tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32575839643659321152024-02-20T18:23:50.492-07:00ZoopointA zoophilic perspective on life, love, and the rest of the world.J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-47004626444266481252018-01-10T16:06:00.001-07:002018-01-17T13:19:40.512-07:00The Shape of Water<p dir="ltr">I went ahead and saw The Shape of Water the other week and it seemed significant to me. Here we have a cast of protagonists: the first, a disabled individual, specifically a mute, talked down to for her disability, her humanity undermined, and her abilities underestimated. (And further someone whose socioeconomic class is discriminated against. Second, a gay man, whose social life and freedom are restricted for his sexuality. Third, a black woman, whose race is her primary limiter. And then fourth, we have a nonhuman, someone presented as an animal - who for all intents and purposes is an animal - who is the subject of all the injustices animals are often subject to.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And we have all of these people rising above, proving that they are worth more than they are given by heteronormative society in ability, intelligence, strength, and the ability to love. The Shape of Water is one of those unfortunate films that receives critical acclaim while being generally ignored in box offices, only playing in select theatres, and not even considered for annual awards (although it did take home one for its soundtrack). But if you want to point to Hollywood making one more step towards acknowledging and respecting human-animal relationships, this is a good one. Indeed, this is the first time I have seen a film glorify an explicitly sexual relationship between a human and something non-human very clearly pre-linguistic (at least expressively: he only makes single word utterances through ASL). Further, even when the protagonist describes this relationship in a rather explicit manner, no one takes issue with its interspecies nature.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Slowly, very slowly, zoophilia is peeking its way into accessible media and being portrayed as something beautiful, even if strange, and one more victim of a judgemental society. Go support this film if you get the chance, it's certainly worth it. Wonderful soundtrack, very daring depiction, well paced and with very real and flushed out characters that you can take home emotionally with you. Even for non zoos, of course, enjoy falling into, and even in love with, its weirdness.</p>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-21981812133594149262017-08-10T14:26:00.000-06:002017-08-10T14:26:24.482-06:00Robert Pattinson and the Thing with the Dog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/television/7890016/robert-pattinson-refused-to-perform-sex-act-on-dog">here</a> is what happened.<br /><br />Robert Pattison, probably best known for playing Edward Cullen in the <i>Twilight</i> franchise, is working on a film called <i>Good Time</i>, which is about a man with something of an obsession with dogs and who believes he was a dog in a former life. In the film, there is a scene in which a drug dealer bursts in on the protagonist who is lying in bed with a dog, apparently giving the dog a hand-job.<br /><br />
The story that's been bouncing around is that Robert was asked by the director to actually stroke off the dog, and that he refused. He later clarified that it was all a joke, that he wasn't seriously asked to do so, and that a fake dog dong was always what was going to be used. There's obviously nothing wrong with this; for one thing, as a rule of thumb while filming, you want to expect as little out of your animals as humanly possible. If anything might even potentially cause harm or discomfort to the animal, you would really rather avoid that. For another thing, <i>Twilight</i> was pretty darn tame as far as weird kinds of lovin', and I don't imagine Robert himself would be very comfortable if asked to actually bring a dog to erection. Just a guess.<br />
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What makes it honestly silly is that as soon as the story came out, <a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjksqjWvc3VAhWK64MKHUkWDm0QFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.peta.org%2Fmedia%2Fnews-releases%2Fpeta-statement-robert-pattinsons-refusal-sexually-molest-dog%2F&usg=AFQjCNE9-CDclvuJ4xM9eyHxNSJi1ZdSXg">PETA</a> congratulated him on not being a horrible animal abuser by agreeing to this morally bankrupt request. And every site discussing the story is chock full of people crying the same thing — not because it's good to respect an actor's comfort zone, or even because it's good to avoid employing real animals when possible, but because giving dogs erections is sick and wrong.<br />
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Even though the incident was apparently all a joke, it is important after all, because the response is real. So let's discuss this. Zoopoint is obviously biased on the whole thing, but I think the best impartial indicator to the morality of such a hypothetical request is best judged by the reaction of the trainer: a very blatant, "I mean, you can. You just gotta massage the inside of his thighs." This is something that is done all the time by caretakers of intact animals for a variety of reasons, whether to stimulate them for breeding, for semen extraction, health checks, or indeed, for the pleasure of the animal, and for only one of these things do people get in an uproar. PETA had nothing to say about the trainer who clearly was no stranger at all to the red rocket, but when the word 'pleasure' is used, suddenly it's an affront to all that is natural and holy.<br />
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Which is awfully ironic. I imagine this dog would have enjoyed being massaged for pleasure more than for forced breeding any day of the week. He might have even become a <i>Twilight</i> fan.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-66214100864190733152017-01-11T19:53:00.001-07:002017-01-11T19:53:54.176-07:00Scientists Still Clueless<p dir="ltr">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/two-animals-species-sex-zoophilia-monkey-deer-japanese-macaque-female-sika-interspecies-sexual-a7519706.html</p>
<p dir="ltr">Just a quick post to let you know I'm still alive. Apparently the first ever "consensual" intercourse between species has been documented, and the researchers looking into it are still clueless about how or why this could possibly happen. Now they're getting down to it being a natural reaction to mate deprivation in combination with estrus.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It makes one wonder when they'll finally decide to just talk to us if they want to understand us, and find that we aren't all oversexed, lonely abusers. Or maybe it's time we started talking to them.</p>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-91951356203741458162016-09-25T04:07:00.000-06:002016-09-25T04:07:00.993-06:00Shelter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One thing I haven't talked much about on this blog since its inception is my video game habit, but I am in fact a gamer (PC master race) and every once in a while something pops up that catches my attention. A bit over a year ago <b>Might & Delight</b> of Stockholm<b> </b>became my new favourite indie developer because they gave me a game that was not only enjoyable but did things that I feel really broke barriers, and some of those barriers are things that might be relevant for this outlet.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for shelter might and delight" height="283" src="https://d1vnh8mbrp67em.cloudfront.net/news/image/0/86/4200/index_0033444.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Shelter</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Three games comprise the <i>Shelter</i> series, but they all have a few things in common. <i>Shelter</i> puts you in the shovel-esque paws of a mother badger, beginning underground in her set with her newborn young, which you are charged with feeding, protecting, and leading through a world of hazards ranging from flash floods to forest fires to dreaded birds of prey. <i>Shelter 2</i>, my personal favourite, has you instead as a mother lynx in a huge, open environment, hunting for your kittens and once more shielding them from predators and the everyday (and perhaps not-so-everyday) risks of being a young animal in a big new world. <i>Paws</i> is a spin-off of <i>Shelter 2</i> in which you play not as the mother lynx but as a kitten who has lost their way. It's more exploration-focused and whimsical, but retains the simple but ironically philosophical outlook.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for shelter 2" src="http://artgames.info/img/shelter-2-screenshot-1.jpg" height="409" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Shelter 2</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Each game focuses on the interplay between mother and young, and bonds formed through hardship. Hardly a word is written in the game and there is no dialogue; no humans exist in the <i>Shelter</i> world, but all the same it's almost impossible not to feel a rather intense affection for these furballs you have been charged with, and the resulting blow to the upper-left of your chest when one of them shrieks their dying cry as they're carted off by a fox that you should have noticed, should have caught — but didn't. To help along this paradoxically meditative and dire plot, each game has extraordinary simple but beautiful acoustic soundtracks and a papier mâché aesthetic.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for shelter 2 paws" height="360" src="https://gamechurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/PAWS3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Paws: A Shelter 2 Game</i></td></tr>
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To me this visual style immediately struck me as being symbolic of how an animal might view this world that they live in: their sight is not as important to them as their feel of the world, so rather than the game allowing us to focus on each individual detail of each individual leaf, we're instead shown patterns, basic ways of interpreting trees and grass and mountains, even the fur patterns of our character's young. This, and the lack of UI, and the use of auditory rather than visual cues for many challenges the games present really places the player in the mindset of the animal better than others with quadrupedal protagonists.<br />
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Of course the games aren't without their shortcomings, mostly technical, but I didn't want to make this post a full review, simply a recommendation and brief analysis of the feel that the <i>Shelter</i> series invokes as a whole. I think if there's anyone, gamer or no (because they are very easy games to pick up), has found themselves curious about the simple but brutal world of wild animals, or considered the possibility of seeing existence through the biases of another species, or just wants a game that's simultaneously uncomplicated, challenging, and emotionally trying, do try these out. They're inexpensive and available on Steam and on GOG. And next month, a fourth game in the series, <i>Meadow</i>, is in the works and will be released next month. You can bet I'm looking forward to it.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-37289387865592143092016-09-22T03:40:00.000-06:002016-09-22T04:33:37.198-06:00Security, Photographic Evidence, and Not Being a Loon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Recently I've been having more and more conversations with a wider variety of zoophiles, and of course as we're coming more out of the woodwork, and more of us are caring less and less about our privacy as the internet becomes more ingrained into our lives, the conversation of what is and is not good secure online practice came up frequently. This especially arose when discussing organizing for things such as help groups or more public interface. The different risks towards zoophiles who are expressing themselves online are, I would say, twofold, with one of these risks divided into two parts.<br />
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The first risk is the most obvious and the most universal: Other people, and our social lives. The individuals with whom we share our local and global communities can make our lives hell for us. I have heard of people who have been fired from their jobs on account of a word-of-mouth report from a stranger. This happens particularly those in certain states of the US that allow such employment practices. That having been said, there is nothing stopping someone from doing the same to you even if you are not sexually active with animals, or even a zoophile at all; this gossip is given and acted upon without any evidence at all, so the general security rule to avoid this sort of thing is to <b>not be a dick</b>. If you're going to be talking about your zoophilia outside of zoophilic circles, make sure it's with people that you can likely trust to be mature about it, even if they aren't entirely accepting, and work on your social skills! I have never had anyone respond negatively to my paraphilia because, if I might say so myself, I am a good speaker, an even better writer, and I know how to put my opinions and facts forward without making people too grouchy with me — or at least, if they are, they don't feel so empowered that they might strive to exercise that power in harming me.<br />
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The second risk is, as I said, twofold, but rather because one part is the imagined risk, and one is not. The imagined risk is in the law of the land, which has always been incredibly stringent by word against zoophiles. The days are gone when we were hanged along with our lovers, but there are still places in the first world in which the maximum sentence for intercourse with an animal is life. Simply saying so on the internet would technically be enough for an investigation, but here's the issue: some studies have the rate as high as 30% for people who have sexual interactions with an animal at some point in their lives, and of course the internet is rife with furries saying they'd like to have sex with animals, wish they had the guts to play with the family dog, real zoophiles quietly discussing these things amongst themselves, and naturally trolls acting as if they do it just for the laughs. It's chaos here and no one has time to go for the small fish.<br />
