The Mish Posish

This post will contain some naughty pictures of animals.  It's nothing worse than you would see on a PG-rated production on the Discovery Channel, but if you're particularly sensitive on account of being on this blog, I totally understand.  If it makes you feel better, I find primates icky.

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There's something I heard, again, a while ago that I kind of want to talk about now.  The first time I heard it, it was from a primatologist, and this statement is part of the reason I sometimes have difficulties with primatologists.  I have also seen it quoted online, though, in the years since bonobos became the animal of the day. (Now it's the honey badger.) The statement is, roughly, this: Bonobos are more sexually/interpersonally evolved than other animals on account of the fact that they have sex while facing each other.

Bonobos have only been identified as a species for a little over half a century or so, depending on who you ask.  They have only been intensely researched for a few decades.  Zoologists and comparative psychologists were of course astounded by the unique behaviour of the species: in contrast to their close chimpanzee relatives, they are quite nonviolent, females hold a lot of power, and they have lots and lots of crazy sex.  They have sex for many reasons: they have sex to calm everyone down, to build relations, or even to exchange favors.  They have sex with the opposite sex; they have sex with the same sex.  They have sex with their juveniles.  And, what was for some reason astonishing to researchers, they have sex in the missionary position.

The reason given was that because they are having intercourse face-on, it must add to the idea that sex in bonobos, like in humans and unlike in nearly every other animal, must play a very important social role and may even suggest a loving context.  After all, the face is the main outlet of emotion in primates, and we are a highly visual taxonomic order.  I say they are fascinated, "for some reason," though, because of this

this

and even this

Ignoring the fact that I probably have far too many pictures of lions at quick access, most ethologists would tell you that there isn't a whole lot going on between a male and female lion when they're doing their thing up to fifteen times a day.  Lions are also not terribly visual: they rely mostly on smell, like most mammals.  So what exactly is the deal here?

Well, as for why animals do it... we're not entirely sure.  Quite possibly, as it is with humans and weird positions, it's just a cool thing to do.  As for why some don't, though, or don't that often, it comes down to anatomy: if you've ever looked at a dog on his or her back, they're not quite as, erm, accessible as is a human on his or her back.  Any effort to make them more so would likely lead to at least some discomfort, particularly if you are a quadruped, with a quadrupedal spinal structure: you would need to have your entire body on top, pressing all the limbs that normally want to stick up back down, and things get way more complicated than is generally worth it.  In addition, a female is more prone on her back, and unable to escape.  A little more controversial, perhaps, but when you consider that rape seems much more common among apes, including humans, than quadrupeds, it may be that the missionary position developed to keep females safe and males "productive" among those species were rape is more frequent.

In any case, some primates in particular seem to have evolved towards the missionary position.  The spines of Old World apes are more erect.  Our limbs are very flexible.  Apart from humans, there is no animal that better exemplifies these crucial qualities than the bonobo.

On a side-note, and as an excuse for one more picture, have you ever wondered why human women have much larger breasts for their size than those of any other mammal?  It's not because of milk production: breast size has no impact on that.  It's not a conspiracy orchestrated by Playboy, either. (Or is it?) It's because they make a pretty great cushion in the missionary position, just as big butts do so in "doggy-style". (see Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape, 1967) And bonobos look to be heading in that direction.

So, is there something special about the missionary position?  Quite honestly, not one bit.  It's a side-effect of the anatomy that evolution has given us, and bonobos just happen to be on a similar pathway.  Sorry, bonobo fans.

Zoo Rights

I look around that freaky part of the internet that is filled with zoosexuals and I see a whole lot of two things: firstly, the idiots/rapists/holy-shit-crazy people that I've already torn into quite enough for one month; secondly, people who have quietly accepted who they are but are saddened by the social stigma and fear they know they must live with until they die.  I recently had a chat with one such individual, and though this week I was going to do a quick silly post, that will be put on the back-burner so that I can whisper into the ears of all the rest of you dejected zoos.  I'm going to tell you why we are the next sex rights revolution.

This isn't because of crap like COMING SOON or predictions by Bill O'Reilly, although we should certainly be inspired by the success of the LGBT and other sex rights movements.  It's because, quite simply, we are right.

