Info straight from the ponies mouth
It has always interested me how bestiality came to be so widely treated with hate, disgust and fear, often invoking some completely irrational reactions in people when they are faced with the subject. Bestiality truly is an ancient concept with even cave paintings showing human-animal couplings. It seems that the act didn’t begin to pick up its serious negative connotations in Europe until the rise of Catholicism and the hate of all forms of sex outside of procreation between married couples. Sodomy, buggery, bestiality and plenty of other things went from being activities that where happening quietly all over the place to crimes that got you executed extremely unpleasantly. After that initial law was made (which was around 1260 in the UK I think) it eventually became so well ingrained in peoples minds that it was a bad thing it has become a way of thinking that still persists now.
I know some definitions have already been given but thought I would clarify a few. Zoophilia itself is not a physical act and simply means a love of animals. Bestiality is the term for any sex with an animal. A zoophile who has sex with an animal is committing bestiality, but just because a person has sex with an animal that doesn’t make them a zoophile. Some zoophiles who are sexually active with animals refer to themselves as zoosexuals.
It’s good to see that so far the replies in this thread are mostly rational as it is nice seeing people be able to discuss the subject maturely.
Now to the question in hand, should it be illegal? Most definitely not. And there is a lot of reasons why. Before I go through some of the reasons I would like to address one post in particular.
Dessi said:
I've summed up some thoughts on the subject here:
Quote:
Have you ever actually seen a beastiality community? Do a search for one on Google, you'll get a feel people's motives and how they fetishize it.
People will often keep public diaries filled with their fantasies of mostly an absurd sort like dolphin ***********; sometimes they're personal accounts of a very terrifying sort like chicken ***********, where the animals are too small for safe penetration, so the animals thrash and flail violently, and often die from internal damage.
I got the impression that they aren't really into zoosadism per se, but really view animals as a kinky sex toy. In their universe, some people **** pies, other people **** chickens, what's the difference?
So, yes, I think there is a very strong objection to beastiality not only because its non-consentual, but animals are tangibly and severely harmed or killed in the process.
As a member of several of these online communities I can happily vouch that people talking about causing harm to animals either sexually or non-sexually, including talking about having sex with poultry which is an especially harmful act and is highly abusive, are quickly banned from the sites.
It is easy to assume that all sexual acts with an animal must be harmful to the animal, possibly because that is the commonly propagated way of thinking, but it simply isn’t true. Certainly some acts can be harmful, such as sex with poultry or any animal too small physically, and these are definitely abuse and should be punished. But many acts are not only harmless to the animals involved they are actually very enjoyable for the animal. There is an often misapplied bit of knowledge about sex in the animal kingdom which is that only Dolphins, Bonobos and Humans have sex for pleasure. The fact is a reference to recreational sexual activity, something that is indeed rarely seen in the wild in other species than the three mentioned, though it is extremely common in domestic mammals. A problem is it is quite common for people to take that fact as meaning animals other than those three types do not get pleasure from sex, which couldn’t be further from the truth. All mammals receive pleasure from sex in a similar way. A good real life example is to watch a stallion perform his duties at a semen collection, if you do you will notice a very similar display of pleasure at the point of orgasm as you would see when any human male reached orgasm.
This brings me neatly on to another good thing to ponder if you think all sex between humans and animals is abusive regardless of the act and the animal. It is accepted practise in reproductive veterinary medicine, livestock farming and other commercial animal breeding operations to pleasure male animals till orgasm for the purpose of collecting semen for breeding. If allowing a male animal to have sex with you is abusive to the animal then to me logically that would imply any incidence of sexually pleasuring a male animal would surely be abuse. Now AI in animals is not usually necessary and is mainly done for reasons of economy and simplicity so if sexually pleasuring animals was really abuse then that would make all those practices simply abuse, which if it was the case would lead to them being widely banned. And don’t worry I’m not forgetting the females of the species. Female mammals are all blessed with the same standard functioning parts too. There is the odd difference in shape and precise position but they are all fundamentally the same when it comes down to function. They have the same innervations connected to the same parts of the brain as a lady human does and assuming there is no incompatibility of size they can enjoy sex in the same way.
To add something more to that it is common that male and female mammals that get any form of pleasurable sexual attention more than a few times to start recognising the signs that it is going happen and getting excited at the prospect. Definitely not the reaction you would expect from an animal that had the expectation they were going to suffer genuine abuse.
Most telling when it comes to the question of is it always abuse can be found in the laws themselves. There have been quite a few cases where US states and some countries have introduced a new bestiality law even though they already have strong existing animal abuse laws. The reason simply being that the animal abuse laws were only relevant when there was proven abuse. As bestiality is usually harmless there are no signs of abuse to target, meaning that there is no way to attack those performing acts of bestiality using only animal abuse laws. This means that separate draconian anti-bestiality laws are rushed into being. This is definitely not very good support for any notion of a blanket definition of abuse that can be applied to all cases of bestiality.
This brings me on to the issue of consent. Someone already mentioned the term “implied consent” but this is a term I think is often used to defend or imply inappropriate sexual behaviour. Animals can consent at a level beyond implied consent, though not to the level of informed consent. Important to realise though is that implied consent is actually a concept not applicable to animals. The reason for this is that humans have to understand possible consequences of sex beyond if it just feels good, and these consequences include mental and social consequences that animals do not have to worry about. For animals sex is simply an act that they either want to participate in or they don’t. They don’t worry what their parents or friends think and they don’t know or care what human society generally thinks of bestiality.
