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Laws to permit the colour "blaze pink" for hunters have been proposed in five states in the US. How did this become a legislative trend?
As the legislative session drew to a close last week at the Minnesota state capitol, a curious piece of legislation became the focus of ire for lawmakers - a bill to make something called "blaze pink" legal for hunters to wear.
...
Last spring, Wisconsin Representative Nick Milroy had the idea that "blaze pink" might also be an acceptable safety colour as well as a way to get some new blood into the sport.He even got a textile scientist at a local university to investigate whether there were any safety concerns.
"The fastest growing segment in new recruits into hunting are females, and that's one of the big reasons that companies have been marketing things like pink camouflage, pink guns, pink knives," he says.
Participation in hunting in the US has been on the decline for decades, and the sport is overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Safety Orange to become Safety Pink?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Sunday May 29 2016, @11:05AM
When such a story comes up, the first and foremost thought is "Eh?" and <facepalm>.
The amount of time spent on first world problems is amazing. Just to have some more branding, sales and profit. It is too easy to look at trivial stuff while the hard stuff might require some thought and backbone.
Sigh.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @11:10AM
I only wish they would spend more time trying to amend the constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman and spelling out exactly who can use which bathroom. That's the BIG stuff.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday May 29 2016, @11:29AM
You sound like Bernie Sanders [washingtonpost.com].
Among the women I know the ones that would hunt aren't motivated by the fashion of the expedition, nor generally own pink-colored items. And the ones that won't hunt aren't going to become hunters because of pink gear, even if they're more inclined to the color.
I'm not much of a fan of pink hats [urbandictionary.com] in general.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @12:10PM
Except when you ask women what they want, let's say, in a car
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_YCC [wikipedia.org]
You either get accused of patronizing sexism or not catering enough to female needs. You just can't win.
And as people are devoting billions of dollars to stamp out every last bit of sexism in video games, tech, science... whatever; you'd think there must be some heavy-duty misogyny keeping women from wanting to make kill shots on bambis.
And no, the gold standard for first world problems is landing a craft on a freaking comet, and being outraged by the shirt the project scientist wore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by an Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @03:42PM
Or, to summarize, "Everything is sexist! Everything is racist! Everything is homophobic! And, you have to point it all out!"
The only way to win Kobayashi Maru is to throw out the rules that say you can't win and roll your own. You could also go WarGames and just not play their game at all.
Look up double bind theory if you want a broader overview on this.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday May 29 2016, @04:33PM
That's usually because they do things things out of a cynical desire to trick women into buy the items allowing them to jack the prices up.
The features are patronizing and involve accommodations that women really don't need. I doubt that there's women out there that truly can't add washer fluid. It's just a matter of opening the hood, unscrewing the properly marked cap and pouring it in. You definitely don't need to be a mechanic or have any sort of intelligence to do that.
Same thing is going on here with the pink. It's basically just a variant of green washing where they take something that's clearly for men and paint it pink hoping that they won't actually have to do anything to earn women's interest.
The bigger issue is probably that women don't get raised to hunt with the same frequency that men do. There aren't as many hunting programs on TV dedicated to women hunting and the gear that is used for hunting is less likely to come in sizes and styles that are comfortable for women. The color is unlikely to be a factor here.
I'd suggest that painting things pink is probably just going to alienate more women as the sorts of women that were refusing to hunt because it wasn't pink enough are probably not the same women that would be willing to cut the guts out of something they just killed.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @06:31PM
Why should women be excluded from the marketer's eye? Are you telling me that as a class they are unable to sift through the bullshit of most advertising, or are unable to make a coherent statement about what they want from the products they buy?
The car was designed by women. It's at least what a segment of them wanted from a vehicle, and you are poo-pooing their choices. And honestly after decades of working on vehicles myself, I do not begrudge them not wanting to mess with it at all, or making it as idiot-proof as possible.
A mate of mine actually longed for finally being in a peer group that had a marketer's ears. A cast of millions working towards satisfying your every whim? That's power. And damnit, if I want it in pink, I'll get it in pink because my dollars finally have enough pull to change the market to what I want, instead of the compromises I have to sort through for most products.
