Ah. Cognitive dissonance in action.
More to the point, you’d hate to think that I have a valid point that you have no means of addressing.
If you are going to draw parallels between zoophilia to other inborn sexual behaviors, why compare it to homosexuality and not heterosexuality? Hets also have innate sexuality, and want that sexuality accepted.
The thing is, heterosexuality and homosexuality are more than just sexual behviors. They also define the sort of people you have intimate emotional connections with. It is generally accepted that an adult can have a genuine emotional/intellectual/sexual relationship with other adults, but it seems less likely for there to be the same with an animal or child or inanimate object, for reasons of maturity, intelligence, development, shared interests, etc. So it is not like goboy is saying “I want my particular kink to be legitimaized”, he is saying that he wants his relationship with another man to be legitimized, since there’s no real difference between the capacity for mature relationship between an adult man and an adult woman. But there do seem to be unsurmountable barriers to prevent that sort of relationship from occurring between a man and a doberman or a vacuum cleaner. Sex, yes, relationship, no. Now, if someone wants to make a case that you can have a relationship with a poodle that is equivalent to a relationship with a fellow human, go ahead, but that’s the only way I can see bestiality as ever being comparable to a relationship with a fellow human of either gender.
I do have an “eww” factor with bestiality, but overall it just seems to me like really kinky masturbation. And I don’t like the idea of sex without the animal’s clear consent. Even if we do kill and eat animals, torturing them purely for our own pleasure is unpleasant. I’d look more kindly on someone who raises and kills dogs for food than on someone who raises them to rape them.
Well, very few animals have sex for any reason other than procreation. Most animals, as far as humans have been able to ascertain, do not have sex purely for fun. Of course, porpoises have been known to do so, so I guess it’s okay to nail one if you can hold your breath that long (gives new meaning to the term “blow-hole,” don’t it?).
Cognitive dissonance, ha! You haven’t made any valid point to be refuted, merely a juvenile and wildly inaccurate comparison between homosexuality and bestiality which I treated with the contempt it deserved.
As Gaudere pointed out, one’s sexual orientation invloves more than just getting off; it involves a warm, loving, and most importantly, mutually consenting
relationship. I can have a fulfilling relationship based on mutual respect and shared interest with another man, something I can’t do with a billy goat.
Now, I’m all for interspecies relationships if there is mutual consent. Capt. Sheridan and Delenn on Babylon 5 made a lovely couple. On Star Trek, there have been many instances of marriages and sexual liaisons between humans and Klingons, the Borg, Ferengi, Cardassians, and so on. They aren’t human, and so you’d have to call Tom Paris’s marriage to B’lanna technically bestiality, but she’s a thinking being that can give consent, something that a farm animal or a child cannot do, which is one of the reasons we rightly condemn sexual abuse of children and animals.
GOBOY, with respect, I think you are being oversensitive. KYOMARA did not make a generalized statement about all gay men; he (he?) said he had read accounts of incidents involving gay men. To me, the fact that such accounts would not concern all gay men seems self-evident, but maybe that’s just me. In any event, I’ll leave him (him?) to defend himself.
Before going on, I want to be clear that I am in no way advocating bestiality. But then I am no fan of the “any thing goes, so long as no one is being hurt” school, nor do I subscribe to the moral relativism that allows for tolerance of all things under the label “to each his or her own.” I think that some things just ain’t right, and under that heading I personally would place bestiality – which, moreover, does not pass my own personal “yuck” test in any event. That said . . .
GAUDERE:
True, but they do not have to be more than just sexual behaviors. Not all sex is based on “intimate emotional connections” – sometimes it’s just hot monkey love (pun intended). If a person wants no strings attached sexual gratification, what would be wrong with getting it from an animal, aside from the issue of consent? Moreover, a person could have intimate emotional connections of the human variety and also be literally screwing the pooch. And, of course, some people cannot or will not form intimate emotional connections at all.
The rest of your argument asks whether a relationship with an animal could ever be the equivalent of a relationship with a person, and I agree that emotionally it could not – any more than a relationship with your own right hand could be. But that is not what the OP asked; it asked “what’s wrong with bestiality”?
