is the man or bear thing rhetorically or optically the perfect feminist meme that is beyond criticism? no.
but is it leaps and bounds better at getting men to understand the material consequences of patriarchy on the physical and emotional health of women than that stupid “kill all men” meme from last decade? definitely.
Some of this is starting to get beyond my rhetorical capacity so I won’t pretend to have answers for your questions here, I apologize.
Maybe other commenters can give you satisfactory answers, but in the meantime I’ll refer you to this book by bell hooks (free PDF). Should get you 99.9% of the way there. :)
No worries, thank you for getting me this far!