In my experience, if you show a young girl any cruelty towards animals compared the young boys; it's fairly obvious why more women don't hunt. That's a mental block to be overcome, and it may start with something as simple as making it a bit more feminine.
And wouldn't you know:
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/112507/loc_112507065.shtml#.V0szyOTZeuI [lubbockonline.com]
Is the pink ribbon campaign sexist as well?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Francis on Sunday May 29 2016, @07:39PM
Nice straw man, I never said that they shouldn't market to women. But, if making things pink and calling it a day is what you consider marketing to women, then I'm not even sure how to respond.
Yes, I'm poo-pooing their choices because they're insulting. I'm not sure it's any less sexist because women are making the car. I'm not sure The fact that it was developed to appeal to women is a fact that women ought to be offended by.
Where's your evidence that there's enough people out there demanding pink color hunting gear? Women have been hunting for a long time and somehow now we need to make things pink in order to appeal to them?
And yes, of course the pink ribbon campaign is sexist. You'd have to have some sort of severe shortage of brain cells not to recognize it as a cynical attempt at getting at women's pocket books. Beyond the fact that women are more likely to be killed by heart disease, there's the choice of color there. There's no particular reason why it needs to be pink and at this point, it's just a con as a lot of those products that are pink don't even give money to any respected charity. They're sole purpose is to trick people into giving them money when the only benefit that society derives from it is "awareness." I don't know about other countries, but we're pretty aware of breast cancer in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @05:24AM
From your link:
Must have breast tissue where the brain was supposed to go... this kind of thinking leads me to believe women are disconnected from things like hose and belt inspections and maintenance, coolant, oil, and battery inspections, power steering and brake maintenance, and the ever present alternator and water pump wear. We have sure been conditioned to accept "feminine" to mean "complete lack of common sense", where fashion trumps function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @10:02AM
A good number of luxury brands (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Porsche) are doing away with the oil dipstick. No way to manually check the oil. As I've heard it described, no one (in that price segment at least) checks their own oil anyway.
Is this a triumph of engineering? Capitulating to market forces? Or perhaps fashion over function?
Is it feminine?
Give it another 80 years these same ladies will be celebrated as "innovating" the low maintenance car paradigm ahead of industry leaders.
And even then, if the current zeitgeist holds, it will still be written as sexist that they weren't given proper recognition in their own time.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday May 31 2016, @05:35AM
I believe they will also drive the new-car market, as they will need a new car about every three years, and their tow-in will be worth about zero.
Just drive it 'till it locks up. No need to smog it. Once it begins burning oil, it has about four quarts to go, followed by engine seizure.
At that point, simply buy another.
Goes against everything in me, but seeing how everything else in my life has become so ephemeral, oh well...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @11:09AM
Can Going Pink Draw More Female Hunters?
The fastest growing segment in new recruits into hunting are females
More female hunters draw more pink.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 29 2016, @11:11AM
Judging strictly by demand for pink-rather-than-orange camo hats given out by the company a couple of my friends work for as freebies, chicks who dig camo dig pink camo. They in fact currently have unfilled requests because they had to get more made.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 29 2016, @11:17AM
Heh - I walked past a television some years back. Stupid action movie, lots of shooting, hordes of people being killed - one side wearing blue "camo" the other side wearing red "camo". And, I actually stopped to watch it for a minute or two. WTF? The whole purpose of camoflage, is to remain unseen.
Alright, so deer don't see the same colors that people do. Neither do I. Red, orange, or pink, if you stand motionless among the greenery, I probably won't see you. Especially in the autumn, when the foliage is ready to fall off the trees. Blue? Yeah, I'm gonna see you. Maybe they should have considered a nice electric blue for hunting.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @02:36PM
Nearly all mammals, deer included, have 2-color vision. It's like people with extreme red-green color blindness. Blue is easy to spot.
