Hunting: Vessels, and Vices.

Remember this: A huntress is no longer a free woman when enslaved to vices.

Post-operatively speaking, surgery can really work a girl over. Doing seventeen hour sleep-o-thons due to prescription painkillers can throw you off your game. Tallying those hours up made me think it might make Sleeping Beauty fabulous, add in anemia while waking up feeling and looking like road kill, is the exception to the rule. Losing big slots of time does bring concerns, but my medical results were negative.

While in my drug-induced recovery, I was doing a lot of kindergarten art. One of my favorite things to do is look at and interpret art. Going into a museum and focusing on the nuances, details, and hidden meanings make for a relaxing time for me.

While looking up this recipe for a French dish, I came across this book, which I have now lost the title to. I was wandering off into Greek cuisine, when I happened to wander off again into the hunting realm. In it's pages were the pictures of Greek vessels. I considered the images of the surface treatment. I studied the content, which I had seen before in a book at the library; a most risque book. Not quite as literal and detailed as Japanese work, but fairly simplistic in design. Maybe I am like Dean Winchester and I like my archaic porn.

For some time now, I have wanted to be inclusive of same-sex peoples in the realm of my hunting treatises. Usually, my writings are in the form of heterosexual speculations. I consider people humans first. Whatever they are into or do with other consenting adults in their private bedrooms or with their reproductive organs is not my business. Public sexy time photos from strangers are just muted. I move on silently into that good night.

I do take issue with sexual depravity when women, children, and animals are being violated against their will by strangers or familiar people, regardless of sexual orientation. Some of the content of these pieces do allude to this type of nefarious activity. I turn my vision to Canada and the problem of missing indigent tribes-women. I will not dwell on that subject. It is best to save it for later. Yet anyone reading this should look into this issue. It is a heartbreaking thing.

The vessels in question are called Attic Vases. These vessels either have orange backgrounds with black figures portrayed on the surface, or vice versa.

Male and female figures were engaged doing some activity. The gifting or exchange of deceased or living wildlife leaped out at me more so than the naughty, implied sexual behavior. Images of the fox, a stag, bird, or animal skin are being gifted, traded, or paid to another individual for some purpose. The images are limited. Therefore the interpretation could be limited as well.

Figures are shown handing a dead fox to another male or female. One figure is illustrated with a dead stag on his shoulders. There is an assortment of farm animals delivered. Another interpretation of the image of the fox is as a living pet gifted to the receiver.

When considering the recipient, the individual could be a relative, a consort, a concubine, a prostitute, or lover. When it gets into the realm of sexual positions and amorous postures, we know what that means. On one hand, there is the possibility these recipients are people who do not or can not hunt for some reason.

When you look at the rationale of the image, hunting was not exclusively performed to provide food for the hunter's table. Hunting became a non-monetary system to purchase or trade for sex.

I could see where this is a kill three birds with one stone trick. Hunter kills two stag, eats one or takes it to the wife, and then pays a sex worker for some sexy time action with the second. Everyone is happy.

I began to chuckle a little because the images reminded me of the movie, The Best Little Whore House in Texas. Dolly Parton's character, Miss Mona Stangely, is running the Chicken Ranch. The Chicken Ranch is a brothel, where football players go to fulfill their sexual desires. The mode of exchange in the Chicken Ranch's history was exchanging fowl for fortification.

These vessels illustrate Greek daily life through snapshot imagery based on concepts such as hunting, folklore, and sexuality. More so, the interaction between each activity as it applies to Greek daily life.

To interject here, I have constructed my personal vessels from home-made and commercial clays. You take great care in the selection of the treatment and imagery that is to be applied to the surface. You are always thinking in terms, when fabricating sell-able items, of the consumer. This treatment is what gives the vessel its value along with the silhouette.

When considering the use of such an artifact, these vessels could be used during ceremonies, as home utility vessels for the purposes of cooking and storage, humorous gag-gifts, or specifically made for some purpose known only to the person commissioning the work.

The idea of how publicly these vessels were displayed became an interesting turn of events. When you consider in years past, the event of LGBT peoples closeting themselves to avoid persecution, here same-sex relationships are proudly displayed and shipped out to other places as an exported trade-good during the 5^th century. These vessels were popular and being produced in Italy.

Could the mindset, in regards to these same-sex shenanigans, be so open and liberal?

I thought of the rampant sex trade of today. Women, men, and children are used as vessels of trade for money. Victims of a form of capitalism in underbelly slums, off-shore yachts, high-profile call girls and al la carte objects on someone's lavish lifestyle procurement request list. Beware of those procurement people. You are just an item that will make them money because they think everyone and everything has their price.

