Ethics And Zoophilia

[Ren Houk]

This is a re-post from the archive. Originally written by SEM and published on my old Zoo Web Page.




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Ethics and Zoophilia




By SEM




 




Editor'd note:  This Essay originally appeared in the news group talk.politics.animals during debate concerning animal rights and humans who are attracted sexually to animals.  It is posted with the permisison of the author.




Religion, by nature, is both subjective and exclusive (the our sect is special because we're the only one that understands the true nature of things and everone else is damned" syndrome). As religious and cultural taboos vary from culture to culture, we cannot use them as a basis for determining right and wrong. The litmus test I'd choose to use is "harm", with the sole exception of harming oneself (the freedom of self-determination cannot exist if the ability to self-destruct is revoked).




Murder harms another person. Rape harms another person. Theft harms another person. Assault and battery harms others. Psychological abuse harms. Drunken driving has great potential to harm other people. These offenses have distinct and identifiable victims and perpetrators, the exact nature of the harm done is often readily apparent (due to the victim often being intentionally targeted, or even an innocent bystander). 




But, does just *being* drunk hurt others? Does merely getting high on marijuana harm anyone? Does soliciting prostitution harm? (John Stossel of ABC's "20/20" did a couple of thought-provoking stories on these topics). Does engaging in sexual intercourse with a member of the same gender (or members of another species) harm anyone? Or are they "victimless" crimes? Can gods (of a religiously diverse country) be victims of any indignities against their honor? I must maintain that they are not; how can a god be named a victim if nobody can even reach a consensus on the nature of that god? 




Can society be victimized? Yes, it can, when some people decide to go against the majority and decide to violate its laws and customs. Society is definitely harmed when scofflaws stir unrest. Murders and thefts cause distress and disrupt harmony as individuals seek to exact revenge over wrongs having been committed. On a brief sidenote, the ancient Athenian king Drako is not the ruthless villain the words associated with his name ("draconian") often seem to imply; he actually came to the *rescue* of his society by codifying the laws and punishments, and getting the government involved in meting out justice, especially in murder cases such that the cycle of feuding and revenge would stop (ideally) with the deaths of only the victim and perpetrator. Without the institution of society (through the government it administers) setting itself up as a "victim by proxy", the vicious cycle of revenge/avenging gets out of control. 




But all too often society sets itself up for an inappropriate victimhood...the civil disobediences perpetrated by women and blacks in the US victimized society. How does that happen? The people who compose society overstep their bounds and stop minding their own business. They blind themselves to the reality that their only basis for denying rights to some eligible classes are generally unsupported by any semblance of reason. They begin pushing subjective legislation around that has nothing to do with enforcing the purpose of the government in a free society: to keep people from harming each other. The government ceases to be merely a victim by proxy, it becomes a full-fledged victim when that happens.  




So, what's wrong with the government becoming a victim in and of itself? Easy...freedoms are trampled underfoot. To an extreme, the government and its rulers suppress dissent and any other freedoms it deems harmful to itself (hot issue recently was burning of the US flag; elsewhere, such as in China, political prisoners continue to rot in prison because they espoused democracy and thus victimized the socialist regime running society).




The rule of thumb isn't a hard concept. All the people need to do is arrange a government that basically maintains order and security. It most properly accomplishes this by: (1) setting itself up as a victim by-proxy *only* for other beings (i.e., it cannot represent itself as a victim) (2) recognizing as victims only sentient beings whose existence is universally acknowledged-- physically present animals (including humans). This means no gods or subjective religious dogma should be a factor. The reason for this being that there are many gods around that often have conflicting agendas, which will bring their respective followers into bitter conflict (whether they exist or not). It's not up to society to determine which God (or god) is the correct one, that's too subjective and difficult to do without setting up a state-run church. Only when some god or another steps forward and indisputably claims damages should the government defend that entity. Note: the freedom to worship (without infringing upon rights of others) can be disrupted, and in such a case there *is* a victim: the ego of the god is irrelevant, but the worshipper would clearly have been wronged.




