This started off as nothing but a hypothetical question posed to a bunch of random women on the street. If they were walking alone in the woods, would they rather run into a strange man or a bear? What was meant to be some light TikTok trend ended up going in a completely different direction as an overwhelming majority of women preferred the bear to a man. A silent understanding rippled amongst women as a lot of men flew into a hissy fit.
The answer was not given out of malice. It acts as more of a cry for change in our society. So this begs the question; why would such an overwhelming number of women from all walks of life choose a literal wild animal over a member of the opposite gender?
Lack of knowledge of a problem is privilege and privilege is part of the problem. Now, it is important to realize that there are two types of privilege; the one that is a part of the problem and the one we are fighting for. While differentiating between the privilege we ought to work towards and the privilege we are fighting against, Peggy McIntosh gives the unjust variant the distinction of giving others a license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.1 The privilege we are fighting for is the one where women can walk freely and have total autonomy over themselves and their bodies. The power to be restored to the word ‘no’. Sexual and Gender Based Violence is an umbrella term for harmful acts perpetrated against a person’s will that includes acts that inflict physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion, and other deprivations of liberty whether in public or in private.2
Why the bear and not the man? I think this is a good place to start. Why is the notion of encountering a strange man in the woods more terrifying than a literal wild animal? The answers were numerous, and they all circled around the same point. The violence suffered in the hands (paws?) of a bear is much more preferable to that suffered in the hands of a man. Then there was the argument of statistics. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 30% of women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, and 7% have experienced non-partner sexual violence, in their lifetime. Among even-partnered young women aged 15–24, prevalence of intimate partner violence is 29%. Prevalence of combined intimate partner and non-partner violence ranges from 27% in the WHO European Region to 46% in the African Region3. This means that 1 in every 3 women has been sexually assaulted. In every conversation about sexual assault, it is always paramount to acknowledge that men go through it too. Let’s bring this home. In Kenya, generally, the larger percentages of the victims of physical and sexual violence are women and girls while there are reported cases of male victims too.4 According to the Kenya Demographic Health Survey 2014, forty-five per cent of women and forty-four per cent of men the age 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence.5
Referring to the numbers above and those that are going to follow, cases of gender-based and sexual violence are highly rampant in Kenya. The 2010 Kenya Violence against Children Study (VACS) showed that violence against young women and children is a serious problem in Kenya: 32 and 66% of females aged 18 to 24 reported at least one experience of sexual or physical violence respectively prior to age 18, and 11 and 49% of females aged 13 to 17 reported experiencing some type of sexual violence or physical violence respectively in the past 12 months.6 It does not stop at young women. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are experiences suffered by children exposed to violence, survivors of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, observers of criminal activity in the home, substance abuse by parents or living in a dysfunctional domestic setting resulting in mental health problems and psychosomatic disorders characterized by numerous hospitalization.7 That brings us to the conclusion that children are not spared from this worrying epidemic, and they are especially not safe in their own places of residence, as it is evident that perpetrators do not have to be strangers. Most of these perpetrators are parents, guardians, caregivers and other individuals that are meant to be providing care and guidance to these children. Instead, they give in to desires that can only be regarded as sick, or, in some cases malice like in the case of an 8-year-old boy who was found to have been assaulted repeatedly while living with his aunt and uncle and their children.8 In 1991, there was an unfortunate case where 71 schoolgirls were raped and 19 killed at St. Kizito School in Meru, Kenya. The Deputy Principal was quoted telling the former President Moi that “the boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just wanted to rape”.9 In 2017, 784 cases of rape, 3487 cases of defilement, 287 cases of incest, 107 cases of sodomy and 245 cases of indecent assault were reported.10 With these numbers, it is easy to see why the bear tends to be the better choice.
It is noteworthy that our Kenyan society is heavily patriarchal with misogyny being deeply entrenched in the minds of the people. In times of political unrest like in 2007-2008, sexual violence was used as a means of political and social domination. Men would rape women to express social communal grudges and hatred. Sometimes, it’s more of a cultural thing than an intentional thing. This can be deduced from a case study done by the African Journal of Education Science, where a victim of early marriage from Wajir was married off by her father at the mere age of fourteen. She believed that he had his heart in the right place but was
deeply misguided by bad cultural beliefs that are heavily prevalent in that area.11 While not every woman has suffered the extremities of the issue, it is guaranteed that one can throw a rock and it would land on a woman with tales of receiving unsolicited advances from men along with threats or even acts of violence whenever they reject these advances.