Here it is 2014 and same-sex couples are finally getting the right to legally marry their partners. I asked myself: What happened? How did the human timeline travel from having same-sex relationships as acceptable enough to put on a vase, to threatening people with persecution if they dared state the truth about their sexual orientation?

There is no stigma attached to the vessels that is known. Maybe it is known yet I haven't seen a scholarly review of the details. This might have changed with the advent of Christianity and doctrines raging against same-sex participants.

These vessels have become image documents testifying to the role of hunting in sex-based trade activities. It also displays the role of hunting in the relationship of heterosexual and LGBT hunting participants. The vessels also indicate hunting participants as participating in same-sex relations. Even if there was no love and the motive was sexual pleasure, the sexual orientation of the partner didn't matter, only the consenting decision. Sexual satisfaction was the ultimate goal. I would have to argue the point in a humorous fashion of a hunter going to a sex worker and saying, “Hold me. I want to be held.”

Hunting purchased you sexy time. This sexy time could be void of emotional attachment and based solely around vice and physical pleasure.

Taking liberties here, how do these artifacts from the past, when applied to the current landscape of hunting, indicate a change in societies view of hunting participants' representation of sexuality in the field sports? In terms of gender roles, does it really matter what you do with your partner or partners under the sheets or in the woods? When hunting does it matter if you are heterosexual, homosexual, trans-sexual, or bisexual? Why was same-sex relationships more acceptable in the 5^th century and not now in some countries?

I was going for the obvious, albeit comical. Of course, these are all negative bullet point. Possible hunting for sex trade-offs could be:

Hunting participants posting the sexiest photo of themselves online publicly to catch the eye of a male or female hunter. This could ensue to long-term or short-term sexy time.

Hunting participants posting all but nude, or nude photos of themselves, to agitate the male-female glands to get money and recognition in lieu of online peepshow through self-exploitation.

Posting all your expensive toys to show people how much you have, because money is everything. Who cares if they like you, for you? If you have money, you can pick and choose to whom you choose the sexy time, discard, and move on.

Hunting participants can involve themselves in relationships with other hunters or people who have access to prime hunting areas for sexual trade. Who cares if the sex is bad as long as you get a good hunting spot? When hunting season ends, move on.

Hunting participants who are dating and married come home with said quarry and expect dinner, a movie, and sexy time because it is there legal right, by God. No spouse shall block the sexy time.

Getting past these points, the question of same-sex in hunting reoccurs to me from a heterosexual vantage point.

When you consider the alpha-male's position of hunting as a purely male, testosterone driven sport, where the wimps cry and run home to mama while the bearded men with the most balls prevail, where does the LGBT fit in? Where would a LGBT fit in to the alpha-male hunter, who finds other hunters as puny, inferior beings, playing in his hunting sandbox?

When the viewer considers the older and newer perspective on hunting participants, it is heterosexual in nature. It seems to appear in advertising. When you see an advertisement for the hunter of today, you would probably see a heterosexual couple with children, a single parent with a child, or a singleton with no progeny.

The patriarch or matriarch is assumed to be heterosexual. These images can be seen on social media and in memes, but the image itself can be misleading in its content.

How do we know the sexual orientation of the hunting participants? Is it implied or assumed? Do we not question the relationships in the advertised photos? We use our greatest point of reference, which is our personal view of our own sexuality. I am heterosexual, therefore they are heterosexual. If this is so then how does a LGBT, interpret what is a heterosexually implied image?

Here the viewer could understand sexual orientation and sexuality to be relative in hunting. Perception change from society to society, given their acceptance or a societies limited and oft times murderous contempt for such sexual activities.

If you are a LGBT, when you go into the woods to hunt no one cares what your sexuality is. There is no question to indicate your sexuality on a hunting license to be used for discriminatory purposes.

As for advertisements, when the eventual shift begins by understanding LGBT are consumers too, the images will become more ambiguous. It is unrealistic to think that all imagery will be presented in vague ways. Let us hope that more people who are use to the heterosexual condition will realize the slight that is being handed down to our fellow hunter and soften the suffering of the human condition. LGBT are not little aliens that have arrived on the heterosexual landscape. I would not think they cared what heterosexuals do but would appreciate a little consideration and representation as consumers and participants in all arenas of life. When you stop segregating people with issues made to exclude, then life is filled with less anxiety. The people move on from the controversy that disrupts everyone's life.

As for LGBT, there is not much to understand. They pay taxes, vote, adhere to the same laws as everyone else and are not a different species. If people want to throw the Word of God at them, those religious people should remember that their God is the ultimate judge. Not them.

Otherwise, sexual orientation does not matter in hunting or outdoor sports. If it does, it is because of the prejudice of a human being with flawed beliefs. Regardless of sexual orientation, people will choose to be cruel or kind for whatever reason. It doesn't seem to matter.

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth.

~Courtesy of the AOFH~