Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Hunting Women
Posted on July 24, 2003 in Crosstalk Folly Watch Morals & Ethics Sexuality
Pen the Gutless Pacifist quotes David Batstone who has weighed in on the new “sport” (read masturbation fantasy) of hunting naked women with paintball guns:
A business in the state of Nevada, I learned, offers men the chance to shoot women for sport. Men use guns loaded with paint ball pellets to hunt naked prostitutes across the open Nevada range. The company – which unabashedly takes the name “Hunting for Bambi” – charges each hunter $10,000 for the right to play the game. Those hunters who successfully shoot their “prey” can “mount” – the euphemism is not subtle – the naked woman on a wall (think of the moose head in the lodge) and to commemorate his exploits take home a photo of himself, gun in hand, next to the mount…
The libertarian voice in my head argues, “Ok, it’s awful, but you can’t legislate morality for other people. No one is being forced to play this game, after all. The women who participate do so of their own volition, and are paid well for their services. In the state of Nevada, prostitution is legal….”
But I would argue that Hunting for Bambi degrades human experience beyond any tolerable standard. Making fun and profit out of a masculine urge to harm woman is plain wrong. All too many women already feel like targets are painted on their bodies. An enterprise like Hunting for Bambi simply provides men a mental license to pursue the hunt. Our society has the right, no the obligation, to say, “Enough, we will not allow you to desecrate the dignity of women so.”
Pen weighs in:
Regardless of whether it is real or not. Hunting for Bambi is a strange way to treat women. In the same way Tom Leykis’ choice to reveal Kobe Bryant’s accuser is a strange way to treat women. And also in the same way that the Boston Arch-Diocese of the Catholic church’s failure to remove pedophile priests is a strange way to treat children.
I say “Thank the Universe for the Christian Left!”
Do I dare mention that feminists will be enraged by this, too? Burningbird mentioned this in passing the other day. I find myself speechless, appalled, as if the fringe elements of this country who want a totalitarian Christian state are allowing this kind of industry to flourish so that they can justify the big crackdown against far more harmless lovers of nudity and free sexuality.
The scream rises inside of me: NO! NO! NO! Civil libertarian that I am, allowing as I do the expression of many unique and idiosyncratic practices as long as they do no harm to those involved, I must scream that whether she is willing or not, this harms not only the woman who runs but all women. The men who pay $10,000 a shot for this are beasts and, champion of privacy that I am, they deserve to be outed as sex fiends as do the men who promote this. I suspect that we will find much that is beyond shady in this enterprise. Everyone who cherishes the human being in the body — naturist or prude — should join in denouncing, deriding, shouting down, screaming at, bemoaning, verbally attacking, and excoriating the men who own this business and the men who buy this disservice.
A free people have that right, even in Nevada and even within sexually progressive and experimental circles.
Do not allow yourself to be so numbed by media violence that this kind of “play” is acceptable.
