is the man or bear thing rhetorically or optically the perfect feminist meme that is beyond criticism? no.

but is it leaps and bounds better at getting men to understand the material consequences of patriarchy on the physical and emotional health of women than that stupid “kill all men” meme from last decade? definitely.

  • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    First just want to reinforce I’m only commenting in the spirit of “how could this thought be propagated more effectively” and hope that comes across.

    But no, I think I understood the general premise. The image you’re posting is referring to the trend of women being given a hypothetical situation where they can choose to encounter a bear or a man in the woods, right? And some men are angry that any woman would choose a bear over a man.

    I took the image you posted to be an attempt to convey that it’s not unreasonable for women to do so, and also introduce people to the thought that patriarchy is harmful to both men and women. What about something like this image?

    I tried to work in:

    • A reference to the man/bear debate
    • That men feel justified in telling women their opinion about it is wrong
    • That men are harmed by patriarchy
    • And at the same time take masculinity as their identity and view any systemic criticism as a personal attack
    • A joke about how men’s own reactions to the original thought experiment can be a good illustration why women choose the bear

    Also I have to say one thing that was effective about the original post is at least for me I looked up Bell Hooks and read a little. The image I made doesn’t work in a reference to her, not sure how to do that effectively. I also think there could easily be other memes dedicated to illustrating how men are harmed by the patriarchy. It’s a complicated subject so showing it clearly would be a service.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeOP
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      6 months ago

      thank you for sharing. i feel like you might not be aware of the already established format that i am using here. yours is good too and i encourage you to post it but i do find my post to be quite effective as it uses a scheme that is already familiar to most viewers.

      • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Ah you’re right, I’ve seen the format before but didn’t pick up that’s what you were going for.