Teressa Groenwald-Hagerman is feeling very pleased with herself after the keen hunter met a challenge to hunt and slaughter an elephant using a bow and arrow. Her trip was paid by sponsors, including her schilling for a line of hunting clothing made specially for women (because sadly sexual equality, normally a very fine idea, also sometimes means that women get to prove they are as violent, foolish and downright nasty as many men). She’s proud of travelling to the vast continent of Africa, the cradle of life, to kill one of the most magnificent animals on the planet. She spent several hours a day training to use the bow effectively. One wonders what positive things she could have done for herself or others in those hours instead of training to slaughter an animal purely for fun.
And please, don’t give me that ‘humans are predators’ line, this isn’t the Neolithic period and people like this woman are utterly despicable throwbacks to an earlier time. Hunting for food is one thing, but hunting for sport, whether it is fox hunting upper class twonks in Britain or would-be Amazon Jungle Janes like this person killing an elephant for the thrill, is simply despicable and there is no reason and no excuse for it. And given how often the violent abuse of animals is cited by criminal profilers as the first symptom of a possibly sociopathic personality I think we shouldn’t just dislike people like this, we should be actively wary of them and their urges to kill other creatures purely for a thrill. (from the Telegraph via Boing Boing).