Talk:Blood sport (hunting)

message: I'm rather edgy about coursing and related articles being included in this article and matching category. In coursing, unlike most other sports in this category (e.g. hunting), the death of the hare is not the objective - the objective is for the dogs to pursue the hare and force it to turn. By design, nine times out of ten the hare escapes, as hares literally have eyes practically in the bank of their head, allowing them to dodge at the last second. Plus greyhounds a) run out of steam within a few seconds b) have no sense of smell and c) are, like all dogs, very very stupid. The remaining one out of ten hares are generally ill and not long for this earth anyway.
Admittedly the figure is lower for illegal coursing, but condemning legal coursing because of that would be like condemning boxing because of the injuries sustained during bare-knuckle fighting. Perhaps if a less emotive term than 'blood sport' was used I'd feel differently, but we can't choose our language.
I'm not going to be bold and remove it myself because some of the Southern US 'blood sports' also seem to avoid outright killing of animals, and I don't want to come in from outside and screw up other people's definition of 'blood sport' for the sake of my own personal bias. But I'd be interested to see if anyone else has any thoughts on this. --Last Malthusian 14:57, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirected from [[Talk:Blood_sport]] 28dec2005 

message: I spent the better part of an hour yesterday at a large library trying to find the origin of this phrase, but even the Oxford English Dictionary is vague about first uses, which go back to the late 1500's (essentially the beginning of writing on such things). There was also some conjecture in other sources that the phrase originally refers to "bloods" (aristocratic rowdies, what in the US would probably be called "frat boys" today) or physical blood. There seems to be a strong rise in the use of the phrase in the late 1800's as part of Victorian social reform, particularly around feminism and animal welfare. Given this history, there seems to be a strong case that the phrase is pejorative in modern usage, especially in the sense that it confounds "sports" where the sporting aspect is chase and an animal's ability to run away with spectacles such as cockfighting where the point is to forbid and prevent the animals from doing anything other than fighting or being killed. In modern hunting terminology, this is the distinction between "fair chase" and stocked ponds for children's fishing and "canned hunts" for yuppies. Most participants in such "sports" as hunting, fox hunting and fishing "fail" in the sense that they often don't kill anything, yet they still consider that "good sport" because of the spiritual and recreational aspects of the pursuit. Current use of the term "blood sport" is either (A) historical, referring to Victorian spectacles, (B) rhetorical, as by animal welfare activists or (C) metaphorical, to describe various social nastiness. The fact that the term is not often used to refer to gladiators, boxing or professional wrestling would seem to support this. Rorybowman 17:07, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pejorative 

message: User:SirIsaacBrock has twice removed cricket fighting from the list by saying it's only for vertebrate animals .  Can we have a citable definition for this addition of "vertebrate"? SchmuckyTheCat 23:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Citable definition SirIsaacBrock 23:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The fundamental issue is that the term "blood sport" is imprecise and here being used politically. Were I feeling sophisticated I could jump in on this one from either side (do insects REALLY have blood? do they understand enough rules for it to be a true sport? etc), but the phrase here is being used as a pejorative. Instead of vertebrate perhaps a better restrictor could have been "charismatic mega-fauna" as various Victorian rat "sports" are left out because they also do not fit the agenda... Notice that menstrual cup racing is also left out? - Rorybowman 01:05, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cricket fighting

message: This page encompasses plenty more than hunting, it defines and explains the general term.  I propose this page should be "Blood sport" and the dab page should be "Blood sport (disambiguation)" SchmuckyTheCat 01:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Kind of like the Holy Roman Empire, eh? Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. I've taken the opposite approach and tried to expand the article so it is clearer how the term is used and the different ways it can be used. I'm a boxer myself, for example, but consider modern professional boxing to be an immoral bloodsport in the rhetorical sense. Go figger. - Rorybowman 02:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yah, exactly.  I see in the history it was moved to this title about a month ago, and I can't find a shred or hint as to why. SchmuckyTheCat 02:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the talk history was moved here from the disambig page. View the article's history and its "evolution" is clearer. - Rorybowman 03:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Ditto above. Meanings other than hunting should have separate articles. --Mistress Selina Kyle (Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉) 11:35, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But this article currently is not strictly about hunting, it's not even the main topic.  Extricating the hunting specific information would result in an entirely too short stub article with no context to other vitally linked uses of the term.  What is there to say about hunting as a blood sport that shouldn't realistically go into the hunting article itself? SchmuckyTheCat 17:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Page move

message: Just added a beautiful pic from the Très Riches Heures which I placed at the bottom for two reasons: (1) it is so beautiful that I thought it might disrupt NPOV, (2) it is tall, so fills this space more fully. It clearly illustrates the concept in a purer and more historical way, though, but perhaps if there were other pics in the listy area these could balance it out. Something of boxing perhaps? I'll let others weigh in on this and stop adding for the time being. - Rorybowman 02:03, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beautiful Pics 

message: I have moved this article from its present rather unfortunate title back to blood sport, as this is the main meaning, and created a new blood sport (disambiguation) page. For simplicity I suggest leaving this talk here, so the rationale for such a move will be clearer to future editors. - Rorybowman 14:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved this article to [[blood sport]], left talk here