julietx
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Aug 2009
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Posts: 207 |
Everyone, what should I make of this statement?
Okay, I've been planning for months to get a coonhound and will as soon as my life circumstances allow. My father was a coon hunter years ago, and we talk hounds all the time. He has known that I've been planning to get a dog, and he has been in total support of this. He has said that he will go with me to pick the puppy out. I am interested in all the events and want to do any many as I can. I thought I had made that clear to my father.
The other day we were talking up a storm about coonhounds and hunting and stuff. Out of the clear blue he said, "You love hounds so much just like me. If you had been a boy, you might have been a coon hunter". I was speechless when he said that, utterly speechless. I thought that I was going to be a coon hunter anyway. I thought that's what the plan was all along. Did he really think that I was going to get a dog and only do bench shows and never train the dog to hunt? I wish I had said something, but I was so taken aback by the comment that I couldn't say anything. It totally took the wind out of my sails. I became silent, and I think he realized that he had said something wrong.
My father swears that he meant nothing by the statement, but why say it if he meant nothing? To me there was no other way of interpreting it but to say that I couldn't be a coon hunter because I am a girl. That has kind of put a damper on things for me. It's not like my father has ever tried to hold me back on things because he hasn't. He supported fully me becoming a lawyer and me doing military, etc., and both of those professions have historically been male dominated. What he said would have been the equavalent of him saying, "If you had been a boy, you might have been a lawyer". He never had any issues at all with my career choices.
And it's not like he's against women. He hopes and prays that Sarah Palin is the next president, which makes his comment all the more puzzling given the fact that Sarah Palin is an avid hunter herself. His comment shocked the heck out of me because just the night before we had been watching Sarah Palin and her father go hunting together, and my father had commented on how great their relationship was and how great it was that they shared the passion of hunting. And then he makes a comment like that????
My father did his coon hunting mostly in the 1970s and early 1980s, and back then there were few if any women hunting. And in his club there were no women hunters. Maybe it's not that he is necessarily against women coon hunting, maybe it's just that he's never seen it. So, in his mind a coon hunter is a man. If his club had, had women hunters it probably wouldn't be an issue because that would have seemed normal to him. I have also told him that I intend to get into fox hunting, the traditional english style on horseback. He has no problem with that at all, but in that type of fox hunting there are likely to be as many women as men.
I can't figure my father out. Perhaps he can't get old images out of his mind. He has been out of the coon hunting world for close to 30 years. It's like he goes from one extreme to the other. He can make a comment like if I had been a boy I might be a coon hunter, but in the same sentence he is telling me that we need to get me a nite light. And then he has made comment that he thinks Sarah Palin would be a good coon hunter if she ever got into it. You see any contradictions there?
As I said, his statement really put a damper on things. It was like a stake had been driven through my heart, or like the wind had come out of my sails. How would that have made you feel? I have never been easily offended by anything. I have always been able to laugh things off, but this was different. Was I wrong to be offended by this, and what should I make of it?
Last edited by julietx on 01-04-2011 at 07:24 PM
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01-04-2011 04:53 PM
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