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Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love PDF

171 Pages·2020·2.74 MB·English
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LOVING ANIMALS LOVING ANIMALS On Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-human Love Joanna Bourke REAKTION BOOKS For Costas Published by REAKTION BOOKS LTD Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London N1 7UX, UK www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2020 Copyright © Joanna Bourke 2020 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and Index match the printed edition of this book. Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library eISBN 9781789143096 CONTENTS Preface Introduction One The Law Two Cruelty to Animals Three Mad or Bad? Four ‘Zoo’ Communities Five ‘Z’, or Post-human Love REFERENCES SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INDEX Preface A nyone who writes books and teaches for a living is constantly being asked: what are you currently working on? I am often reticent about responding, largely because ‘my’ topics are often uncomfortable ones to talk about: they include killing, combat, dismemberment, militarism, rape, fear, pain and what it means to be human, to name a few. I have become accustomed to awkward silences and quizzical looks. This book is no different. Its themes follow logically from those that have always fascinated me. Violence is at the heart of all of my writings. How could it be otherwise? After all, humans are extraordinarily cruel. But I have also learnt that most people possess deep reservoirs of tenderness and love. We all strive to understand others, as well as ourselves. Without human friendships, we would die. If emotional attachments to non- human animals were forbidden, our lives would be incredibly impoverished. The human and non-human animals with whom we engage on a daily basis are our lifeblood. In the past decade or so, I have been thinking about such relationships. How do sentient creatures express affection for each other? How do we both acknowledge and respect the agency of others? What is so mutually exhilarating about being touched and touching? It is so easy to mistake consent: even in the most heart-warming relationships, power always intrudes. What does it mean to love? This book does not claim to have answers, but it does hope to provoke discussion about these questions. It does this by tracing through some of the complex and sometimes tricky aspects of our relationships to companion species. The introduction begins by exploring a paradox: for millennia, human–animal sex has been a prominent theme in art and literature, yet it is routinely said to be a ‘taboo’. Chapter One looks at legal and religious views about bestiality. Are prohibitions about human–animal sex more about the emotions of disgust and fear than ideological precept? Many readers will find the second chapter painful to read: it explores the sexual abuse of non-human and human animals. I can only encourage readers to persevere with this chapter because it is a central argument of this book that the degradation and sexual abuse of girls, women and non-human animals are linked. Chapter Three turns to the medicalization of interspecies sexual intercourse, culminating in the diagnosis of ‘zoophilia’ or the (sexual) love of animals. Some self-proclaimed animal-lovers (as I show in Chapter Four) have taken these psychiatric ideas further: they insist that zoophilia is a sexual orientation like homosexuality. Calling themselves ‘zoos’, these men and women seek public recognition of their sexual identity. The book concludes with a chapter asking: what is the way through this maze? It is not enough to merely critique political and ethical positions on human–animal sexuality; people and ‘pets’ are already in dialogue. How can we create more equitable, fulfilling and erotic worlds for everyone? It is the fundamental tenet of this book that queer theory, post-human philosophy, disability studies and the history of the senses can help move the debates forward. There is a risk that careless readers might see in my arguments either a defence of the kind of harmful, violent interspecies sex that has typified human–non-human relationships over centuries (‘bestiality’) or an endorsement of the more recent identity politics of self-proclaimed zoos. I am saying neither. Rather, this book is an attempt to think through ways of cultivating more kind and caring relationships between different species. It pays homage to the possibilities of interspecies understanding and, in the future to come, the promise of love. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Girl with a Dog, c. 1770, oil on canvas. Introduction Define: Loving. The act of expressing love; sexual feelings etc. J ean-Honoré Fragonard’s Girl with a Dog was painted around 1770. The painting is typical of his decadent style, with its warm tones, luxuriant brushwork and energetic celebration of pleasure. In the painting, a young girl lies back on her bed, holding a small spaniel whose tail moves between her legs, caressing her vulva and buttocks. Its phallic energy is palpable. The girl’s bedside table is open, a visual allegory of her receptivity to sensual advances. The cool blue ribbon of the girl’s nightcap is echoed in the bow of the spaniel: the two beautiful creatures are in harmony. The artist seems to be saying that the sexual instinct – volupté, even – is shared between all animals, whether human or not. Girl with a Dog is a scene of reciprocal adoration and erotic enjoyment. I have chosen this painting to introduce this book because it is a scene of mutuality between a girl and a dog. To be frank, most of this book is about disharmony, so I wanted readers to be reminded of the carnal joys of truly loving animals. As we all know, people have a poor track record in expressing love for other creatures. We admire exotic wildlife while destroying its habitats. We are distressed by the unkind treatment of animals but regulate their slaughter within abattoirs. Western lifestyles are wholly dependent upon farming animals, which involves practices of extraordinary cruelty. The philosopher Jacques Derrida invented a term to describe human– animal relationships: ‘carno-phallogocentrism’. In other words, our treatment of animals is based on privileging masculine traits (‘phallo’) and the possession of language (‘logos’); it involves a willingness to kill and eat other sentient beings (‘carno’).1 But this is not to deny that many of us sincerely love ‘our’ animals. We call them ‘pets’. In fact, pet ownership probably goes back to Palaeolithic times.2 In 2017–18, 68 per cent of American residences sheltered a pet: that is nearly 85 million homes.3 In the the pet population is around 51 million; UK 45 per cent of people ‘own’ one.4 The most common companion species is dogs, followed by cats. Although pet owners are reluctant to allow their animals to act according to their nature, and many even euthanize them when they become disobedient, unattractive or old, there is general agreement that love for pets means giving them food and water, ensuring they get exercise and talking to them. Half of all pets in the . . sleep in the same bed as a U S member of the human family.5 We maintain fictive kin relationships with them. There are even websites hosted by ‘pet and people wedding specialists’ to facilitate human–pet marriages.6 ‘Pets Us’. We indulge them, buy them presents, give them names and look upon them as ‘almost human’.7 We kiss and caress them. We dance with them on our beds. What we don’t do is have sex with them. At least, most of us don’t. Sex with animals is one of the last taboos, the final bastion of human exceptionalism. The prohibition of what is sometimes called ‘bestiality’ distinguishes the human subject from the animal object. Taboo Why is sex with animals such a taboo? While all other arguments about human exceptionalism have been dismantled, bestiality remains off-limits. It is only in very recent years that some people have begun to undermine the absolute prohibition on zoosexuality. Are their arguments dangerous, perverted or simply wrongheaded? Or are we entering a new and more amorous phase in human–animal relations? And what does it mean to love non-human animals? More pertinently: what does it mean to love? This book explores the modern history of human sexual encounters with other species. How have British and American commentators talked about sex with animals and what changing meanings have been attached to the

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