Zoophilia means the love of animals. This can mean someone who hates animal cruelty or someone who has sex with his horse.
Let’s talk about that second one.
I recently read something somewhere about a guy who claims to have a loving, caring, “marital” relationship with a dog. Sounds ridiculous to me, since I think of marriage as being between two equals. One of these partners wears a leash and collar (and doesn’t have a safe-word), so their relationship isn’t equal.
Not to mention the fact that the husband has the brain-power to recognize bonds like marriage, while the wife doesn’t even know to look where you’re pointing, rather than at your finger.
But leaving the institution of marriage aside, it’s surprisingly difficult to build an argument against zoophilia as a morally repugnant act. That is, every argument I find forces me to reassess other topics where I thought I was solid. Bear with me.
1. I’ll leave aside all the gut-reaction and ultra-conservative stuff, like it’s unnatural, or that sex should lead to babies. I don’t really believe in unnatural behavior. If humans do it (and they apparently have been doing it for a damn long time), then it’s natural.
That doesn’t mean that it’s common, or that it’s ok. But “unnatural” isn’t good enough to say that it’s wrong. After all, humans have been having sex with animals a lot longer than we’ve been driving cars. (And cars kill a lot more people than sex with animals does.) So we need another reason to say it’s wrong.
And I never believed that sex should only be to produce babies. If you believe that masturbation, condoms, or oral sex is ok, then we have to leave aside the babies thing.
2. The animals aren’t consenting. So it’s rape. Or cruel. Or both.
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. I think there are a couple of responses for this, including that animals don’t carry the shame and emotional pain that humans do from rape. For animals, as far as we can tell, rape isn’t a big deal. Anyone who’s watched the Discovery Channel has probably seen a thousand animal rapes without batting an eye.
But the big response here is that surely even rape is better than how humans treat most non-pet animals. Every animal in the zoo is kidnapped. The chickens, pigs, and most cows are kidnapped as well. They’re kept in extremely small places, they’re routinely subjected to what we’d call “torture-lite” if it happened to humans, they’re often forcibly taken from their mothers while young, and then they’re killed. Some are killed while still babies. Others have to live in those conditions longer before being killed.
Their lives are almost uniformly bad. They’re unloved and unhappy. (And this is leaving out the really bad stuff that happens to some animals, like burning off the beaks of chickens.) Compared to that life, a little uncomfortable sex now and then would probably be heaven. In other words, imagine if an animal had a choice between being raised for food, and being treated like a pet except for sex now and then. Which would it choose?
So if you, like I, eat meat. Then how can we claim that sex with animals is wrong because it’s cruel?
And while we’re on the subject, even pets are slaves, really. They can’t leave when they want, or eat when they want, or do practically anything else they want. These animals are living lives of non-consent. I mean, it’s ok to castrate them, but not to have sex with them.
Is this just another facet of our species being hung up on sex and trying to rationalize a different reason for outlawing something?
3. Disease. It seems to me that having sex with animals is a really good way to encourage animal-borne viruses to adapt to humans. In other words, if just handling chickens and pigs can create worldwide epidemics of swine or bird flu, imagine what having sex with them can do. I don’t have a response to this, except again, we do handle birds and swine without being arrested. Blood gets everywhere, and viruses evolve.
I’m not sure whether there are other arguments against zoophilia, but I’d like to hear them if there are. To be clear to friends and family: I’m not attracted to animals (other than humans). There’s no need to hide your pets when I visit.
Okay, so you’re probably already familiar with Peter Singer and his arguments on this subject. The same process he used to justify sex with animals led him to the idea that it’s okay to kill infants. You say you want to leave out the “ultra-conservative” stuff, but it’s not ultra-conservative to think that sex with animals is not natural. It’s not reason-based, I’ll grant you that, but that’s a defining difference between a conservative and a liberal, no ultras necessary.
It’s a classic argument for why we, as a society, have not yet developed the tools to live without God. You know me and you probably know that I’m not a person of faith; it’s one of my many shortcomings. But, being conservative, I’m also not ready to throw out generational wisdom based on the inability to come up with a perfect argument for keeping it.
Interesting concepts such as Kant’s categorical imperitives just don’t address things like this. Our best and brightest minds try to work out systems that justify human ethics, but they always fall short. Our best often winds up being “well, because it’s against nature”. And we know that’s a lame answer, and we know it’s not a reason-based answer.
