Brouhaha Roundup

In Which We Sensible Folks Sort Out Some Online Foolishness

I don’t know about you all, but the news sure is getting me down these days. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza, inflation, the looming election, and don’t even get me started on Harrison Butker. These issues are not only depressing but also above the Happy Wanderer’s pay grade (this is a free blog, after all), and so I won’t be writing about them here. It’s more fun to tackle petty online tiffs instead. (I think this is the real reason everyone spent so much time arguing about the dress a while back.) And it’s more productive too: When the stakes are low, we can hold out hope that wiser heads will prevail. To wit, my takes on a few recent brouhahas.

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Bros or Bears? (And Beer!)

Everyone is likely aware of the recent bear controversy, in which women are asked to imagine a scenario where they are alone in the woods. Would they prefer to encounter a man or a bear? A surprising number of women say they would prefer the bear.

Aww! He’s cute—but also deadly. I mean, look at his claws! Photo by Dušan veverkolog on Unsplash.

As it happens, I actually know something about this one, because I go on solo hikes at least once a week, and I always meet men who are out hiking too. You know what happens? They greet me and move to the side to let me pass, or they thank me for moving aside.¹ They ask me which path leads to the waterfall. They pet my dog. Sometimes they stay with me protectively as I navigate a treacherous section. One time a man even treated me to a beer and a hearty fondue lunch. No mauling, clawing, or biting whatsoever. Not even any stinky fish-breath.

I do kind of get where the women who pick bear are coming from. They are thinking about the thousands of men they have run across during their entire lives, and comparing that with a single, hypothetical bear. After all, every woman has had at least one unpleasant, terrifying, or dangerous run-in with a man at some point, while hardly any of us have had the same experience with a bear.

So maybe this needs saying: All bears are dangerous, and very few men are. I think the women who pick bear are using the thought experiment as an opportunity to make a point, or they do so out of ignorance. Because anyone who has ever actually been near a bear knows that the bear by far is the bigger threat.² For example, my high school used to sponsor a summer camping trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and every year my friends returned with harrowing tales of fleeing into their cars as bears invaded their camp and wreaked havoc. I may have been too much of a princess back then to go on the trip (a lingering regret), but I, too, have had a disquieting bear encounter, at a zoo. I was inches away from a bear on the other side of a chain link fence. I could watch his nose twitching as he sniffed the air all around me. And then he started to drool.

The sensible answer: If you are hiking alone in the woods and have a choice between man and bear, you should choose man. Duh!

Perhaps the Old Fogeys Are Right on This One?

Readers may have heard that the Zoomer dating scene is a miserable, lonely wasteland. The dating app Bumble decided that the correct approach to the problem was to embark on an advertising campaign that scolds and shames women who have opted out of dating.

This is a screenshot of one billboard; there were several others, including one that snarked at nuns. Bumble later took down the billboards and apologized.

As though women were avoiding dating out of sheer cussedness! I have another theory: The dating drought is an example of revealed preferences. Whatever women may say about hookup culture, they are quietly choosing not to engage in it. How do I know this? Because I am a cranky old Gen-Xer, and I remember the days before hookup culture was a thing, back when women loved dating as much as men did. Of course we did, because dating was fun: We would share a nice meal or a drink, or maybe see a film or take a long walk, and we’d enjoy conversation—and sometimes more than that. I mean, we Gen-Xers weren’t exactly saving it for marriage. Heaven forfend. But we did at least want to get to know the other person first, to see if we liked and trusted them, and to explore whether we might have a future together.

By contrast, the deal hookup culture offers women is not so appealing. A date nowadays comes with the expectation that women will have sex with a virtual stranger who may well ghost them afterwards—or string them along for occasional booty calls. Studies show that women are also “less likely to receive the same, ahem, benefits as their partners during those casual hookups” (source).³ Worse, 58 percent of college women report being choked during sex, and many women are pushed into other painful and distasteful practices that have been normalized by porn. Is it any wonder that young women are opting out of this? Hookup culture hurts men too; there are terrific guys out there who are looking for a girlfriend, not a one-night stand. Still less do these nice men have any desire to commit attempted murder during sex. But online dating doesn’t allow them to distinguish themselves from the predators who are scaring away potential partners.

