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Over two million American women hunt. By taking up weapons for the explicit purpose of killing, they are shattering one of Western culture's oldest and most firmly entrenched taboos. The image of a woman 'armed and dangerous' is profoundly threatening to our collective psyche--and it is rejected by macho males and radical feminists alike. 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 thought. Her book is a profound critique of our society's evasion of issues that make us uncomfortable, and it culminates in a surprising claim: that only by appreciating the value of hunting can we come to understand what it means to be human. Controversial and original, defying easy stereotypes,Woman the Hunter is sure to provoke strong reactions in almost every reader.
“A heart shot is what every big game hunter hopes for,” Editor Mary Zeiss Stange explains in the introduction to Heart Shots, “that perfect shot placement, whether of bullet or arrow, which ensures a quick, humane kill. A heart shot is also what the best hunting writing has always aimed for—that certain image, or theme, or turn of phrase that strikes to the core of our flesh-and-blood humanity, piercing the tissue-thin membrane between life and death.” Hunting and writing about it have not commonly been thought of as women’s work, but today women are hunting and writing about it in unprecedented numbers. This collection of stories by 46 hunters who happen to be female shows us th...
Mary Zeiss Stange's story of running a bison ranch with her husband in southeastern Montana--on the outskirts of nowhere and far-from-here--is a narrative of survival in a landscape and a society at once harsh and alluring. In this series of essays she illustrates the realities of ranch life at a time when the "New West" of subdivision, "ranchettes," telecommuting, and tourism collides with the "True West" of too much, too little, too hard, and too harsh. This society is molded by the climate, and both run to extremes, simultaneously unforgiving, often brutal, yet capable of unalloyed charm and breathtaking beauty. Her stories explore the myths and realities of ranch life in modern America--the brandings, rodeos, and demolition derbies that are major events, and the social, environmental, and political factors at work in shaping the land and the people. Less memoir than deep history of people and place, these vivid, naturalistic tales examine the complex relationships that comprise life in the rural West today.
Women, we are told, should not own guns. Women, we are told, are more likely to be injured by their own guns than to fend off an attack themselves. This "fact" is rooted in a fundamental assumption of female weakness and vulnerability. Why should a woman not be every bit as capable as a man of using a firearm in self-defense? And yet the reality is that millions of American women--somewhere between 11,000,000 and 17,000,000--use guns confidently and competently every day. Women are hunting, using firearms in their work as policewomen and in the military, shooting for sport, and arming themselves for personal security in ever-increasing numbers. What motivates women to possess firearms? What ...
This work includes 1000 entries covering the spectrum of defining women in the contemporary world.
These colorful tales highlight the complex relationships that comprise life in the rural West today.
The history of hunting, from Stone Age hunter-gatherers to today’s sport hunters. Hunting has a long history, beginning with our hominid ancestors. The invention of the spear allowed early humans to graduate from scavenging to actual hunting. The famous cave paintings at Lascaux show a meticulous knowledge of animal behavior and anatomy that only a hunter would have. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series traces the evolution of hunting, from Stone Age hunting and gathering to today’s regulated sport hunting. Humans have been hunting since we became human—but did hunting make us human? The authors consider and question the “hunting hypothesis of human origins,” not...
Born into a cosmopolitan family, Grace Gallatin Seton nonetheless took easily to the rough life of an outdoorswoman when she married naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton. Nimrod's Wife, first published in 1907, is the second account of the hunting exploits of the couple (A Woman Tenderfoot is the first). The narrative, as one contemporary reviewer in Outlook put it, "preserved the atmosphere of close companionship with woods and waters that, even to the uninitiated, what is after all the chief charm of sport with gun and rod is made quite clear." This charm is as vibrant and relevant today as it was a hundred years ago.
"For Osa, too, these years, from 1924 to 1927, were an especially significant period. After seven years of touring the vaudeville circuit, and seven more of exploring the South Seas and Borneo with occasional lecture tours worked in stateside to raise more capital, the Johnsons' complex at Lake Paradise was the first relatively permanent home the coup had had since that little flat they started out in back in Independence. Osa not only brought all her Kansas skills to bear on turning her Kenya house into a home, she also was largely responsible for managing the roughly two hundred "boys" needed to build the place and keep it running, as well as for organizing the several safaris the Johnsons...
An examination of women's self-defense culture and its relationship to feminism. I was once a frightened feminist. So begins Martha McCaughey's odyssey into the dynamic world of women's self- defense, a culture which transforms women involved with it and which has equally profound implications for feminist theory and activism. Unprecedented numbers of American women are learning how to knock out, maim, even kill men who assault them. Sales of mace and pepper spray have skyrocketed. Some 14 million women own handguns. From behind the scenes at gun ranges, martial arts dojos, fitness centers offering Cardio Combat, and in padded attacker courses like Model Mugging, Real Knockouts demonstrates how self-defense trains women out of the femininity that makes them easy targets for men's abuse. And yet much feminist thought, like the broader American culture, seems deeply ambivalent about women's embrace of violence, even in self-defense. Investigating the connection between feminist theory and women physically fighting back, McCaughey found self-defense culture to embody, literally, a new brand of feminism.