I think the focus of this OP is women's safety. Surely, there can be and has been plenty of threads about men's issues.
@1_teddybear See the bottom of my post, a handful above yours. I care.
https://www.cuddlecomfort.com/forum/discussion/comment/282480/#Comment_282480
~ Sunset Snuggles
🦄 Enthusiast 🏞 Travel Fiend 🐘 Animal Lover
Don't take anything personally, especially here. It's a waste of your life. @TxTom Yes!
It's kind of a sport to dump on men here. Just sit back relax open a beer and enjoy the show
It's would you rather be stuck with the obvious threat or a hidden threat...
🐻🐻🐻
@Shake Exactly, if I must choose to die between obvious threats (bear) and hidden threats (human)...Yeah I'll still take the bear!🐻
It's just because a bear will at least give me a quick death, without adding other torturous methods in the mix. Humans are historically known for outlandish ways to hurt each other before the final kill is dealt.😌😏
Bear please!👋🐻
@SunsetSnuggles I hadn't seen your post. Thank you for pointing it out. I very much appreciate your perspective. 🫂
@Katota & like clockwork, I'm seeing more comments of passive dismissal & whataboutism. Why be supportive, when you can downplay a genuine concern as just "man hate"? I don't know what I expected here. 😂
Literally no group is fully safe from male violence, including men. 🤷🏼 Statistically speaking, everyone is safer choosing the bear, including the bear 😬
@Runawaycuddles I'd choose the bear lol
Quick update everyone. An official statement has been made by the bears.
@Shake Honestly I'd be pissed too 😂🤣
On the plus side though, they did get a big uptick in love from those of us who chose the bear, so this was probably somewhere in there response too 🤣😂🤣 https://www.tiktok.com/@fackyouinchinese/video/7364114948391210272?_t=8m3ooDk2bBz&_r=1
@Shake 😆😆😆
Literally no group is fully safe from male violence, including men.
😊
@Runawaycuddles But we WIMMINZ obviously didn't know ANY OF THIS!😆 It's that female hysteria stuff and Cosmo reading and Oprah worshipping that's "preventing us" from knowing about that there male on male violence and yada yada...Yeah, that's what it is! 😆😆😆
@Katota Oh I knowww, gods we're so clueless about basic logic, must be our uteruses traveling around our bodies making us insane 🙄😂🤣
It would be pure comedy gold if so many men didn't genuinely believe it. 😬🤦🏼😂 Cuz seriously, the whole reason so many men think we don't know about the violence men face from other men is this way is because that's how they think!! If it's not about them, it's not important in their world, so why should ours be any different? 🙄 It's the same with any kind of systemic privilege, when you're used to the focus always being on you, others even being mentioned feels like a hateful attack 🙄🤷🏼
@Runawaycuddles posted: "must be our uteruses traveling around our bodies making us insane"
😂😂
Thank goodness for the good guys who offer to go buy tampons and chocolate!
Do y’all actually listen to what you’re saying from one thread to the next? When I saw this thread I thought ok here we go, another opportunity to hate on men. Then insert the hypocrisy. The usual suspects are probably already annoyed at me and that’s okay. I posted a thread where I spoke on checking on my adult daughter on a daily basis to make sure that she was okay. A handful of you recognized the good man in me that wants to take care of his family but most of you took that as an opportunity to tell me everything I was doing wrong. Fast forward, now you’re hating on men because we’re apparently horrible people but….. it was wrong for this horrible man (points at self) to want to make sure my Daughter is safe. Now here we are in a thread about a topic that’s supposed to bring light to what women face because of men and we are expected to respect it but the other day y’all were talking about all lives matter because the all lives matter movement wasn’t a negative response to Black Lives Matter or anything. These boards never fail to amaze me.
Ready, set, go……
Oh I knowww, gods we're so clueless about basic logic, must be our uteruses traveling around our bodies making us insane 🙄😂🤣
😆😆😆
@Runawaycuddles Lol!😆 Yep, that's it! Ya know, they say that stuff a-ketching...LOL!😆 😆😆😆
😁
@SunsetSnuggles Yeah I reckon so, especially if they're buying us chocolate bears! 🐻🍫
Hey now, there's a discussion topic idea... ☝️💡
Chocolate Bears: Who's Got Some?!
😄
It’s been frustrating seeing the discourse online and in person mainly from men not taking this seriously ever since it went viral.
The most annoying thing is when I’ve gotten dismissive attitudes from men claiming “it’s so sad you live in fear and paranoia of men”. But they TRULY don’t understand that the sexualization and threats of violence are a DAILY OCCURRENCE for many women.
Just this past weekend I went to an event, and once a day, men I didn’t know bothered me and made me extremely uncomfortable. Zero women did that to me. But the men? Once. A. Day.
Another thing, it is overwhelmingly men I see telling women to be more careful, have situational awareness, etc. yet they get angry and lash out when women follow the advice.
Sorry, if you are dealing with hostility and invasion of space/privacy so frequently, you are not “living in fear” when you try to take measures to prevent escalations. You are just being responsible for your own safety. Because guess what? When we aren’t “responsible” enough and get attacked, tons of people dogpile us and ask why we weren’t more careful.
I would definitely choose the bear. When I got raped, half of my social circle ostracized me and I even lost clients (not CC clients, my day job) because they sided with him. It boggles my mind every day that I literally lost money due to being raped since my clients loved him! Insane. Plus tons of horrible comments on how I deserved it. But if a bear attacked me? People would probably send me flowers and cards, not call me a bitch and a slut.