And people are starting to know that we're right: today, we in the western world are encouraged to question absolutely everything.  It started with creationism, branched off into religion as a whole, later into ethnocentrism and sexism, and finally into sex: we've questioned whether it really is wrong for a woman to be lustful and kinky, or for a man to love another man, and we are so used to questioning such things by now that we are beginning to be able to question whether it really is wrong for a human to fall in love with an animal, and to express that love physically.  If you don't believe me, check my last blog post, in which Peter Singer, who is among other things a supporter of zoo rights, was given a very prestigious award by the nation of Australia.

And it only takes a quick trip around the smarter places of the internet, and a good head on your shoulders yourself so that you can support a brief argument (or links to this blog ;) ) to find that when people are made to think about these things, the forward-thinking of them, which are a surprising amount, are quick to reach the conclusion that zoophilic intercourse is no more wrong than anything they might consider doing themselves.  The days in which we could fall back to religious arguments and knee-jerk reactions and have it work in science and politics are quickly leaving us here in the first world.

We have a leg-up, too, on the LGBT movement as it first started: it wasn't until 1974, after a lot of pressure from rights groups, that homosexuality was no longer regarded by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder.  With the release of the DSM IV in 1994, though, zoophilia (as it is called there) and other paraphilias (barring some exceptions) are only regarded as mental disorders if they cause significant distress or inhibition of daily functioning to the individual.  As such, few zoos, despite their fear of social stigma, fit this disorder, and zoophilia is a rare diagnosis.  The most that could be done is to have the name changed to fit the nomenclature we have established, and to have it include an addition to make it similar to the diagnosis of Sadism, in that it may also be considered pathological if it includes harm to another.  At the moment, zoophilia is only listed in Paraphilias Not Otherwise Specified.  The Word Health Association's ICD-10 has a similar thing going on, so the insanity argument is already null and void.

So what needs to be done for this push for acceptance?  It will of course be difficult and take a long time: although zooerasty is legal in many places, it is not widely accepted anywhere.  It therefore is not legislation that we need to be pushing for, but for a change in people's  collective mindset.  It involves getting allies: people who sympathize with and understand us, even if they are not zoophilic themselves.  If you're zoo, it involves coming out, where it is safe; at the moment, the only people who often come out are the ones you don't want to be associated with: these people who don't have the brains to fear society.  We need to mediate that fear, though, even if it's only on the internet, and get out and talk to people about our orientation.  Not getting up in people's faces, but should the topic come up, or should the opportunity to arise, we must become educators.  We must be well-armed with information and we must not back down from a debate.  You have the resources.

I also feel that women who typically orient towards male animals are crucial here.  The big argument against us is that animals cannot possibly consent to human intercourse.  We of course have all sorts of data and observation that is contrary, but unfortunately, with few if any scientific studies on this and no terribly good way to show people, it remains the largest argument against us.  The sad fact is that most people are unable to read animal body language, and will invent scenarios in which what they expect to happen is happening.  You can't exactly show them pornography (and if you can, please don't), but what about your own life?  Most people have great difficulty with the idea of a female raping a male, and even more if the male is an animal, due to anatomical reasons.  It's important, though, when your arguments involve explicit content, that you know how to sound professional, and know when to stop creeping out your opponent.  Keep it short and to the point.

Here is what I think: Telling the world that, contrary to popular belief, zoos exist outside of the realms of animated comedies, they love their animals, and that the time has come for them to get the facts and seriously think about them - this will be the heart of any movement towards acceptance.  If you're zoo, so long as you're safe and smart, you need not be afraid any longer.  Your coming freedom from the hatred of society rests on you, and it rests on us working as one entity.  Here's to a liberated future.

Congratulating Peter Singer

This post is to congratulate Peter Singer on receiving the honour of Companion of the Order of Australia.  The man is a controversial fellow, but is something of a hero of mine who has spoken some difficult truths that have had people throwing things at him on multiple occasions.  He is a radical when the need to be a radical is there, and is moderate when one should be moderate, fighting for sustainability, animal welfare, and human rights.




Relevantly to this blog, he is also an ally of the zoophilic community.  He has spoken up for the legalization of zoophilic (but not zoosadistic) sexual interactions and has been the author of several articles supporting us, including the famous Heavy Petting.