This is all ideal. When society can't even arrive at a general consensus on which organisms deserve the status of personhood, everything will continue to be shaken up and society will continue to evolve. Today, blacks and natives are considered to be people with rights, not livestock as they were seemingly treated in generations past. Perhaps in the future, mammals (and other animals) will be considered to hold full rights, and folks will look back at the ways we treat and use livestock today and call us unenlightened barbarians. To seemingly be decided in the near future is even the status of fetal humans; as things stand now in the US, pre-birth humans have no rights until they're born alive (even at stages where they have highly developed brains and modern medicine is able to sustain their lives independent of the mother).




However, (this is the suggestion) we can make things more ideal by at least resolving some of the more obvious issues: decriminalizing the crimes objectively determined to be "victimless". We need to distinguish the subjective "wrongs in our own minds" from *real* wrongs. 




Homosexual relationships between two consenting adults seem to be exclusively a wrongs in many people's minds (and against the dignities of their God), yet not a *real* wrong against society at large, because it victimizes no individuals. 




A weird case: pedophilia between adult men and boys used to be an accepted rite of passage in ancient Greece (this is definitely *not* a defense of pedophilia as I'll point out later on, it is just the way things were). In their society it seems that fathers had great cultural difficulty in expressing any sort of affection for their own sons (excessive doting was socially unacceptable), so they took on the sons of others as proteges/lovers. There was no stigma attached, and the protege generally stood to benefit by gaining a mentor who would aid him in rising through the ranks. Both benefitted, the youth receiving affection (I cannot fathom this situation not being harmful in some ways, such as the sexuality thrust upon a sexually immature person, but I must reserve judgement because I did not live in that society), the mentor from being able to express affection. But that situation has changed. The widely-held views of society today makes that type of relationship a crime. The stigma attached to the act reflect negatively on both the victims and perpetrators of pedophilia. That situation results in psychological harm in this society and cannot be tolerated until the harm stops (*if* it ever disappears). However, the question is, is pedophilia a wrong in my mind and almost everyone else's, something subjective that we learned, or is it a *real* wrong that society has realized and corrected?




As for bestiality...the point is largely moot. Can harm be committed against a creature that has no real rights? Humans choose not to bestow the "right to life" on animals, we don't require their consent to kill them. Nor do we require their informed consent to domesticate and train them to work for us. We often circumvent and suppress their wills in compelling them to bear young, either via restraint or artificial insemination. But this issue is more complex than just animals not having many rights though, since we do seem to grant them the right to a life without excessive misery and pain. It all boils down to whether animals suffer from having sex with humans, either physically or psychologically. Unless beaten or otherwise bullied or restrained into submission, I fully believe that animals are indeed able to consent (or not consent) to just about anything...sometimes my horses run away when I pull out the saddle because they don't feel like being ridden. It used to take a great deal of persistence, patience, and persuasion to get them to consent to taking their dewormer pastes (I don't believe in using force or physical restraints to "persuade" them to do *anything*, with the sole exception of keeping them fenced in). And it is well known that horses will sometimes kick if they don't consent to something invading their space. Breeding hobbles are used to prevent mares from acting out their dissent to being bred in the form of kicking out at the stud; if they weren't able to resist, the hobbles wouldn't be necessary. And dogs bite (just try touching the bone of a possessive dog without its consent). Pretty much all animals have defenses and the capability to physically resist or at least make known their objections.




So, I guess I must reserve judgement on this issue. Hmmm...with one exception. It does really seem like animals *can* be psychologically damaged if they *don't* consent to sex (or even physically, someone on another board related the story of a mare fighting being bred to the degree that, even though restrained in breeding hobbles and doped up on tranquilizers, she flipped over backwards and broke her back). And certainly young (sexually immature) animals have great potential to be harmed by any sort of sexual relations; my sister's Lab bitch just experienced her first heat recently...the bitch was definitely not ready by the accounts my sister gave, she resisted and fled from all potential suitors instead of consenting to mate with them. To force the dog to breed in that state of mind would almost certainly seem to cause great harm. I'm just glad that the dog wasn't ready...I hope her owners demonstrate their responsibility soon, I highly doubt that they'll be able to intercept the girl in time when she decides she *does* want to take on a suitor(s). 




