Woman the hunter

by Mary Zeiss Stange

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