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What are the big fish, then? Well, in every single news article I've ever seen, there has been visual confirmed evidence of the investigated and tried 'bestialist' having sexual intercourse with an animal — that is, no one has ever been investigated and tried simply for discussing these things on the internet. Even if someone is already being noticed by law enforcement, they don't make a move until said person of interest posts an image of them spreading their female dog's vagina, or a film with his member in a mare. In <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/donald-waelde-horse-craigslist_n_5213786.html">one instance</a>, an individual was only investigated because they were posting (and eventually following through with) Craigslist ads through which they were looking for a horse to have intercourse with. Of course, the ones who eventually answered and had to deal with their very explicit phone calls, and then meet up with this individual after they drove halfway across the country to see them, were the police.<br />
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And it doesn't particularly matter if it's legal in your state. If you create and publish this media, and then move elsewhere, yes, you did not technically break the law, but you have just given anyone who would like to know visual confirmation that you ought to be watched by anyone who might want to catch them some evil bestialists.<br />
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I don't want to go too long on this, but in conclusion, I just want to confirm:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>You are generally fairly safe. Don't go giving out personal information (ie your name, your exact location, birthday, intimate things like that), which is generally good internet practice no matter what your sexual preference.</li>
<li>Learn to communicate. Don't be a weirdo! If you can't have civil conversation, don't have conversation at all. Don't 'ragequit' halfway through a chat. This is far more important in near anyone's eyes than your zoophilia.</li>
<li>Don't publish evidence of your acts online. This is so basic, and it astonishes me how many people just publish their naked butts conjoined with those of dogs willy-nilly, but just don't do it.</li>
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Just be smart. Don't be a loon. The way you present yourself, and the ways in which you don't, are going to mandate your security far better than your use of Tor or the toughness of your online passwords. Not only will presenting yourself well keep you safer, but in time, as we start to come out of the dark recesses of the internet and into the public eye where, if justice were ever to prevail, we ought to be, you and all of us will be in better shape. </div>
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J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-15264490203031117172016-09-18T15:23:00.000-06:002016-09-18T15:23:00.153-06:00Attraction vs Kink<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Building on the last post, and inspired by a post I saw on the Zoophilia sub-reddit, I'd like to discuss the difference between what people like and what people want.<br />
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I have a close friend who is a self-defined masochist. She loves humiliation, and has frequent fantasies about being cornered in an alleyway by multiple people and gang-raped. This notion is of course very terrifying, and most people's immediate reaction is to ask why on earth she might think that would be a good thing to happen, but here is the answer: She doesn't. She would never want that to happen to her in real life. It's simply a fantasy that arouses her.<br /><br />Many self-defined zoophiles actually fit into this paradigm. Young and inexperienced boys, a lot of the time, quite used to masturbating to anything with visible naughty bits, they find themselves getting off to videos of animals having sex, or people having sex with animals, and imagine that this makes them zoophiles. And sometimes it does, but sometimes they grow up, or they finally get the chance to be around the animal they thought they might like to be with, and it turns out they don't. It's just a fantasy, more properly defined as faunoiphilia.<br /><br />Others, as shown in the post that I'm thinking about, are more just voyeuristic. These people are not zoophiles, but they may want to see their significant other (in my experience, usually a man wanting to see his girlfriend) having sex with an animal. It's a factor of voyeurism as well as humiliation-focused sadism, given that the attractive aspect of it isn't seeing a beautiful girl with a beautiful animal, but rather a beautiful girl being taken by a base creature. Unfortunately, it's often (not always, but often) a factor in abusive relationships, and these individuals are not zoophiles.<br />
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I think it's important to draw these distinctions and to be aware of them. Usually the distinctions we draw are between those who love their animals and those who only use them for sexual gratification, but there are also those who claim to be zoophiles to begin with only to discover they are not — they didn't change, they simply never were, only thought they were because they couldn't distinguish between <i>fantasy</i> and <i>desired reality — </i>and there are those who enjoy watching animals having intercourse with people for reasons more connected to sexual sadism (and judging by the porn that exists out there, these people probably make up the large majority of its consumers). </div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-91124544818971232682016-09-11T14:44:00.001-06:002016-09-11T14:44:58.634-06:00Sexuality and Psychology<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sexuality is rather prevalent in a lot of what we are and do. If you look into personality disorders and thus their corresponding personality types, you'll see their specializing researchers listing their sexual tendencies as well. People with borderline personality disorder/type tend to have very active, multi-partner, intense sex lives. People with schizoid personality disorder/type tend to have the opposite, but have incredibly active fantasy lives, often right down to pertaining to specific fantastic interests, specifically the idea of returning to the womb. (Guntrip, Harry. <i>Schizoid Phenomena, Object-Relations, and The Self</i>. New York: International Universities Press, 1969.)<br />
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Of course, not all of us have these extreme personality types, but if we consider the research of some psychologists, these personality types seem to correspond to high or low values on scales used in personality inventories that we have today. (Mullins-Sweatt SN, Widiger TA. The five-factor model of personality disorder: A translation across science and practice. In: Krueger R, Tackett J, editors. Personality and psychopathology: Building bridges. New York: Guilford; 2006.)<br /><br />Although perhaps the best place for this observation would be as the root of a study rather than a blog post, given these two observations together it would make sense to presume that sexuality is quite deeply linked to our personalities, and therefore everything we are and do.<br />
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It would also account for the conflicting but consistently present and simultaneously true views that personality is both quite static, by definition, and does not change from day to day (for instance, the fact that you are grouchy one day because your boss yelled at you is not changing your personality for that day, it's changing your mood), personality does seem capable of changing over time, as people's values on even our most up-to-date inventories do fluctuate. Sexuality is the same: we see sexuality as crystallized by the time we're finished puberty, but I'm sure most adults can attest that they are not interested in the same things sexually they were ten years ago, and are interested in something new these days.<br />
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What this link between sexuality and personality means is that our sexualities are, simultaneously, both entirely natural and not under our control, but are also formed by our persistent environments, traumatic events, and other things that happen to us. It also means sexuality is potentially even more complex than most people realize and should be given more consideration when measuring, using very broad terms, exactly who a person is.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-82316189605270404802016-06-26T01:39:00.000-06:002016-06-26T01:39:00.843-06:00For the Less Well-Adjusted Cats<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've helped quite a few consistently violent or anxious cats, and these two complaints are generally what non-cat-people, and frustrated cat people will cite as the reasons for their frustration.</div>
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Violent cats are on one hand easy to deal with because there is a single method that I've found works very well and doesn't need much adaptation. Cats are violent for two reasons: first, because they feel they're playing. Consider when a violent cat scratches, or grabs your arm to claw at it, what is your immediate reaction? We're creatures of instinct, too, so naturally we pull away, try to get kitty off of us. Think about the similarities between that action and the action of, say, a cat toy being tugged about in her claws. To them, it's just another game, and being violent by nature with their non-lethal weapons, it's a fun one. In order to curb this behaviour, you need to make it less fun.</div>
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The process is painful, but hear me out. If kitty is clawing at you, regrab them — not hard, just essentially to fixate them on what they're doing, and also give them the very real sensation that you are definitely bigger than they are. An interesting thing about the cat psyche is that they don't seem to register size when considering whom they can beat up. That having been accomplished, you're going to let them continue clawing your arm. This doesn't mean you shouldn't vocalize your discontent; enough "ow!" and "hey!", coupled with the grabbing, will have your cat stop. She may look up to you, confused and embarrassed, or she may just get miffed that her tactics aren't working as they usually do, but at this point you'll be able to get her claws out of your skin and you'll keep her with you for a pet and cuddle, so long as she'll tolerate it. This is simple operant conditioning, pairing the fun they usually have with something humiliating or uncomfortable, and then rewarding them for ceasing the humiliating and uncomfortable thing while simultaneously showing them another activity to enjoy with you. The change will not happen overnight, and may take weeks, even months of this depending on the stubbornness of your cat, past trauma, intelligence, and your own skill, but I've seen it succeed many times.<br />
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The other reason cats are violent, though, is because they're afraid. Generally, this takes a very different form, and rather than grabbing and clawing for long periods it's a quick grab and kick, usually with some angry vocalizations, or else just lashing out. Acutely angry or afraid cats will often jump at faces. While some cats that are playing may employ hit and run tactics, smacking or scratching you, and running away, only to come back and try the same thing again, angry or afraid cats will avoid you if they can. If this is the reason for your cat's violence, you need to get them into a comfortable situation in which they won't have a choice but to be with you.</div>
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This is also the treatment for anxious cats that I've found works well: Live intensely with your cat for a period of time. That is, keep her in your room with good food, water, litter pan, cushions, catnip, and anything else that might help them feel comfortable, <b>except</b> for hiding places. The reasoning behind anxiety in both cats and humans is ultimately the same: we have a stimulus that gives us anxiety and our escape from that stimulus exacerbates it, because we are conditioning ourselves to fear it more. Cats are very, very good at escape, so they are very good at being anxious. In this treatment, you are preventing your cat from escaping you. It may be extremely traumatic for them; depending on their level of anxiety, usually past abuse, she may hiss and spit every time you move, search desperately for an escape route, even urinate on the floor, but you need to be consistent and give your cat as much attention as you can while still attending your basic human needs likely for several days on end. Over time, and the key term here is <i>graduated exposure</i>, try to pet and cuddle her; like with the violence-for-play method, when she lashes out at you, however much you may bleed, just let her until you can scritch her ears, hold her, or find some other way of making her feel physically good, which will calm her down. Ideally, only let her go when she seems calm, and wants to get to a different spot for her own comfort rather than because she's afraid, although you may have to try a few times to get to this level. If you are not able to, ensure your cat is not getting away from you because she escaped; rather, be sure it's on equal terms. For instance, you may reach out to pet her and she may jump at your hand and slash it immediately, backing away and snarling. You want to continue advancing in this case, and just get to the point where you can gently scritch her cheek, and then move away, having succeeded in your goal. There's a lot of sacrifice to be made here in terms of your own physical pain and scarring, but you retreating from her self-defence is just another form of letting her escape and build her anxiety further. Throughout the entire process you want to be very verbal with your cat, using a sweet, soft tone. This ultimately may sound borderline psychologically abusive, and you definitely need to have the heart for it, but this exposure is crucial. Ideally, you want to keep this up until kitty can lie contentedly on your bed as you get into it, and visibly appreciate petting without any violent preamble.<br />
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Cats are an enigmatic species; we've lived with them for thousands of years and we still don't quite understand them. And they like it that way, being the shy kid in the back of the room that no one quite gets and fewer people still will even try. But as people who love our cats it's our duty to understand them whether they help us along or not, to develop that relationship between cat and human, and make their lives as happy as they can be. Best of luck.</div>