At the very least, it would be wise to compare bestialists' rights with the rights of animal exploiters in general. If we try to set a precedent that animals have actual rights, would it not be an obvious violation of a right even more fundamental than to refuse sexual advances, the right to simply live? I'd hate to be a hypocrite to condemn one form of possible use and abuse while committing another more blatant form...




I also do not know about it "being wrong anywhere I go". For what stories and rumors are worth, Bedouins are said to often be a bit too fond of their horses and camels. Residents of Nebraska (more specifically, the Cornhuskers football team, hehe) are also said to be a bit too fond of cattle. And jokes abound in regards to Scotsmen and their sheep, would these jokes be popular at all if there wasn't a hint of possible reality in them? Back a few years, it seemed that many religions at least tolerated bestiality; there are many Greco-Roman myths in which a god seduced a maiden by assuming the form of an attractive animal (and one case that I know of where a mortal woman, Pasiphae wife of king Minos, was stricken with amours for a bull and begot the Minotaur). With stories like that, and depictions of bestiality in their wall paintings, it seems that those cultures just didn't have a problem with it. 




By SEM.

[30-30]

In the earlier days, people frequently posted essays like this as a kind of "carte du entree" for all those zoo forums out there. This seems to be one of them, sadly not a very well written one. The real disaster for us is that many of the flaws and mistakes this old essay has are mindlessly perpetuated and repeated, even today you occasionally run across basically the same "arguments"...and as back then, they usually won´t hold any longer than a snowball in hell.




Funny how this essay starts by taking a blow into the direction of religion, but let´s be honest, the "our sect is special because we´re the only one that understands...."....say, isn´t that a pretty common thing to say for the "zoo sect" too? Australian aborigines blessed us with a word for this...funnily, their traditional hunting weapon carries the same name...;)




But behold, our hero quickly shifts towards the famous "harm principle", a flawed perspective...or would you say that "gently raping someone who´s under the influence of anaesthetics" isn´t rape, yet no harm is done, neither physical nor psychological harm because the raped one hasn´t conciously lived through "the experience"? What most don´t get here is that the harm principle may offer guidance when it comes to bodily harm stuff, but this principle totally fails when other factors are involved in the equation. I can easily tie up a mare, corner her in her box and immobilise her with a multitude of different means, yet don´t inflict any physical harm on her....but no one would call this a mutually enjoyed experience..at least I hope so. And to evaluate the psychological effects of acts of bestiality (zoo or just "plain and simple beasty stuff", doesn´t matter), it takes more than some self proclaimed "animal experts" in an animal fucker community. Even experts (real experts on the field of behavioural studies) can´t agree on even a single species´ expressions, so thinking that fucking an animal miraculously makes anyone into an expert is just hilarious. Yes, we do know more than people who never ever would touch an animal with sexual intent, but that´s it, folks...no miraculous transformation into a myriad of Dr Dolittles here. I wish we all could stop this narrative once and for all. 




So, the author hops over to randomly pulling out examples of what he/she thinks is "unharmful"....but let´s see whether the author is actually correct on every entry of his list:




- being drunk may not harm someone except the drunkard himself directly, that much is right, but when you expand the perspective a little, things don´t seem to be so easily definable. What if the drunkard´s family isn´t fond of this guy´s alcohol usage? What if the occasional drunkard develops a drinking habit? And has the author heard about the negative effects of co-dependency in families with an alcoholic? What about DUI? What about destroying some other car driver´s life because you were intoxicated and accidentally walked or fell onto the street, in front of this guy´s car, without any chance for him to avoid the collision?




-Marijuana....well, I am a pothead myself. But even with that being said , I do recognise the multitude of possible dangers that come along with dope. I know much of the money that´s made with cannabis on the illegal market will end up in the hands of terrorists...name one terrorist group and I´ll swear they fund their "war" with drug money, mostly with cannabis products and cocaine. And although I´d be the first one to demand decriminalisation of cannabis in any town hall meeting, I am also aware of the enormous risk totally legal and unregulated(!) cannabis distribution can and definitely will have. Smoking a joint every now and then is fun...but I´ve also gone through a long phase of getting baked 24/7 in my life. I know the risk of losing one´s life focus by travelling the "gesternmorgenheuteland" (Yeasterdaytomorrowtodayland...fellow potheads know what I mean) too much. I´ve met many other smokers who couldn´t handle it properly...and I´ve met some who ended up in psychiatry with a massive psychosis triggered by cannabis smoking.  Even I as a longtime smoker would not like to see a total legalisation of cannabis without proper regulations. People always tend to overdo stuff if they aren´t slowed down by well placed corrective measurements. 




