As someone who has suffered heavy physical and verbal abuse [including threats of false rape and even an instance where she said she'd hurt herself and tell everyone including the police I was the one who did it to her] from a female for 3 years and has since developed severe mental and trauma issues from it, if I said:
"If I was given a choice to be stranded in the woods with either a bear or a woman, I would choose the bear, because the bear wouldn't accuse me of raping it if I ignored it."
How would you feel? See, I've said this before, and I just got downvoted to oblivion because guys can't be abused! It's discrimination against women! It's sexist. How dare you not support women! It invalidates their feelings and experience with abuse! Statistically, its more likely to happen to females, so we're more understanding with their situations! HOWEVER, these same people are 100% all in on dogpiling any male with the audacity to say, "This is offensive. Not all men are like that!", and they're all too happy and eager to invalidate male experiences simply because it's "Not as common."
Which makes it pretty obvious at this point, to me at least, that comments like this stupid "bear" comment serve only one purpose: to shit on men, simply to shit in them. It's MISANDRY but nobody wants to talk about it, because fuck men, we don't deserve support, we don't deserve validation and we don't deserve any rights. As men, we are BIG and STRONG and TOUGH and SCARY. How DARE we want to be met equally when it comes to being abused. Just shake it off!
And there they are. The downvotes. Thanks for literally proving my point, folks.
“If I was given a choice to be stranded in the woods with either a bear or a woman, I would choose the bear, because the bear wouldn’t accuse me of raping it if I ignored it.”
Seem like you are actually in a place to understand from your own experience what women are trying to communicate with that whole bear thing. Next step would be to try to have an empathic connection instead of a defensive one. The anger and frustration are not directed at you as an individual but are an expression of experiences, those nuances are often lost in online, non personal communication. What helps is to have more personal communication, better in an offline environment.
I also have a similar experience, I was mugged at knife point and spit on by two adolescents. After that I was jumpy around groups of teens.
That said , I do not think my fear of teens was rational, neither was it healthy. Only a small minority of teens will mug people. Fearing a whole group for the actions of the few is in human nature, but it is something we must fight against.
So you think it will help to just tell folks to not be afraid? How did you overcame your fear? What if similar experiences happened to your and your friends more than once?
On personal level, in my experience it's best to validate someones emotions and then help them work through them if they wish so and are ready. On societal level it's another question on how to teach people more empathy and to respect for others - and at least in my opinion we already came quite a way.