tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post3181328075562319199..comments2024-03-23T12:38:46.260+00:00Comments on The History Girls: The 'wrong' side of history, by K. M. GrantMary Hoffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06241989732624913706noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-82297513628276843152011-09-30T12:49:52.484+01:002011-09-30T12:49:52.484+01:00I'm another intolerant liberal, and a member o...I'm another intolerant liberal, and a member of the League Against Cruel Sports and the RSPCA. The conduct of hunting belies the "pest control" argument: foxes could be swiftly caught by faster-running hounds, but foxhounds are used because they are slower than foxes but have more stamina, the idea being to prolong the chase for the enjoyment of followers. Then there's the fact of foxes being encouraged to breed in hunting areas by the use of artificial earths - I've been shown some by a landowner in Northamptonshire. The last thing hunts want is for fox numbers to dwindle.<br /><br />Above all, it beats me how people who lavish every kind of care and attention on their horses, and would be appalled by any kind of cruelty to them, can happily participate in the terrorising and killing of another mammal. There are some good comments here, and I agree that no one can count themselves blameless, and stand above animal exploitation of all kinds. But I don't see that as a justification for blood sports.Linda Newberynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-50374273425424651292011-09-30T07:38:56.601+01:002011-09-30T07:38:56.601+01:00I wrote my PhD thesis on depictions of hunting in ...I wrote my PhD thesis on depictions of hunting in literature (though in 1300-1500, not more recently). I was often asked whether I had been hunting to see what it was like. I answered that I hadn't, and that had I been writing on slavery or the holocaust I would not be expected to try out those types of inhumanity.<br /><br />Hunting was already being excused as a form of vermin control in the 13th century, though the ornate French manuals on hunting show that there were more effective and humane methods of control which did not attract the same (or indeed any) level of glorification because they were not enjoyable. Hunting was denigrated by the church, though many monks and priests were satirised for their devotion to the hunt. It was considered by the Church to be the companion of gluttony and lechery - immoderate enjoyment of something which should serve a need. It did not escape their notice that 'venery' refers to both hunting and sex.<br /><br />There is nothing noble in the enjoyment of destroying another life form. Early hunters always had propitiation rites which accompanied a successful hunt. Amongst the ruling classes of 'civilised' societies, this developed into rather obscene rituals of lauding it over the dead animal. <br /><br />Only the upper classes followed the ornate and inefficient process of the ritualised hunt. Peasants and poachers just killed things and ate them. The stylised processes were a tool of exclusion, of marking the knowledgeable hunter as a member of the elite as they still are. The clothing, vocabulary, traditions and method of breaking (butchering) the carcass were designed to distance the act of slaughter and try to make of it a work of art or social separation. In France, the predominant symbolic use of the hunt was of love, but in England it was of mortality, with hunting being the emblem of the 'man who has everything' and pays no regard to the inevitability of death, even while in the throes of inflicting it. <br /><br />Anti-hunting sentiment is not a modern liberal attitude. John of Salisbury, writing in the 12th century, is the English first writer to record an anti-hunting view on the basis that it diminishes the hunter to take joy in the infliction of pain.<br /><br />Millgram's experiment is sufficient demonstration that 'normal' people will engage in repellant behaviour if it is normalised or sanctioned by authority. The instinct to enjoy a chase is no doubt an evolutionary one (and a chemical one). The rush of adrenalin and endorphins helped our ancestors to feed themselves. But so did it help them force themselves on unwilling women in order to ensure their own genes were propagated. It doesn't mean that in the context of a developed society it is still a good thing. The 'intolerant liberals' who didn't like slavery felt that black people had rights and white people should not be morally debased by buying slaves. Modern 'intolerant liberals' who don't like hunting feel animals have the right not to be tormented and humans should not debase themselves by enjoying slaughter. I'm happy to be counted an intolerant liberal.Stroppy Authorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16560035800075465845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-69080484165375736302011-09-29T17:31:57.475+01:002011-09-29T17:31:57.475+01:00Yes,mind you, the persecutors were pretty brutal t...Yes,mind you, the persecutors were pretty brutal to early Friends!Leslie Wilsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15105465949970430998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-38771396197964707432011-09-29T10:21:35.605+01:002011-09-29T10:21:35.605+01:00"There is, after all, no group on earth as il..."There is, after all, no group on earth as illiberal as nice people who disapprove."