The sensible solution: Bumble Wholesome. What if Bumble offered a section in their app for people who prefer to date the Gen-X way, who want a relationship instead of a situationship, and who promise that there will be no choking or brutality? I bet Bumble Wholesome would end the dating drought lickety split. Beats the heck out of those billboards, anyway.

Can We Knock It Off with the Food Policing?

People get extremely het up about food. We talk about food in moral terms: Foods are healthy and virtuous, or they’re sinful, guilty pleasures. Even when we’re not talking about health, we have strong opinions. Any Chicagoan will tell you that ketchup on hotdogs is anathema, and we’re all familiar with arguments over whether pineapple belongs on pizza, and whether New York or Chicago-style pizza is superior.⁴

You can find this image—and a recipe!—here.

Somehow it just bugs us when people choose to eat differently from us. And as is always the case, politics only makes matters worse. Think of the mockery directed at people who make “inauthentic” guacamole, who neglect to wash their rice before cooking it, who eat with chopsticks when they shouldn’t (or don’t when they should), who fail to spice their food to a level the commenter thinks is appropriate, and so on. There’s even the Facebook group “White People Making Asian Food,” whose sole purpose is to ridicule the eponymous cooks. What a sad way to spend one’s time.

The sensible maxim: What and how other people choose to eat is not our concern. Or, as I used to tell my kids, different people like different things, and that’s ok.

Is Chili Offensive?

Speaking of food conflicts, my son alerted me to a petty and dispiriting online controversy from a couple of years ago. A group of college guys moved in next-door to a woman, and she noticed that her new neighbors ordered takeout every night. So she cooked up a nice pot of chili for them and brought it over. The guys were so happy about her gift that they offered to return the favor by fixing a fence between their properties.

If you inhabit the normie portion of the universe, you are thinking, “What a lovely story about friendly neighbors!” And many people did tweet to that effect. But others were outraged. How dare she? Bringing chili over is “not OK without getting consent.” Others worried that the guys might have allergies, aversions, or “religious exemptions.” One commenter castigated her: “for the love of god, stop babying men. this is why they learn to take advantage of their wives.” Someone else said that a homemade dinner could be threatening during the pandemic. Anyway, if you are in the mood to be bummed out, you can read more about this incident here, but honestly, why not seek out something cheerful instead, for example the story of Nimble, the first mutt to win the agility competition at Westminster?

The sensible policy: When people do something nice for you, don’t ascribe nefarious motives to them. Take it as the kind gesture it was intended to be, thank them, and maybe reciprocate. Yes, even if they didn’t get consent first, even during a pandemic, and even if you are so benighted as to have an aversion to chili.

Just How Dirty Are We, Anyway?

Finally, my friend Natalie reminded me of one contentious debate on which we may never agree: Do you wash your legs with soap every time you take a shower? Some of you might be thinking, “Ew! What kind of barbarian doesn’t wash their legs every day?” while others (like me), are aware that most of us don’t spend our time, say, laboring in the salt mines or cleaning out septic tanks, and are thus unlikely to require such meticulous hygiene. (Here is an amusing podcast discussion of the issue.) I think we need a poll!

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How about you, readers? What are some other stupid brouhahas that could be easily resolved, if only people had some common sense? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

Whether it’s bears in the woods, dating, or food, sometimes we really do inhabit different worlds, as the cartoonist Gary Larson knows well:

1. This is not because of chivalry (or chauvinism). It’s Swiss hiking etiquette (and also safer) for slower hikers to move aside to let faster hikers through, and for hikers going uphill to make way for people going downhill.

2. Incidentally, women are not the only ones who are ignorant about the danger of bears. According to a recent survey, about 6 percent of men believe they could defeat a bear in hand-to-hand combat. These men will hopefully never find out how wrong they are.

3. This is a no-slut-shaming space! To those female Lotharios (Lotharias?) who are hooking up not because they want to be a Cool Girl or a pick-me girl, but because they genuinely enjoy casual sex, I say You go, girl! I just don’t think we should center our dating expectations around the capacities of a small minority of women.

4. The people who choose soggy and greasy New York slices are apparently under the impression that all Chicago pizza is of the bready deep-dish or stuffed variety. These poor souls are unaware of Midwestern thin-crust pizza, which we cut into squares. Some of us prefer cheesy middle pieces, while others prefer the crusty edges. Here is an article that will convince you to give this excellent style of pizza a try.