Equus

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

The Importance of Telling

Sometimes, 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.

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 sympathetic deviant.

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.

However, the need to find a sympathetic deviant seems to be synonymous with the need to find someone who just understands.  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.

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 someone else who will understand," to which the most obvious solution is a sympathetic deviant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good luck to you and yours.


Also, landmark: 10 000 hits!  Despite my absence, the average daily views of this blog has continued to increase.

Female Zoos and Sample Bias

Nearly every article, academic or not, that I find on "zoophilia" or "bestiality" (because they're the same thing, right?) is quick to point out that sex with animals seems to be an almost entirely male phenomenon.

I know for a fact that a number of people reading this article will be raising their eyebrows, shaking their heads, and/or scowling, at least mentally.  The reason for this is often that they themselves are women.

So what's the deal?  Are these ladies outliers, little statistical blips in otherwise solid data?  Or is there something more?

In my personal experience - which cannot be used in research - female zoos are actually just as common as male zoos.  The trick to discovering this is to go on communities that are not specifically for zoophiles.  In being briefly open about my sexuality on a large online community, I received a lot of messages from people, many of which said, "Me too!" Roughly half of these individuals out of several dozen were female.  This in itself is bizarre, because in that community, only about a third of all users - zoosexual or not - were female.  This isn't the most scientific of ways of gathering data, but if we were to take it seriously, it would indicate that the majority of zoosexual individuals are female.

Let's look at another pseudo-statistic: On knotty.me, a non-pornographic forum I advertised a few weeks ago, at least two (possibly more) of the ten most active members are female.  So, fewer ladies, but still more than people tend to think exist.  We're getting closer to the source of the difference.

The simple fact is that not only do men tend to be on online communities more often than women, as evidenced by any "What is your gender?" poll you can find on an online forum, and not counting things like Facebook which are more gender-neutral, but they also tend to be far more often on online communities geared towards sexuality.  Men are more commonly visual sexual beings: we are more than twice as likely as women to view pornography on a regular basis, and so are probably more than twice as likely to find online communities and resources related to sexual activity.  These two facts are almost certainly responsible for a strong skew towards men in any study on paraphilias that use the internet as a source of participants, which is almost all of them.  It's very difficult to put an ad out on the street for pedophiles to call you or walk into your office, or approach random individuals in a shopping mall with clipboard in hand and the question, "Have you ever given your dog a blow job?" You get the idea.

And from that idea we get the other source of participants in studies on paraphilias, and the other bias: prisons.  One of the most commonly cited studies concerning zooerasty is a case study on a sex offender who also happened to rape animals.  People had no problem taking this to mean that it may be common for zooerasty to predict [other forms of] criminality.  The bias here is obvious, but prisons continue to be used as easy ways to get sample populations for studies on deviant behaviours of all kinds, and for one reason or another, prisons are primarily inhabited by men.  Just like with criminal pedophiles, despite the fact that women may make up a significant portion of sex offenders with a history of zooerasty, they are typically ignored by the academic community.

Once again, it always comes down to thinking about what you read.  Wonder about how the author got his or her information.  Look for similar conclusions reached in separate studies.  That goes for what you see here, too: I don't do professional research in this area because I'm aware that I have a very strong bias.

And for those lady animal lovers here: don't worry, you're not alone.  We have actually known this for a long time: in one study, out of 190 sexual fantasies of different women, 23 involved explicitly zooerotic activity. (Friday, 1973) Stay true to yourself.

For those who want more proof, there is actually a fellow zoo in the blogosphere who is female.  She's linked to ZP, so I'll link back to her here.  She does a bunch of stuff there and is quite a bit more personal and sexual than I am here, but if you're looking for other perspectives (or are into that sort of thing :P ) give Lexxi Stray a look.


Oh, and because these landmarks are important to me if to no one else: we just hit 5 000, er, hits.  It's to the point where I'm not even sure where they're coming from now, which is kind of too bad because I find that fascinating.  Oh well.  A big thanks once again to the readers, and especially the sharers!

The Anthrosexual Questionnaire

I came across again a piece titled, "The Language of Sex: The Heterosexual Questionnaire" by one M. Rochlin.  It made me giggle, so I thought I would adapt some of it for use here, as well as add a few of my own things.  1-18 are from the original questionnaire, which was obviously meant to highlight heterosexism, turning on their head a lot of questions that, at the time, were being asked of and about homosexuals.  Please note that, although it may seem like it sometimes on this blog, I'm not trying to pick on or appropriate the LGBT movement; I simply admire their ability to make an entire culture stop and think for a moment about their ideals pertaining to sexual morality.  I am also not trying to "convert" anyone to exclusive zoosexuality.  I do not even believe this is possible, nor, in our current cultural climate, is it particularly desirable.  I simply hope that you find this list entertaining and perhaps a little thought-provoking.

