Teressa Groenewald-Hagerman: ‘Elephant Killing Feminist’ Or Just ‘Elephant Killer’?
Print This Post
“When a man goes on safari to kill animals for the thrill of killing, it’s disgusting. When a woman does it, it’s equally disgusting. Congratulations to Teressa [Groenewald-Hagerman], for being in the company of the likes of Sarah Palin, women who champion the perverse and, frankly, idiotic idea that the ability to callously kill, the ability to viciously take a life and enjoy taking it, is something to aspire to.” [...]
“Just as I wouldn’t celebrate a “skilled” female rapist for breaking into that male-dominated area or celebrate a woman presiding over genocide or war, I also won’t celebrate a woman’s breakthrough into the vicious practice of killing” [...]
“Compassion is not a sign of weakness, not in men and not in women, and compassion is not unique to either the urban or the rural; nor is true strength.
And compassion for animals–who are the greatest victims of the patriarchal system–should have a place in strong feminism.”
I could do without the Palin reference, but this quote above comes from an excellent piece over at Change.org’s Animal Rights blog. Check it out: http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/women_girls_and_the_so-called_achievement_of_killing
My thoughts:
Teressa was “inspired” to kill an elephant after a male friend said “women could never draw such a heavy bow.” But archery is NOT necessarily a hunting sport. My grandmother was an archer and she did NOT kill. She shot targets, not animals.
In order to prove the male “friend” wrong, Teressa needed only to show strength and skill, not a barbaric blood-lust.
Moreover, the next comment to “inspire” Teressa: “no woman had ever taken an elephant with a bow” is likely FALSE. If you know anything about history and sexism, you know that women’s triumphs have not been accurately recorded. It’s VERY LIKELY that women have killed elephants through bow-hunting in the past. What’s unlikely is that men in power would willingly acknowledge it and record it in history.
Feminism, in my opinion, should not be about finding women’s niche in a male-centered world full of hyper-masculine values like death, destruction, and domination. Feminism is about ridding the world of sexism and misogyny, a task better done without shedding blood.
Your thoughts?
As an active person in the campaign to improve the lives of captive and wild elephants worldwide, this excruciating story not only saddens me to the core, but it also makes me feel that from time to time, human compassion takes a few steps back, not forward. Something is terribly wrong for someone to actively seek out one of the most incredible and intelligent animals on the planet, and shoot them down for “sport”, or for the thrill of the “dare”. Shame on this inhumane being for what she did.
What Teresa (known on the net as pro-huntress) did was disgusting. I have done some research on her and other huntresses…And they do seem quite ‘accepted’ by men in a way. Some practically worship her.*sick* Although female hunters do have their own sites: so often men and women are seperate. What I have found is that women who hunt seem more likely to kill with bow and arrow, or knives and spears. So up close and personal (and very vicious and more cruel to the animals). I’ll write a blogpost about this in the near future after I have done some more research…
I don’t know if this means that some women are trying to prove themselves or topple men. It could be the case. Or perhaps something else is going on.
She isn’t the only female hunter out there to kill big ‘game’(I hate that word). Another one is Cindy Garrison. If you look her up on youtube you will find some videos on her. The comment sections by the way are sick too…She even had her own tv show, where she killed hippos and other animals on exotic trips.
And I wonder how this has anything to do with furthering feminism, since these women become almost ’sexual objects’ to some male hunters as far as I can gather from the boards that I have read about it up untill now. So how are they even helping womens rights? It’s just sick really. The fascination with death and violence…
Once I’ve written that blogpost I’ll let you people know.
~ Recent blog post: Euthanizing animals: how change is coming ~
Very disturbing… what a beautiful creature to be killed to “prove” a ridiculous point.
~ Recent blog post: Animal Agriculture Uses Religion to Defend Killing Rights ~
To answer a few of the questions posed here.. yes, most female hunters are accepted by male hunters, and respected. Female hunters are not sex symbols, though many male hunters do find it rather attractive that a woman shares his interest. Men love that a woman will spend time in the woods with him, instead of sitting at home being angry that he isnt sitting there with her. This was about her own personal desire, never about feminism. Such is usually true in the world of archers.
I don’t know that more women hunt with a bow than with a gun. I do know that a lot of women seem to take to shooting a bow (for hunting or for targets, not all shooters hunt) more easily than a lot of men do. We just often seem better able to focus and block out surrounding noise. We get better faster than men, and a bow is a very graceful thing.
It is very unlikely that a woman has killed an elephant with a bow before this. She had to draw a 90 pound bow for it, most men are unable to do that. The average male hunter will not draw more than 70 lbs, women usually between 35-65. Not a lot of men have done it either, as most men would be unable to draw the bow in order to do it.
And though I know vegans don’t approve of eating animals, I doubt they approve of children starving to death either. The elephant she killed was used to feed 500 villagers.
Cindy, even though your comment violates the comment policy at Vegan Soapbox because it is pro-meat and pro-hunting, I approved it anyway because I’m in the mood to respond.
Point 1: You said, “This was about her own personal desire, never about feminism.”
That IS feminism. They are one and the same.
Point 2: You said, “I doubt they approve of children starving to death either. The elephant she killed was used to feed 500 villagers.”
Where is your evidence that the villagers were starving?
In what kind of bizarre world
do 500 villagers need
an inexperienced bow hunter
to shoot an arrow into an elephant,
leave him to die overnight,
and then pose for photos with the elephant the next morning
in order to satisfy their hunger?