As our philosophers, kings, and bloggers work this stuff out, the rest of us plebes are just going to have to live with “because God said don’t do it” and let that be good enough. It’s not that I’m incurious, but, as Kant discovered when he started developing his “faculties”, this stuff gets way too complicated way too quickly, which is why we still have religion. You can make a very good argument that we’ve moved past the need for religion to explain the wonders of the world, but then somebody starts buggering a cat and it takes us three doctoral theses just to decide that we don’t know why it’s wrong and you start to think, hey, you know what? Because it’s nasty. Go to jail. You guys can call me later when you figure out a reason-based argument for why it’s wrong.
I do know Singer’s thoughts, and I linked to an article of his in my post.
I think you’ve got him wrong, though. Unless I misunderstand what he’s written, he doesn’t think it’s ok to kill infants.
He thinks, and I disagree with him, that it’s equally wrong to kill animals for food (unless we NEED to) as to kill infants. So he doesn’t eat meat. In other words, he thinks that both things are wrong, not that they’re both right.
Now, as far as God, I think that it’s just wrong and dangerous to say that God says it’s bad, so we shouldn’t do it. That’s worse than just saying that I personally feel icky about it. God says all sorts of terrible things, depending on who you listen to.
I accept that you just want to say it’s nasty, so lock the guy up whether it makes sense or not. That’s at least based on SOMETHING. It feels weird, feels wrong, don’t do it. But that doesn’t work for me.
If we followed that line of reasoning, then we’d have all sorts of laws against all sorts of stuff that I think is ok.
In this case, if a man shoots a deer in season, takes it home, then screws it, he probably has committed no crime. But if he screws it and lets it live, you say to throw him in jail.
That doesn’t make sense to me. Obviously this law isn’t about protecting the deer. So what’s it protecting? As a libertarian, you tell me.
Sorry, I didn’t even notice the link to Singer. My bad. His arguments regarding infanticide are separate from his animal rights issues (but related). He has stated that he believe it’s less wrong (not murder) to kill a newborn than to kill a “person” (he doesn’t consider infants to be persons) because newborns don’t know that they’re alive and therefore can’t want to stay alive. The only reason, as I understand it, that he believes it is wrong to kill a newborn is that they are loved by a parent, and you would therefore be hurting the parent. If the parent did not love the infant, it would be acceptable to kill it, therefore infanticide (committed by the parents) is ethically acceptable. Dr. Singer is what you get when you let yourself come completely untethered from the soul and try to work things out from an entirely intellectual point of view.
I’m definitely with you in as much as I would like to have a reason-based argument for not having sex with animals. My problem is simple: I don’t have one.
If our reason-based system of ethics cannot proscribe humping a cat, does that mean it’s okay to hump a cat? Or is there something wrong with our reason-based system of ethics?
And you’re absolutely right that we can’t just accept ancient scriptures blindly when formulating a modern code of ethics. I don’t advocate restoring slavery, crucifixion, stoning, prohibitions of homosexuality, etc.
My point is don’t start with zero. Start with what you were given and work it out from there. A set of (confusing, contradicting, capricious) laws has been handed down to us, and we don’t understand why we have some of them. We look at these laws, and over time we’ve come to the conclusion that some are unjust and based on old ideas and old prejudices. We debate them, we test them, we eventually discard them. Sometimes we might even go back and pick them up again later, if we figure out that there was a reason we didn’t understand at first.
But we didn’t start from zero. We don’t assume it’s okay to hump a cat and then work out why it should be wrong, we default to what we were given: it’s wrong. If someone wants to hump a cat, they’re going to have to prove it’s okay, not vice versa.
I don’t believe there is a libertarian argument for not humping cats, unfortunately. Again, I don’t assume that means humping cats is okay, I assume libertarianism has some flaws.
So, I guess we have two running threads here.
1st is Singer. I happen to have one of his books on my shelf. It’s true that he says that killing a baby really only hurts those who love the baby, but “those who love the baby” can mean more than just the parents. Grandparents, other relatives, or even neighbors can qualify.
I guess I just don’t see what soul has to do with it. I personally don’t agree with his reasoning about when it matters if you kill something. And I wouldn’t allow late-term abortions, as he would. But if you DO allow them, then I think he’s right to argue that there’s not much difference between one side of the vagina and the other.