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J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-72220766365564010892016-06-19T01:43:00.000-06:002016-06-19T01:43:03.500-06:00Cat Communication<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In general, people don't bother with their cats too much. It sounds very distasteful to say, but it's true: We think of our cats as rather asocial animals, who can generally take or leave us, and when they take us they may well just leave us three minutes later, until the next time we're busy enough that we're worth bothering. Cats are assholes, we say.<br />
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I, obviously, feel very strongly against this. Cats can be very sociable, loving, even needy as any dog you might find if they're given the attention and the respect, and their communicative needs are met. Dogs, though they aren't anymore, originally came from pack animals, and are still naturally more gregarious than cats are. We, as humans, can sympathize with this, and so we have an easier time communicating with them. Cats, on the other hand, are nocturnal, less interested in consistent, close proximity, and prefer the one on one. This doesn't mean they have fewer social needs, only that their social needs are different. They're the introverts of the animal world, and a common misconception about introversion is that it means you simply don't like people. Introverts don't like crowds, don't like strangers, but the few people that they do like they become very attached to, and require them in their lives more than extroverts might rely on their own friends. Cats are like this.<br />
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So no, don't assume kitty is fine if you leave home for a week and they have no one to interact with. You may come home and they seem to ignore you, but this is because cats have a more complex social mind in some ways in comparison to dogs: they have the capability to quietly resent, they are vengeful, they can be embarrassed. Have you ever seen kitty do something stupid, like slip across a kitchen floor chasing a bug only to collide with a counter, and you laugh, and they stalk off to face away from you, licking themselves? Their humiliation looks a lot like ours, and so do their feelings of being abandoned. They haven't forgotten you when you get home after that long trip, they just aren't very happy that you left them alone in the first place. Cats isolating themselves, whether in humiliation or sickness or other upset, is a survival mechanism.<br />
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Cats also listen very attentively to verbal communication. Like the other forms of concealment or deceit listed above, they often <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2349770/Cats-really-CAN-understand-owners-voices--just-act-aloof-form-survival.html">know very well</a> what we want them to do or are telling them, but ignore us intentionally. If one develops a strong relationship with a cat, they may well tear this barrier down, as my own has, and react to your wants and needs almost implicitly. In return, cats also have a huge range of their own verbal expressions, highlighting how important verbalization is to them. The more you talk to your cat, the more they'll talk back!<br />
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Cats have somewhere between thirty and upwards of one hundred distinct vocalizations, depending on one's source. This is actually far more than dogs have, which is somewhere in the teens. For comparison, the greatest number of distinct sounds in a human language is 141 at most. Coupled with body language, this means a cat can express an awful lot with little effort.<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>A content cat will have her ears forward, her eyes almond-shaped, and her whiskers down and forward in what I like to call a 'cat smile', since like a human smile it uses muscles in the cheeks. The tail will be relatively still, perhaps just flicking at the tip, back and forth like a pendulum. Content cats obviously will purr, but if you're talking to them and petting them, especially if they're pacing about while you do so so that you can get to their favourite places, they may give short little chirping noises or bubbling sounds from their throat. A very good way to see a content cat though, apart from all this, is the slow-blink. A lot of people see this as them being snobby, and in humans this is a rather self-important expression, but in cats they're telling you that they're happy where they are and they appreciate your presence. Cats will also rub against things when they're happy, and contrary to popular belief, this isn't them declaring your desk or your leg as their property, it's just communication like everything else.</li>
<li>An excited cat will have a more rapidly flicking tail. People usually note that an active tail in a cat generally means they're annoyed or angry, but an excited cat's tail may be all over the place as well. She'll be moving around a lot more, and may even look agitated, but the facial expression will mirror their content state, especially in the ears and the whiskers. She may vocalize much more, especially if you're vocalizing back to her, with loud purring and meowing.</li>
<li>An annoyed cat will be making very few vocalizations at all. She'll have her back to you, perhaps her ears back so that she can hear what you're doing. Her whiskers will be pushed back as well, and her tail will be flicking. In this state, it's best to just leave them alone; as humans, our natural response is to try to cheer them up, but they just want time to themselves.</li>
<li>An angry cat is easy to spot. Ears back, whiskers back, hackles raised. They'll snarl and hiss, and generally be very unpleasant.</li>
<li>A frightened cat is also easy noticed. The facial expression will be similar to an angry one in that the ears and whiskers will be back, but the tail will be still, and the eyes will be wide. A cat under consistent stress may actually purr, just as they do when they're injured. Some have asked me before how one can tell between a purring happy cat or a purring, and it's all in their facial expression and their reaction to stimuli. We all know what a cat looks like when she's enjoying being pet, curling her body against your hand; a frightened cat won't appreciate attention as overtly, although unless she bristles or moves away from you, comforting her is very advisable.</li>
</ul>
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In general, the way you interact with a cat will be very different from how you interact with a dog or a person. People often lament that they dislike cats but cats in houses always seem to like them; this is because cats enjoy being ignored. Most cats don't enjoy intense physical attention, but even the most casual pet or ear-scritch can make them very happy; if she decides she wants to go somewhere else, do something else, don't follow her. She'll come back on her own. The petting may get more intense, and some cats love being brushed roughly, or having themselves underneath your body, making them feel loved and protected, but one way to almost always engage with your cat is just through verbalization. If you observe cats in the wild, big or small, most of their interactions are very brief physical contact, along with quite a few more vocalizations, often at long distances apart. Tell your cat her name in the right tone and you're guaranteed a cat-smile and a slow-blink.</div>
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J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-1653752159044506712016-06-14T18:39:00.001-06:002016-06-14T18:41:01.550-06:00Canada: Bestiality and What It Entails<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So, a bit of an early update because there's been some news recently: A man accused (and certainly guilty) of molesting his two stepdaughters on 13 counts over the last 10 years was also therein accused of bestiality, as he had reportedly smeared a substance on the girls' genitals to encourage the family dog to lick them there. The court ruled that according to the law, the man was not guilty of bestiality as bestiality specifically requires penetration to take place.<br />
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This issue is rather hard to stomach for me, as I imagine it is for anyone reading, and of course, it has caused an uproar. People seem to have generally forgotten that this man was <i>abusing his daughters for ten years</i> and the highlight of the issue has been the poor dog who was compelled by tastiness to lick someone's private parts. Nowhere do you see anyone discussing the issue of how this could have gone on for ten years, how the wife could not have known about it, how children need to be protected, as the girls were just in their teens (and that's at the time of conviction, I do believe). It's all about the dogs.<br />
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And of course appealing to their sense of reason is useless. Ask people how on earth having a dog lick a body part smothered in peanut butter or what have you, without any force used or any form of coercion beyond the reward, could be exploitative and abusive, and there is no response, only that it's criminal because it involves animals and sex, when in all honesty even the most stalwart anthropomorphizer must admit that the dogs probably in this case don't care a lick (pun fully intended) whether they're lapping at someone's hand or their crotch, beyond the slight difference in flavour. To assume otherwise would be to assume that dogs have some complex sexual culture in the way that human beings living in worlds developed under Abrahamic religions do. It would put them higher in their sexual finickiness than many human cultures all over the world. It's absurd.<br />
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But the public verdict is almost unanimous and everyone hates this man not for being a child molester but for utilizing a dog's taste buds in being such. But there's good news at least for Canadian zoos: Those blowjobs you give your dog, the cute little rubbings and lickings you might give a cat in heat are entirely legal where you live. So despite the idiocy of the public, the intelligence of lawmakers can sometimes win through, and maybe this is a tiny step forward for the rest of us in the western world.<br />
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Article from Vice <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/canadas-ridiculous-ruling-that-oral-sex-with-animals-is-legal-shows-need-for-new-bestiality-laws">here</a>.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-9251425574011424672016-06-12T00:37:00.000-06:002016-06-12T00:37:04.629-06:00Zoophilia and Veganism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's been some time since I've really involved myself in any sort of zoophilic community, the only good one I've ever found still being at knotty.me, but one thing I recall people discussing in places is whether it's moral or not, especially as people who prefer the company of animals over people in matters that go beyond mere introversion, to eat meat and consume other animal products.<br />
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The argument has been made that we as zoos don't just love certain animals, but all animals, and we understand them better than the general population due to both our interest and our proximity to them that we try to maintain, both physically and emotionally. It's been said that anyone who can do that and still feel that they are not morally in the wrong for consuming animals cannot be doing it right.<br />
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I would argue, however, that if we understand our animals the way we say we do, we also understand our own animal nature, which historically has included eating meat as a crucial part of our lifestyle and our development as a species. It may be today that we can exist on certain proteins, synthesized supplements, all from non-animal products, but to me doing this denies some of my basic nature, the same as just giving my cat beef-flavoured supplements would deny hers.<br />
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Morality goes beyond floaty pieces of philosophy, though, and it would come down to whether or not I feel a sort of sympathy for the animals I consume. And I do. Ideally, we would live in a world in which animals and humans are free to live their own lives without interfering with one another without consent. Wild horses would never have gone extinct everywhere outside Mongolia. Bears would leave alone campers. Birds wouldn't get sucked into jet intakes. Unfortunately, that isn't a world we live in, and isn't a world we can live in; humans are taking over and I don't believe it will even be a possibility without a literal apocalypse for us to stop it. So to me, there are two options: The first is that we press the philosophy that animals need to be protected, away from humans, and be allowed to live free lives without our meddling. And this has merit, morally; freedom is good, but unfortunately it often is juxtaposed against safety. If animals as a whole were allowed, and made, to live without human interference, that would also necessitate that they're living without our protection. We already of course see this when we compare the lives of animals within human society versus without; despite our consumption of them, cows, pigs, chickens are not in danger of going extinct, because we measure our consumption. Meanwhile, even though consumption of them has been made completely illegal, many endangered species are only dwindling in number, and continue to dwindle apart from within reservations specifically set aside for them. Imagine, for a moment, if rather than insisting they are wild animals, we managed to domesticate the Amur tiger. They're bred, selected for docile behaviour, and sold as pets. Suddenly they're a business, and now the tiger is nowhere near the brink of extinction.<br />
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But we're talking about slaughtering animals here, not simply keeping them as pets. Let's disregard for a moment the fact that most of the animals consumed in the United States are kept in pretty horrible conditions, and this, I agree needs to change. And it can change, it <i>has</i> changed in other parts of the world, with greater regulation of animal welfare in farming and a decrease in the immense amount of waste that requires the United States to slaughter so many more animals than they should. Let's pretend that we have done that, because it will happen, and that every hamburger is raised free-range, hormone free, and so on. We're still slaughtering these animals, but in the wild, these animals are naturally prey animals as well. Yes, they may perhaps live longer lives out there, but they more often will actually live shorter ones, riddled not only with the promise of eventually being eaten by a predator but also sickness, injury, accident. It's arguable that the ideal possible artificial habitat for cattle is more humane than the wild that would be the only alternative.<br />