<br /><br />What a very nice line!Penny Dolanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16386668303428008498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-56573316121938680322011-09-29T10:18:04.768+01:002011-09-29T10:18:04.768+01:00I agree with Kath. Animal cruelty is more than hun...I agree with Kath. Animal cruelty is more than hunting. Foxes do, sadly, need to be culled, and the means used to kill them now are often crueller than hunting. And unless you are a vegan , you are living from the deaths of other animals and battery farming is worse than hunting , I think. Even vegans - unless you live from gathered food, are complicit in the deaths of competitors like slugs. Killing pests is allowed in organic farming, though probably less wholesale. As to entering into the mindset of earlier generations, I love the bit in Ann Turnbull's Forged in the Fire, where the lovely heroine reflects with satisfaction on the lightning bolt that God sent to demolish a 'steeple-house' - not the way modern day Quakers think but definitely the way early Friends did. Their early records contain judgements by God on their persecutors like being gored by a bull!Leslie Wilsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15105465949970430998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-10589095954773327892011-09-28T13:40:46.386+01:002011-09-28T13:40:46.386+01:00Fantastic & evocative post - thank you.Fantastic & evocative post - thank you.Gillian Philiphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01143802491301982960noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-83682970414252693462011-09-28T09:59:47.372+01:002011-09-28T09:59:47.372+01:00You absolutely sum up the confusions, Katherine. ...You absolutely sum up the confusions, Katherine. I can remember thinking 'I hope he (always he, in my mind) gets away', all the while knowing, and completely accepting, that this was not the name of the game. One thing I loved about hunting was the uncertainty, the never knowing quite what the day would bring or how it would end for any of us. The Darwinian principle doesn't affect my belief in God, which constantly wavers. Despite the New Testament, He has never seemed entirely kind, though when I die I hope, if He exists, he'll be pretty kind to me.K.M.Granthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04004496563163651929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-56041094898900859252011-09-28T09:59:23.634+01:002011-09-28T09:59:23.634+01:00Sorry - a sloppily edited comment!Sorry - a sloppily edited comment!Emma Darwinhttp://www.emmadarwin.com/pages/writing/a_secret_alchemy/extract.htmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-30274633199515810132011-09-28T09:51:26.170+01:002011-09-28T09:51:26.170+01:00One of the many reasons I so often find myself wri...One of the many reasons I so often find myself writing historical fiction in the first person (though the critic P N Furbank disapproves...) is that it makes it much easier to make your characters truer to the mores of the time, without the necessary duck-shuffle which indicate that of course YOU the writer don't think any such thing.<br /><br />You do still have to beware. Many readers, lacking the historical awareness of just how contingent what we believe to be absolute truths of good and bad may well never get to like him.<br /><br />Of course many readers do know that what we take to be absolute truths of good and bad are actually historically and culturally contingent. But an authentically good, decent, responsible, kindly and humane historical character would still have have some authentic views on women, children, non-whites and non-Protestants and blood sports which prompt a shart intake of our modern breath, at best.<br /><br />The best you can hope for <br /><br />And yes, I've written falconry scenes, and hunting scenes. Though in the latter it was the narrator's beloved mare who suffered the ultimate fate...Emma Darwinhttp://www.emmadarwin.com/pages/writing/a_secret_alchemy/extract.htmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-63201290820449178882011-09-28T09:29:09.383+01:002011-09-28T09:29:09.383+01:00I used to ride but have never hunted, but I love S...I used to ride but have never hunted, but I love Siegfried Sassoon's 'Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man' - do you remember the bit near the beginning when, as a child of nine or so, he blurts 'Don't do that - they'll catch him!' to the the older, more hard-bitten child who is about to shout out as the fox emerges from covert? <br /><br />Human beings kill animals all the time, and not just for meat. We poison rats (see Louisa's post below, about clearing rats from a castle). They probably die in agony. We mow them down in motor cars: a city-dweller once exclaimed to me in horror about the number of mangled corpses strewn along country roads. We cull animals like deer when their numbers become unsustainable: and death by gunshot is definitely more merciful than being pulled down by the wolves which would have kept the numbers down before we exterminated the wolves. <br /><br />The argument against hunting seems to be driven by a visceral moral distaste that human beings should take pleasure in pursuing and killing an animal - rather than the fact of its death. Eg: killing rats is OK because we don't enjoy it? - but that makes no difference to the rat... It's impossible to eliminate suffering from the world: the whole natural world is constructed on the principle of kill-and-be-killed: which is the one of the main reasons why I can't believe in God.Katherine Langrishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.com