Would you rather be alone in the woods with a man or with a bear? This question has been going around on social media in recent weeks, and the answers that have arisen have sparked debate over the perceived safety of women in society.

The overwhelming majority of posts that I’ve seen about this question have said that they would prefer the bear. Most of these responses are women, but I have seen a few men saying similar things. On one hand, with the bear comes the possibility of being gruesomely mauled, but on the other hand, with the man comes the possibility of being sexually assaulted. The difference is that a bear doesn’t act out of malice, and a rapist does.

To be clear, women don’t pick the bear thinking they’ll have a better chance of avoiding harm than they would with a man. As I said previously, the bear is acting out of instinct, but any harm caused by another human is conscious. To give a few examples: the bear wouldn’t brag about mauling you to its friends; no one would blame you for being mauled by a bear, nor would they ask you what you were wearing to make the bear maul you. However, these are experiences that many women go through after being assaulted by men, just making the trauma all that much worse.

Not all men are rapists (although some seem to think that’s what we’re implying by choosing the bear). However, when one in three women experiences sexual violence or harassment in her lifetime, we have to be very cautious because we don’t know which men are safe. This doesn’t just mean choosing to be alone with a bear in a hypothetical situation, it also means crossing the street or speeding up when a man is behind us on the sidewalk. It means feeling your heart skip a beat when a man you don’t know starts talking to you in public. It means checking hotel rooms for cameras and triple-checking that your doors are locked every night. It’s not personal, and it’s not all men, but it is far too many victims.

Society has failed if there are women in the world who would rather be alone in the woods with a wild animal than be alone in the woods with another human being. Rape culture is extremely prevalent in our society, and it will probably never go away. Rape culture allows predators to run free while their victims are commonly the ones who are shamed and censured.

There has been one positive of this trend, though: it’s given many sexual assault survivors, both men and women, the courage to share their traumatic experiences when they might have been uncomfortable doing so before. It’s infuriating and extremely saddening to see just how many people have been sexually assaulted, but in a way, it’s encouraging to see so many people coming together to validate each other’s trauma. Most rape victims will not receive justice for what happened to them, but seeing others who have gone through the same thing is an important step in recovery.

If I really had to choose, I think I’d pick the bear. It’s not because I hate men or because I think all men are dangerous. It’s because bears don’t statistically violate 1 in 3 women every single year. In fact, a bear only attacks less than one person a year on average.