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To me, the PETA-style notion of animal liberation is silly. If all animals were free of human influence, we would also be free of theirs, which would be an absolute tragedy, I say not just as a zoophile but as someone who benefits from the fact that dogs were domesticated for hunting, that cats were first used in agriculture, that horses were first bred and raised for not only riding but meat and milk. Cows don't make the best pets in my opinion, having raised them before, but I'm happy nevertheless that they're in it with us, guaranteed survival (at least as their modern, selectively bred incarnation), rather than being bulldozed by the relentless tide of industrialism like the rest of the wilderness. I'd like to see every animal included in human society, humanely, alongside us, and I think if we manage this, we ourselves will become more human in the process, more understanding rather than neglectful or fearful of our nonhuman fellows on this planet.<br />
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So as a member of a historically rather carnivorous species, I will continue to eat meat, but I will also be conscious of where that meat comes from, and how I, as a carnivore, might impact the humanity in the raising of that meat. Am I getting chicken from a factory farm, or is it local, free range? Just how far can the dairy cows who produce my milk move? Do you know the answers to these questions? Eat meat or do not, but if you do, be responsible about it.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-7030119419727065082016-06-05T00:00:00.000-06:002016-06-05T00:00:22.693-06:00Equus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Equus is a play that was composed, like many strange and controversial pieces of media, in 1973. It follows a troubled teenage boy, repressed by his overly dogmatic upbringing, with his feelings for (or about) horses being central to the story and what it represents.<br />
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Like most fiction that deals with individuals with zoosexual proclivities, it primarily uses the attraction as fuel for metaphor. In this case, it's not so much about the perversion, as Alan, the protagonist, never does interact in a sexually explicit way with any horses, but as a representation of something that he has been prevented from, and ultimately an object of worship (as these two things are consistently linked in the play).<br />
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I don't want to discuss the literary elements of the play, although they are definitely here, because I feel it's very dishonest in a lot of ways. It's dishonest scientifically, being one more piece to add to the heap of ones that depict hypnosis for enhanced recall as a valid practice. And it's dishonest in its message, as it opens with the psychiatrist, Dysart, giving the audience the very 70s notion that we perhaps should not be treating troubled teens for fear of giving them "boring" lives in place of their disordered ones, and Dysart remaining a positive and moral figure throughout the play, even to the mutilation in the end. The message is clearly throughout the play meant to be about how Alan has it right, and is just the victim of the tug of war between militant atheism and fear-based evangelism while trying, and being prevented from, finding his own spirituality and worship, naturally tied into sexuality. But it ends with the real-life inspiration for the play, in which he mutilates the object of his worship, and still our benevolent psychiatrist laments that he may yet cure the boy, as if his insanity may still be preferable to a healthy life.<br />
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It's dishonest, of course, about zoophilia as well. Although it is a play meant for a then-modern audience, and its depicted zoosexuality is meant only as a literary element, it still insists upon depicting those with similar feelings about horses as troubled monsters just beneath the skin. The constant shouts and whooping of Alan whenever he comes into contact with them, be it during the nude moonlit ride or the actual blinding of the stabled horses, gives us the impression that while the human side of his sexuality is troubled, and he's socially inept, and he has a horrible, mentally abusive relationship with his parents, the most salient disturbance about him is how he feels about these animals.<br />
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I don't believe anyone who knows how the play ends would see this play as a good one to suggest to a zoophile anyway, but as it was quite successful and even has a modern film adaptation, to me its dishonesty is worth noting here. And we as the zoo community can use this dishonesty to open up a window into the minds of those who don't quite understand us, perhaps don't even realize we exist. That's important when we're looking into acceptance.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-79534775302471061992016-05-29T00:00:00.000-06:002016-05-29T00:00:04.825-06:00It's Now!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Lots of interesting human rights things surrounding sexuality and gender have been going on in the western world, particularly its high seat in the United States. In the last two years, more gender options have appeared on many official documents, same-sex marriage has been legalized, bills passed to protect transgender people from discrimination, and of course the issue with bathroom rights in the US is ongoing. Now more than ever we have a large liberal community, a global community, who are united behind these issues and the liberation of the people they affect.<br />
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My question is, why not us? Perhaps it is a huge leap to go from saying people with penises should be allowed to use the women's washroom, or that mothers should be able to breastfeed their children in restaurants, to the suggestion that perhaps those who have intercourse with animals may not be sick or abusive. But the wonderful thing about this day and age is that we have the internet, and people read what they see on the internet. And if there is vocal support in their camp — if other Bernie Sanders liberals are giving things their Like and sharing on Facebook with a captioned #damnright — people follow. It's what people do.<br />
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But the issues are flowing like cheap beer on campus, and if we want to ride this train of social libertarianism in the most conservative country in the English-speaking world, we need to start acting now. Communities of people who want their rights acknowledged, who don't want to be worried about blackmail or arrest for the love they share with their animals, need to start popping up and going public on the internet. I'm not talking about names; we can use handles, just as we have done for decades now, and we can continue using our security so that if someone creates #zoogate we needn't worry about being leaked. What we need isn't organization, although that's part of it; what we need is numbers, and to get the word out to one another so that people can see what those numbers are. That, and reasonable dialogue, using phrases like "safe space" and "government out of my bedroom" will draw the positive attention we need.<br />
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And there will be negative attention. A lot of it. What needs to be done is to simply ignore it, and acknowledge any allies we might receive very strongly. It's the allies that will make the difference here, and as soon as we start alienating them, we cripple any movement that might be started here.<br />
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Think about it. Talk about it. Our timing is right, and it's time to organize.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-38964327217447085972016-05-22T00:00:00.000-06:002016-05-22T00:00:04.807-06:00Bear<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Time for another review! And finally, it's a good one: This is an excellent book I have for some reason never been aware of until now. It's a Canadian piece written in the 70s by second-wave feminist Marian Engel about a Toronto women made to live out in the boondocks, where she meets and eventually falls in love with — you guessed it — a tame bear.<br />
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First of all, let me get the not-so-zoo stuff out of the way: It's a really well-written book. At first it may come across as a bit purple; it starts with the same tired and frustrated young city woman undergoing major changes in her life. The author does this on purpose, saying that she originally just wanted to write pornography, and then a bear came into the picture so she went with it, in typical style of writers. But it picks up, and a nice array of literary tools are used throughout the story to deliver a strong message just beneath the surface of the plot regarding the liberation of women's sexuality, and outside the sphere of feminism (or is it?) the rediscovery of what is natural and wild, beyond the scope of the niches society fits us into.<br />
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Some critics have toted it as a very spiritual book, but to me it's quite the opposite: with its length and its style, it reads like a significantly less chaste Paulo Coelho, but it actually paints a rather believable and down to earth story. If anything it's about pulling the wool away from one's eyes and just embracing the simple, almost a sort of nihilism, rather than a spiritual feeling or doctrine.<br />
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That realism extends to the zoophilic aspect, too: the bear's actions are in my experience very believable, right up to the ending, if not tragic then simultaneously disappointing and liberating in all the best ways. It doesn't ever disparage or abuse, and indeed even glorifies the zoophilic actions and feelings at hand, and really, I think some of us zoos could learn a thing or two about our relationships with animals from this book, and help bring us into a more moderate state of mind.<br />
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I really can't recommend this book strongly enough, not only to zoophiles but also to feminists, real libertarians, and anyone who enjoys good literature. It's erotic, but doesn't revel in it, and instead uses that eroticism to teach us things about our own existence and personal liberation in measure.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-46558008190101282392016-05-20T01:53:00.000-06:002016-05-20T01:53:18.253-06:00Hello!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's been over two years since I've updated this thing. My life has been quite hectic during that time, and I've just had more things to do in developing myself than paying attention to the side of me that's wont to fall in love with quadrupeds. But I'm going to stockpile some posts, so stay tuned, tell your friends, as at least some of them should be quite interesting.<br />
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This one, however, will have no content at all but to let you all know that I'm alive, and tell you what being me has been like for the last little while. I'm going through something of a career change; anyone in mental health who's making less than six figures will tell you that it gets very draining when done for years, not necessarily because of the clients but because of your fellow professionals. Nothing is remotely set in stone yet but I may have to take out the "mental health professional" bit on that sidebar! Perhaps a little academic credit lost when it comes to the nature of the blog, but to me, certainly worth it if I can find something that won't see me losing so much hair.<br />
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Something has occurred that has helped me keep that hair in, however, and that is this: I've gotten married. To a human, even. In fact, my beautiful genius of a wife's interests swing very much in the same way as mine, so you may be hearing a little about her end of things in the future.<br />
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So the next few posts will be about entertainment and media, as although I've been on a blogging hiatus I certainly haven't been on a reading one. After that, who knows? See you soon.<br />
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JD</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-50863622297021542882013-07-12T22:35:00.000-06:002013-07-13T17:42:29.842-06:00Passion in the Desert<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This film has been sitting in front of me literally for two years. Has anyone ever put off seeing something so relevant to their interests for so long? Why would I do that? Quite simply, it's because I was introduced to the film via its Wikipedia entry, and I knew, for absolute certain after reading the plot synopsis, that I would cry at the end.<br />
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<b>SPOILER WARNING!</b> Because this film is so very relevant to this blog's main topic, and because of my feelings about it, I'm not going to skirt around plot events, so if you haven't seen the film, want to see the film, and want things to be a surprise, read no further. That having been said, if you want a plot synopsis, I recommend mine over Wikipedia's, which is incorrect in several parts and, frankly, very cold in the rest.<br />
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Also, I totally did cry at the end.<br />
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<i>Passion in the Desert</i> opens with relative innocence, taking place in Egypt as Napoleon Bonaparte's armies march across it in an effort to wrest it from the hands of the Arabs. The protagonist is a French soldier by the name of Augustin Robert, who seems quite unremarkable apart from his current duty, which is to escort artist Jean-Michel Venture de Paris ("Venture"), who despite his name is most definitely from the Middle East and so is very mistrusted by the other French soldiers.<br />
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When one first sees the movie, one's inclined to think that this eccentric painter may be the focal point of the film: when the two are separated from their unit during a Mamaluk attack, he drives our poor protagonist half-mad with his obsessive depiction of the desert - the natural and cultural world of Egypt alike even as they try to survive in the desolate environment, climaxing when the old idiot uses the last of their drinking water to mix his paints. Unable to continue, Venture stays behind at a pair of dead trees and, after being assured by Augustin that he'd be picked up once the soldier had found the Nile, promptly drinks down his paints with lead-induced ecstasy.<br />
