A Recognizable Pattern

                We all know “That Guy.” The one who makes us think, “Oh god, his poor wife and kids.” The kind of man who loudly proclaims himself a paragon of masculinity, an example of how all men should behave. Behind the bravado and the false confidence is a fragility that he tries desperately to hide: a narrow crumbling path of manliness governed by a rigid set of rules inflicted on him by his father. He learned very early in his life not to question the basics—what a man is allowed to feel, how a man must react, and who he must dominate in order to remain a man at all.

                When he steps outside these rules, the punishment is immediate and often self-inflicted. Shame rushes in first, followed by disgust and fear. He is disgusted by his own perceived weakness and fears ridicule, emasculation, and being stripped of the only identity he has been taught to value.

                The other side of the coin is unavoidable. If a man is required to be stoic, dominant, and perpetually reactive, then there is nowhere for the pressure to go but outward. The people closest to him, often his wife and children but sometimes his mother, are the ones who bear the brunt of it. His emotional volatility behind closed doors is reframed as authority. Control is called leadership. Abuse becomes discipline, justified not as cruelty, but as necessity.

Equal Rights, Equal Lefts.

                If you’ve ever been foolish enough to venture into the comment section of a video depicting a woman being punched by a man, you’ve seen this phrase over and over again. It’s a popular slogan among men whose masculinity mistakes retaliation for justice and violence as a solution to all life’s problems. Despite how it’s meant to sound, it has nothing to do with equality. It is a threat disguised as principle, an assertion that any challenge to male authority deserves asymmetrical violence.

                Devoid of context, their minds immediately reach for an excuse. They see their own reflection in their masculine counterpart and instinctively come to his defense. If he is exposed as weak or illegitimate in his manhood, so are they. It’s self-defense.

                So, the details get stripped away. The video gets edited until the context disappears. You no longer see the 20 minutes of harassment that followed her rejection of his advances, or the moment when the man they identify with groped her leading to a slap in return. What led up to the violence is erased, then reimagined, inverted, or exaggerated until it can “justify” what followed.

                The woman becomes an abstract provocation rather than a person. Any force she uses is treated as inherently unreasonable, while his physical aggression is rendered unquestionable. Her being knocked unconscious, her body collapsing into tables and chairs, is recast as comedy because her pain is irrelevant. What matters is maintaining the illusion that dominance is righteous and force exerted by the “right kind of man” is never cruelty, but correction.

The Bear

                This is why these men cannot accept that women choose the bear. To do so would require acknowledging that the danger women are responding to is not hypothetical, not exaggerated, and very human. It would demand that he recognize himself for what he is, his father for what he was, and his sons for what they will become under his tutelage. He would have to admit that outside of his own mind, no one views him as a protector, or a victim of provocation, but as a proud part of the pattern that women have learned to fear. Self-recognition, introspection, and accountability are intolerable to his brand of masculinity.

                He doesn’t understand that, at least, the bear is honest. It makes no claims to righteousness, or demands for understanding, gratitude, or absolution. It doesn’t justify its behavior and insist it was provoked. Most importantly, it does not argue when it is named as a threat.

But this man does. He rages because admitting the truth would mean confronting the possibility that women are not afraid of abstract monsters, but of men who look like him, speak like him, and think the way he does.

                They couldn’t help themselves but illustrate the point perfectly in their reaction to the question. Faced with a hypothetical meant to explore the way a woman assesses risk, they responded not with curiosity or self-reflection, but with fury, mockery, and threats. They demanded explanations as if women owed them reassurance that they’re not the kind of man that makes them afraid, even if they have to frighten her into saying it. They argued semantics, invented alternate scenarios, and obsessed over technicalities, all in an effort to avoid the one conclusion that actually mattered. They exposed themselves with the intensity of their response.

                As an alternative to asking why women feel this way, they insisted that women were wrong outright. Instead of listening, the “Fuck your feelings” crowd centered their own offense. In doing so they affirmed exactly what women were describing: a masculinity so brittle that even being named as a potential danger feels like an attack and must be quashed rather than understood.

Renée Good

            The killing of Renée Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross followed the same script as every clip, every headline, every story where a woman is harmed by a man in authority. These men immediately began obsessing over finding a reason that she deserved it. Evidence was secondary to permission. They needed a justification for identifying with the person who killed her and still being righteous. They disregarded the context of numerous videos that showed the killing up close and personal and jumped on the one blurry video from far away that they thought exonerated them.

“She should have obeyed.”

“She didn’t comply.”

“If she had just done what she was told, she’d still be alive.”

                The language is always the same, because the “logic” is always the same. In their worldview, safety is conditional. Protection is offered only to women who properly submit, speak softly, obey quickly, and never question the authority of the man they happen to be standing in front of.

                We see again how little importance she played in their narrative. What matters is preserving the moral innocence of the figure they identify with. The moment a woman resists, hesitates, or asserts autonomy, she is reclassified from being a person, to being a problem. Once she’s the problem, harm becomes consequence rather than cruelty.

                This is the instinct that cheers on violence against women in the comment section and rages at the idea of choosing the bear. It is the belief that men are entitled to obedience, and that any woman who fails to provide it has forfeited her right to safety. In this framework, harm cannot be tragic. It is instructional. It is restoring order. And in response we all think “His poor wife and kids.”