Bestiality
One of the stranger perversions is Bestiality. This topic is even more NSFW than incest, but like with Part 1, Bestiality is something that is more prevalent than people are willing to admit and is also based on objectification. Reviews of Bestiality and Zoophilia Sexual Relations with Animals on Amazon, have a mix of ridicule and sympathy for people with a past history in Bestiality. “This was a hilarious prank gift for Christmas. But, if you’re really serious about studying this, the book seriously describes it in detail. Tired of reading Dr. Seuss to your children before bed, well here ya go folks!!” Even supportive reviews could be seen as a form of “concern trolling” where reviewers get off on siding with strange niche groups: “A fascinating insight into the study, practice, justification and both the unfortunate abusive incidents which demonise zoophilia, and the love stories which warm the heart of all but the most hostile reader. If you’re expecting pornographic content, look elsewhere. If you want insight into a highly downtrodden, misunderstood and hated fringe sexuality, however, look no further…”
Even if one attempts the argument that many animals can engage in sexual relations with humans in complete volition, it still opens up a sense of harm in the lack of dignity for animals. Regardless, the book lays out the fact that people have engaged in this practice for millennia, and often with excuses related to superstitions about deities and beliefs in its curative value.
Exhaustive examples proving the existence of Bestiality in the book include:
- Evidence in cave paintings and carvings in the Fourth Glacial Age 40,000 and 25,000 years ago.
- The Code of Hammurabi proclaimed death as a punishment for bestiality (1955 – 1913 BC).
- Spring Fertility Rites of Babylon used dogs and animals for maintaining a constant orgy condition for seven days and seven nights.
- Hittites (13th century BC) created rules on which animals were suitable or not for sex. Punishment was death.
- The Book of Leviticus described Canaan as a land with widespread bestiality.
- Animal-human sex was portrayed on Egyptian tombs.
- Ancient Egyptian men had sex with cattle and women resorted to dogs. There are also reports of sex with a crocodile on its back and sex with apes.
- Egyptian nymphomania was supposedly cured by sex with goats. When bestiality wasn’t tolerated, punishment was death.
- Ancient Greeks didn’t punish bestiality, and they also believed nymphomania was cured by it.
- In Ancient Rome bestiality was widely performed by shepherds, and some women trained snakes to coil their thighs and move past their vaginal lips. Bestiality went through periods of punishment by death and acceptance.
- Christianity had a struggle with bestiality in the middle ages with eventual separation between humans and animals due to the lack of reproductiveness. It was believed that Demons could take the shape of animals and there was confusion as to whether sex with animals constituted demonic activity. Prohibition eventually equated homosexuality with bestiality, but bestiality was considered worse. The animals were often killed as if they were equally to blame.
- In the Renaissance, homosexuality and bestiality were persecuted with burning as a punishment. Bestiality between young boys and cows was prevalent enough that the Catholic Church tried to ban the employment of herdsmen. There were tales of monster looking births and there was also blame towards bestiality in relation to STIs.
- Parisian brothels enjoyed snapping the necks of Turkeys to make them clench their asses during orgasm. Chinese did this with Geese.
- NAZI Doctor Mengele was obsessed with making human-animal hybrids to replace slave labor.
- In Australia and New Zealand, dog, goat, ram, pony, and bull sex shows existed.
- India had fines for bestiality, and it was reported that pet dogs and monkeys were used to service women in harems.
- Arabs primarily practiced bestiality with goats, mares, sheep, sows, asses, and camels. Arab women had oral sex and intercourse with dogs whenever men were not available. For a time, Arab men believed that intercourse with animals increased virility, cured diseases, and enlarged their penises. When bestiality was considered inappropriate it was thought to be less stigmatizing than adultery. It was also more acceptable if people did it with their own livestock. There were also some that believed that sex with what would be eaten later was inappropriate.
- Egyptian shepherd boys were well known for engaging in sexual relations with animals and they would favor fellatio, and rub honey or candy on the penis to encourage the suckling of lambs and goats.
- Incas forbade female alpacas from being in their homes due to repeated cases of bestiality.
- Ancient Columbians believed that competence in marriage could not be achieved without practice with donkeys.