1. What do you think caused you to be attracted to men and/or women?
2. When and how did you decide you were only attracted to humans?
3. Is it possible that your anthrosexuality is just a phase you may grow out of?
4. Is it possible that your anthrosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of animals?
5. Is it possible that all you need is a good non-human lover?
6. If you've never slept with an animal, how do you know you won't prefer that?
7. Why do you insist on flaunting your sexual attraction to humans?  Can't you just be who you are and keep it quiet?
8. Why do anthrosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?
9. Why do anthrosexuals feel compelled to force others into their own lifestyle?
10. Nearly all child molestors are primarily anthrosexual.  Do you believe it's safe to expose children to anthrosexual people?
11. Men and women think very differently.  Can a hetero-anthrosexual relationship really work?
12. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling.  Why are there so few stable relationships among anthrosexuals?
13. Disease transmission from animals to humans due to sexual activity is much lower than that between humans, due to the lack of cross-species STIs.  Is it really safe for someone to maintain an anthrosexual lifestyle and run the risk of disease and pregnancy?
14. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive anthrosexuality?
15. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone were anthrosexual?
16. Could you trust an anthrosexual therapist to be objective?  Don't you feel he/she might be inclined to influence you in the direction of his/her own leanings?
17. Have you looked into methods, such as aversion therapy, that can be used to cure your anthrosexuality?
18. Do anthrosexuals hate animals?  Is that why they are anthrosexual?
19. How can you be certain that your human partner is consenting to sexual intercourse?
20. Humans fake enjoyment of sex with great frequency: 60% of women and 25% of men state that they have faked orgasm.  How likely do you feel it is that your human partner is not getting anything from your sexual relationship?
21. Are you attracted to humans because animals do not find you attractive?
22. If your partner does not explicitly say, "Yes, I want to have sex," it is rape.  Do you consider yourself a rapist?
23. Some people are, let's face it, pretty stupid.  Do you believe it would be wrong for you to have sex with an intellectually inferior individual?
24. With rape being this common in the human world -  one in four women are raped at least once in their lifetimes (Greenberg, Bruess, Haffner, 2000) - is it fair to say that humans do not have a real idea of sexual consent?
25. Do you think that, during a woman's "time of the month," she is capable of giving proper consent?
26. You can injure your human partner during sex: roughly one third of American adults being injured during intercourse every year (according to medical insurance companies).  Is having sex safe for both you and your partner?
27. Power differences are commonly large between human partners: many marriages include only one spouse who works to keep food on the table.  Is it wrong for such a couple to have sex with this power difference?
28. Humans are notoriously unconcerned about nature.  Don't you think it's better to become more intimate with the non-human world?
29. In South Carolina and Michigan, oral sex, even between heterosexual married couples, was illegal prior to 2003.  Do you feel that couples who practiced oral sex in these states prior to 2003 were perverts or criminals?
30. Anthrosexual intercourse is disgusting.  Why would you ever want to do it in the first place?

Zoo Rights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Furry Spectrum

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

Something to think about.


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

Terminology

There's a lot of discussion in the zoo community and interested parties about what certain words mean.  Generally, it is said that because said community is disorganized and often less than stable, there is no agreement on what means what.

I'd like to change that.  We don't have a definitive lexicon, so I'll attempt to put one here.


Anthrosexuality
A sexual orientation towards humans.  The opposite of zoosexuality, although the two are not mutually exclusive.

Bestiality
The sexual use of animals.  Bestiality and bestials/bestialists, unlike zoophilia and zoophiles, give no regard to the emotions or desires of the animal, and there is no emotional attachment.  First used in the seventeenth century, it's now the usual term used in legal documents.

Faunoiphilia
Sexual arousal from watching animals mating.

Fence-hopping
Having sexual interactions with an animal that is not yours, without the permission of the animal's legal owner.

Horse-ripping
Rather explicit abuse of horses in an often sexualized context that has unfortunately become common enough that it has its own term.  Unfortunately one of the big reasons zooerasty is still illegal in many places.

Zooerasty
Zoosexuality in practice, ie the act of a human having sex with an animal. cf pederasty

Zoophilia
(1) A romantic attraction to animals.  An emotional attachment is necessary (-philia meaning love) and a sexual attraction is generally implied.  It does not, however, need to be present, nor does an individual need to have had a partner to be a zoophile. cf nyctophilia, etc.
(2) A paraphilia involving animals, used in a clinical context. cf necrophilia

Zoosadism
Bestiality, but above and beyond a simple lack of concern for the animal partner in being explicitly physically abusive.

Zoosexuality
A sexual orientation towards animals.  May cover either zoophilia or bestiality, but, like zoophilia, does not necessitate an existing relationship.  Sometimes used today to mean someone who prefers animals, as opposed to someone who will orient towards animals but prefers humans.

"Am I a Zoophile?"

I get this question more often than one might think.  In this last week, I’ve had a couple people ask me this, and my answer comes down to, basically: what does the word “zoophile” even mean in the first place?

Obviously it means a love of animals, but what is the dividing line here?  If I have a dog, and I love him very much, consider him my best friend, and would rather spend time with him than anyone else, human or otherwise, am I a zoophile?  On the other hand, if someone sneaks into farms in the dead of night to bone random horses, is he a zoophile?  It’s a fact that most people don’t know the definition of a zoophile beyond that it’s someone who likes animals “a lot” – usually “too much”.