Primates are 3-color. Sea mammals are 1-color.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 29 2016, @02:56PM
I guess I knew that. I read an article not long ago, about deer being able to see clothing clearly after being washed. Brighteners leave a residue which reflects ultraviolet, which from the deer's point of view, makes the hunter glow in the dark.
http://www.atsko.com/how-to-check-camo-and-orange-for-uv-glow/ [atsko.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @03:26PM
At least the deer won't shoot a you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @04:36PM
How not to be seen [youtube.com].
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday May 29 2016, @07:47PM
Red and blue cammo like that would be of extremely limited utility, but if you're in an area where there's a ton of blues or reds, those uniforms might actually be worthwhile. Usually it's more about appearance than actual utility like it would be for proper cammo.
But, as other folks have mentioned, it's not the colors that make cammo cammo, it's the pattern on them. Hence why the US military now uses digital cammo where they can take the several most common colors in an area and turn them into new colors for the battlefield without having to spend a lot of time figuring out how to arrange it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @06:49PM
My experience agrees with this as well... there is a significant market of women shooters who love pink. Pink clothes, pink guns, pink anything. I attribute this to the fact that recreational shooting is a sausage-party and all the gear tends look a certain way for that market. Making something pink marks it female and is a way for women shooters to have something "for them" that is visibly differentiated from the gear their boyfriends, husbands, brothers, or sons use; it is a way to be feminine in an environment that is mostly male.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 29 2016, @07:39PM
And also, girls just like pink. It's a stereotype for a reason.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday May 30 2016, @12:28PM
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/297159948/girls-are-taught-to-think-pink-but-that-wasnt-always-so
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday May 30 2016, @12:37PM
I didn't say it was genetic. Times change and in these times chicks dig pink.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @06:35PM
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday May 29 2016, @07:43PM
There's other ways of making firearms for women that isn't so sexist. Perhaps designing the weapon to better fit in smaller hands and adjusting the proportions involved for smaller people.
If there's actually women requesting pink, that's one thing, but making them pink in an effort to attract women to the sport in order for them to buy weapons is rather sexist.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 29 2016, @10:09PM
Not if it works it's not.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @12:40PM
I don't think they know what that second word means.
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Sunday May 29 2016, @03:22PM
You've obviously never hunted deer in a vagina before.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by mrgren on Sunday May 29 2016, @03:57PM
Blaze camouflage patterns work because most animals have limited color perception. Shocking pink to us just looks like another drab color to them; the broken PATTERN disguising your shape is what makes it camo.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ilPapa on Sunday May 29 2016, @01:27PM
We don't need to get new blood involved in hunting. It's already bloody enough.
If you really want more blood, limit big game hunters to spears and buck knives.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @01:53PM
I agree. In order to solve the sex equality issue, we should really be fighting for more women garbagepersons, and more male sex workers.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Sunday May 29 2016, @04:16PM
That's not quite true, there's been a few times I've followed a blood trail to its end and never found a fresh kill, or found it way down inside a deep ravine that's nearly impossible to even winch it out of. Lost a few expensive arrows that way too.
And have even more wounded deer wandering around, eventually dying in a remote ravine as food only for the buzzards and coyotes?
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 29 2016, @06:28PM
If you really want more blood, limit big game hunters to spears and buck knives.
And have even more wounded deer wandering around, eventually dying in a remote ravine as food only for the The Mighty Buzzard and coyotes?
FTFY. I get what you're saying, and definitely agree that the number of wounded animals per attacked animal wound go up. I would also expect the number of attacked animals to go down, though - hunting with a spear is a more strenuous activity that fewer people get into. I'd bet that this would result in a fewer total number of wounded-but-not-dead animals, but I wouldn't be too incredibly surprised if I lost.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Sunday May 29 2016, @06:52PM
Actually, the way I look at it, an arrow is just a little spear.
The only time you have to wear blaze orange/pink when hunting large game is during rifle season. Otherwise, you camouflage yourself the best you can so they're more likely to walk in close.