I wish I could say I've met the man, or that I knew more about him so that this could be a more lengthy blog post, but I do not, and do not wish to make a fool of myself by pretending I do.  I do however feel it necessary to spend a week celebrating this man's recent achievement, which I feel is, if not a small and silent victory for zoos, a large victory for animal welfare.

So, regardless on your opinions of his ideas on the ethics of abortion, euthanasia, etc., I feel it's impossible to deny that he is an admirable fellow for exploring so calmly and intelligently such controversial issues, and I believe it would be a fine thing to raise our collective glasses in his honour.

Training, Not

Quite a while ago, I believe when I was ranting about the online zoo community, I mentioned training in zooerasty: specifically, that it shouldn't be done.  This is kind of a controversial thing, too.  Controversial, I mean, even for zoophilia itself.  So, once again, I apologize to my non-zoophilic readership, however few you may be at this point: judging by this blog's statistics, you're all a load of perverts anyway. ;)

So, training.  First, let's define it: training is using Pavlovian or operant conditioning to get an animal to have sex with you.  That is, rewarding the animal (ie with food) for participating, or punishing them in some way for not.  Let me make it clear that, say, showing your dog how it's done, or sort of "warming" your horse up over time is not training.  Animals do that to each other.  Humans do that to each other.  We don't really talk about it, because we don't want sex to seem so mechanical, and we certainly don't want to look like we're 'bad' at it, so we pretend it's an entirely natural thing which we just 'get'.

And we do, to a great extent.  So do most if not all sexual animals; certainly all the animals a human could ever have a mutual sexual relationship with, in any case.  That's part of the point here: animals do not need specific training to have sex, let alone to enjoy it.  If they are not enjoying it, it does not mean you need to train them to enjoy it, it means you are doing something very wrong.

I'll give an example: I read a lot of people talking about putting tasty things on their genitalia so that their animal (usually a dog) will lick them.  I don't have an enormous problem with this: particularly compared to other methods of training I read about, it's certainly not harmful.  The human is getting a lickjob and the pooch is getting a snack, and that's fine and dandy.  The problem comes up when people call this zoophilia. As I noted last month, zoophilia is romantic: there is primary interest in the desires of your partner, and in mutuality.  In the case of this training, the mutuality is limited: one is getting sexual pleasure, the other is not; the latter may only be faintly aware that sexual pleasure is at all being had.  The use of this method of training, therefore, along with all the others that are more explicit and intensive, are a form of bestiality.



Let's talk more about the peanut butter-licking.  The people advising other people on it are doing so as an answer to the question, "How do I get my dog to blow me/eat me out?" What is not acknowledged is that for dogs, even more so than it is for people, licking another's genitalia in a sexual context, usually before or after sex, is entirely natural.  It is a response to sexual stimulation, generally olfactory but also tactile.  This means that if the individuals in question were simply willing to put in the time to get to know their dog and establish an understanding sexual relationship with them, they would achieve the same result without any smeared substances.

From here, it doesn't take long to look at the other ways people get their unwilling animals to have sex with them.  Animals get sex.  They probably get it more than a lot of people do, and are more than happy to oblige someone whom they trust and makes them feel good.  Why, then, do we have people who will in the same breath talk about how they got their bitch to 'take it' and then call themselves zoophilic?  This is sheer bestiality, and is part of the reason zoosexuality is looked down upon so heavily: it's assumed, because these people are too stupid, heartless, or lazy to have a real mutual sexual relationship with an animal, that a real mutual sexual relationship with an animal is not possible.

So how do you do it, then?  By utilizing the empathetic skills you must have if you are zoophilic.  Know your partner.  Understand their body language.  When they say, "No," understand that it does in fact mean no, and oblige.  Experiment a little, but don't overdo it.  Most importantly, love them; if you do that, just like in anthrosexual relationships, everything else will come with time.

Also, in the last couple posts, this blog has doubled its view count.  This is in large part on account of Reddit (hello, Redditors!) but also because of a few links here and there that I know of on Facebook, MSN, forums and the like.  So a big thank-you to everyone who's helped spread this around!