-Prostitution....well, as a German living in a country that fully legalised prostitution a couple of years ago, I can say with certainty that the hippiesque "legalise everything, then world peace will come" crap isn´t solving anything. Hookers are still trafficked, tricked into it, forced to obey any customer´s every wish and so on....not one problem with prostitution was solved with legalisation. And I won´t even speak about the "flatrate fucking" many brothels offered, especially those residing on Germany´s borders...if you want to see an army of horny frenchmen invading Germany every weekend, just visit the German-French border region and see how all that Legalisation stuff turns out in real life.




With that being dealt, let´s come to this talk about "victims" and government...as an Anarchist, I do bear some sympathy for some of the viewpoints the author utters here, but as a realist anarchist, I do know for certain that thinking in categories is the true weak point here. What all of those theories about victims and government don´t incluude is human nature.  Before I go off into a page long rant about everything, I prefer reading some of the basic books for Anarchists...read Michail Bakunin, read Proudhomme, read Landauer, Anarchy, by the way, is commonly misunderstood as "do anything that pleases you" when in fact, it is more of an "order without authorities" concept. What people usually mean when using the A-word in reality is chaos, with the ego being the only one authority. Besides that, it´s hilarious how the author imagines religions in his ideal state...gods fighting gods...wow, isn´t that what ISIS does right now? [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/wink.png[/img]/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" title=";)" width="20" /> 




"Can harm be committed against a creature that has no real rights?"....Wow, is he/she actually saying that animals have no real rights? Lemme just check if I´m still in "zooland" or accidentally was redirected to the butcher´s guild by my browser... [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/wink.png[/img]/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" title=";)" width="20" /> well, today, animals HAVE rights, albeit just limited rights.  Honestly, folks, I never understood how any of us can even think of using the same repulsive approach the author is using here. He degrades animals to things by drawing all these parallels, arguing that "if we don´t care for animal´s rights in so many other sectors, why should we care about them when sex is involved?". This may seem like a cunning answer, using "their" mindset against them, but this kind of intellectual judo backfires miserably when we remember what we want to be seen as. We, the zoos, we should be the ALTERNATIVE to this kind of repulsive thinking about animals, not just another group that profits from the usual "humanthink"! Even today I see plenty of people fall into the same trapdoor, even today people sabotage any effort to offer a real alternative by using that old and worn out rubbish "defense". This kind of argument only deepens the notion that we zoos truly have only one thing in mind and that is our own sexual gratification; animals don´t matter at all and the only thing worth fighting against is the "terrible injustice" of not being able to abuse and mistreat our quadruped companions the very same way all the others do. How can anyone demanding equal human superiority rights for animal fuckers even remotely think of himself as a legit zoophile? Isn´t it equality we´re striving for? 




"All animals have defenses..." Yes, true, nearly all animals have the potential to defend themselves. But what most people using this "animals can defend themselves" yaddayadda forget is that most domesticated animals are bred for their obedience and servitude towards humans. A "kicker", a horse that attacks humans is destined to end in a sausage pretty quick..a dog biting a human will be put down in most of the cases. Bovines who are aggressive towards humans will soon end on the counter of your local fast "food" shack and their DNA will be thrown into the dust bin. That´s what reality is like, folks. We breed them to be obedient and submissive. We select them by this criterium. We disencourage and even punish any offensive behaviour in any animal we breed. So, any zoo who doesn´t train his dog for pit fights should never pull out that old and ridiculously malinformed "defense" of zoophilia if he doesn´t want to make a total fool out of himself.  




