It is widely reported that given the theoretical choice of meeting a man or a bear in the dark, most women will choose the bear.

Men are justly offended by this report. Women take a breath and nod.

Last Friday morning, Juneteenth, Ron Charles (former WaPo book editor) wrote about the exploitive relationship of Thomas Jefferson with Sally Hemings, who was 16 years old in Paris and younger than his daughters when he got her pregnant. Yeah. Awful. There is no evidence, no signed contract or other document, that she chose to begin her relationship with the much older Jefferson, but that is the story. [DNA testing of her descendants proves the relationship.] As a free woman, why would anyone have chosen such a relationship?

Was Jefferson the bear?

Wherever she lived, Sally Hemings was not free. As a penniless woman she was not free. In France she was a Black English-speaking woman trained as a housemaid trapped in a European culture. In the United States, she was owned. Again, why choose slavery?

France had already done away with slavery and any slaves Jefferson brought with him while doing diplomatic work were automatically free people on French soil. Sally could have stayed in Paris as a free woman when Thomas Jefferson went home. Her brother stayed. She chose to return to Virginia with Jefferson.

So what about Sally Hemings’s future and Thomas Jefferson’s racism toward Black people, including those he owned? He defended the humanity of Native peoples, but that didn’t go so far as to ensure their protection under the law. Reportedly, he made promises to Sally Hemings that he would try (and sometimes fail) to keep. Surely slavery was worse? Or would she have been trading the devil she knew for the devil she didn’t? Technically free, but completely at the mercy of people she could barely speak to, and with no legal rights?

Maybe being an enslaved mistress in the place she knew as home and using a language she knew appeared to be the safer option than staying free in a nation with a language she didn’t speak and few opportunities for an uneducated women of her color, or for any women, or any impoverished person of any nationality or color? Much is made of how the Constitution originally counted slaves as partial people in census. Women counted as whole people, but with no rights whatsoever. In at least one colony, women had had the right to vote, but that ended with the birth of our nation. Jefferson’s “All men are created equal…” was never meant to include women. Under the law, “men” means “male.” Leave or stay, Hemings was caught. In most situations, even for women with property and funds, male relatives controlled both them and their property. Women could not vote, sign contracts, testify in court, sue, apply for a patent. They were, under the law, minors at a time when a parent or schoolmaster could beat a child bloody. It was illegal for a man to murder his wife, but he could beat her, take her inheritance, send her to an asylum, and claim her children outright.

Women were counted but did not count. As a woman, Sally Hemings did not enjoy full rights under European or US laws that regarded women as property more than as people. Sit with that for a moment.

[1. A reminder that it was the widow Martha Washington who made Washington rich, who ran his properties when he was busy elsewhere, and provided four step-children to inherit when he freed his slaves after death. Martha Dandridge Custis Washington’s mother had eight surviving children, and her grandmother was pregnant over a dozen times. No wonder she had no children with Washington! I like to think that was part of the deal when she remarried. 2. Hamilton made no secret of marrying for money, and while he was publicly and admittedly unfaithful and rarely lived with her, he fathered 8 (surviving) children before dying in a duel. His wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, would go on to pay off his enormous debts, advocate for her dead husband and the nation, and establish a home for and support orphans during her long widowhood. That orphanage still exists, but no one made a musical out of her life. 3. In her 8th labor, Queen Victoria asked for pain meds. She was widely condemned for defying the Bible which decreed women should suffer in childbirth. Victoria could afford not to care about that, and it was her husband who administered anesthesia during her next and final pregnancy (he died four years later). Medication is widely available now, and where women have choice, they have fewer babies.]

Consider reparations for the many sins of powerful white-Euro men. Because, of course, many people have suffered at the hands of an unjust America: Native peoples stripped of language, culture, religion, land, and life; and through the generational damage to Black people, families, and culture; Japanese concentration camp victims; and general bigotry and violence toward people of color, and of unpopular religions, sexual orientation, and identity. All might rightly demand recompense. We are a million miles away from acknowledging responsibility, a million miles from being fair.

Consider my own selfish reaction, my personal stake in justice and opportunity. Can a history of low pay, sexual exploitation and attack, prejudice, and lower status be repaired for me, for my mother, my grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers? Can someone make that history up to me?

Consider the misogyny of what those currently in power in our government advocate for American women. Tradwife, head-of-family voting, outlawed birth control and health care. Tell me we aren’t going backward. Please convince me.

I love my husband and trust him absolutely. I am proud of our sons, who are decent and honorable men. My father too, respected women as people. I have been personally fortunate within my birth and chosen family. Most men are not as good as the men I love.

Consider how I might absolutely know this from personal experience.

I might choose the bear.