WHY HUNTING IS ABOUT DOMINANCE – NOT SEX

First — before you read any further — please understand this clearly: we are NOT pro-hunting.

Not now. Not ever.

If you’ve been following Meet Our Horse Meat for any length of time, you already know that.

We don’t oppose hunting halfway, conditionally, or with caveats. We oppose it because animals are not targets, tools, or collateral damage in someone else’s identity politics.

That said, we’ve spent time digging into how hunting is criticised — and we found something uncomfortable.

Some of the language commonly used by critics of hunting, while emotionally satisfying, isn’t quite right. It relies on assumptions that are easy to dismiss and even easier for defenders of hunting to weaponise against us.  We’re calling on those advocating for the well being of horses to be smarter than that.

If you really know us – you also know that we think language matters.

What we discovered is that the accurate language is a far more powerful tool than cheap insults are.

Because when you strip away the jokes and the pop-psychology, what’s left isn’t about sexual inadequacy or individual pathology at all.

It’s about power.

It’s about dominance.

And it’s about how violence against animals becomes socially and politically acceptable when it’s framed as identity.

The problem with hunting culture isn’t sexual pathology. It’s power performance.

Across modern hunting, gun, and shooting subcultures, the through-line is not subsistence, conservation, or necessity — it is domination framed as legitimacy.

The right to kill becomes a marker of identity.

Control over animals becomes proof of worth. And violence is repackaged as tradition, heritage, or “management.”

This is why debates about animal welfare so often go nowhere. Because once killing is tied to identity, criticism becomes an attack on the self — and cruelty becomes something to defend rather than question.

This is also why the loudest political defenders of hunting and shooting interests consistently minimise animal suffering, dismiss welfare concerns as “emotional,” and resist any limits on their authority to kill.

Not because the harm isn’t real — but because conceding harm threatens the entire structure.

This isn’t abstract theory. It plays out in legislation, votes, and dead animals.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the conduct of Robert Borsak, NSW Member of the Legislative Council and senior figure within the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.

During official inquiry hearings into the aerial shooting of Brumbies, Borsak did something unusual:

at first he told the truth. [Later he did a complete flip flop.]

He described the killing methods as “inhumane, unsafe and ridiculous.”

He questioned the weapons, the protocols, and the inevitable suffering.

And then — when it mattered — he voted to continue the Brumby bloodbath.

The helicopters didn’t change.

The ammunition didn’t change.

The suffering didn’t change.

Only the political alignment did.

This wasn’t confusion or ignorance.  What resulted was an inexusable massacre of  sentient beings.   Wild horses were inhumanely slaughtered by the thousands.

What happened with the Brumbies wasn’t an anomaly…

When hunting and shooting interests are politically empowered:

– Animal welfare becomes negotiable

– Cruelty is reframed as management

– Violence is sanitised through bureaucratic language

– And accountability disappears behind “process”

This is how mass killing becomes policy.

It’s also why the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party — and similar hunting-aligned political movements — are so dangerous to animals. Not because every member pulls a trigger, but because they normalise domination as a right.

Calling this “sexual inadequacy” misses the mark — and lets the real problem off the hook.

The truth is more unsettling:

When political identity is built around the right to dominate animals, cruelty stops being a moral failure and starts being a negotiating position.

Brumbies weren’t killed because of poor science.

They weren’t killed because no alternatives existed.

Humane, non lethal methods of population control for wild horses do exist.

They were killed because power was protected — and that kind of protection rarely happens without political trade-offs behind closed doors.

And as long as hunting and shooting interests hold political leverage, animals will continue to pay the price.

If you are able — your donations go a long way to supporting horses pulled from the slaughter pipeline.

And if you can’t donate, sharing this work still matters.

Silence is what power relies on.

What do YOU think?

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