Obviously, the leading cause of sexual and gender-based violence is the perpetrators themselves, but there are other factors that encourage their behavior. Factors specifically associated with sexual violence perpetration include beliefs in family honor and sexual purity; ideologies of male sexual entitlement; and weak legal sanctions for sexual violence. Gender inequality and norms on the acceptability of violence against women are a root cause of violence against women.12 Another problem is collapsed justice system and dysfunctional forensic evidence collection, prosecutorial and trial infrastructure.13 14This allows perpetrators to roam freely as the methods available to catch them are primitive at best. Poverty also plays a big role. Parents, especially in informal settlements leave their children unattended for long periods so as to fend for them.
It goes without saying that the subsequent results are anything but good. A study conducted by Yale University suggests that abortion is strongly related with gender-based violence.15 Victims of sexual violence, specifically rape, are put at risk of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV as well as unintended pregnancies which are almost always synonymous with induced abortions which may lead to gynecological problems.16 . There is also the risk of the abused becoming the abuser, as it has been found that up to 30% of child victims of sexual abuse are at a higher risk of becoming perpetrators.17 Moreover, gender-based and sexual violence results in reduced confidence in the victims along with mental health issues such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and Depression. This leads to a myriad of negative long-term outcomes.18
Putting a stop to this unfortunate epidemic is a mission that has been taken up by many people and organizations. Educating the masses is paramount. Educate women on their rights to their autonomy. Drill into the heads of the perpetrators that ‘no’ is a complete statement, and anything other that ‘yes’ doesn’t constitute of consent; carve into their minds that violating another human being is not synonymous with power or control. Teach the members of society to speak up. Remove the shame from the victim and put it on the perpetrators. More people need to speak up. One doesn’t even have to stand on a soapbox. Speaking up when a friend makes a sexist comment or a crude joke is important, and it goes a long way.
In conclusion, the bear is what came out to be preferable after everything women have suffered in the hands of men who have felt entitled to women’s bodies due to deeply entrenched misogynistic beliefs. It is important to unlearn the lessons that our patriarchal system has engraved into our minds so that we are able to move in the right direction.
Darlene Nyambura
1 (McIntosh 2002: p. 100)
2 UNHCR The refugee Agency, Standard Operating Procedures for Prevention of and Response to SGBV in Nairobi Kenya,
3 World Health Organization. Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2013
4 (Mathuret al.,2018; Ondicho, 2018; Bryantet al.,2017
5 KDHS, 2014
6 for Injury Prevention and Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics,. Violence against Children in Kenya: Findings from a 2010 National Survey. Summary Report on the Prevalence of Sexual, Physical and Emotional Violence, Context of Sexual Violence, and Health and Behavioral Consequences of Violence Experienced in Childhood. 2012
7 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2019.06.001
8 Forensic Science International Synergy 1 (2019) 185- 203
9 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/29/world/kenyans-do-some-soul-searching-after-the-rape-of-71-schoolgirls.html
10 Economic Survey Kenya 2018;Kenya 2017 Crime and Safety Report
11 African Journal of Education Science: The Occurrence of Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Wajir County, Kenya.
12 World Health Organization (WHO), Violence against Women Nov, 2017.
13 Locard’s Exchange principle is a forensic principle which states that ‘every contact leaves a trace’.
14 Human Rights Watch (HRW), “They were Men in Uniform”. Sexual Violence against Women and Girls in Kenya’s 2017 Elections, December 2017.
15 Yale J Biol Med. 2016 Jun; 89(2): 153–159
16 World Health Organization (WHO), Violence against Women Nov, 2017.
17 World Health Organization (WHO), Adverse childhood experiences international questionnaire (ACE-IQ),
18 Friedberg R, Baiocchi M, Rosenman E, Amuyunzu-Nyamongo M, Nyairo G, Sarnquist C (2023) Mental health and gender-based violence: An exploration of depression, PTSD, and anxiety among adolescents in Kenyan informal settlements participating in an empowerment intervention. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0281800.