Memes of Production

Beyond that, the question itself is fundamentally misandrist. Or rather, the fundamental question is prejudiced and this particular version is misandrist.

Bigotry is often obvious and easy to call out, but it can also be subtle at times and sneak up on us. Any time something isolated a particular protected trait (ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc) and tries to make generalizations about then, I find it's often handy to swap things around to see if it is still okay.

Imagine a similar question posed to JK Rowling: would you rather be alone in the woods with a trans woman or a bear? I would fully expect her to answer "the best" and fully expect progressive people to call her transphobic for that, and I would agree.

Not to mention how this question really breaks down on the borders of gender identity and sex. What happens in the bear vs trans-man case? Is it the gender identity that's the "problem" with men or is it the chromosomes?

Imagine a racist asked whether they would rather be alone in the woods with a black person or a bear. The racist might start citing statistics about violent crime and crafting a narrative about how they are rationally correct for fearing black people more than bears. That doesn't make it any less racist or any less wrong. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't make it any less dehumanizing.

You can do the same with bear vs a lot of things. Bear vs nonbinary person, bear vs Muslim bear vs jew, etc. It's all fucked.

Responding with "not all men" is equally misandrist. It says "yeah sure most men are monsters, but not me! I'm #notlikeothermen".

For me equality is not something we can afford to just pick and choose when to apply or withhold. Prejudice is not some tool that can be used for good or evil depending on whether it's in the right hands or not, but a fundamentally evil part of human nature we all need to fight against for the betterment of the world. Things like this "bear vs man" meme may do a slight bit of good: it might bring some awareness to a tiny subset of uninformed men of the problems that women face and the fear they live their lives with. However, it does a lot more bad to society by perpetuating fear, portraying half of the population as monstrous and sub-human, and sowing division within society. There are better ways of educating and raising awareness without stooping to the tactics of bigots.