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.
Tbf, the bear question was supposed to be gendered and inflammatory. It was designed to provoke a reaction so that people could say "see this is what I mean" when anyone feels personally insulted by someone insinuating that "men" specifically are inherently evil, which, btw, are we only counting AMAB individuals that identify with their assigned gender? Are MtF (evil to good), or FtM (good to evil) included? What about AMAB gender fluid individuals, evil on Tuesday but Wednesday they feel non-evil? It was always just provocative and stupid, and should be disregarded at least and mocked at most.
I agree with your assessment however that if it wasn't supposed to be the way it was and was instead not gendered it would have had a much different and likely more positive effect. All I'm saying is the author did it this way instead on purpose.
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.