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Augustin doesn't find the Nile, and as a consequence, those who are particularly fond of horses might want to be wary of a certain scene in which he is forced to put his steed down (at the same instant a giggling Venture does himself). It's at this point the real crawling through the desert begins, until he finds a Bedouin camp. He steals water from a veiled and beaded woman, whom in his delirium he believes a sorceress and does what any of us would do in his shoes: he quickly takes his knife to her hair and jets with the whole tribe in pursuit behind him.<br />
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He finds an ancient temple and hides there as night falls, and his superstitious assailants leave him to be picked clean by the jinn - malevolent spirits who appear as anything, from humans to animals to wisps of sand. The concept of the jinn is one revisited throughout the film, particularly in animal form, to, of course, foreshadow our protagonist meeting one.<br />
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That is, as he turns in for the night, he finds himself bunking in the same sandstone room as a leopardess. She ignores him entirely as he nearly wets himself and prepares for the inevitable confrontation.<br />
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It comes, but not to him: in the morning, when one of the Bedouins comes looking for him, sling in hand, the leopardess gives the Frenchman a nuzzle and goes out to hunt his attacker. From this point on, we have a slow but steady movement from a supposed predator-prey relationship between Augustin and the cat, to the point that, in his hunger, he steals the remnants of a kill (a deer this time, to our relief) from her - which she is more than happy to share.<br />
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Before too many more cuts, we have the absolute sweetest scene I have ever seen in a film before: he's stroking this fully-grown leopard, to rubbing her ears, caressing her chest; she washes his hair and ears, then his face, and soon enough he's tossed away his inhibition and kisses her back - on the face, the lips, until he's cuddling her passionately and licking with his own tongue her head and neck. The scene starts at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYoCCQHJJ5A&t=56m0s">56:00</a> on the nose in the video above.<br />
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At this point, I found three things: firstly, that this is beyond doubt an art film. Secondly, that I have just witnessed the most loving and honest zoophilic scene that I ever have in my life. Thirdly, that I just witnessed said scene on a film that is an hour and a half long, has big-name reviews, and is available on DVD.<br />
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The rest of the film - a healthy portion - is about the energetic, loving relationship between soldier and leopardess (whom he calls Simoom). For those wondering, there is never anything explicitly sexual between them, but a turning point in the film is when Augustin discovers Simoom playing and presumably mating (in what is at once a very catlike and very playful and humanly relatable fashion) and becomes visibly jealous. She runs off, and in an effort to win back his lover her strips what's left of his uniform to decorate himself with mud and sand to look like, of course, a leopard. It's difficult to say this while keeping a straight face, but even this scene is in my opinion done believably. Most certainly it depicts the soldier's madness, but it's still not a madness that's depicted as explicitly negative. It's a desperation that comes to a head when Augustin's unit enters the area, and the lovesick, rosetted soldier has to choose between his own kind and his feline companion as the former takes aim at the latter. The tension ends with a boulder hurled at the young soldier's terrified skull and a snarl from a half-dressed Augustin to a cheery Simoom: "Where have you been?!"<br />
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Fed up, Augustin cleans himself up and dresses for the first time in however long, and prepares a makeshift rope to tie Simoom to a pillar as he makes his departure back to civilization, protesting to her that he does not want to be a deserter. Simoom, however, takes offence that he'd desert her for his old comrades, breaks the rope and gives chase. In his terror, realized from all that time before when he was certain Simoom would kill him, Augustin stabs his lover in the chest as she pounces on him, and kills her. Horrified with himself and weeping terribly, he turns blankly to the desert, cradling the corpse of the leopardess in his arms, to aimlessly walk the sands until at last he collapses, thus ending the film.<br />
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There are some neat literary things done in this film. The very veiled foreshadowing of the artist Venture's mania, love of the desert, and self-imposed death against Augustin's own madness, infatuation and (near) death in the end. The dead pair of trees that they come to a second time, the use of jinn as a metaphor all lend themselves well to an art film. And like its source, its finale very nicely symbolizes one of the most prominent tragedies: that of the conflict between love and mistrust.<br />
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I also appreciate the story itself, of course. Some critics have rated it low because, as I've found in my life people are wont to do, they can't stand the idea that a human and a wild animal can get along. From both personal experience and from stories like that of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamunyak">Kamunyak</a>, I know that animals can have compassion for other creatures, sometimes without any clear reason, and sometimes even for animals they would normally be the enemy of. I know at least someone is going to laugh at me for this, but I find the story to be wholly believable. (And it should be: the original short story was written by Balzac, who championed naturalism in writing).<br />
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The reason I want to talk about this here, though, is because of all the films, short and long, about zoophilia and zoosexuality that I've reviewed: <a href="http://zoopoint.blogspot.ca/2012/11/a-tale-of-forbidden-love.html"><i>A Tale of Forbidden Love</i></a>, <a href="http://zoopoint.blogspot.ca/2011/11/coming-soon.html"><i>COMING SOON</i></a>, and others that I haven't like <i>Equus</i> and <i>Animal Passions</i>, despite not even being a documentary it paints the most accurate portrait of zoophilia. It doesn't play it for laughs like so many do, or demonize it like <i>Equus</i> does, or represent it as a cold sexual fetish as do <i>COMING SOON</i> and <i>Animal Passions</i>: it's a romance, and a beautiful one. It doesn't anthropomorphize the animal but depicts the relationship in all its beauty as well as all its strangeness. Indeed, I also found it nearly unique in realistic animal films (<i>Old Yeller</i>, etc.) in how little it anthropomorphizes the actions of the central non-human: there's never even the classic confused head-cock. Also interesting is that the animal (and the actor) are never computer-generated (though Simoom is played by two different cats, one of whom is actually male), so there's an earthy realism there even in production that's missing from so many modern films.<br />
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What all this means to me is that it's entirely possible for one to successfully depict zoophilia for the masses and do so successfully artistically while actually being fair to individuals like us who might just fall in love ourselves with the creature on-screen. I'd highly recommend this film for any zoos or zoo-sympathizers out there; although an art film and a little slow at times, it was made with a lot of love (the director put $5 million in from her own pocket) and is truly a diamond in the rough.<br />
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And with that, here's hoping that we can find more beautiful depictions of interspecies romance out there, and that more will continue to be made. Though I'm not sure if she will or won't appreciate the sentiment, Zoopoint salutes director/producer/writer Lavinia Currier for this lovely film.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-56501265908668925402013-07-05T20:14:00.000-06:002013-07-06T23:25:08.091-06:00Romance?The other day, I was approached by a close friend about zoophilia. She knows about my sexuality and had a simple question for me: Doesn't it get lonely? This is a subject that comes up a lot both by zoos and allies. A relationship in which you can't communicate using language, where you can't bring up complex topics or go to a fancy dinner or even say the words "I love you" seems to many, not unjustifiably, to be hardly worth calling a relationship at all. And, looking back at this blog after a long hiatus and seeing it being almost purely read by people who I'd <i>like</i> to think are legitimately interested in pleasuring/relieving their female feline friends but are probably just looking for images and videos that they will not find on this blog or hopefully anywhere else ever, I think this topic is a good one to bring up.<br />
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My response to my friend might have seemed a little cynical. I've been in love both with humans and with animals in my life, and while there are pros and cons to both, I don't believe one is superior to the other, and here's why: while a relationship between two humans does indeed have all of those riveting aspects about it, and I particularly myself enjoy sweet nothings and little romantic back-and-forths, it's precisely the same capabilities humans have that make relationships between them at the same time less communicative.<br />
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When using language to communicate, there are all sorts of things that can go wrong. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle#Grice.27s_Maxims">Grice's Maxims</a> are, in essence, a list of things that cause communication to fail: lying, changing the subject, oversaturation of information, obscurity, etc. These things, unfortunately, also exist within love, and if anything, exist <i>more</i> in romantic exchanges than elsewhere due to the strong culture of taboos, expectations, implications, etc. most of the world has when it comes to love. We are actually <i>required</i> to deceive our romantic partners and potential romantic partners to avoid coming across as cold or oversexed, unsympathetic or clingy, to avoid commitment while still seeming committed, and so on and so forth. Examples range from "playing hard to get" to consenting to sex despite not wanting it; we're all very familiar with the deception that goes on in romance to the extent that we all do it without even thinking about it: think of the meaning behind common little deceptions like "X really isn't a big deal" or "Yes, I really enjoyed Y".<br />
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Love with an animal, on the other hand, is very forthright: from the perspective of the non-human: if they don't want to be with their partner, they don't, and they do if they do. If they want sex, they make that extremely clear; if they don't, they make that equally clear. They make both their platonic adoration and physical pleasure well-known without restraint, and won't hesitate to make you aware of the opposite either. They don't find mates to please their parents, to get revenge on an old lover, or because they feel sorry for someone. So a human who falls in love with an animal is in a very real sense freed from those, in my opinion ridiculous, cultural constraints around romance.<br />
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So when I see a zoophile and his or her lover, my heart automatically melts. I see a very happy and affectionate dog, cat, horse, and think, if I can say so without sounding sappy, that that's the purest love right there. No holds barred, no secrets kept or lies told; whether there's a sexual relationship there or not, you know for certain there's love. On the other hand, when I see a couple kissing on the street, holding hands, I can't help but look at their expressions. Once in a while I get to talk to them. Sometimes, certainly, I'm convinced that the two are very true to one another and to their relationship, and walk away feeling my heart warmed. Much of the time, though, I can only think of a candle that someone's covered in diesel: it's going to blaze bright and hot, but it's going to burn out fast and, more importantly, it's going to smell awful: it's a couple that is fundamentally dishonest with one another and is formed by two people searching for love while missing the point of love in the first place. It's a reason the divorce rate is so high in many countries, and I've never heard of a zoophile falling out of love or otherwise having emotional difficulties related to their partnerships.<br />
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This isn't to belittle anthrosexual romance at all. After all, those who are lucky enough to find that individual with whom they can share a completely open and loving relationship have found someone they can understand implicitly. As long as they're together, they'll never be lonely, while a zoophile, even one with a very adoring mutual relationship with their lover, will still of course want close human friendships to fill that gap (or, at least, they should). But just as an anthrosexual can find that truly special someone, a zoophile can make those very close friends. It's two different approaches towards the same goal. The only difference is how they are viewed by greater society.J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-60850190004173654812013-02-05T18:58:00.000-07:002013-07-06T00:48:49.552-06:00More from ZETAThis will be a short post because I have time but not a whole lot of it. I was notified by an active member of the German zoo rights group ZETA a week beforehand that they were planning on organizing a public screening of <i>COMING SOON</i> as well as a public talk from one (modern) EFA member, Karel, in Berlin. For <a href="http://zoopoint.blogspot.com/2011/11/coming-soon.html">reasons</a> I have discussed before, I vehemently warned my contact against this, but was updated on Friday, after the demonstration, and assured that the film was introduced by Karel as being wholly a work of fiction. Furthermore, the twenty members of the public who attended the screening, who were not favourably disposed towards upon arriving, left stating in a poll that they were much more likely to be more empathetic towards zoophiles.<br />
