Would you rather be trapped in the woods with a man you don’t know or a bear (who, presumably, you also don’t know)? If you’ve been on social media recently, you might have seen this hypothetical question circling around. Initially it sounds like a philosophical riddle. But it’s not. It’s a sharp reminder of the epidemic that is male violence against women and girls.

SCREENSHOT filmed a vox pop where they asked random women on the street this question, now viewed more than 14 million times, and all but one picked the bear over a man. Since this video went viral, thousands of women have posted their thoughts on TikTok, with some even filming their male partner’s response to this question.

The vast majority of women who have answered this question choose to be stuck in the woods with a bear over a man, and the reasons are heartbreaking. One comment said “Men don’t understand that we’re not picking the bear because we think we’d survive,” another wrote, “If I said a bear attacked me, I’d be believed and nobody would ask what I was wearing or how much I’d had to drink”. One woman simply said, “Bears aren’t rapists, easy choice.”

The ‘Would you rather be trapped in the woods with a man or a bear’ debate shows the reality of misogynistic violence