the patrol car, walks up and said: "What's going on (insert wife's name.)" This officer moonlighted as a security guard at the same hotel. He then assured the other officers that if she had hit him, he did something. Well, they took him to the hospital where they discovered she had broken both of the lower arm bones, his collar bone, dented his head and ruptured his testicle. During the operation they had to remove the other because of the damage. Now, while this was probably 1982, they were still able to pin 7 rapes on him and the assault on her. For years at parole hearing she'd go and every time he saw her, he started to cry until the lawyers asked her to not come anymore. Honestly, I'm sure she'd've taken the bear... Oh, and I fought off two guys who picked me up to carry me someplace. Ya know, if I can handle a 1000+ horse, I showed I could fight off some guys too.
That's awesome.
She was lucky. If that cop, who was also a security guard where she worked hadn't shown up it sounds like it could have been very different, and in many instances it has. I'm glad your wife had a good outcome. For most women it isn't so good. We fight our assailants and we are the ones who go to jail.
Rarely do you hear of an attacker receiving the consequences he truly deserves. This is definitely one of those all too rare cases. I'm sorry you and your wife were subjected to these horrible experiences, but it's also heartening to hear how you each dealt with them. Thank you!
So, she went Daredevil on his sorry ass. Is my takeaway.
If I ever get lost in the woods, I want your wife to be there with me.
By the time I'd learnt of this phenomenon, the question had been posed to men whether they'd rather their *daughters* be alone in the woods with a man or a bear, and after that a woman or a bear... Seemed to get the point across effectively.
But only for the men who value their daughters. I know some who happily encourage their daughters to be subservient to men.
I hate that they refuse to understand these things until they can imagine the woman as some man's smth
Personally I'd choose the bear both times, but I'm very misanthropic. Humans are hard to be around without dread.
@@hayuseen6683 totally agree just because women are smaller and less likely to do something dont mean they wont
Everyone should pick the bear. Regardless of any gender considerations. Bears are relatively safe if you leave them alone. Humans, not so much. Too unpredictable. Game theory says pick the bear.
As an afterthought, as a person who was born and is comfortable presenting as male, I don't want to minimize the difference between genders and the fact that most (human) predators are male. I wish it wasn't so.
Yeah. I think a lot of people aren't understanding that part. The question is "who would you rather encounter" and not "who would you rather have to fight" after all. Bears are usually fairly safe if you keep your distance.
Really depends on the species of bear
As a man, I'm afraid to pick bear...because I've seen too many pictures and videos of them being adorable, and I'm afraid I'd do something stupid like want to pet it.
What if I'm lost though? I feel like that's an important factor. I thought "stuck in the woods" was part of the scenario and that implies being lost.
The Venn diagram between the men upset about this and men you wouldn't want to be in the woods alone with is 1 complete circle
Well, that's the shallowest retort I've seen all day.
My wife introduced me to this dilemma and I said the bear immediately without hesitation. I don't know maybe it's the Canadian in me I lived in a place where if you saw a bear it wasn't a big deal if you just stood your ground. But if you encountered a man in the woods it meant you stumbled over an illegal weed farm or meth lab and if they saw you they'd shoot you.
I wouldn't say I am upset, because at the end of the day you can't really control what you fear or not.
I more find it sad that an animal that in principle can tear people effortlessly is considered less scary than a fellow human being.
But I kind of get where that idea comes from: a person can do far worse than a bear.
@@OsirisLordDo you not have hikers up there in Canada?
@@jamaisj- In what way? Far too many of these guys go online and demonstrate why we pick the bear.
I'm a man. It's not illogical for a woman to prefer sharing 'the woods' with a Bear than with a Man. Usually, if/when a woman (or a man) IS sharing 'the woods' with a bear, there is an EXTREMELY high chance that the bear will never become known to you. Men feel an obligation to 'announce themselves' and become 'significant' in one way or another if they know there is a woman. Bears are unlikely to interact unless they think you have some food available.
Yep. Or a mama with cubs. I’d much rather die from a protective mom than a bored man.
I thought I understood pre-transition. Just wasn't prepared for the weight of it. OMG BEAR!!! Rebecca was right, I thought. Now I've been Rebecca even old and ugly as I am.
BTW, if you check out TikTok, one woman who was famously mauled by a bear chose... wait for it... bear!
Link pretty please 🥺
@@magnarcreed3801yt doesn't allow link
Elevator gate was the first thing I thought of when I saw your video title, so I guess great minds think alike?
Please don't bring up that I didn't make the connection at all until I saw your video, I need this one. It's been a rough month.
I only made that connection about five minutes into the video. I thought it was gonna be some God or Man :: Bear or Man cosmology. So you got there faster than I did.
