Networked perversion: fascism, misogyny, and the man versus bear meme

Misogynists have smugly scoffed and projected outrage at women who suggest that, if trapped alone in the woods, they would feel safer encountering a bear than a man. Through an analysis of anti-feminist engagement in the Man versus Bear meme on X, we explore cultural misogyny online as a mode of networked perversity that rehearses a fascist social order. Reaching for the feminist, the misogynistic subject manages his lack by staging transgressive encounters that are affectively organized around digital enjoyment. Specifically, the meme-ing misogynist is perpetually fueled (but never quite fulfilled) by racialized fantasies of sexual violence, pain, and pleasure: simulating sadism, he choreographs femicide at the paw of the bear; fascinated by phallic fictions of stolen enjoyment, he voyeuristically envisions the bear as a stand-in for Black masculinity; and preoccupied with victimhood, he masochistically designs his own cuckoldry. This circuit of enjoyment is undergirded by an illusory sort of exhibitionism, as mostly anonymous users experiment with “showing” themselves for the purpose of producing anxiety in others. Ultimately, this essay concludes with a meditation on obscene enjoyment as experienced by onlookers and a discussion of the mask-off political sadism marking Trump’s second term.