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

171 Pages·2020·2.74 MB·English

by  Joanna Bourke

LOVING ANIMALS
LOVING ANIMALS
On Bestiality, Zoophilia
and Post-human Love
Joanna Bourke
REAKTION BOOKS
For Costas
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REAKTION BOOKS LTD
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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