I'm not a bird hunter but I think you have to wear it while hunting waterfowl. Not sure about upland game birds like quail or pheasant.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 29 2016, @07:17PM
Arrows are made differently, with flight in mind and fletching on shaft. I think OP was trying to restrict us to classic melee weapons - I doubt that even an atlatl would be allowed, much less a bow and arrow.
I have yet to hunt a large animal with a spear. I've only actually been deer hunting a couple of times, period (I used to have radically different views on death, and was a vegan for years). Most of my gun hunting experience has been with birds, but I've also gigged some frogs, fish, and a couple small mammals. I enjoy wading through a pond gigging frogs way more than lying in a blind waiting for ducks. I did shoot a frog with an arrow once, but that's my only bow kill. I haven't put in enough time with a bow yet, but a confused frog is an easy target.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 29 2016, @07:46PM
Strangely, I don't dig on venison. I'll leave that to my non-capitalized cousins. The only warm-blooded wild game animals I enjoy are quail and doves and hunting them requires entirely too much walking through muddy corn fields for my lazy ass. Now catfish, they're in dire peril from me. I'm all about getting food from sitting around smoking cigarettes and swapping lies with other old guys.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Troll) by ilPapa on Monday May 30 2016, @10:22PM
It takes a real man to kill defenseless creatures. What are you compensating for?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Tuesday May 31 2016, @03:39AM
Nothing. I'm just hungry. And it's practically free.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday May 31 2016, @01:03PM
That's what all hunters say. Hunting "for food" is just a gateway drug. You start out shooting a squirrel for stew and you end up like these assholes:
http://www.oregonherald.com/bnews/i/95.jpg [oregonherald.com]
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2016, @04:53PM
I don't hunt for food. I kill and leave the poor, innocent, dead animals to rot just to piss off jerks like you.
Head shots are best when they blow animal brains out onto the trees...
Lick it up, chattel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @02:46PM
We required "blaze orange" on hunters, but not on other people in the woods. Hunters are still required to avoid shooting people.
I suspect the real issue is the police. Orange camo makes it seem that the hunters probably aren't hunting humans.
Oh, and garment industry lobbying.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 29 2016, @07:50PM
I think it's about harm mitigation. Most of the people you're likely to run into while hunting on public land are other hunters. It's not perfect, but I'll bet it has stopped a bunch of people from dying without requiring non-hunters to know which animals are in season and what can be hunted on which public lands before going out into nature.
On topic excerpt from Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck (Rocinante is the name of his truck, after Don Quixote's steed, and Charley is his dog):
If I were hungry, I would
happily hunt anything that runs or crawls or flies, even
relatives, and tear them down with my teeth. But it
isn’t hunger that drives millions of armed American
males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence
of heart failure among the hunters will prove.
Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity,
but I don’t quite know how. I know there are
any number of good and efficient hunters who know
what they are doing; but many more are overweight
gentlemen, primed with whisky and armed with highpowered
rifles. They shoot at anything that moves or
looks as though it might, and their success in killing
one another may well prevent a population explosion.
If the casualties were limited to their own kind there
would be no problem, but the slaughter of cows, pigs,
farmers, dogs, and highway signs makes autumn a
dangerous season in which to travel. A farmer in upper
New York State painted the word “cow” in big
black letters on both sides of his white bossy, but the
hunters shot it anyway. In Wisconsin, as I was driving
through, a hunter shot his own guide between the
shoulder blades. The coroner questioning this nimrod
asked, “Did you think he was a deer?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“But you weren’t sure he was a deer.”
“Well, no sir. I guess not.”
With the rolling barrage going on in Maine, of
course I was afraid for myself. Four automobiles were
hit on opening day, but mainly I was afraid for Charley.
I know that a poodle looks very like a buck deer
to one of these hunters, and I had to find some way
of protecting him. In Rocinante there was a box of
red Kleenex that someone had given me as a present. I
wrapped Charley’s tail in red Kleenex and fastened it
with rubber bands. Every morning I renewed his flag,
and he wore it all the way west while bullets whined
and whistled around us. This is not intended to be funny.