- For Gauchos on the border of Brazil and Uruguay there was a bestiality hierarchy starting with chickens, which was ridiculed, to engaging in sex with wild animals, which was as a sign that one was a master of the wilderness.
- Colonial America harshly punished bestiality because of their worries over monstrous offspring. Both people and animals were executed. Life imprisonment or castration were offered as options.
- A 20th century study estimated 8% to be the bestiality rate in the general population. This was mainly relegated to farm boys and rural males.
- The internet age has brought fringe groups together who enjoy bestiality pornography and share an identity related to ongoing sexual activity with animals or at least a desire to do so.
The Gentlemen – Guy Ritchie – Pig Scene: https://youtu.be/p9dQARAI76A
Zoo (2007) Trailer: https://youtu.be/QQGGcb3F4KQ
What is consent?
Gieri Bolliger and Antoine F. Goetschel in Bestiality and Zoophilia Sexual Relations with Animals, prefer to use the term zoophilia, and remind readers that not all sexual relations with animals are done consensually. It is often a brutal rape. The prevalence sited by Kinsey from the mid 20th century had highs of 17% of men having orgasm with animals in rural surveys. 8% of men on the average, and 3.5% of women had at least one sexual experience with an animal. Rural populations naturally had higher rates than urban ones. Modern estimates predict that urban areas would have more bestiality than in the past due to the number of pets people have. Prosecution today is more aimed at animal cruelty where animals suffer and feel pain. Part of the reason for decriminalization of many bestiality acts is due to the “Kinsey Reports, according to which sexual contacts with animals are said to occur mainly during adolescence for a short ‘experimental phase.'” Animal welfare laws have advanced to protect animals when they are hurt, and yes they have a term for it: ‘zoosadism.’
Like cases of child abuse, the easy argument against Zoophilia is to look at the lack of free will of targets. “The violation of an animal’s sexual integrity, thus firstly does not depend upon the question of what an animal feels during a zoophilic act, but rather whether such an act complies with its free will. People generally cannot discern whether such a behavior by an animal happens voluntarily. Because of the communication barrier between man and animal, it naturally remains unclear what exactly an animal feels during a zoophilic interaction if it does not show any evidence of pain, suffering or injury. As is the case with humans, it has to be assumed that any damage to the wellbeing of animals can only partially be determined from subsequent clinical investigations. One cannot even say whether those animals who were sexually imprinted to human beings feel good during sexual intercourse with a person…One should act on the assumption that the animal’s consent is forced, either through an artificial fixation on a person or by use of other psychological methods. The labeling of such acts as ‘animal love’ or ‘sexuality in partnership,’ as the people involved often call them, misjudges such circumstances and seem euphemistic in the light of the different methods in practice.”
If a forced rape is not involved there can also be a lot of the manipulation involving human deception, i.e., using the hunger of animals to seduce them to engage in sexual activity. “Cats can be employed for sexual stimulation by letting the animal lick the human genitalia, eat food from the vagina or penis, or by masturbating them.”
I particularly agree with the attitude that people who are describing sex with animals as “beautiful” are only using euphemisms. There are definitely emotional involvements with humans and animals, but at some point the human must be able to differentiate the power attainments of a human from that of an animal, and see that the animal is in complete helplessness to the human. Animals, like children, need to be able to trust adult humans. If adult humans still insist, is it because it’s their nature?
While reading these books I found it difficult to find evidence to support an animal-sex-orientation. One would have to prove that the person is only capable of sexual desire for an animal. In those cases, descriptions below point to not a sexual orientation but simply a lack of human partners, loneliness, and personality disorders. Even if there is genetic evidence, the well-being of the animal still has to be taken into account, and there will always be a temptation to create laws to protect animals, and this is especially so if there is an ongoing genetic predisposition for a percentage of people in any generation to continue the practice of zoophilia. For the vast majority of readers who aren’t genetically predisposed, this subject matter is only transformative for those who feel shame for their childhood sexual encounters with animals. Whether the high prevalence of bestiality creates a normalization for the individual feeling shame, they most likely have moved on from any fixation with animals in their adulthood and found human partners and or developed legal hobbies and interests as a form of sublimation.