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Two ZETA members also gave an <a href="http://www.taz.de/Zoophile-ueber-ihre-Leidenschaft/!110205/">interview</a> (German) on Sunday.<br />
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All in all, however critical I may be of everything that goes on, I must salute ZETA for stepping up and changing minds across Germany and hopefully, soon, across the world. I hope that their actions will inspire other groups in other nations to stand up and ignite crucial debates.<br />
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<a href="http://www.thelocal.de/society/20130201-47711.html#.URa3IJMseQG">The Local</a><br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/world/europe/german-legislators-vote-to-outlaw-bestiality.html?_r=3&">NYT</a>J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-13089914323920679602012-12-07T17:18:00.000-07:002012-12-20T16:13:04.447-07:00Zoophilia and PedophiliaThis is another topic I touched on in <a href="http://zoopoint.blogspot.com/2012/05/animals-can-consent.html">another post</a>, a long time ago, but given the amount of discussion I've had on it recently I feel I ought to talk more about it.<br />
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Almost invariably, like some sort of sexual Godwin's Law, when debating with someone about the morality of zoosexuality my opponent will claim that zooerasty (or "be(a)stiality" as it is far more often termed, which as far as I'm concerned is like calling anal sex "assrape") is just the same as pederasty because animals, like children, have no concept of sex and are too uneducated to appropriately respond to it.<br />
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There are many arguments against this. Most shouldn't be necessary: any ethologist, comparative psychologist, or animal breeder will know from study or observation that animals frequently proposition others for sex, have sex, react favourably towards sex, and eventually come back again for more sex. Sex can even be used as a <a href="http://animalbehaviour.net/ClassicalConditioning.htm">reward stimulus</a> in Pavlovian conditioning. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02453.x/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+on+15+December+from+10%3A00-12%3A00+GMT+%2805%3A00-07%3A00+EST%29+for+essential+maintenance">Humans too</a>. And anyone with any knowledge of natural selection would surmise that if every animal on the planet apart from humans was not capable of showing sexual readiness, propositioning others for sex, and enjoying sex, then biodiversity would be very slim indeed. And this enjoyment of sex is definitely not limited to same-species intercourse.<br />
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But let's assume correctly that these assertions are not enough for many people, who believe that the reason children should not have sex with adults, and therefore the reason animals should not have sex with humans, is because children do not have the mental capacity to understand it. This is true, but what these individuals do not realize is that this truth does not extend to mature animals, and that this fact is readily observable. The easiest way to find the onset of sexual interest is to examine sex hormone levels. These hormones are necessary not just directly to the sex drive but also to the development of various somatic and neurological structures. We can actually see a child's brain readying itself for sexual intercourse, and this does not take place until puberty. The same goes for any mammal, and the chemicals (mainly estrogen and testosterone) and brain structures (especially the hypothalamus and other subcortical structures in the forebrain, such as the pituitary gland, nucleus accumbens, and caudate nucleus) involved are universal, with only slight changes to relevant structures and none suggesting any human exceptionalism.<br />
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<img src="http://kallmanns.org/files/images/kalfig4.gif" />
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There have been organizations of pedophiles who have suggested otherwise. Perhaps most famous is the Party for Neighbourly Love, Freedom, and Diversity (<i>Partij voor Naastenliefde, Vrijheid en Diversiteit</i>) in the Netherlands, in existence from 2006-2010. It <a href="http://www.pnvd.nl/EN_Prog_May_2008.html">advocated</a> initially for a drastic reduction of age-of-consent and eventually its elimination, and it and other organizations have released pamphlets, for adults and children, with the suggestion that pre-pubescent youth can desire and even frequently proposition adults for sex. Is this any different from what zoosexuals say about animals?<br />
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I would naturally argue that it is. Active pedophiles tend to view entirely innocuous gestures as sexual proposition: an eight-year-old girl does a headstand and inadvertently shows her panties, or a six-year-old boy urinates at a campground, unaware or uncaring of his visibility. Children themselves, of course, don't respond sexually when they see one another's undergarments, and even were adults to perform them, these gestures would never be recognized as sexual overtures. The assumption would then have to be that not only are children capable of making such overtures, but have a far more complex social and sexual mind than do their post-pubescent counterparts that belies the fact that they may not get why peeing in public should be embarrassing.<br />
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It is sometimes suggested that prepubescent children masturbate or even engage in sexual conduct with one another, but this is a misrepresentation: while children may touch themselves, or touch one another in what is called "sex play" by developmental psychologists, these never result in orgasm, nor do they ever result in consistent sexual attention. It is best regarded as exploratory, in the same fashion that a seven-year-old child who plays around with the terminal of a Linux box is not intending to learn to <i>superdo</i> his way into becoming a hacking sensation. He's just curious about what's going on.<br />
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Animals are entirely different: the signals they give off, whether they be humping, displaying of genitalia, or other relevant actions, are unmistakably sexual in nature and could not conceivably be perceived to mean anything else. As expected, animals respond sexually to one another when presented with these signals. And unlike children, and like adult humans, they seem to benefit from consensual sexual intercourse physically and psychologically, whether their partner is of their own species or not. It should be noted that there are many long-term physical and psychological consequences for victims of child sex abuse; indeed, the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0193953X05701453">majority</a> of individuals diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder are victims of child sex abuse.<br />
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Finally, there is the question of authority. This, I think, is best answered with observation and common sense: while a child, even if he or she really does not want to do something, such as going to school, washing the dishes, or eating their broccoli, they will usually do so when told to by an adult, especially one with authority, such as a parent or a teacher. This is because we as humans have a very developed social intelligence; we have language, we have culture as a result, and we have very complex social norms that often even supercede basic needs and conditioning: that child will eat his broccoli even if it makes him vomit later, because his mother told him to.<br />
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Anyone with an animal, on the other hand, even an animal traditionally regarded as very loyal, like a dog, will know that there are many things they will simply not do without a fight no matter how much they seem to dote on you otherwise. Whether it be going to the vet, going outside when it's cold out, or swallowing a pill, their resistance is clear even if they eventually give in. With animals such as cats or horses, this resistance is even more clear, and more likely to result in injury to your person. While there may be a social hierarchy in the mind of your animal, then, the importance of that power you have over them is not nearly as important as their basic needs to not be ill, not be cold, or indeed, not be used or abused sexually. Any animal, particularly a female, will make it incredibly clear that she is not in the mood for sexual intercourse, regardless of how much she loves you: as an adult, she knows what it is, and knows that now is not the time, and that knowledge is more important than any thought that you might take away her walk privileges.<br />
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Which brings up the notion that an animal will jump to these conclusions in the first place: we don't tend to punish our animals for resisting when we want them to go outside, or take a pill. We just make them go outside, or take the pill. This is of course different for children: "If you don't stop whining and eat your greens, you won't have TV for a week," isn't that uncommon of a statement. Children are trained early on to do everything their parents, and other authority figures, want, for fear of punishment. We are far more lenient on our animals, so why should an animal ever even imagine that should they not consent to sex with us that something bad will happen? If anything, this is much more likely to happen with our (adult!) human partners, who have been educated socially to believe that sex is necessary for a stable relationship. To imagine that animals have any such concept is, frankly, to afford them some very hefty intuition about how our modern human culture is organized. This is not to say that we do not have some level of control over the lives of our animals, and therefore responsibility particularly to take care of them and to ensure they act appropriately in the public space, it is not to all the same extents as children with developing biology and views of the world.<br />
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That's the end of my argument. This took a lot of time out of a day that maybe should have been focused on something that will be productive in my career or for my family, given the time of year (Happy Holidays, zetas & friends!) but given the discussion that has been happening recently, I really felt I needed to update the blog again.<br />
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I would just like to finish on one note: despite the abuse and lunacy propagated by the most visible of pedophiles, I believe the average pedophile is someone to be pitied. The PNVD actually advocated for a ban of zooerasty in the Netherlands, interestingly enough, all the while proclaiming that they should be allowed to have sex with prepubescent children; however, the large majority of pedophiles are not only fully aware that pederasty is grievous abuse, but are indeed terrified and often traumatized by the idea that they may someday lose control and be perpetrators of such abuse. They have nowhere to turn in our current social system, and even mental health professionals that are willing and capable of assisting pedophiles are few and far between. So while it has nothing at all to do with zoosexuality, I would like to appeal to the readers of this blog to empathize more with those sad individuals who are cursed with a sexual attraction to prepubescent youth. It is only through this empathy, and the resulting support, that these individuals can be helped, and thus child sex abuse prevented for the future. Thank you.J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-89589625397278330052012-11-30T01:15:00.000-07:002012-12-09T03:29:21.403-07:00ZETA Responds to Anti-Zoosexuality Law<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/germany-plans-to-outlaw-sex-with-animals-a-869402.html">http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/germany-plans-to-outlaw-sex-with-animals-a-869402.html</a>
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Many of you may be familiar with the law that is being tossed around German parliament at the moment, intending to re-criminalize sex with animals. I personally know little about what is going on there, which I suppose helps anyone intent on discovering who I am as they now know that I am either not German or else I am very sneaky.<br />
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In any case, though, while this news is absolutely terrible for any zoos in Germany -- and really, eventually, all of Europe -- it does come with a hefty silver lining: zoo rights group ZETA is showing its face and opposing the movement.<br />
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A month or two prior to today, I had contact with a member of ZETA via email. We had an excellent discussion about some sensitive topics, and particularly how best to achieve greater tolerance from the public. Now, I am thrilled to hear that, at least to some extent, they are putting themselves into action when they are most needed.<br />
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Unfortunately, it seems sometimes their message is being taken the wrong way by people. <a href="http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/a-real-animal-lover-meet-the-man-fighting-to-keep-bestiality-legal-in-germany/zoophilism-germany-animals-sodomy-study/c3s10275/#.ULuf3ZPZeSr">This article</a> spends much of its time relating the group to people running sex farms and painting their dogs' claws with nail polish. Another logical fallacy comes in when they quote a vet who notes that it is abusive for dogs to have sex outside of their heat cycles, purely because they are heat cycles (to which we, as enlightened individuals, respond, "So <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394562/">women</a> can only have sex for a few days per month?")<br />
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So it seems there is a ways to go: what needs to be done is for a solid line to be drawn. We can't be viewed as people who just think sex with animals is great and let's all be free and use the critters however we please. We need to let the public know that we hate sex farms and abusers, if anything, even more than they do. A common enemy is the best way to forge an alliance; the public just needs to be shown that this enemy exists, and it's not us.<br />