There is a bit of self-centeredness to men that get angry about the bear thing, isn't there? They just can't put themselves in women's shoes and understand where they are coming from.
They are also the same people that got angry about toxic masculinity. Everything is about them, so they get angry about anything that makes them look bad.
If I'm part of a system which includes toxic masculinity and widespread rape, and I'm not working to change that, then I'm complicit.
Therefore, I can't POSSIBLY (sarcasm) be part of such a system.
The mere thought is uncomfortable!
- I say that as a man who is working for change, but how can it ever be enough?
I (cishetmale) had a similar issue recently, but it was with the expression "all men are predators".
While I understand that this is just the short version of a much more complex and nuanced thought process, and that it actually means "a woman must, for her safety and her friends, always assume that the men around her are secretly trying to get her", it doesn't change that the expression itself is quite provocative.
I was upset and felt insulted, but I feel this was legitimate considering the wording.
Still, the true issue is that, well, women needs to be constantly on their toes. And while it's not a nice feeling to hear that, and it can lead to a lot of misunderstanding, the expression still stand valid.
You said men shouldn't try to act more like bears, but if that's the lesson they take from the exercise, maybe it's best for them to wander naked into a nature preserve, to live mostly on nuts and berries.
...and to generally not assault humans, of _any_ gender.
Tempting proposition
And to take a several months long nap.
I fully understand why people would choose bear, but it still stings quite a lot. Being seen as dangerous by default hurts, especially because it’s entirely out of my control.
“‘Dangerous!’ cried Gandalf. ‘And so am I, very dangerous… And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Glóin, for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest of Fangorn is perilous - not least to those that are too ready with their axes…’” (The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, chapter 5: “The White Rider”)
Everyone is dangerous in their own way; what matters is not being too ready with your axe.
you can use this knowledge to your advantage tho. if you can empathize with women in a way most men cannot, you will always have a (good) partner. men often complain that "women have it so easy" when it comes to relationships and sex. yes, it is easy to get sloppy, degrading, and dehumanizing experiences if you so desire. sifting through the mud to find a kernel of gold is not a privilege.
someone compared it like this: while the male loneliness epidemic can be compared to dying of thirst in the desert, women's loneliness can be compared to dying of thirst in the ocean. i think that's pretty accurate.
Both problems are valid.
Both problems also go away if women's safety is dramatically improved. Too bad that seems unrealistic.
No need to feel hurt if you're not one of the bad ones because we're not talking about you 😉
It like a running into a strange dog. People love dogs. But you don't know if this one might bite so you're cautious. We're just being cautious, that's all.
I think I'd choose a bear over any person I don't know, man, woman, or enby.
I would rather encounter a bear fishing in the woods with his boyfriend.
I am a fan of Rebecca Watson, and was familiar with this story. I can add, I’ve been in situations where it was clear that the man was absolutely clueless of the fear he inspired in me. And, in fact, I was molested as a young teen by a friend of my parents and wasn’t believed when I told my parents, which me me not only not trust men, but not trust my own parents.
I am a cis, heterosexual man, and I have felt threatened (and many times uncomfortable) by other men.
I'm a big guy and trained martial arts for years, so I am absolutely 100% sure, i not only made a lot of women, but also quite a few men very uncomfortable, by purely existing in the same space. I'm also an introvert and therefore uncomfortable in crowds.
Being uncomfortable, to me, seems to be a basic, daily feeling of almost all humans.
Women don't care. Expect a lot of "not everything's about you! No one cares about your feelings!"
The point of the thought experiment is that you don't even have to be a muscular, obvious threat to be potentially much more dangerous than a bear to many people, especially women. It's potential danger, but we have great precedent to show us what might happen if we implicitly trust.
Someone else said it best: "at least if I was attacked by a bear, people would believe me."
Okay, I'm torn about this video.
On the one hand, it's a well-thought-out piece highlighting how this discourse can be both toxic and useful in identifying toxicity in groups.
On the other hand, it seems like at least part of the reason you made it was so you could do your Dawkins impression...
Aw, screw it; it's too funny an impression. Take my like.
Porque no los dos?
When Dawikins became an atheist, he went from the smug arrogance which I hate among some (not all) Christians...
...to the same smug arrogance minus the theology.
Like, dude, if you had to lose one or other other, then a humble Christian who keeps her theology to herself, and prays quietly at home where no one else can see, is a better person.
Dawkins thinks that he's a better smarter wise person than MLK Jr., was, on the mere grounds of who has the God delusion.
Well said! I look forward to a society where nobody feels threatened. We’ve got a long way to go.