The homosexuality tie-in, to the extent there is one, IMO is this: If we can say, as I personally do, that some things just ain’t right (or natural), then we must see that others might legitimately feel the same way about homosexuality (or, for that matter, anything but plain vanilla missionary hetero sex, and not too much of it, either) – ie, that it simply is wrong, for inarticulate reasons. (Note that while I personally think that bestiality is wrong, I do not feel the same about homosexuality.) If, on the other hand, we must be able to articulate reasons for why a practice is “wrong” or else assume it is okay, then why is bestiality not okay?
This assumes, of course, that sex with an animal is always physically unpleasant for the animal – akin to “torture.” (“Rape,” of course, refers to sex without consent and implies a being able to give consent in the first place, which an animal does not have. And, as has been pointed out before, we don’t ask their consent for anything else we do to them.) Assuming we are talking about, say, the apparently consensual participation of a male dog, or the apparently indifferent participation of a female cow (as opposed to the torture and death of, say, the infamous hamster), why is the practice wrong? The same goes for GOBOY’s construing bestiality as “cruelty to animals.” Is it, always? If the animal is not harmed and, to the contrary, by all evidence seems to enjoy it, then why would it be?
GOBOY –
Again, not always. In fact, in the “why I like being gay” thread, one of the positive things listed about male homosexuality is the availability of sex without strings – something that many women cannot or will not do, though it is by no means unknown (or even uncommon) in the straight world, either. Besides, the OP was not asking about the social/cultural baggage (okay, baggage is a bad word, but I can’t think of another – accoutrements?) of being a “bestialist.” It merely asks if the practice of bestiality is wrong and, if so, why.
No one has yet given a good answer to this question. The only answer I’ve seen so far is “because animals can’t consent to having sex,” which to me is a non-starter in that we don’t worry about them consenting to anything else we might choose to do to them, good or bad, pleasant or painful. (This in turn devolves to a question of extending “personhood” or quasi-personhood to animals, which is IMO a whole 'nother debate.)
Again, my personal answer to “why is bestiality wrong?” is “Yuck – it just is.” But I fully recognize that this is not a terribly satisfactory answer, so I’d still like to see if anyone can come up with a better one.
WAG about societal mores here…
Sex with animals is at the extreme end of a continuum of sexual objectification. A one night stand, not even knowing the name of the partner…is in a sense, a type of sexual objectification as well…but perhaps we humans think that even in THAT scenario, there is “some” sense of human bonding.
Folks who think bestiality is “ewww” (count me in that crowd also), would probably not see any bonding happening…
Also include (at least perceived) hygiene issues…and species order as well…
Not to get too ewww, but do we lump all animals in the bestiality category equally…is primate sex worse that say, canine sex?
Shit, now I gotta go scrub my brain… 
True. I suppose how I see bestiality as different from homosexuality and heterosexuality is the capacity to form genuine emotional/intellectual/sexual relationship. I’m drawing a line between sexual behaviors and sexual orientation. To desire to have sex with creatures or items with which you can never have the same sort of relationship that you can with a fellow human is different from choosing to have sex without that sort of relationship yet still having the capacity to do so. When you have sex with a dog or a knothole, there is no chance for the sort of relationship you can have with another person. Even in a one-night stand, I think there is a recognition that this is another person there that you don’t get when you’re screwing a wet-vac or beagle. Overall, I suppose my core objection to bestaility is that I suspect it may be or become a substitute for a genuine relationship with another person, and I don’t think that will lead to good mental health. It’s too easy to project your own desires on something that can’t talk or think well enough to correct you, and the dog can hardly object when you “read its mind” and see it as being the ultimate partner that you can’t find among humans. From what I’ve seen among the people who form emtional attachments to their animal lovers, their animal partner is often completely unrealistically percieved, full of deep thoughts and eternal, perfect, undying love. Even the most determined romantic usually can’t have that view of a human partner forever, since a human partner can speak his/her mind.
The Eww Factor, for me, seems to be more based on the inability to have a relationship or equals (or at least close to equals) than the species difference. I have the same sort of “eww!” reaction to someone who would have sex with a severly retarded (to the point that they cannot understand languange) mute human, even if the human seemed willing. Do you?
I wasn’t really answering the OP, except in my final comments. I was arguing against the direct equation of homosexuality and bestiality that Zaruthra seemed to be getting at.