Andrea M. Beetz found that animal abuse connects with Antisocial Personality Disorder. “Conduct disorder is characterized by a ‘repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated. This includes aggression to people and animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness and theft, and serious violation of rules.’ The diagnosis of conduct disorder is applied mainly in childhood and adolescence. A significant proportion of juveniles with this diagnosis, however, continue to show these behaviors as adults, allowing for a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, also referred to as psychopathy or sociopathy. Both diagnoses are closely related to criminal behavior, and animal abuse has also been linked directly to Antisocial Personality Disorder as well as adult criminal offending.”
Even if the sexual act is somehow consensual, veterinarians notice damage with animals. This includes anal, vaginal, and internal organ damage from sexual abuse. If human-animal sex is as widespread as claimed, there must be a wide range of powerful motives that allow people to feel okay with animal internal bleeding and even death in order to gain pleasure.
Motivations
In Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia, by Hani Miletski, he broaches some of the reasons why people engage in Zoophilia, and also hints at the role of objectification and the need for replacement pleasures when legal ones aren’t available. “A variety of reasons or motives for engaging in sexual relations with animals were found. Among Miletski’s (2002) sample, the reason reported by most men, 91%, was ‘sexual attraction,’ followed by the ‘wish to express love and affection to the animals’ (74%). A reason for 67% of the men was that ‘animals are accepting and easy to please,’ and 66% claimed that ‘the animal wants it.’ Further reasons were ‘relieving sexual tension’ (40%), ‘I can only trust animals’ (39%), the wish to ‘experience something different’ (25%), ‘I identify with the animal of my gender’ (24%), ‘I see it in pornography’ (21%), ‘loneliness’ (15%), ‘no human partner’ (12%), ‘too shy to have sex with humans’ (7%), and ‘If I did to humans what I do to animals, I would be arrested’ (3%)…The data of Peretti and Rowan (1983) show that the men in their sample engaged in chronic zoophilia for a number of reasons: ‘sexual expressiveness’ (93%), ‘sexual fantasy’ (81%), ‘no need for negotiation’ (74%), ‘no human social involvements necessary’ (63%), ‘economical reasons’ (59%) and ’emotional involvement’ (26%).”
Needless to say, the level of psychopathology is high enough that even mental health professionals fail to understand the above motivations. When Zoo-philiacs admitted their desires to therapists “in half of those cases reactions from the therapist were negative, ranging from ridicule, threats to report to the police, disbelief, and a lack of knowledge about the existence of such practices, to an attempt at a forceful cure.” Certainly some of these studies strain credulity. “Another similarity to human relationships is the phenomenon of ‘falling in love’ with animals: this was reported by 78.8% of the men in Beetz’s (2002) study. A further indicator of a strong emotional aspect to sexual relations with animals came out when male zoophiles were asked if they would allow others to have sex with their animal; only 24% said they would generally allow this, 53% would only allow it under certain circumstances to certain people, while 23% would not allow this at all (Miletski 2002). Frequently, jealousy was cited as a reason for not allowing others to have sex with their animal, again pointing to a strong emotional relationship. However, in the study by Beetz (2002), more than 75% of the men stated that they had at least once had sex with another person’s animal, without the knowledge of the owner.”
From the review of these books, one wonders how much abuse the perpetrators went through in their childhood, and if it was a factor in their sex-object choices. “According to Ramsis’ theory, often unpleasant initial sexual experiences motivated these people to seek pleasure with animals. Once they become sexually involved with an animal, their pursuits become an obsession. When the participants in this study were asked about childhood abuse, the following were their responses: It turned out that 36 men (46%) rather than 33, were emotionally abused. Among them, nine men described emotional abuse received from their peers because of being different. For example: ‘Many people made fun of me in school, so I tended to shy away from people. That’s how animals became a part of me.'” Sexuality follows a lot of patterns of addiction in that animals can be a replacement for the lack of successful human relationships, and animals are targeted like children in relation to their sense of helplessness and the ease with which they can be controlled.
Bestiality and Zoophilia Sexual Relations with Animals by Anthony L. Podberscek & Andrea M. Beetz: Paperback: https://amzn.to/2JpJiL9
Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia by Hani Miletski: Paperback: https://amzn.to/3b2ovcf
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/
Photo: “Hey Dragon! You’re not supposed to be here!” https://discardingimages.tumblr.com/post/62648938306/hey-dragon-youre-not-supposed-to-be-here