It’s ignorant and insulting to assume 500 villagers need a Western white woman with a point to prove to kill their food for them.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think “starving” villagers would be better served by clean water, education, medicine, safety from violence, and seeds, NOT by Kansans on safari.
Dear EV,
A few thoughts on the elephant article: First, thanks for opening up a dialogue about the ethics of madness. There are many issues threading this tragic story – hunting, morality, public policy and development.
Some people think one solution to human overpopulation is culling other animals, but that is a false construct. Having worked for USAID in both Western and Southern Africa, I can attest that hunger and poaching are both severe problems in many places on that continent. Our policy was (and is) to strongly advocate human population control through education and planning (not by culling! – though that has been done on a tragic scale in Africa). My personal crusade was (and is): “The Ecology IS the Economy”. Without reasonable government and policies which preserve the environment, man cannot be an economic animal, just a barely subsisting one with hardly a scruple (as in Somalia, or the Congo catastrophe).
Even in stable, developed countries like South Africa or Tanzania, famine and poaching can be serious issues. Fee hunting, horrible as it is, brings in substantial foreign currency which can help the parks and local people if managed properly. I’d much rather see safari tours only, but unfortunately there is hunting (for outrageous sums). There is also a major controversy within the African conservation community itself about what to do when large animals have conflicts with humans (or each other), yet that friction is merely a symptom of the overarching problem – human overpopulation and unsustainable agricultural practices.
However, in places like Zimbabwe or Somalia where civil society has mostly or completely broken down, barbarism and extreme cruelty become a way of life. There is unrestricted hunting, and for humans too – last I heard mercenaries were active in the Congo and E.Guinea. Same thing happened in Uganda under Idi Amin – it took decades for the people, animals and parks to recover in what used to be the ‘Pearl of Africa’.
Against this panorama of suffering, the inhumanity of shooting an elephant with a bow might seem casual, yet I believe it is iconic – like George Orwell’s story “to shoot an elephant.” The huntress claims to be doing all this for our servicemembers overseas, but I am astounded that an educated person (she has a BS in psychology) would think destroying a large, intelligent animal could advance any cause. The salient point seems to be her own physical and psychological well-being, the satisfaction of a challenge accomplished and boasted of to one’s peers – and the exhilaration of a trip to Africa. It is iconic, ironic, and absolutely emblematic of neo-colonialism and the false superiority of ‘modern’ humans, to hideously torture and destroy a Pleistocene animal with carbon steel and GPS after flying over on a jet, while being ridiculously pampered by your native guides and porters and feeling fatuous about it.
No doubt it was a challenge, archery is a difficult sport. I used to shoot an 80-lb at target (I had a 60-lb as a teenager that I would string myself). As an archer I have to comment here about the extreme cruelty of killing animals this way. Hunting arrows tipped with metal broadheads for big game are vicious weapons; they resemble sharpened instruments of torture rather than sport. Even a very large arrow, pulled by a 90-lb bow, would inflict a horrendous, excruciatingly slow death on an elephant (3 or 4 times more massive than a grizzly) – it would be like shooting a person with a child’s bow and arrow tipped with razor blades and waiting all night for them to bleed to death (Imagine it happening to you). And one more thing, African elephants don’t see that well at night, just like humans. So it was a cheat and an advantage conferred by an experienced tracker, I’m sure. I wouldn’t give Teressa 2 bits against elephants or buffalo in daylight, without porters carrying guns, in an area where they are hunted and stressed. They have good memories and short tempers.
It’s an utterly absurd claim she is the ‘first woman’ to kill an elephant with a bow, maybe the first modern woman – even that is very dubious. African people (including women) have hunted big game for thousands of years with poisoned darts shot from a bow, poisoned fruit, and various weapons and traps (in their defense, subsistence living is very difficult, and the Big Three – elephant, buffalo, and rhino – are quite intelligent and dangerous if you mess with them). Personally I am against hunting and leaning vegan, but I don’t condemn the destitute for doing it.
I see NO defense for people armed to the teeth who travel 10,000
miles to a beautiful, special place which is the motherland of mankind, just to destroy large animals (or any, for that matter) and boast about it. This sick, ugly business is like the punchline to Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, another good read on colonial exploitation. At the end the protagonist Kurtz in his last moments, realizes the heart of darkness isn’t in Africa or any other place but the human heart, as the last shreds of his identity disappear down the event horizon of madness and all he can do is mutter “…the horror, the horror!”
Jonathan,
You wrote: “see NO defense for people armed to the teeth who travel 10,000
miles to a beautiful, special place which is the motherland of mankind, just to destroy large animals (or any, for that matter) and boast about it.”
That’s exactly how I feel. Well put
I just read this story and this is a late post. This was very painful to read. Blood sports are the dark heart of humans. I have a real hard time with hunting. But I find when women hunt, it is particularly disturbing. These women hunters pretend to be tough and equal to men, but they are men pleasers to the core. They must have some way to have male admiration. I’ve met these types. They have few female friends. They want to be part of the guys so badly they will murder to do it.
Every time I think society is advancing and humans are moving up the evolutionary scale, i read something like this and weep.
I want to talk to this thing that claims to be a woman. You do not kill to prove you are a woman. I am disgusted by this woman. Its not just the elephant, its other living creatures as well. I wonder if she was abused or bullied? Is that why she feels the need to bully animals?
Even ghandi said, a woman is more compassionate. This is not a woman. Not in any way shape or form. Im a 14 year old (vegetarian) girl, and this makes me want to barf. I hope she never has children, especially not a daughter. Have a nice life, Teressa.