Well, that is why I mentioned consent (although I’m using the term much more casually than goboy). If you sodomize an unwilling creature, I would consider that torture, unless that animal’s anus is so big it doesn’t hurt it. If having sex with animals does not impair your ability to form relationships with fellow humans and is not a substitute for a relationship and it doesn’t hurt the animal and the animal wants to have sex, I cannot really call it immoral. Just…ewww.
[Edited by Gaudere on 05-17-2001 at 05:55 PM]
:eek: :eek: :eek: Hey missy…dems fightin’ words !!!
Gaudere, you will impress me mightiliy if you can point out any mention of homosexuality I may have made in my two or three posts to this thread. Why do you see the resemblence, when I made no mention of it?
Furthermore, you and goboy still haven’t answered my question. Couldn’t I argue that–although bestiality is a nasty practice for all the excellent reasons you’ve given–it’s still just a matter applying your own values to someone who can’t help feeling the way they feel, and who ought to have to right to accept himself and express his own erotic beastial nature without fear of society’s condemnation?
And to make sure you’re consistent in your rebuttal, I’d remind you that we’ve already established that (1) the act may not necessarily be unpleasant for the animal, (2) as an insentient being, the animal isn’t able to give “consent” in any case, and (3) we already have a precedent of using beasts to satisfy our desires–that of hunger, of course.
Come on, Gaudere, goboy, answer the quetion. Don’t disappoint me.
I have this picture of beagledave wavering in a dark, dripping alley of some exotic foreign locale, as some dodgy-looking fellow fellow in a trench coat, half-hidden by shadows, whispers, “Come on, meester, hyoo know you’d like to, they ain’t so different from people, right? Only two dollar! Just close yer eyes an’ tink of yer girlfriend!”
GAUDERE –
I see that, of course. The question is whether the sexual behavior of bestiality is wrong and, if so, why.
See, and my objections are way more visceral (and forceful). I think too much masturbation is not a good idea and potentially inhibiting to perfect mental health. Same with prostitution, IMO. They are things to which I have personal philosophical objections, but they are not in the same class of omigod-that’s-just-wrong that bestiality is. Moreover, to the extent I can at all articulate why I object to bestiality, I can say that it has more with being concerned with the animal, and seeing the act as a misuse of an animal, as opposed to concern over the user’s mental health. Maybe that’s really it for me (thinking as I type): It’s exploitative. But then – again – so are most other uses of animals. So I don’t know.
Again, my “yuck factor” is much more visceral.
No. Let me see if I can explain it. On a visceral level, I think I would find having sex with any (living) human less repugnant than bestiality. On a philosophical or intellectual basis, I would be much more outraged by non-consensual sex with a person incapable of consenting – but not in small part because we do, as a society, recognize that we generally should not do things to our fellow humans without their consent. In other words, having consent is the norm for human interaction but – again – we never concern ourselves with animal consent, so why should we just in the area of sex?
Sure, but not all sex, with people or animals, is painful sodomy. It is possible to encourage male animals to perform sexual acts that, in their dumbness, they are apparently perfectly happy to perform. It is possible for men to have sex with female animals of sufficient size that the animal apparently doesn’t care either way. Give a cow a warm mash at one end and she probably won’t care what you do to the other, so long as you don’t hurt her.
So provided that the sex is just casual and the animal is apparently not hurt, your answer to “what is wrong with bestiality” is “nothing”? They why is it “ewww”?
I realize I may be asking you to articulate something you really can’t – welcome to my world! Again, I can’t say why I think bestiality is wrong wrong wrong. But I feel very strongly that it is.
Also sprach Zarathustra:
Oh please. If I talk about a former head of state who diddled and intern in his big, oval-shaped office, you’d know who I was talking about, wouldn’t you? Don’t be deliberately obtuse, hon, it’s not becoming in a civilised discussion.
You know full well what you intended with the following:
To deny you were attempting to use an argument similar to one you believe to be used in support of homosexuality is rude, disingenuous, and just plain jerky. Geez, if you cannot make a point without cowering from your own beliefs, how the hell do you expect anyone here to respect your arguments?
When I spoke of philosophically objecting to masturbation, I meant of the staying-in-the-house-all-day-to-play-with-yourself, being-best-friends-with-your-hand variety. I have no more objection to healthy self-love than I do to healthy hetero- or homosexual love. If anyone cares.
Gaudere:
You know, we have had alot of threads about vibrators here on the SDMB: how to get them, which ones to get, how to use them effectivly, how good they are. No one has ever suggested that using a vibrator implys there is anything off about oyur sexuality.