Ive only lived openly as a woman for the last six yrs... And yet ive had more than that many encounters with men alone, or worse once; a man and his female accomplice who turned on her sisters for the sake of a mans approval
So sorry that happened to you
I never knew that was the inciting incident until years later when I found Rebecca's UA-cam channel, perhaps because I've never used Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. But I certainly saw the sea change and lost a TON of people I had thought were friends who decided all of a sudden that they were on Dawkins' side - on the side of the weirdo creepazoid. And seeing them all take what was clearly the wrong side on this topic was a massive red flag that ended every single one of those relationships, to the point that the only friendships I still have which date back to before I graduated college were a handful I made online while seeking out new communities to find fellowship in once I realized that I wasn't going to find that in the groups I had been playing D&D with, watching anime with, going whitewater rafting with, and hanging out at the diner just outside the campus with. It's really sad to look back and realize that a lot of those people are probably MAGA supporters now in spite of the Christian dominionism in that movement, but at least I dodged a bullet with all of them.
The weird thing is, nobody would judge a person for being wary of dogs, especially if they've been bitten by one, even though not all dogs bite.
And it's also very normal for certain public spaces to demand all dogs be muzzled as a safety precaution even though, as you said, not all dogs bite.
Instructions unclear, currently trapped in a wooded elevator with a large, hairy, friendly homosexual man.
Okay fine I won’t become like a bear but you’re still not getting your pick-a-nick basket back.
I think you may have missed the point.
It is also very important that the objectively correct answer does not matter in the man or bear question because it is a thought experiment like the trolley problem. Even the people who say man, many of them understand why other women say bear and the fact that so many women say bear is important information. If a large group of women would prefer to run into a bear than a man, then something is going on there. People are answering honestly for them and like any sociology study, or political poll it doesn't matter what you think the answer should be, it matters what people answer.
Right? The literalism in the offended responses is so completely off base.
Floored by the amount of explanation & coercion it takes to get some dudes to engage with empathy
Patriarchy tells men they can't have empathy. Why are we surprised when they act on that imperative?
The resistance can be very strong.
We're part of a system, and even if we're individually innocent (most of us), our role in the system gives us a moral obligation to seek improvement in the system.
This is uncomfortable for many of us.
The ones who argue seem to me kinda like Germans in 1941 who say no, they haven't recently seen their Jewish former neighbors, but how DARE you. insinuate some sinister theory in which they are passively complicit in genocide.
I empathize with their plight. I will not accept being painted as a subhuman threat just because of my gender. If you package one as the other, it's rejected, try again.
@@frederf3227It's your responsibility to hold your fellow males accountable. If you don't want to get categorized as a threat, that is. We women can think of you any way that suits us, and safety is what suits us best.
@@frederf3227What makes you think that as women we're going to "try again"? We're not trying anything. We're walking away.
Well said, Steve! You're spot on here. As a lesbian, I still experience regular harassment and antagonism from men who tell me my sexuality doesn't exist or I just "need to find the right guy". There's still so many guys who view me and my sexuality as a trophy to manipulate and conquer and add to their collection. And then they act indignantly when I choose the bear 🤣
I unintentionally was the guy the women wouldn't be comfortable with for a while. Had a friend in college I was always hanging around. She was polite about it, but it was pretty clear she was a little wary of me since I was three times her size, had hygiene issues, and had an unrequited crush on her. So I can understand pretty easily why women would choose the bear, and don't begrudge them the choice in the slightest.
Hey dude, good on you for catching it and not choosing to blame her. A lotta guys choose their ego over their empathy, to get mad and blame the object of their crush.
You did better, just finding your way this far.
Thanks for being here
@@loorthedarkelf8353 I don't blame but I do feel hurt. I was talking to a neighbor girl. Her mom came and made an obvious lie to get her in the house. I was enjoying talking to her and it really hurt my feelings that I was considered some subhuman filth that had to be protected against. There's nothing I can do about it. That enjoyable aspect of living is denied to me. I understand it but it still hurts all the same.
@@frederf3227 “subhuman filth” is your words, not hers.
Maybe you need to mentally reframe this issue.
There was a newspaper article about a young boy protected and fed by a bear before he was found by the authorities, and some people thought that it was better that it was not a man.
Instructions unclear, now stuck in tree after trying to get honey.
What amazes me is how often Men(TM) will talk about Elevator Gate and insist that Rebecca was crying and screaming the entire video where she told the story, and she just... wasn't. And I saw the video pretty recently too, Sarah Z used a clip of it for a video a few years ago. Rebecca didn't even raise her voice really. In fact she was so dead pan Film Twitter dismissed the video for having "Marvel writing." *badumtish* Seriously though, describing her talking about that dude in the elevator as "screaming and crying" is like describing the Normandy scene from Saving Private Ryan as a slapstick routine.
I think the way to get through to those who deny the danger of strange men is to pose the question, "would you rather find yourself alone in the woods with a bear or in prison with other men?"
