Mixing autobiographical reflection and scholarly analysis, a woman
hunter examines the cultural history of hunting, brilliantly
challenging fundamental assumptions about femininity, masculinity,
and the relation of humans to the natural world. Noting the
increase in women afield, Stange (Religion and Women's
Studies/Skidmore Coll.) is less interested in explaining why they
hunt than why more don't. She analyzes anthropological theories of
hunting: The discredited "Man the Hunter" theory and its feminist
opposite, "Woman the Gatherer," are rightly criticized for
perpetuating tired gender stereotypes and minimizing woman's
historical role as predator. Stange examines the stubborn grip
these theories hold on popular and academic imaginations and
persuasively details the well-meaning but ultimately destructive
way people anthropomorphize nature. Though she claims "implications
far broader than an argument with feminism," it's ecofeminism
(which equates hunting with rape) with which she has the biggest
bone to pick. Stange charges that ecofeminism romanticizes nature
and casts women as victims, absolving them of culpability in
environmental depredation, from the responsibility that all humans
"are up to our elbows in blood." Hunting, on the other hand,
confronts "the painful paradox of life itself: Some of us live
because others die." This "blood knowledge" - a spiritual
interconnectedness most often manifested as affection and respect
for quarry - results in a sense of mutual obligation between people
and nature that can't be bought at the grocery. One caveat:
Stange's hypocritical stereotyping of men as macho males threatened
by women hunters is troubling, considering many - herseff included
- were introduced to the sport by fathers and husbands. Though the
Field & Stream crowd might balk at extended forays into
scholarly jargon and feminist theory, Stange grapples head-on with
a central philosophical question largely unanswered by sporting
literature: Why hunt? (Kirkus Reviews)
Woman the Hunter juxtaposes unsettlingly beautiful accounts of the
author's own experiences hunting deer, antelope, and elk with an
argument that builds on the work of thinkers from Aldo Leopold to
Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Exploring how women and men relate to
nature and violence, Mary Zeiss Stange demonstrates how false
assumptions about women and about hunting permeate contemporary
thinking. Traditionalists and feminists alike view hunting as a
symbol for men's activity in the world - ignoring the reality of
women hunters now and in the past. In fields from anthropology to
religion and in movements from environmentalism to feminism, women
are often seen as nonviolent and allied with the natural world; men
as aggressive and alienated from nature. By bringing Woman the
Hunter back into the spotlight, therefore, Stange upsets basic
assumptions across the political and intellectual spectrum. Woman
the Hunter also challenges the notion that human beings - male or
female - are separate from nature, an idea reflected in the
environmentalist impulse to keep wilderness safe from people. If
instead we see people as part of nature, Stange argues, then
hunting takes on symbolic value for us all. We become vividly
conscious of our inevitable complicity in animal death, and of how
we all fit into the web of life. It is by appreciating the value of
hunting that we understand what it means to be human.
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