It’s called playing devil’s advocate, and it’s a common rhetorical device. And I notice that you also choose to dismiss my question without answering it. Grasping at straws, hon?
This is a bit of a hijack, but I’m reading the first chapter of Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae, and I find some curious resonances between that reading and this thread. I don’t want to make any representations about the book’s view, though, since I’m just starting on it. Has anyone else here perused this tome?
Yes, and to deny it is called being dishonest. Thanks for playing.
Er, no. I don’t see where I’ve dismissed your question at all. I haven’t responded to it, sure, but that in no way means I don’t think you have a valid argument. I do, in fact, and Ii’m interested in seeing others’ responses to it.
Here, let me help you with that chip you’re carrying . . .
Hm…we must have different viewpoints here. I see them as roughly equal.
I suspect that if a human was so retarded that they couldn’t understand language, we’d do a lot of things to them without their consent. Maybe not eat them, but we’d force-feed them medicine or food if necessary, dress them without their consent, take them around as examples to seminars on retardation, etc. And I’m pretty much OK with doing such things even if the person is not legimately able to give consent and may even be objecting, but sex with that person is just …eww. I guess I think sex always should have at least the potential for genuine connection, however slight.
I think what I am objecting to is sexual activities that could mimic genuine relationships but have NO chance of developing into one. Masturbation, fine, you’re not fooling yourself that your relationship-based needs are being met. But sex that is almost-kinda-sorta like sex with anouther person but can never develop into a mature relationship, like sex with animals, sex with severely retarded people, etc., I tend to have the Eww Reaction. Because you can fool yourself into thinking you’re getting all you need from that, but you will never get a relationship of any sort, ever, comparable to that with an adult human. Even in a one-night stand there is a human connection there that could be pursued. Even with hookers there’s a chance! But with animals, severely retarded people, no. And I have the same sort of concerns for any of those.
My answer is that I have grave doubts that the sex will remain casual, just basically using the animal to masturbate. If you have sex with an inanimate objects or masturbate, you generally can’t fool yourself that there is some sort of relationship going on (objectum-sexuals being a notable exception). Someone who fucks an apple pie I may find amusing, I won’t feel the ookiness I feel about bestiality. There’s very little chance anyone will fool themselves that they have a relationship with an apple pie. But with a warm furry animal/severely retarded person that loves you in his/her way, that you take care of, that does have emotions…I can see some confusion possibly happening, a good chance that it is going to be a substitution for a relationship with an adult human of full sentience. And in fact, in my rather limited online readings about bestiality, the animal does often become a substitute. Why have a relationship with a human when your dog is always there and loves you?
Your objection seems to be that it’s bad for the animal; my objection is (I think) that I consider it highly likely to be very bad for the human. Given the powerful taboos against bestiality in our society, anyone who has sex with animals likely has trouble forming satisfactory human sexual/emitional relationships in the first place, and so may give up on it entirely if s/he can convince themselves that his/her needs are being met by the animal.
Manda JO
When I was speaking of the vacuum cleaner, I was thinking of the people who do have relationships with inatimate objects. Ms. Berlin Wall, and suchlike. I have no problem with mastubation, assisted or not, so long as it doesn’t interfere with your ability to have a relationship with a person.
Zarathustra:
Pretending you didn’t imply what you did imply is a common rhetoical device? I see it as dishonesty. There’s no point in dishonest debate.
OK, I misunderstood. Sorry.
OK, I was dishonest. Once again, sorry. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, your answer to the legitimate point I’ve made is what? Or if it’s not a legitimate point, why not?
Virologists realize that diseases that “jump” the barrier between species are particularly dangerous. This is because the virus is not well adapted to it’s new type of host organism. A well adapted virus will not kill it’s host, because that tends to limit it’s opportunities to reproduce & spread to other hosts. A poorly adapted virus tends to be far more lethal.
Many animal species have STDs or other illnesses unique to their own species.Domestication of animals provides many opportunities (sp?) for transmission of diseases between Man & his farm animals. Bestiality is (obviously) one of the most effective ones. It is also the single most easily preventable one–i.e. Don’t Bugger The Beasties.
It is worth noting that many religious prohibitions in the Old Testament function as a hygene code, even if that was not their intended purpose.
Comments?