It is possible to raise the point (which I think someone here indeed already has) that animal consent is a red herring in many ways as only in sex do we expect a level of consent that is actually beyond the ability, and need, of the animal to give, and when it comes to slaughtering for food, surgical sterilisation, AI and physical restraint of female animals to allow for selective breeding consent suddenly fades into the background and becomes irrelevant. I do agree that in some ways consent is a red herring criticism of bestiality but I think this sidesteps the main and most important thing which is simply that an animal can consent to sex with a human. Being able to speak is not a prerequisite of ability to consent. I am fairly confident that if you get a man and a woman and prevent them talking or lip reading or writing down what they want on pieces of paper, then ask either of them to attempt to initiate sexual activity with the other the inability to speak would not prevent either party displaying their feelings as to whether or not they were interested in sex. I actually have some personal of experience of a similar situation to this Once while abroad I hooked up for sex via an internet site only to find when we actually got together that we didn’t speak a common language at all. But we still had a great time despite not being able to articulate vocally what we wanted, though I will admit it was slightly odd to begin with. When it comes to animals you have some situations where the animal is the obvious initiator of the sexual activity. It might be a mare with her tail held high winking repeatedly while backing you into the corner of her stall or it might be a male animal in an obvious state of physical arousal trying to get you to let him mount you but either way these cases show clear affirmative consent on the part of the animal. Actually the standard of affirmative consent simply means that it is either parties’ responsibility to stop if they notice their partner isn’t enjoying something. Oddly in the case of bestiality where the male animal is taking the active role it is the human that’s more likely to be unable to change their mind after the act has begun.
Obviously as animals can consent that means they can also be raped and this is maybe where there could be a problem as an animal can’t come forward and tell people it is being raped. Animals are not helpless though, and an animal is definitely capable of showing very definitely that it is not interested in sex at a particular time.
When you are talking about situations where the male animal is in the active role consent is very obvious. You cannot force a male animal to become aroused if they don’t want to and you most definitely cannot force them to actively mount and participate in sex.
When you are looking at cases where the human is taking the active role it is harder but still far from impossible to tell if consent is given. Personally I would at least expect the animal to be fully unrestrained so in the very least they are able to clearly demonstrate if they are happy with what is going on and can also simply move away if they are not happy. When a female animal is in heat she may well be willing to be very undiscerning when it comes to choosing a partner but it would be a mistake to say that they will allow any advance they get just because they are in heat, and a mistake to say there is no desire for sex outside these periods. Actually I think in some ways cases where you have females who actively seek out sex or at least some kind of sexual enjoyment when they are not on heat does hint that the desire for sex is not just linked to physiological periods of sexual receptivity.
Finally I would like to add a few things about zoosexuals in general that stand in direct contradiction to the widely accepted image. As more studies have been done on Zoophilia it is becoming more apparent that it is a true sexual orientation, not simply a paraphilia, fetish or kink. Zoosexuality is very rarely a conscious choice someone makes, as far from what many may think it is not an easy option. Zoosexuals feel the same level of connection with their non-human partners as any other person feels for their own same species husband or wife but due to the shorter lifespan of animals most zoosexuals, especially cynophiles, will often have to face the grief of loosing several partners over the course of their lives. How many here could really genuinely commit to a full-on emotional relationship when you knew your partner would probably be dead in under 10years?
If you were to visit one of the larger online bestiality forums you would most certainly find threads dedicated to the topic of when people realised they were zoophiles, and if you read through them you will see most have felt those feelings their whole life, some have even never had any sexual interest in humans at all. You would also notice there is seemingly no correlation between where people were raised and their zoosexual feelings. Someone can be raised in a city apartment yet come to realise they are attracted primarily to horses. Some zoosexuals are more attracted to non-domestic than domestic animals and have to accept that they will never be able to act on their feelings. Zoosexuals are all ages, nationalities, economic backgrounds, occupations and religions, and although there is most likely a higher percentage of men who are zoosexual (getting a true figure is next to impossible) there are plenty of female zoosexuals too.
It is also very rare to find a zoophile that would ever deliberately harm an animal or that is so ignorant of animals that they would cause harm through their lack of knowledge or common sense. And it is not a case of simply thinking that they are not causing harm, or misreading signs. Animals may not speak a verbal language we can talk in but I think any pet owner will tell you that they can tell when their pet is hungry, when they want to be let outside, let back into the house, wants to play ball when they are happy or sad and many other things. And they would be right to say it too. If you do accept that it is possible for an animal to communicate those aforementioned wants and feelings then surely if you know what the signs are it is easily possible for an animal to communicate sexual interest or lack of. The vast majority of zoophiles feel the same way about raping an animal as the vast majority of non-zoophiles would feel about raping a human being. It is not something they would be able to do.
The last point for now that I will only raise briefly is the matter of public health risks. Actually when it comes to disease risk you are far more likely to catch an unpleasant sexually transmitted infection from a human than an animal. This is because the majority of infectious diseases are species specific and the few that are zoonotic are either not transferred through sexual activity at all or they can be but at a much reduced chance than infection through other more usual routes of zoonosis transmission.
I’ll finish by saying that if anyone has any questions about zoophilia they would like to ask me so they personally can understand it better I am happy to try and answer. I’m also interested to read any direct negative responses to my post that might be made as hopefully I can refute them and explain well enough why that people can go away with a better understanding of a very misunderstood sexual orientation.