As a man in this world, my biggest frustration is the level of defensiveness I hear from other men in this kind of discussion.
I'm not limiting this to CC even though I see it here, in this thread, in other threads, and in reports that I receive as a moderator.
Whether it's women's issues or race issues, or any other issue where awareness needs to be raised, the voice of the oppressor consistently gets louder until it drowns out the voices of those who are asking for help.
Most men on this planet have the POTENTIAL to be safer than a bear, but we have to decide that we want to be. Not being a rapist isn't enough. We need to be willing to hear. Will it make us uncomfortable sometimes, to be identified with a part of the population that is behaving in such a destructive manner? Maybe. That discomfort, however is NOTHING compared to the fear that so many women experience. This fear is not unreasonable.
My discomfort makes me want to address the source of the problem. As human beings, one would hope that men would have the capacity to respond with compassion to cries for help, but many (very many) men don't have the decency to listen even when someone is crying, "please stop!"
I'm not singling out anyone on this thread, but rather, I'd like to make an invitation for men. Can we open our ears, close our mouths, and maybe roll up our sleeves to make a difference in this world when we hear a call for change?
Do we have the courage to recognize our own potential for growth and learning, and realize that having room to grow doesn't have to be seen as a shameful thing?
We aren't bears. Women are our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters. Let's listen to them please!
If that question was posed to me as a man: I would choose a bear over a woman too - anytime! … PS: once women know they are safe with a guy they are no different than men … humans are humans, some humans are more animal-like and some humans are angel-like … their negativity may manifest in different ways but is no different ultimately … one type rapes your body to destroy your life the other type rapes your life to destroy your body
@Joyful Heart, @bobadevotee Well put.
Just a minor point -- I can think of a number of women National Guard personnel, women firefighters, women police, women EMTs, and women doctors who would disagree that, in times of disaster, women step aside to let men handle things. That era is long past.
@WriterGF yeah, that’s some crazy 1950s sexism. I notice the backlash to these things always triggers extreme misogyny. I wonder why 🤔
I saw dudes saying on another site “women choose bears because they don’t actually go outside, they just post on Instagram about hiking” 🙄 Meanwhile I’m friends with female park rangers…
I am not surprised by the answer. The problem with using 'most'... What is the threshold here, 50%? Due to the serious nature of the issue, even if say 20% were a safety risk to women, it's way too high.
This is all very hard to quantify but I'd imagine we'd have to be in the low single digit percentage or 0.x (decimal point) percentages for women's safety not to be a topic (and quite honestly the tolerance level of risk I would accept being a cuddler if I was a woman).
I'd like to believe we are not at 50% but something tells me we are not in the single digit percentage or decimal point percentages either and this is likely where the divisiveness comes.
@sg89 My daughter put it this way. "Not all dogs bite people. In fact, probably most dogs don't. But if one dog bites me, or tries to bite me, I'm going to be nervous around any dog."
To your point on tolerance level of risk -- based on some of the horror stories I have heard from female pros I am friends with, I am surprised any woman wants to do this for a living or as a side hustle. The danger seems to be built into the job. But I can't speak for other people.
This all reminds me of something I read a long time ago about the need to trust your instincts. If a deer stops, listens, and then runs off because it's frightened, no one says it's all in the deer's head. If you get a bad feeling about someplace or someone, don't analyze it, trust your gut.
Never underestimate the ability of men to make ourselves the victims when women share their lived experiences at our hands.
@WriterGF: Just a minor point -- I can think of a number of women National Guard personnel, women firefighters, women police, women EMTs, and women doctors who would disagree that, in times of disaster, women step aside to let men handle things. That era is long past.
As someone who between active and NG did 22 years, I loved reading this. I had some great experiences, appreciate the pension, which kicked in last year, and loved the VA loans for buying two of my houses, but without going into details, I definitely saw and had to do a few things I'd have gladly taken a pass on.
Wasn't in a position in either day-to-day or in crisis to "step aside" and let someone else do my job, because people I cared about were counting on me to pull my weight and later in my career set an example and/or lead them. That has been true in other areas of life as well. 🙂
@SunsetSnuggles: Thank goodness for the good guys who offer to go buy tampons and chocolate!
So true! 😊🥰❤️🍫
@HarleyGirlKate Thank you for your service.
Here's the thing -- I can totally get a guy who isn't (or doesn't see himself as) a bad guy resenting the idea that he is being lumped in with creeps. But I look at it this way: I would never burgle a house, but my neighbors have locks on their doors because some people have. I would never hijack a plane, but still have to go through TSA screening, because some people have. I wouldn't steal, but still have to accept that there are cameras everywhere when I shop and I have to go through a scanner when I leave the library. Some guy might never, ever molest or rape a woman, but has to accept that he will be treated with caution or even mistrust because, guess what, other guys will and have.
@WriterGF I absolutely love these analogies 👏👏👏
@WriterGF: I like what you wrote vey much, agree, and can sympathetize with someone who is well-meaning, safe, and decent being lumped in with creeps because of gender, race, etc.
I have zero desire to bash men. That said, as you pointed out, it is an unfortunate reality of life that women have to be careful because we aren't mind readers. We need to do what we need to do in order to feel and stay safe.