2nd is this “starting with zero” thing.
[Incidentally, I think that the Bible is much worse than starting from zero. I think it’s a horrible, terrible, disgusting, offensive place to start, and it’s not at ALL what I think of as wisdom passed on through the ages. But ok, we can just take “received wisdom” as a starting point, regardless of where we get that wisdom.]
You seem to be saying that someone, somewhere, is starting by assuming that bestiality is ok, then working out why it may not be. I don’t really see what you mean. Practically, anyone who thinks about it surely starts by thinking that it’s NOT ok, then slowly starts to wonder why not. Just as you say we should.
No one ever starts with zero. I literally don’t believe it’s possible. So I, like everyone else, start with thinking that X is either icky or ok. In this case, it’s bestiality. Other times it’s been homosexuality, drug use, oral sex, premarital sex, nose rings, and much more.
In each of those cases, I think about my prejudices and try to figure out whether they hold water. If they don’t, then I have a choice:
A. Keep my prejudices and accept that as a human I am inconsistent.
B. Discard my prejudices as best as I can.
I’m not saying that A is wrong or that I never do it. But I really don’t like the idea of not asking the question, or assuming that logic has failed because I don’t like the answer.
After your last comment I had to stop and think before replying, because when you say
“I think about my prejudices and try to figure out whether they hold water. If they don’t, then I have a choice:
A. Keep my prejudices and accept that as a human I am inconsistent.
B. Discard my prejudices as best as I can.”
I know we’re both having the same lunch meat, we’re just choosing different breads.
You also said “But I really don’t like the idea of not asking the question, or assuming that logic has failed because I don’t like the answer”. Here’s apparently where we diverge a bit. Logic fails, in my opinion, and that’s not always a bad thing. It’s not a bug, it’s an undocumented feature!
In your choice schema, I’m probably most likely to choose A unless there’s a compelling reason not to, such as a conflict with a deeply held belief. I’m going to assume I have a prejudice for a reason, whether logical, understandable, or not. Again, unless this conflicts with another deeply held belief, then I’m fine with that, and I’m not going to pursue the question further.
If logic doesn’t justify my position, my first assumption is that my logic was either defective, or I lacked sufficient information to use logic appropriately, but I do not first assume that my position must not have been correct.
Which gets me to the “starting from zero” thing. Obviously, you don’t. Many philosophers attempt to do just that. Nietzsche famously had to write “Beyond Good and Evil” in order to tear down the existing moral framework so that he could then write “On the Geneology of Morals” to build it back up from scratch. I think Dr. Singer does much the same thing, starting with the (I think faulty) assumption that there’s nothing particularly different between humans and animals (thus my “no soul” comment, as imprecise as it was). He builds his moral framework on utility, and because of this, because he starts from zero and builds thing up from there, I think he gets to some pretty gruesome conclusions.
Yes, I said “probably most likely”. I need an edit button!
It reminds me of a close friend of mine. When I asked probing questions about the existence of God, he replied that he’d just rather not go there. He’s comfortable with leaving it fuzzy. I can live with that.
As it happens, I also don’t think there’s anything different between animals and humans, and I don’t have to consciously attempt to start from zero. I just believe it.
So maybe that’s part of the difference here. It’s not me trying to be a philosopher, or you trying to kill logic. It’s us actually disagreeing about the truth of a basic starting point.
To me, though, the fact that we’re essentially the same as (other) animals doesn’t mean that choosing humans over animals is wrong, or indefensible.
I know this is old, but couldn’t sleep and was browsing the internet…
First: Animals can and do concent to sex, and will even go so far as to solicit it from other animals or certain humans (out of ‘heat’). I have seen and experienced this.
Second: Animals are pretty horribly treated in most places. So you are absolutly right to point out the hypocracy of most people. People tend to treat sexuality as soemthing inheriently special and sacred, when in fact it is one of the most basic and pure biological functions.
Third: Just becuase something has an ‘ick’ factor does not make it an immoral action. Neitehr does the fact that the majority of people hold a certain view make it an immoral action. Most people are easilly led and never take the time to challenge their beliefs of why they have them. Most people are products of teh society and reflect it in some way, especially when determining what is considered normal.
Correction to above: ” out of ‘heat’ ”
was meant to say “EVEN outside of ‘heat'” Meaning otuside their heat cycle.
Nice blog btw. Interesting so far.