The radios warned against carrying a white handkerchief.
Too many hunters seeing a flash of white have
taken it for the tail of a running deer and cured a head
cold with a single shot.
But this legacy of the frontiersman is not a new
thing. When I was a child on the ranch near Salinas,
California, we had a Chinese cook who regularly
made a modest good thing of it. On a ridge not far
away, a sycamore log lay on its side supported by two
of its broken branches. Lee’s attention was drawn to
this speckled fawn-colored chunk of wood by the bullet
holes in it. He nailed a pair of horns to one end
and then retired to his cabin until deer season was
over. Then he harvested the lead from the old tree
trunk. Some seasons he got fifty or sixty pounds of it.
It wasn’t a fortune but it was wages. After a couple
of years, when the tree was completely shot away,
Lee replaced it with four gunny sacks of sand and
the same antlers. Then it was even easier to harvest
his crop. If he had put out fifty of them it would have
been a fortune, but Lee was a humble man who didn’t
care for mass production.
Don't take this all as fact. Travels with Charley is strange book, it has odd parallels to Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which involved way stronger drugs and was written a decade later. Steinbeck is attempting relay what he experienced as he remembers it, not what happened.
(Score: 2) by Bill Dimm on Sunday May 29 2016, @08:12PM
Which is more visible to a color blind hunter, blaze orange or pink? Maybe this is a conspiracy to get women entering the woods shot....
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Monday May 30 2016, @01:34PM
I have moderate red-green colour blindness. Pink stands out much more than orange.
I would agree with Runaway1956 that bright blue would be even better.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by Bill Dimm on Monday May 30 2016, @05:34PM
I read once that the only color that really stand out to deer is blue, so I suspect hunters wearing blue would be extremely unsuccessful at shooting anything.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday May 31 2016, @01:18AM
Probably. I was only commenting on how visible they were, not how good they were for hunting. If deer vision is like R-G colour blindness then I suspect pink would not be a good colour either.
I wonder if colourblind hunters tend to shoot people in orange more than normal vision hunters do.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @08:14PM
Does this military-style assault rifle make me look fat?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Mykl on Sunday May 29 2016, @10:10PM
FWIW, the Surf Lifesaving clubs in Australia use pink vests to improve their visibility in the water (turns out its the most visible color). Of course, the woods are a slightly different environment, but I would imagine that wearing pink gear would make you highly visible to humans and slightly less likely to be shot by an overzealous hunter. And the fear of being shot by someone else is probably pretty high on the list of "why I don't want to go hunting" on many peoples' lists.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Sunday May 29 2016, @10:31PM
Some women were so offended that anyone would assume they like the color pink.. they actually voted the bill down. Someone please tell me there is some other reason for voting this out. I know not all girls like pink but I think most country girls are into the color.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @10:45PM
A friend came over after the misses and I had the bathroom redone.
He said, "Ugh, pink bathroom... Women, amIright?"
I told him we had narrowed down the selection to brown or pink. I said, "The choice was mutual. Pussy pink or shit brown. Which would you rather enjoy?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Monday May 30 2016, @02:11AM
It was replaced by blaze orange when it was determined that a) the visibility of red tends to fade into the background in a lot of hunting situations (particularly in situations with poor light) and b) most if not all game mammals are color blind and the highly visible to humans blaze orange was just another shade of grey to them. I have no idea where pink fits on the scale, but any objections to it should be based solely on safety and visibility concerns and not just more anti-SJW ranting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @06:34AM
As stated by his father: 'Real men wear pink!'
Seriously though, I'd wear bright pink if I was out hunting for the simple reason that it would be unusual enough to catch even a complacent hunter's attention as something unusual and perhaps take a pause before shooting. Blaze Orange maybe not so much anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @10:50AM
I was very puzzled but now I understand why Scotland played Italy wearing that color yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2C9IVLPw1I [youtube.com]
They were hunting. It didn't end up well ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @04:17PM
This reminds me that women are fragile creatures who have no agency of their own can't do anything unless it's dumbed down and pinked up for them.