The bear you want to be is a teddy bear. Loving, happy, slightly squishy, and fun to hug.
Well said. Thank you. What a shame that so many don't get it and aren't willing to listen.
You can go on this very site, look up "Man tells bear to leave" and there are dozens of videos of men telling black bears to leave and the black bear leaving.
So yeah, as a man, I would rather be in the woods with a black bear than another man.
Bears respect boundaries and consent until they’re hungry enough to consider eating you.
I attended the CFI con where Rebecca gave that talk, and coined the label "Elevatorgate" in a blog post for Mizzou SASHA about it. What a disaster that was. That whole mess was the first time I really realized how toxic Dawkins and his followers can be.
Yeah. I was a newbie atheist myself when I saw Elevatorgate all unfold. It was the first time I realized sexism isn't just a religious thing, and I hadn't just found some paradise of maturity and wisdom just because I belonged now to a movement without religion. It was so disappointing. But yeah, it taught me a lot about my assumptions.
I'm still happy to be Atheist, but not so naive anymore.
I actually had a situation like that where I made a woman very uncomfortable. Very similar to what the guy in Watkins' example did. I apologized so many times that she finally made it clear she believed me and knew I genuinely felt remorse. She also told me that this was not even close to the typical reaction, that most men she's known feel no remorse and never apologize. You've got to reverse the scenario, imagine yourself alone with someone way stronger than you and not being 100% sure of their intentions. I'd be worried and afraid too. Absolutely, do not do that.
Happy you were self aware enough to recognize your behavior and correct it, that's a good first step. Having said that I would advise not over apologizing, as it puts the other person in a space where they may feel compelled to comfort you. Apologize and acknowledge, then do better and move on
The big thing I don’t understand is why some people think they’re owed complete trust from strangers. Do they trust strangers unconditionally? Probably not, right?
This is the part that always befuddles me, the ones who respond as if you've personally called their character into question instead of chalking it up to generalized wariness of strangers. I mean, being *completely* unwary of strangers is literally a sign of certain cognitive disorders, why on earth would you expect automatic, on-sight trust from everyone as the default?
@@electricbrein180 “no, no you don’t understand. It’s a grand conspiracy hatched by all the people that make me uncomfortable (certain races, genders and socioeconomic groups) to game the hierarchy. That’s the reason why I’m an unpopular shmuck and not because I am utterly lacking in self-awareness.”
I am a cis-bi man who has been attacked by a man. I am on team bear. I grew up in a female-dominate house and I was raised knowing about this stuff. But I am also an autistic person who takes what people complain about people literally and to heart to avoid making the mistakes of other people. I get told "this is a bad thing that only bad people do", I'm going to not do it. I read "TOP 10 things guys do to make women uncomfortable", I'm going to memorize that list and NOT do that stuff. I do my best to make myself a tiny thing that doesn't take up space because I am afraid of offending or angering ANYONE. It is a major source of anxiety for me. So hearing that, no matter what I do, I am going to be viewed as threatening has been a very negative experience. I can completely agree with the female perspective AND feel like this means I'm a vile piece of shit just for being born male and the whole conversation wants me to take garden shears to my crotch. But if I say that I am tired of this argument, I get lumped in with the assholes.
Why do you direct this at yourself if you aren't a guy who is out to hurt someone? Women are as varied as men, good ones and bad ones. Ones who want to live their lives in peace and those who want to make drama. It's a curse on society as a whole. You can't lump yourself into any group. Be yourself. Be sincere. Be honest. But don't expect anyone to want to heal you, fix you or protect you. If you are looking for someone to take care of you then you will be disappointed. In fact don't look for someone at all. Pursue the things in life that you are passionate about and you will meet like-minded people. It will happen before you know it.
Yup. It do be like this.
Your fine. And don't you dare mutilate yourself. Your not responsible for all men. You are just responsible for yourself. And by the sound of it you seem to be a kind, and thoughtful person.
@@noneYa66613because even if they know it's not them, they know that strangers often perceive them this way, and it hurts, but it hurts worse because we know it's justified for women to feel this way and we can only do so much about it.
@sadpacman3290
I am sad you feel this way, but understand why.
Dealing with other people can suck, and it can suck more because of things beyond our control.
Instead of "imagine if you were a woman...", try "imagine if you were you, in an elevator with a drunk honry gay Andre the Giant/Thanos".
The people that ignore whatever scenario you provide with them as a woman will NEVER get the point because they refuse to believe life is any different for people that are different from themselves.
They just simply don't believe women get harassed more, or that life is just more dangerous as a woman.
Weirdly enough, it's usually (not always) the same people that insist "trns people shouldn't be in sports because men are inherently stronger".
Which makes no fkin sense.... how do ya believe one of those, but not the other??.