I don’t think this is a result of the usual stigma against zoophilia, though; rather, it may be the result of the death of a distinguished emotional relationship.  A zoophile is, quite simply and at the very least, someone who has or desires a romantic relationship with an animal.  Once again, though, we’re left with the question of what this means: we don’t know what romance is these days, beyond things like candlelit dinners and wedding proposals.  We don’t tend to do either of these things with the animals we love, so we must provide a more personal and less situational – and less anthropocentric – definition of romance.

Romance is love beyond that in friendship.  It involves a strong fixation that wants stimulation by all three basic senses, but primarily the haptic.  One wants to not just be close to someone, in terms of the mental and social – like how you and your friend share all secrets you have between each other, and thus you are “close” – but also physically close.  This is in preference to being physically close to any other individual.  It’s also an extreme form of friendship in which one will do anything within their power for the sake of another.  Importantly: this friendship and this desire for closeness are reciprocated.  Feelings of romance do come and go, as they’re feelings that take an awful lot out of us, but two people who often have romantic feelings for each other are said to be a romantic couple.

Given this definition, many people do not believe that it is possible for a human and a non-human animal to be in a romantic relationship.  However, it does happen quite frequently; it simply goes unacknowledged.  We often hear about dogs sacrificing greatly for their human owners.  We know of cats that are with their owners all the time, and are so tuned into their emotions that they seem able to sense them from the other side of the building.  The reality is that it is not the animal aspect that is usually the barrier to a romantic relationship: it’s the human that is unwilling or unable to reciprocate.  Our senses are just no match for theirs, and in a lot of ways because of this, we have troubles understanding them.

Some people do, however, manage this.  And those who are at the same time willing to be literally in a relationship with an animal are what we call zoophiles.  But that’s not all that terrifying, people say: it’s perhaps a little odd to love your cat that much, but nothing outrageous.  When we think of zoophilia, we think less of someone who is mutually cuddling his or her furry companion, and seems happiest only when with them, and more of the guy who’s boning his neighbor's sheep in the dead of night.  This perception is false.

Zoophilia usually does involve sexual interaction with animals.  This is because, as humans, we believe that romance naturally leads to sex.  Animals, as creatures without culture and thus without reverence of sex, think of things the other way around, but that’s for another time.  The point I will make here is that there are people who have sex with animals without that romantic relationship, and who have no inclination to forge such a relationship.  These people are not zoophiles: they are what we tend to call bestialists (although bestiality technically means any intercourse between a human and an animal, regardless of the circumstances, a better term is zooerasty).  The zoophilic community will often show their disdain for such individuals.

One does not need to be a zooerast to be a zoophile, or to be a zoophile to be a zooerast, in the same way that one doesn’t need to be homosexual to have intercourse with members of the same sex, and one does not need to have said intercourse to be homosexual.  However, most people who are or do one thing tend to also fit into the other group.  Is this true about zoophilia and bestiality, though?  I would say that it is.  The people we tend to hear about in the news and other media that have abusive intercourse with animals are not zoophiles, but these people are not representative of the zooerast population: they are the people that have difficulty containing themselves, and are often disordered in one way or another in that fulfilling their sexual urges becomes top priority for them.  They have little interest in the romantic.  Those that do – and are thus zoophilic – tend to be more difficult to spot and less likely to sneak into their neighbor’s barn.  Although this is not an area where reliable statistics are easy to come across, from personal experience I would suggest that the zoophilic population is much higher than that of bestialists and “fence-hoppers”: one study shows that fifteen percent of males have had some sort of intentional sexual contact with an animal at some point in their lives.  As much as three percent have continued to do so.  This is a much higher figure than we would think, given that each time another sheep-shagger is arrested, every news blog in the world has something about it.  It’s on this discrepancy between the bestialists who are detained, and the more covert zoophiles, that I base my claim that the latter group is larger than the former.

What about the other way around?  Are there many people who are in romantic relationships with their animals, but not sexual relationships?  This may also be a higher number than we realize, but these people do not often call themselves zoophilic, due to the word’s sexual connotations.  Indeed, they may not even think themselves particularly abnormal; I know many of these people.  There are those, though, that call themselves asexual zoophiles: people who truly love their animals, but have no interest in becoming sexually active with them.  It is a complex topic, and one that really can’t be resolved at the moment.

But really, it’s just a word: zoophile.  It’s a complicated word that attempts to describe a person, like “Christian”, “democrat”, or “bisexual”; and this means that its definition is deceptively difficult to pin down.  Originally, the word literally did just mean “someone who loves animals” – it was in fact used by animal welfare activists before their mortal enemy, the kitty-diddler, stole it from them.  Its definition changes with how people use it, so if you’re asking yourself right now, “Am I a zoophile?” think about this: would you call yourself a zoophile?  Does it benefit you to do so?  Does acquiring this new label help you understand yourself better?  If not, then don’t even worry about it.  You are you, and, as any real zoophile knows, words are overrated: they can’t express love so easily.  And isn’t love what really matters?