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.
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.
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.
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.
Think about it. Talk about it. Our timing is right, and it's time to organize.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
SPOILER WARNING! 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.
Also, I totally did cry at the end.
Passion in the Desert 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 56:00 on the nose in the video above.
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.
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?!"
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.
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.
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 Kamunyak, 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).
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 Tale of Forbidden Love, COMING SOON, and others that I haven't like Equus and Animal Passions, 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 Equus does, or represent it as a cold sexual fetish as do COMING SOON and Animal Passions: 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 (Old Yeller, 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.
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.
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.
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 like 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.
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.
When using language to communicate, there are all sorts of things that can go wrong. Grice's Maxims 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 more 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 required 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".
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.
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.
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.