Loke - Vargaflicka

"Wolf's Girl" by Loke (translated from Swedish)

The girl met the wolf in the forest

And the wolf said, I would have you

And the girl refused and hesitated

But as she took heart, she said

Then let me be loyal to you

And never want to have anyone else

And the wolf smiled, and care he took

And said that a wolf’s love is true

A warm hand for cold promises

I will make you mine

Feel your heart sting, you wolf's girl

I wonder what the lass has in mind

A warm hand for cold promises

The girl took in her hand

Hear the wolves howl in winter-cold

I will make you mine

And the wolf took his lass on his back

And the trees flashed by

When the wolf left and called out

Through the dark forest in wolf’s fury

And over moss and over clearings

They traveled like a bitter wind

And lovingly the lass combed his fur

And kissed gently the beast’s cheek

Home to the wolf’s den

They returned in an instant

And the lass played and caressed the wolf

He was always so fine and tender with his teeth and claws

And under the amber full moon

They danced with one another

And the lass’s resting hand burned the wolf

And their wolf-hearts burned and melted together

A warm hand for cold promises

Yes, I will make you mine

Feel your heart sting, you wolf's girl

I wonder what the lass has in mind

A warm hand for cold promises

The girl took in her hand

Hear the wolves howl in the winter cold

I will make you mine

And the spring came to the wolf-forest

Together they went out hunting

As the summer passed

And by the girl’s side

He said he remained faithful

But for the girl now the time has come

No longer did her heart burn

And the dawn broke and the girl fled

To find another man

But that bid soon did the wolf discover

And so weeping he ran out

And over mountains, through bone and marrow

Could men hear the wolf’s broken heart howling

And the lass’s new man rode

To ride off at full gallop

But trusting to the horse’s canter

He had no chance

The man fell prey to the wolf

A warm hand for a cold promise

I will make you mine

Feel your heart sting, you wolf's girl

I wonder what the lass has in mind

A warm hand for a cold promise

The girl took in her hand

Hear the wolves howl in winter cold

I will make you mine

But the girl knew that wolves feared the fire

So she set fire to the entire town

Her village in the fire she cleansed

And the men fled

While the flames rose higher into the sky

But she saw that the wolf never ran

Together they went up in the lighthouse

In each other’s arms in a fire so warm

The wolf and maid had their final tryst

In the flames of the red glow

At once they burned together

From the kiss of the flames everything fell silent

But the silence proclaimed that the wolf’s love is true

Together they had to face death

Together did they burn

And in the torment of the heat and the blazing fire

The two found each other again at last

A warm hand for a cold promise

I will make you mine

Feel your heart sting, you wolf's girl

I wonder what the lass has in mind

A warm hand for a cold promise

The girl took in her hand

Hear the wolves howl in winter cold

I will make you

I will make you

I will make you mine

The Furry Spectrum

This post is on a question that I get asked a lot.  Not via this blog, but other places, even places that don't know I am a zoo.  The question is: "are you a furry?" So yes, this post will be going a bit into what "furry" has come to mean, how it might or might not relate to zoophilia, and what this relation means in the grand scheme of things.

First of all, to answer that question is always tough for me; my response is generally along the lines of, "Kinda." I like furry art, certainly.  I'll confess I like furry porn.  I like animal fiction, and I've seen The Lion King many dozens of times.  Nala is a total hottie.  If this is all there is to furridom - a proclivity, a paraphilia, whatever - then most certainly I am, and I don't know a lot of zoos who aren't furries in this sense, particularly if we're counting "ferals" (that is, non-anthropomorphic anthropomorphic characters [?]).

On the other hand, I have little to nothing to do with the furry community, don't fursuit or anything like that, don't fancy myself anything other than a simple human, and quite honestly, a lot of self-professed furries would or do hate my guts.  To them, furry is more than just a weird interest in anthro and animal fiction, and I wouldn't count, particularly since people like me make them look bad.  And I can sympathize with this.

I'm not going to claim to be able to draw a line between these two parts of the furry fandom.  Whether I'm a furry or not will continue to be up to judges other than myself.  What I am going to do is draw a line between furry as a paraphilia and zoophilia.  Right after I erect these sandbags around my dwelling.

