COLUMN: Alone in the land of hunters
In recent years, society has seen a breakdown in the traditional values of masculinity.
The boom in the technology industry and the drastic reduction of labor-intensive jobs in America have created a society of men who are more Patton Oswalt than George S. Patton.
However, the impending end of cultural masculinity is a recent phenomenon, and one that is not fully realized.
Never is that more clear than the beginning of hunting season in mid-Michigan.
The men go hunting. If you are in grade school, you miss class to go shoot things.
Women have been accepted up in the deer stands, but still raise eyebrows.
For example, let’s say there is a young man growing up in the rural outskirts of Midland, who has never been hunting in his entire life and happened to grow into a 5’8” dynamo of bearded vigor by the name of Bradley.
When the other 10- or 11-year-olds are talking about their plans to skip school to sit out in the cold with their dad and their rifle, saying “I’m not going hunting” causes reactionary looks expected to be reserved for being told “Jesus already came back and he was the hamster you forgot to feed last year.”
By the time most of the boys in my school reached the age where they were legally allowed to hunt, they had already learned a few choice slurs for homosexuals they chose to fling liberally at the few of us who did not hunt.
I believe there were a few phenomenons at work that made this happen:
First, the systemic nature of grade school society to be cruel to those who are different.
Second, in communities where hunting is prominent, not hunting is just something guys do not understand.
Not hunting was never a moral choice or anything like that; Lord knows I revel in my carnivorous tendencies. I had fired guns, and spent time in the woods, but it just was not my thing.
If somebody is asked to go roller skating and they respond, “I just don’t really like to skate,” nobody bats an eye. Say “I just don’t really like to hunt” in the wrong rural community and people will lose their minds.
As a few of those young boys who ostracized me found out a few years later, sexual orientation has nothing to do with a compulsion to shoot deer with a gun.
By all means, keep hunting. Keep being enthusiastic about it. Just be a little nicer to the guy who is not going hunting.
After all, he’s the guy staying at home with all your women.