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I also think that more than one person -- as it is now -- need to get their face out there. Write to news stations or to relevant politicians who are likely to be sympathetic. Tell people your story. It's mentioned again and again in these articles just how common zoosexuality is, but it's also implied again and again that all or almost all of these individuals are delusional and selfish animal abusers. People don't go looking for the truth in this incredibly taboo area; they want to stay as far from it as possible and continue hating it, so we really do need to get up in their faces ourselves at this crucial time.<br />
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<a href="http://www.zeta-verein.de/en/">ZETA's website</a>.<br />
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Dec 9, 2012: <a href="http://www.vice.com/read/bestiality-is-still-legal-in-germany-but-not-for-long">A fantastic interview by Mr Kiok.</a>J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-76917998076296097172012-11-03T00:21:00.000-06:002013-07-06T00:47:13.129-06:00A Tale of Forbidden Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/kaJt4OdrzHw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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This video, with a whopping ~1,000 views, has got a bit of attention within the zoo community. So in an effort to break semi-permanently from my hiatus, I am going to talk about it.<br />
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A brief synopsis: A man, in a voice-over, talks about his romantic love for his dog, who looks to be a golden lab for you canine aficionados out there. It's all very sweet, quite melancholy with a bit of humour to it, and though the kissing scene has been noted even by several dog lovers I know/read as really weird and awkward, its heart seems to be in the right place as this couple reclines in simple enjoyment of their secret romance. In the end, though, come the police and misguided animal welfare activists to take away the pooch, before a woman walking her dog proclaims the man a "dog fucker" followed by a cut to the credits. The film isn't long, though, so I still recommend you watch it so you can understand what I'm about to say about it.<br />
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I know I'm kind of an inflammatory guy; my harsh remarks against <i>COMING SOON</i> (which, by the way, does turn out to be a total hoax; the website for EFA was built after the video and the organization itself does not exist originally, so there) got me my first external links. But I'm not going to completely tear apart <i>Forbidden Love</i>. It does paint a picture of a scene not significantly departed from reality. It shows a mutual, loving relationship that, if a little, almost imperceptibly strange sometimes, seems legitimate enough. Most importantly, it depicts a story of romance that is inherently tragic right from the beginning: something that is misunderstood, forcibly covert, and inevitably doomed, and tries to tug at the heartstrings of the viewers and gain their sympathy. Overall, for the majority of the film, it at least resembles a piece I might show a visually-oriented and empathetic person who is critical of zoophilia.<br />
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But then there is the ending. The ending that makes you realize that this is not a film made to actually break new barriers, or challenge mindsets or educate or whatever the above might imply. It was made entirely for the sake of <a href="http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/story/a_tale_of_forbidden_love/">art</a>, and in this case, the genre is a very dry and hollow comedy that adores its own internal irony: after all the amour, the suspense, the pleading and the heartbreak, there comes an old lady scowling and accusing with the utmost exaggerated blatancy, "Dog fucker!" while her tiny puppy hides behind her legs, and the credits roll to a strange peppy tune. The intent is to make fun of the rest of the film, and to make fun of the audience in doing so: to say, "Hey, you weren't just feeling sorry for an animal abuser, were you? Sick!" To emphasize this profanity, there are the variety of archaic images depicting zooerasty flashing on the screen as the credits roll, which nearly everyone expressing themselves in the comments noticed. As far as the irony goes, I feel that it for the most part went over the heads of the audience, although a few do catch it and even the publisher on YouTube (who was not involved in the creation of the film) places it in the category of "Comedy".<br />
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So personally, I feel that this video is not the big break that some have seen it as. Yes, it puts zoophilia on the table, but at its core, even if it goes unnoticed, it still approaches it in the same way it always is: as the butt of a joke. Between that and documentaries with nothing but lies, or the wrong sorts of people represented, we have a long way to go before zoos are ever given anything that can be called a fair chance in mass media. But that's just my opinion.J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-7259248005429990352012-10-20T01:09:00.000-06:002012-10-28T14:12:51.072-06:00The Importance of TellingSometimes, in my posts in the past, I've liked to note first of all who is the target audience of that particular post. This one is for zoos; this one, for people wondering what's up with this crazy blog; this one, for animal lovers of all sexualities, etc. This particular post does have a target audience, but to be perfectly honest I'm not entirely sure who makes it up: zoophiles, most definitely, but also members of other alternative sexualities and related phenomena, be they growing in social acceptability, ie homosexuality, transgender, or not so much, such as necrophilia or potentially even pedophilia if one can relate to what's said here. The extent to which the advice in this post should be taken will vary depending on what group the reader falls into, so I'll just say this: the more taboo your sexuality, paraphilia, gender affiliation, etc. is, the more careful you should be. I'll be speaking from the perspective of a zoosexual, obviously, which I would incidentally rate just behind pedophilia in terms of how much the general population wants to lynch you.<br />
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A little background first: a number of conversations I've had online in the last few months since I've really got my face out there have involved the idea of people knowing. And, more often, the idea of people knowing and being OK with it. This often takes the form of, "I really wish I could find even one other zoophile in my area so I wouldn't feel so alone." For the sake of trying not to imply a limitation here to zoophiles only, though, I'll call this "one other" the <i>sympathetic deviant</i>.<br />
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Rarely, though, do these lamentations of zoophiles take the form of, "I wish I could find a non-zoo who would still be my friend and be OK with my sexuality." This, I think, is because, to many, the idea of finding such a person, let alone within one's own group of friends, seems ridiculous. On knotty.me (I sure talk about that place a lot, don't I?) I mentioned something along those lines and the first response I got was that such people are just so very rare that it's downright dangerous to hope for one.<br />
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However, the need to find a sympathetic deviant seems to be synonymous with the need to find someone who just <i>understands</i>. The need for support. I say this for two reasons: firstly, in my own experience, having non-members who are OK with your membership is more grounding and heartening than is having members. Secondly, the drive to find fellow members in other groups seems to often be for the sake of a community of practice, which may include support but is usually preoccupied with the focal point of the practice: in this case, sex. This is just my pulling things out of what I've seen and nothing else, but though I've heard of zoos getting support from non-zoos, I never hear of zoos supporting zoos in the real world. For forming communities beyond the internet, we're too rare, too closeted, and too often confused with bestialists who are, put bluntly, too crazy to care about social implications.<br />
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Perhaps more importantly, though, one major common thing about sexuality and gender, beyond the taboo often against even the slightest deviation from the norm, is that people tend to hold it as a very crucial thing to their own identity in western culture, which most of us have a drive to express in a fashion that is at least in part public. Today, sex is everywhere, and so is sexual self-assignment: I'm straight, I'm gay, I'm bi; I identify as masculine, I identify as female, I identify as something in between or nothing at all; I like a little light bondage, I'm a romantic, I'm attracted to these sorts of people... these are at least frequent topics of conversation and at most, things that people feel are very important for others to know when they are interacting with them. In context, this means that we can make as many new sympathetic deviant friends as we like, but the fact that our current, and likely future, close friends are not aware of who we feel we are often bothers us. We notice our discomfort with our friends who do not understand and, not recognizing the nuances discussed, simply say, "I need to find someone who understands," and because it seems so terrifying to even hint to our best friend that we deviate so strongly from this monolithic norm, that becomes, "I need to find <i>someone else</i> who will understand," to which the most obvious solution is a sympathetic deviant.<br />
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If we recognize this trap as one we have fallen into, though, it becomes clear that rather than searching vainly for this sympathetic deviant, we need to find a way to solve this problem of our oblivious current social group. People who recognize this, at least implicitly, often fall into the second, much steeper trap of just standing up one day and going, "I have X taboo sexual orientation and if you don't like it well you were never my friend anyway," or something that leads to a similar conclusion. This is bad for two reasons. Well, probably more than two reasons, but two reasons we're interested in: first, not all our friends are really close friends to whom we are more important than taboo. Chances are, particularly if we have a large and open social group, most members are too unattached and frankly too dense to do the right thing for you. Secondly, there is something of an art to breaking something to someone, and it always amazes me how few people seem to understand this.<br />
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So here, on a very basic level, is our solution: Firstly, you actually only need to tell your very closest, most indispensable friend that you have known for years and with whom you would trust your life. If they know, and even better if they are willing to discuss it, it won't matter that no one else does. For many people, only one root is needed for that feeling of stability; just having that person with you when the rest of the group starts making jokes unknowingly targeting your proclivities will give a great deal of solace. Secondly, we need to learn how to tell someone the untellable.<br />
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Chances are, if they are a very close friend, they will already have an idea. I once told someone after five years of kinship, as a younger fellow and still trembling from the stress of doing so, and the response I got was, "Er, yeah? I kind of figured that out, like, ages ago. Up for a game?" So rather than actually telling someone, you may just need to hint it strongly. The issue, in my mind, that people have with just standing up and saying something very taboo is that it seems like the speaker is not even particularly aware of the nature of the taboo: that the point is, you don't treat it the same way you treat, "I kissed Jenny Jenkins on the Twelfth of November" or, "I had HPV last year". These things are taboo, sure, but they can be discussed without people being disgusted, at least not in the long-term. So instead (and again, I will speak from a zoo's perspective) you might talk about in context how gorgeous X animal is, or make known your views on animal rights and welfare, or make jokes that, should the person know about your sexuality, would seem self-mocking. Whatever fits your personality.<br />
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Whether the hinting works or not, it's important that before you get to the point where you are both on the same level of understanding that your confidant understands just how much trust you are placing in them. Make sure they know they can't tell another soul. Really, this is serious, I need to get this off my chest and you're the only one I can turn to. If you don't think you can make that promise, I understand. That sort of thing. You can't just spring this on someone: you have to give them the option of saying that this might be too heavy for them and just backing off.<br />
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Finally, you want to reassure your friend that you're still the same person. You don't fit all those horrible stereotypes and ideas people may have of individuals of your tastes or orientation. In the specific case of zoophilia: You're not interested in Jason's dog, you don't go romping around in fields at night chasing sheep; you're just living with this attraction, coming to terms with it and taking it a day at a time. You might be thinking, "Well, what happens if he asks me about my own animals?" and though it may seem counter-intuitive, if you are active with them, and your friend knows them, sees how well you treat them, etc. you should say so. If this individual is worth your trust, they will realize that although they may have thought of sex with animals as animal abuse, it's pretty clear that you're not abusive. And reiterate that: say something like, "We're both happy; it's on his/her dime; he/she means the world to me, etc." You need to be truthful, and you need your friend to understand from the very day they first hear the word you've been dreading come out of your mouth.<br />
