It's basically the perfect rage-bait question, because everyone immediately has an answer based on their emotions and assumes everyone else interpreted the core question the same way.
I think the core of this question has to do with why many women are fearful of men, which is a very complex thing, but IMO it comes down to the fact that if a man has malicious intentions, he can, in general, overpower a woman.
So here we have two beings that are probably physically stronger than you: a man and a bear. With a bear, you more or less know what to expect. Depending on the bear, there's a decent chance they won't care about you or that you can scare them off. There's also a chance they could kill you, but that's still going to be a rather straightforward affair.
With a man, they can also leave you alone, or maybe be scared off, or maybe even kill you, but they have the capacity to do a lot more. They could be kind and help you, which is certainly more than a bear would do, but they could also hurt you in very agonizing ways.
So, given the option, women would rather gamble on the sure(er)
thing than the unknown. It illustrates the fear that, given a situation where you cannot physically overpower or escape another person, you are at the mercy of their intentions.
There's also the fact that, should you live through a bad experience in the woods, people may be more likely to believe your story about a bear than a man, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
I'm sorry but I think that's stupid lol. A bear is an incredibly dangerous creature. Being in the woods with a bear means very likely death. A random stranger will likeyly be kind and decently good.
For some reason, I'm reading the "your" here as gendered. Which is weird, because I like to ask my (not terminally online) boyfriend his opinion of online drama, and when I explained to him that women were saying they'd choose a bear over a strange man, he said, "That's the obvious choice. Everyone should chose the bear over a stranger. People are awful."
Gendering it was probably unnecessary. If you made the question "would you rather meet a bear in the woods, or a stranger," most people would say the bear.
The way it was explained to me was that regardless of gender, if you see someone in the woods, there might be other people nearby and they might pose a serious threat to you. Bears don't really gang up on people, so you should be okay if you keep your distance.
I don't know whether or not I agree with that risk assessment, but I can see that it comes from a logical standpoint.