Alright, so, here's the thing: ever since Kinsey (1948) we have had the idea that sexuality, at least homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality, are not exclusive categories but are instead along a spectrum.  Later on, this became a series of two axes, which is now widely accepted:



For those who are unfamiliar, what this means is that everyone in the world fits somewhere on this graph: if they are further towards the top-right of the graph, they are more homosexual, and more highly sexual (towards hypersexuality) than the norm (on Y) and bisexuality (on X); if they are towards the bottom-left, they are more heterosexual and asexual (demisexual).  It should be noted that placement on this graph should be considered more diamond-like than square-like, as it is impossible to be 100% asexual and hetero/homosexual, and it is impossible to be 100% sexual (hypersexual) without being bisexual.

Now, it has been suggested, albeit sheepishly, that there may be more to this graph.  A hell of a lot more, to put it bluntly: there may be dozens more axes that can be placed here.  Unfortunately, there just isn't that much interest in research in this area, and no one cares to fund it, so you won't find it in your textbooks anytime soon.  These spectra range in all sorts of paraphilias: sadism-masochism, chronophilias (pedophilia to gerontophilia), anthrophilia-zoophilia, necrophilia-vitophilia(?), and whatever else.

You may think, after considering how generally well Kinsey has been accepted, especially given the time since the bulk of his research was conducted, that this would be a no-brainer.  There are, however, problems with these becoming widely accepted.  The first problem is that, as I mentioned, very little research has been done to support or fail to support such a paradigm shift, and there is no drive to conduct any.  Even pedophilia, which once might have got some interest from legal establishments, is actually quite well-controlled these days, and convicted pedos have some of the lowest recidivism rates of sex offenders.  The second problem is that the current versions of both the DSM and the ICD, which are the two manuals used most commonly by psychologists in making proper diagnoses, really like their categories, and all sexual disorders listed are categorical: that is, you can't be kind of a masochist, according to the APA and WHO.  Thirdly, society doesn't like these people; most of us don't like the idea that we all fit onto a pedophilic spectrum, a necrophilic spectrum, and whatever else.  It's not very scientific, but popular opinion has a much greater effect on the social sciences than we like to admit.

Now that I've finished that little rant, what exactly did it have to do with furries?  As the title implies, it is my personal belief that the furry fandom is on that theoretical anthrophilia-zoophilia spectrum, based on the fact that zoophilia is much more prevalent among furries (Evans, 2008), that I have met few if any zoos out of the many who are not at least mildly interested in some aspects of the furry fandom, and that if you brave it and actually look at furry communities and art, you can literally see that sliding scale.  This is not to say that all furries are secretly zoo.  In fact, it means quite the opposite: although a fair number of furries self-identify as zoos, if we consider that sexuality is incredibly difficult if not impossible to change, based on the fact that there is no 'cure' for homosexuality, pedophilia, etc., you can actually be quite sure that if someone is into furry porn but doesn't have any such interest in real animals, that they are not going to somehow progress into zoosexuality: they already have their place on the spectrum, and they are going to stay there, given that sexuality tends to crystallize by one's mid-twenties.  In short, if we accept that there is such a spectrum, we no longer feel the need to pigeon-hole people into one thing or another, or to make assumptions about someone fitting into some imaginary category simply because they're close.

If we extrapolate here to other sexualities, such as pedophilia, this can have some interesting implications, even affecting national legislation.  Lolicon - that is, children or childlike individuals portrayed sexually in drawings or animations - has come under a lot of fire in the last few years, with people being arrested for creating, distributing, or possessing it.  The idea is that people who view lolicon may eventually "graduate" to child sex abuse, either because they must already be pedophiles if they are viewing lolicon, or because the lolicon itself may make them become pedophilic.  If we consider that lolicon may be to pedophilia as furry may be to zoophilia, some research (already backed by the fact that there are a great many people who enjoy lolicon but are not pedophiles, evidenced by the success of certain television shows that would not exist if they only appealed to the ~3% of the population who are pedophilic) would end the equation of loli fans and pedophiles, and thus the fear and criminalization.

Something to think about.


By the way, over the last week, this blog hit 1,000 views.  Let's celebrate by getting 1,000 more, hm?  Whether you think this blog is insightful or disgusting, entertaining or insulting, don't be afraid to share it; no one will think less of you if you do. ;)