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RETHINKING
BESTIALITY: by Piers Beirne This paper was published in Theoretical
Criminology, 1997, vol.1, no.3, pp.317-340. PIERS BEIRNE is Professor of Criminology at
the University of Southern Maine and the founding editor of the journal
Theoretical Criminology. His recent books include Inventing Criminology (1993)
and Criminology (1999, 3rd ed., forth coming, with Jim Messerschmidt). Abstract This paper seeks to introduce a view of
bestiality which differs radically from both the anthropocentrism enshrined
in the dogma of Judaeo-Christianity and also from the pseudo-liberal
tolerance fashionable today. I argue that bestiality should be understood as 'interspecies sexual assault' because
the situation of animals as abused victims parallels that of women and, to
some extent, that of infants and children and further because (1)
human-animal sexual relations almost always involve coercion; (2) such
practices often cause animals pain and even death; and (3) animals are unable
either to communicate consent to us in a form that we can readily understand
or to speak out about their abuse. The paper offers a typology of
interspecies sexual assault, including sexual fixation, commodification,
adolescent sexual experimentation and aggravated cruelty. Keywords
animal abuse - anthropocentrism - bestiality -
interspecies sexual assault - sexual coercion Rethinking Bestiality: O
fouldescent! that I who erst contended -- Satan, in Milton's
Paradise Lost In this article I seek to
contribute to an as-yet-unconstituted sociology of animal abuse, though my
specific focus derives less from overtly theoretical labors directed to this
end than from the practical needs of pedagogy. In trying to develop an
undergraduate course on the sociology of animal abuse, I was immediately
confronted with conveying to my students adequate responses to the
deceptively simple question 'what is animal abuse?' Class time devoted to the
spectre of such dramatic and well-publicised horrors as factory farming,
laboratory experimentation, trapping, circuses, and so on, would tend to
stimulate among students, I believed, a visceral reaction rather than the
desired goal of sustained enquiry about the nature of animial abuse. It happened that, in casting awide
net for some heuristic device that would enable me to examine animal abuse in
a pedagogic context, I stumbled upon a would-be erotic video provocatively
entitled Barnyard Love. This crudely-produced, undated German film
graphically depicts numerous human and nonhuman beings engaged in acts of
interspecies sexual relations. Among these are human males who engage in
sexual intercourse with cows and hens and more often - given that
heterosexual males are the film's chief audience - human females who have
sexual intercourse with dogs, insert eels into their vaginas and perform
fellatio on dogs and horses. Even from my amateurish
perspectiveand despite the risks of anthropomorphism, I noticed how immensely
varied were the filmed reactions of the different nonhuman animals
(henceforth 'animals') to attempted sexual union with and initiated by
humans. At one extreme, the dogs in Barnyard Love who were engaged in sexual
activities with women seemed energetically to enjoy such human attention. To
me, at least, it did not seem possible that such canine enthusiasm could be
feigned by off-camera training designed to suppress more genuine emotions of
grief and pain. At the opposite extreme, some animals, such as eels and hens,
were obviously unwilling recipients of human sexual advances. None of my
students would have much trouble, I thought, in identifying as animal abuse
the case of one unfortunate hen who was literally fucked to death, which for
her was doubtless a terrifying consequence of enforced sexual intercourse
with a human male. Yet, in the case of large quadrupeds, such as the horses
and cows depicted in the film, the irreaction seemed closer to boredom or
perhaps indifference than it did to pain or to bliss - eating, urinating and
defecating as they were during intercourse or while their genitalia were
being manipulated. Indeed, it was unclear whether these larger animals were
even aware of the prolonged sexual relations which humans had foisted on
them. In their case, however, what I saw as animals' indifference might
actually have been calculated detachment on their part and, despite the fact
that we can probably never know it with much certainty, a coping strategy for
numbing the pain inflicted on them by yet another of the myriad ways in which
their lives are routinely invaded, inspected and disposed of by humans. The events depicted in films like
Barnyard Love raise interesting questions about the understanding of
bestiality as a social practice. How should we approach bestiality: is it an
outrageous and perhaps perverse act or, as the law's increasing tolerance of
it suggests, a relatively benign form of social deviance? Why have sexual
relations involving humans and animals been so vociferously and ubiquitously
condemned and so little studied? To these questions let me at once
add how remarkable it is, given the intense levels of ideological and
physical coercion that have been applied to bestiality, that the social
sciences, including sociology and criminology, have almost completely
neglected to study a widespread social practice that is traditionally viewed
with moral, judicial and aesthetic outrage. When, during his work on the
medieval prosecution and capital punishment of animals, the historian
E.P.Evans gruffly dismissed bestiality as 'this disgusting crime' (1906:148),
he was probably expressing not an idiosyncratic prejudice butan enduring
sentiment that he shared with the great majority of his colleagues. To him
and probably to most of us, bestiality is a disturbing form of sexual
practice that invites hurried bewilderment rather than sustained intellectual
inquiry. Indeed, in academic discourse the topic of bestiality tends to
surface only in lectures on the evolution of criminal law given by professors
who, with embarrassed chuckles, refer to the declining volume of bestiality
prosecutions since the early 19th-century in order to instantiate the
secularised tolerance and the supposed rationality of western law. While fictional
and quasi-autobiographical accounts of bestiality occasionally appear in
serious works of literature, like William Tester's (1991) Darling and Peter
Hoeg's (1996) The Woman and the Ape, accessible descriptions of it tend to be
produced only by libertine presses and cinematographers as erotic commodities
for consumption by a popular, albeit limited, audience. In what follows I seek to