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In closing, I'd like to just once again state that this is dangerous, particularly if your proclivity is active and not entirely legal in your region. You shouldn't be telling anyone that you don't trust completely. We zoos, at least, though, are very empathetic people, and I think it would be reaching only in the slightest amount to say that we often have a sense for who is trustworthy and who is not. And taking that step towards bringing your very best friend into your world can not only get you that support and grounding that you've been looking for, but also really solidify your friendship. You might find that they start telling you things about their life that they never tell anyone else. You'll be able to talk about anything without boundaries. Friends like these are not found, they're made, and in that process of development there will always be some pain and sacrifice. That's how life works. It's how anything grows. And you may find, as I did, that individuals who will not only listen but support you are not really so rare after all.<br />
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Good luck to you and yours.<br />
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Also, landmark: 10 000 hits! Despite my absence, the average daily views of this blog has continued to increase.J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-42161489370627011862012-08-31T22:21:00.004-06:002012-09-08T00:03:52.284-06:00Cambridge: Animals as Conscious as Humans<div>
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I'm about a month late to the show; summer is the season of the slowest transmission of academic information for reasons that are probably obvious, but:<br />
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<b>"...the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."</b></div>
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<a href="http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf">Link.</a><br />
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What else is there really to say but, "It's about damn time"? This is less of a scientific breakthrough and more of a political one: the stuff brought up in this conference has been basic knowledge for quite a long time. That's a good thing: it means that it's actually going to get around to public knowledge rather than get holed up in some journal somewhere that no layman will ever hear of let alone read - especially since <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/scientists-proclaim-animal-and-human-consciousness-the-same.html">Stephen Hawking attended the signing</a>, and it was also featured on <i>60 Minutes</i>.</div>
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So, it's a little early now, but what can we expect to get from this? First of all, probably a slower rate of advancement in neuroscience and medicine in general. This sounds like a bad thing, and it may be, but it will be as a result of more stringent regulations on animal testing.</div>
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Then again, it may also more strongly suggest that animal testing is more valid, meaning you will get the same level of advancement for fewer tests. Wherever you go there are always people saying that you can't go off of just a few animal trials because animals aren't the same as humans. This is obviously still true, but when it comes to psych and some areas of neurosci that don't explicitly involve the neocortex, we may start being able to get more for less.</div>
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Most importantly, we'll get public acknowledgment of the worth of animals as individuals. It's unfortunate how many people you can come across today who don't believe animals really have thoughts and feelings; these tend to be people who either were never close at all to their pets or didn't have pets at all, in my experience, which is a growing percentage of the population with continued urbanization.</div>
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As I noted before, this conference is geared primarily as a social and philosophical change rather than a scientific one, so this, I think, is where we'll start to see the most change. It will come slowly, and perhaps I'm jumping the gun just a little here, but I would hazard that the global and inevitably successful anti-anthrocentrist movement has already begun. As it progresses, we'll see not only changes in the way people see animals, but the way we see the natural world at large: suddenly our non-human neighbors become far more important, and conservation becomes an issue. Environmental decline could slow as a result. Social things too, of course: with the acknowledgment of animal consciousness, animal intelligence is only a couple steps away, and with that the rights of zoophiles.</div>
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All this from one conference? No. But it's a start. I like to be optimistic, because in my experience if you publicly assume that something is going to happen, people around you believe so as well and change their behaviour accordingly, so as far as I'm concerned this is just a big step towards all of these big transformations of society and academia. Spread the word; save the world.</div>
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I don't know when my next post will be, but the moral of the story is that if you have some news or something otherwise fascinating for me to write about, I will drop everything to do so. Good work, "lovingpegasister".</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-37490523427316173942012-08-22T20:25:00.001-06:002021-08-03T19:10:13.717-06:00Man vs. Wild?I just finished watching a program that contained a refuge for ex-domesticated 'wild' animals. Three people were in an enclosure feeding the inhabitants. The narrator was going on about how quickly these animals can move and how the individuals needed to be constantly aware of where each animal was and be prepared to react.<br />
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The enclosure was home to four bobcat kittens. They were about the size of your housecat and with the temperament of your typical semi-domestic apprehensive kitty.<br />
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This annoyed me, hopefully for obvious reasons. As far as I know, there has never even been a bobcat attack on a human being in the wild. Even in captivity I've never heard of a bobcat trying to eat a person, and sure as hell never a kitten. But here are these so-called professionals tip-toeing around these babies as though they were afraid of waking up fully grown lions.<br />
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The same people go on to say that the most tragic thing about the refuge is that all the animals were once kept as pets. I can agree with this to some extent, but to me, it's equally tragic that you, dear hostess, seem so fond of drawing such stark lines: if it's wild, it must <i>be</i> wild, and it's therefore so much more dangerous than anything manmade.<br />
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That's when the real problem arises. We have such a divide from nature, and these folks see themselves as naturalists when all they are actually doing is pushing our species further and further away from considering itself a part of the natural world, and therefore devaluing what we see as the natural world - or in this case, perpetuating fear of it. No one considers that puppy and kitty are descendants of wolves and wildcats that were adopted thousands of years ago by loons like me.<br />
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The tragedy expressed <i>should</i> be that there are people in the world who think it's perfectly OK to keep a leopard in their basement, or a hippo in their backyard. Unlike our nomadic ancestors, we do not always have the luxury of space and ready-made habitat for our wild animal companions. According to this show host, I imagine, this marks an impossibility, but clearly it is not: some of us do in fact have large tracts of property where certain animals that require a lot of land can be kept. Some of us have the inclination to devote great amounts of time and money to those animals.<br />
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We see examples of this in the media, and it's not even hard to meet such people online: those who give their animals a lot of space, care for them, and have a very happy and healthy critter who adores them. Smartly, these individuals do not tend to call their animals "pets" and advise others that just because they are doing it doesn't mean any joe can fork over a couple thousand dollars and stick a wolf in his living room.<br />
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Does it remain a bad thing simply because, as this hostess put it, it is "unnatural"? As prone as I am to falling back to it, we know that this is a logical fallacy, so let's examine it more closely. The main issue seems to be that there are a lot of people out there who are complete imbeciles and either don't know or don't care to know how to take care of a non-domesticated animal. They are the problem. Suppose the individual in question does know and happily applies their knowledge. The animal is as happy and healthy as their domesticated counterparts, and likely much more so than their wild counterparts: we know that, while many animals are not naturally social, just from experience that even they do much better when they do have some mode of socialization. Speaking with someone who raises leopards, he said to me that it is actually better to have two rather than one for just this reason. They will also be more healthy, since they have a regular source of food, hopefully still of exercise (again, this comes down to knowing how to care for the animal), and have someone to care for them if they fall ill.<br />
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So if anything, there is an upside to these few individuals existing who have the capacity, both in terms of property and finances and in knowledge, as well as in inclination, to care for non-domestic animals: the animals are safer, better cared for, and happy. The humans... well, we get one of the few life-lines we have to the natural world: something that says hey, wait a minute, just because it hasn't been hacked together using opposable thumbs doesn't mean it is strange and dangerous and must be avoided at all costs. There are things we can learn from them, things we can learn <i>about</i> them in order to not only gain a better understanding of the animal but also of ourselves: where we come from, and where we fit in. There is so much ignorance out there: I have even met a veterinarian that believes most mammals do not have a clitoris, because clearly God made man and gave him sexual pleasure, but not to other animals - process of sexual differentiation from clitoris to penis be damned. (Don't ask how we got to that conversation; it's not what you think.) And now I have come across someone who runs an animal refuge who thinks bobcat kittens are highly dangerous. Let's get off of our high horse, people, and out from under our bedsheets and strive instead for a little more understanding here, shall we?<br />J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257583964365932115.post-11186444910637679672012-08-10T23:01:00.000-06:002012-09-07T23:39:25.732-06:00Operation Outrage: Beastiality[title sic]<br />
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So, what's going on? Well, it seems Anonymous has <a href="http://pastebin.com/A5Xn4J2n">turned their innocuous gaze towards the zoophilic community</a>. Now, for the sake of this article, we're going to ignore the fact that Anonymous has never done anything of note in its entire existence, and employs nothing but DDOS attacks, which if you didn't know is the most ham-fisted form of messing with a website there is. It's not even hacking. A while back they attempted to bring down all child pornographers on the Hidden Web, which turned out to be great to eat popcorn to. We'll also ignore that it's not even a coherent organization and by definition anyone can by Anonymous. Finally, we'll ignore that they'll likely bounce off this topic like a fox on a trampoline.<br />
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This supposed assault on zoo porn sites was brought to my attention by another zoophile, and they, and of course most others, were very quick to say that this is a problem and we all must be even more careful than before, or at least pointing out that this probably won't be a big deal and, again, Anonymous are about as effective as... well, I already used up my simile for the day, but you know what I mean.</div>
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I had a slightly different immediate reaction: while of course I didn't like the fact that yet another high-profile group is badmouthing zoosexuals, a few things made me think more positively about this. And the first one doesn't even require Anon to do anything: the very first line, "<span style="font-family: Consolas, Menlo, Monaco, 'Lucida Console', 'Liberation Mono', 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Bitstream Vera Sans Mono', monospace, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21px;">We recently have come to realize that bestiality is a rising problem in the world right now. It is controversial and by god, a rising act.</span>" This means, if nothing else, that people are getting out there, not just on porn sites as those have existed for ages, but on forums and places that Anon "members" actually frequent and saying, "Look, here I am." <i>That</i> means you get reactions like this, but also some reactions by people who might be more inclined to use logic when approached with something new.</div>
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This is reinforced by the second thing: the poster of this Pastebin document did not use the word "zoophilia" or derivatives once. They're also only attacking those sites where there is porn, which also happen to be the sites that are home to a ton of <i>bestialists</i> rather than zoophiles. The only community site they are attacking is Beastforum which, in my opinion, could probably use an attack from someone more competent than Anon.</div>
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Given this, and also given the fact that they have a lot of sites that they plan on bringin' down - a lot more than I even knew existed - suggesting that at least some of their human spider-bots might themselves have a little more experience than they let on to their bestialist-hating buddies, I think this is far from the most disturbing news for zoophiles, and may even lead to some good things. Even better things if Anonymous magically acquires talent.</div>
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I'm still on the fence: I could be wrong and they would target this blog if they thought it had porn on it, despite all of the things it says that would agree with their anti-animal abuse message, but you know what? Just to stir the pot, I'm going to say that, Anon's history aside, they have my support here. Go get 'em, guys.</div>
J.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01986344701912172247noreply@blogger.com5