A Tale of Forbidden Love

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.

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.

I know I'm kind of an inflammatory guy; my harsh remarks against COMING SOON (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 Forbidden Love.  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.

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 art, 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".

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.

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.

Cambridge: Animals as Conscious as Humans

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:

"...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."

Link.

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 Stephen Hawking attended the signing, and it was also featured on 60 Minutes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

Man 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.

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.

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.

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 be wild, and it's therefore so much more dangerous than anything manmade.

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.

The tragedy expressed should 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.

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.

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.

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 about 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?

Operation Outrage: Beastiality

[title sic]

So, what's going on?  Well, it seems Anonymous has turned their innocuous gaze towards the zoophilic community.  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.

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.

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, "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." 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." That 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.

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 bestialists 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.

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.

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.