My impression of this book started off badly. The first chapter is essentially an effort at rewriting human history. Certainly our history is due for a rewrite. How many people do realize that matriarchal civilizations existed, in which men and women held equal standing, in which the Goddess reigned supreme in the hearts of the people, and poverty was nonexistent? For sure, all of this is true. But she takes this all too far. She suggests that hunting and meat-eating was anathema among those who followed the Goddess, but in fact hunting was widely practiced, and most paintings found at Çatalhöyük involved game, hunting scenes, and erect penises. And although the Goddess reigned supreme there, a minor God was also worshipped. She also appears to claim that Goddess cultures of this sort were our primeval state, and argues that hunting and eating meat are "not natural to the species but are required of men as the conditions of their integration into the 'civilized' (dominant) social order." This is a curious claim, since there is a great deal of evidence that prior to about 8,000 years ago, most people have practiced hunting (as well as gathering) for subsistence, and that most people continued hunting UNTIL the rise of civilization, when animal domestication and agriculture forcefully supplanted the practice. At another point, I winced when the author quoted in great length the false speech given by Chief Sealth, which was in fact written by a white male screenwriter in 1971. (See: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/seattle.asp). Even worse she remarks "It is a beautiful speech. Even if the style betrays the retouching hand of a white sympathizer, the substance is undoubtedly Seattle's own for it is consistent with all that I have read of Native American writings." Not that I can really blame her on this point, since many people before and since have made the same mistake, but her argument for accepting the speech does show how susceptible we are to finding something authentic simply because it fits with our preconceived stereotypes (in this case of American Indians).

In the second chapter, the author goes on to compare hunting to rape. Although certainly there are metaphorical similarities, and certainly many people do hunt in a way that fits with her analysis. But many others do not. The author takes the most despicable image of a hunter and generalizes all hunters against this model. Her hatred for hunters seems boundless: she confesses having no sympathy for hunters, seeing them as senselessly brutal, piteously immature, akin to irresponsible little boys, as people who kill for fun and profit. She speaks of them as having a hard-on for killing wildlife. But even in our misogynistic patriarchal culture, not all hunters are like that. There are many hunters who do in fact love and respect the animals that they hunt, and do eat their flesh rather than simply collect trophies. She also criticizes the claim that hunters are conservationists, for instance blaming hunters for the removal of predators such as wolves from forests, claiming these hunters then benefit from the need to "cull the herds". But in fact, surveys in Montana and Michigan have found that more hunters favor wolf reintroduction than oppose it. Opposition to wolf reintroduction comes from ranchers, not from hunters.

In contrast to these first two chapters, I enjoyed the last three chapters immensely. The author takes on the subjects of patriarchal science, taking such forms as animal experimentation, reproductive technology, and pesticides. She argues that we need to "put the ecology back into feminism, to feel as our own the plight of the earth and shout it". Otherwise, we're going to lose: "our planet will continue to run its destructive course and annihilate us all in the name of health, happiness, and progress." ( )