I´m glad the author also addressed what I call "pedozoophilia" or, more accurately, pedobestiality. I can´t describe how much I want to throw up in my mouth when I come across the typical "sucked by calf" videos platforms like BF have plenty of...and I remember how quickly things became nasty when some random user asked what the right age for his dog to be penetrated is. The horrifying undertone of many replies still resonates in me and almost made me lose faith in anything "we" zoos do or say....as I said it so many times before, principles are worth shit when they´re only used as a deflectory shield when in conflict with the outside world, but are quickly dismissed when pants are unzipped.




"Back a few years, it seemed that many religions at least tolerated bestiality...." Uhm...how about no?!? No religion tolerated bestiality, and especially not the montheistic ones. Even buddhists don´t gather good karma by having sex with an animal...and don´t mention you fucked a cow when a hinduist is present...or you will quickly realise how utterly wrong this perception is. Unless this text was written some three thousand years ago, this statement holds absolutely no truth whatsoever. Although there are some areas in this world where having sex with an animal is permitted to a certain extend, like North African regions with their proverbial fuckdonkeys or some remote region in South America (Vice report), one should never consider that a "free ride"...in those regions, animals are seen as a cheap outlet for juvenile males and their sexual energy, but not because there is tolerance for zoophilia on a large scale, but simply for the reason that fucking a donkey is completely safe from producing unwanted offspring that otherwise will result in stirring the traditions ( young ones usually are "promised" to another family to strenghten interfamiliary bonds) and create another mouth to feed. 




And finally: as someone who had Latin as his first and ancient Greek as his second foreign language in school, let me destroy some myths about those "horny and bestiality tolerant" old ones. Pasiphae was punished by Zeus with "zoophilia", copulating with a bull was seen as a punishment and degradation for both Pasiphae AND Midas, her husband. Zeus odered them to sacrifice a bull in his name, but due to its outstanding physical features, both refused to sacrifice that bull and so, Zeus got a bit nasty with them both. By the way, the offspring of that , the Minotaurus (literally translated: the bull of Minos) was seen as a monstrosity and as a defining of nature, Minos hid this creature in his labyrinth from everyone´s eyes, so much for that myth of "tolerated zoophilia" in ancient times, folks, and it took Aeneas to kill this beast by the help of Ariadne who ensured that Aeneas found his way back out of the labyrinth by handing him a spool of yarn...the proverbial thread of Ariadne.




And now for Leda and the swan: Usually portrayed as Leda having sex with a swan, older versions of that myth never even mentioned interspecies sex. Leda never had actual sex with the goddamn swan, folks. Zeus, being the horny idiot he is, transformed himself into a swan because he wanted Leda for himself, but contrary to the common belief, Zeus mated with another avian that is not identifiably described in the myth. Leda only watched Zeus copulate with another bird,  guys.




Regarding the assumed "tolerance" for bestiality in ancient times, both the Greek and the Romans frequently used penetration by male animals as punishment for women guilty of adultery and such. There even were public executions of women in the circus maximus/Colosseum where women were tied down and suffered a painful death by being penetrated by usually large animals. Despite common beliefs, the assumed "animal brothels" in Pompeii, the ones that are pulled out by zoos often when trying to assure others how "natural" sex with animals is and forgotten whenever modern animal prostitution comes up (^^), seem to not have been actual animal brothels. Some may know that these *etablissements* were "themed", there were "horse houses", "dog houses" etc...but recent research found out that these places may only have been "normal" brothels with no animals around but those depicted on the brothel´s walls for added excitement. Not one of the alleged "horse houses" had signs of real horses being kept there, no fencing, no binding posts, no area to store the vast amounts of food for the animals...so these "animal brothels" could easily have been nothing more than some sort of "walk in animal porn" for all those suffering from mixoscopia bestialis, that retarded form of "zoophilia" that gets its excitement from watching females being penetrated by male animals. Don´t just swallow the convenient, do some research, guys. Ancient times were no "zoophilia heaven" and Alexander The Great never had sex with Boukephalos (lat.bos, bovis = bull and greek: kephalos = head a.k.a. Bullhead) and only made his horse a consul to mock the other consuls. No one of us would have survived the ancient times with our orientation...you could get killed for denying submissiveness to any noble one. Don´t get fooled by fiction just because it fits your own hopes and beliefs. Zoophilia needs thinkers , not wankers, guys... [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/wink.png[/img]/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" title=";)" width="20" />