Marked for trigger warning, but I'll try to be delicate in my wording.
You may have seen it going around on the internet. I've seen it addressed on Facebook, TikTok, and Reddit. In a nutshell, women are asked, walking in the woods, would they rather encounter a bear, or a random man? Overwhelmingly, the women are answering that they'd rather encounter the bear. The worst thing a bear can do to a woman is maul her. The man, if he did attack, would play mind games and torture her psychologically as well.
Team bear, here. I responded, a month ago, "If I were mauled by a bear, at least people wouldn't ask me what I was wearing when it happened, or tell me I probably wanted the bear to maul me, but then I had remorse afterward."
That was a month ago. Today a young man, apparently still in his teens and may not even qualify for the term "man" yet, answered my reply VERY angrily. A quick investigation shows he's kind of hung up on the subject. He's basically going through and verbally attacking any woman who answered bear, and talking with other men about how stupid and sexist said women are. One of his comments was that he, too, hopes these women end up alone in the woods with a hungry bear.
What he said to me was, "Nobody asks that (crap) anymore. It's 2024, and you're acting like it's still 20 years ago. If anybody did victim blame you like that, public opinion would be on your side."
Well, it matters little to me if public opinion would be on my side. I still would have been attacked, psychologically messed with, and then victim blamed. Public opinion being on my side would not magic away that trauma. At first I asked that young man, "You've never actually experienced it, have you?" But then after I saw his pattern of comments, I decided to block him instead. He is exactly the kind of man we women have come to be afraid of.
I suppose I'm seeking validation here. Is he right? Is that kind of victim blaming a thing of the past? Are women, or are they not, still being treated that way after a not-mauling by a not-bear?