Thanks once again to Holly, the NorCal Cazadora who appears to have become a regular source of ideas for me of late.  This time, in her recent post about the women’s shooting clinic, she mentioned that someone had told her about an exciting hunting opportunity, but then responded to her inquiries that the hunt was for men only. 

After a bit of righteous indignation, she went on to tell about the shooting clinic and the great time she and her friends had there.  But the seed was planted… or actually, the seed was already there, but her post provided enough fertilizer and water to get it moving. 

So anyway… here goes…

 

 

The Gender GapA little while back, a group of women on Jesse’s Hunting and Outdoors forum was talking about setting up a hunting trip.  The impetus for the discussion was an ongoing conversational thread about how some of them feel “out of place” at most hunting camps because they’re (women) usually an extreme minority around the campfire. 

And that’s true enough.  Who wants to be the only swan in a nest of ducklings?  When you’re different you get noticed, and that can be an awkward position to be in.  There aren’t many women hunters out there, and honestly, I can see why they might feel uncomfortable in camp without other women around to share attention, or to at least deflect the focus from themselves. 

For their part, a lot of men tend to feel a little self-conscious when women are present in camp too.  They have to second-guess behaviors and topics of conversation that might be offensive to the ladies.  Is it OK to fart?  Should I tell this great, bawdy joke I just heard? 

When the guys start to modify that behavior, it can make the woman feel bad, because she feels like she’s now interfering with the men’s experience.  This makes her feel even more like the spotlight is on her, and now it’s negative attention. 

And sure enough, some men might feel restrained, and may even resent the source of that pressure… the woman in camp… the “intruder”.  Hunting camp has, by and large, always been a “men’s club”.  There are probably a fair number of guys who want to keep it that way, although I’d say there are far more men who would welcome women into the camp and willingly modify inappropriate behavior if that’s what it takes to make them feel comfortable.  Somewhere in the middle are the guys who would say, “this is what hunting camp is like.  If you want to be part of it, warts and all, you’re welcome to come along.”

Anyway, there’s a lot to this conversation, and I can’t carry it alone.  It gets pretty convoluted with a real Catch-22 twist to it, so let me just get back to the women planning their hunt…

As I understood it, they wanted to do a hunt where women would not be the minority in camp, and where gender tension would be a non-issue.  It wouldn’t be guys or girls in camp, only hunters.  And that’s an idea I could really get behind. 

So, because I have some contacts at places like Tejon Ranch that could host a small to moderate group of hunters, I offered to help set something up.  We could have a good hunt on prime property without the tension convention.  I was rebuffed, mildy at first, but then blatantly told that this was a women-only hunt.  No men allowed!

Whoa!  Now that hurt.  I’m not some super-sensitive, metrosexual, city boy, but I do have feelings and they weren’t ready for that.  Nobody said it was a women-only hunt before.  I backed away from the conversation, stung and stunned.  I mean, really?  These women were just talking about how they felt being excluded from hunting camps because of their gender, and they’d just done exactly that to me. 

At first I was pissed and bitter.  My initial response was to think, “well, the hell with them, then.  They’re on their own!” 

But then I backed off and tried to see a different perspective.  Were they just reacting to their own experiences of being excluded from this male-dominated sport for so long?  The rationale seems to have been that, “men have always excluded us, so we’ll do our own thing and we can exclude men!” 

If that’s the argument, then that’s not OK. 

Exclusion breeds exclusion.    Justifying a bad behavior based on another bad behavior only perpetuates the problem.  There’s no such thing as separate-but-equal.  No matter how you rationalize it, there’s only separate or together.    Like any other policy of segregation, the end result is that the initial problem hasn’t gone away, and is probably compounded now because the separation has been formalized.  Boys on that side of the room.  Girls on this side.

Or was it more about empowerment?  “Look, we can do it too!” 

Is there a desire to prove (to whom?  To men… to one another?) that women can organize and hold a hunt without men… to demonstrate that they don’t need us?  Why?  There may be a valid rationale there, but I can’t relate to the idea.  They don’t have to go it alone.  An offer of collaboration or partnership is not an expression of doubt about anyone’s abilities.  Honestly, I’d say most men already recognize the fact that women can do anything they set their minds to, including hunting.  What’s to prove?

Or is there really even all that much to it? 

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do a trip with “just the girls,” anymore than there’s a problem holding a hunt for “just the guys.”  There are folks who feel the need to get away from the opposite sex from time to time.   Heck, it might even be healthy. 

Regardless, I think it’s important that we not perpetuate the schism between “us and them”… Mars vs Venus.  We can’t deny our differences, but we can work through them in hunting camp just as we’ve done in so many other aspects of our lives.  There will probably never be as many women hunting as there are men, but I think it behooves us and the sport to start tearing down some of the barricades that can make them feel so unwelcome that they want to simply create their own hunting camps instead of joining ours. 

Hunters of any gender are ALWAYS welcome in MY camp.  I look forward to the day when everyone else will say the same. 

 

 

 

 

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