introduce a view of bestiality which differs radically from both the
anthropocentrism enshrined in the dogma of Judaeo-Christianity and also from
the pseudo-liberal stance of tolerance fashionable today. I suggest,
specifically, that bestiality should be understood as 'interspecies sexual
assault' (since we should not be in the business of policing nonhuman
interspecies sexual relations, my argument is limited to the sexual abuse of
nonhuman animals by humans). But to begin with, I must comment briefly on the
evolution of different images of bestiality and the stated justifications for
its censure. Introduction to Bestiality('Among
Christians a Crime Not to be Named') The cultural universe of
bestiality is necessarily an anthropocentric one, though in many societies,
past and present, it inhabits an ambiguous ideological terrain. On the onehand,
it is exalted in mythic and folkloric traditions. Although they are not my
concern here, it is worth noting that these favorable depictions of
bestiality are often lodged in the sexual antics, the conquests and the
offspring of numerous gods, in the lineage of earthly monarchs and rulers,
and in the texts of fairy stories and other morality tales. On the other
hand, all known societies have likely applied some form of censure to
human-animal sexual relations. More over, the judicial accusation of bestiality
occasionally blurs into, or is employed in concert with, other charges, such
as witchcraft. Thus, some early medieval European accusations of witchcraft
involved the claim that the defendant had partaken in a ritual salute of the
Devils' backside, the 'osculum infame' or obscene kiss (Russell, 1982:63). In
another case of unknown date, a certain Francoise Secretain was burned alive
because she had had carnal knowledge of domestic animals - a dog, a cat and a
cock - and because, she admitted, she was a witch and her animals were
actually earthly forms of the devil (Dubois-Desaulle, 1933:58). What we refer to as 'bestiality'
has been denominated variously in different places and times. Besides a
hodge-podge of more or less politecollo-quialisms, bestiality has also been
termed 'zoophilia', 'zooerasty', 'sodomy' and 'buggery'. The 17th-century
English word 'bestiality' derives from the Latin bestialitas, the latter
being used in Aquinas' Summa Theologica severally to refer to primitive
behaviour, to human-animal sexual intercourse, and to the way in which
animals copulate. Until approximately the mid-19th century, the term referred
broadly to the beast-like, earthy and savage qualities allegedly inhering in
nonhuman animals. Nowadays, bestiality tends exclusively to denote sexual
relations between humans and animals. Usually, in law, it refers to sexual
intercourse when a human penis or digit enters the vagina, anus or cloaca of
the animal. However, it often also entails any form of oral-genital contact,
including those between women and animals and even, in psychiatry, fantasies
about sex with animals. Bestiality is sometimes classified
as a crime against nature (peccatio contra naturam); in this it is a
bedfellow of other crimes involving 'pollution' such as sodomy, buggery,
masturbation and pedophilia. At other times, the terms 'sodomy' and 'buggery'
are used interchangeably to describe bestiality, though they have also been
employed to denote homosexuality. Each of these terms carries with it perjorative
baggage that varies in its moral bases, in its intensity and in the duration
of its condemnation. Moreover, in some societies, such as in New England from
the Puritan 1600s until the mid-19th century, bestiality has been generally
regarded with such trepidation that even the very mention of the word is
censured. Accordingly, it is also referred to as 'that unmentionable vice' or
'a sin too fearful to be named' or 'among Christians a crime not to be
named'. Anthropocentrism and the Abominations of LeviticusFrom its inception, Christianity
applied austere standards and a strict discipline to those of its followers
who violated its injunctions against the irremissable major sins of idolatry,
the shedding of blood and fornication, including bestiality (McNeill and
Gamer, 1938:4-6). In all cases, the pre-scribed penalty was death. The
earliest and most influential justifications forcensures of bestiality are
the Mosaic commandments. Deuteronomy, for example,declares '[c]ursed be he
that lieth with any manner of beast' (27: 21), while Exodus commands that
'[w]hosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death' (22:19) - the
'whosoever' here referring to both men and women (Leviticus, 20:15-16).
Besides mandating death for humans, Leviticus also dictates that the
offending animal be put to death, a practice that reached its zenith in
certain late-medieval European societies (Beirne, 1994). The precise
intentions of those who originally condemned bestiality are probably not open
to reclamation. But over the ages three beliefs have persisted about its
wrongfulness: itruptures the natural, God-given order of the universe; it
violates the procreative intent required of all sexual relations between
Christians; and it produces monstrous offspring that are the work of the
Devil. Let us uncover each of these three beliefs in turn. A Rupture of the 'Natural' Order of the Universe Prefaced by the general command
'Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy', Leviticus declared
"Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith;
neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is
confusion' (18:23). This theme continues: Ye shallkeep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy
cattle gender with a diversekind; thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled
seed; neither shall agarment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee. (Leviticus,
19:19) The rules that cattle should not
'gender with a diverse kind' and that a field should not be sown 'with
mingled seed' lie at the heart of the Mosaic injunctions about bestiality. On
this very basis, and not without great irony, the early Christian church
regarded copulation with a Jew as a form of bestiality and applied the
penalty of death to it. So, too, from the time of Leviticus to that of 17th-century
English moralists and beyond, bestiality has been regarded as sinful or
criminal because it represents a rupture of the natural order of the
universe, whose categories it is immoral to mix. Similarly, in his history of
Plymouth Plantation, Governor William Bradford (1650: 404-12) recorded the
opinions of three Ministers given in 1642 about the acts of 'unnatural vice'
to be punished with death, among which were to be women who commit
bestiality. Seeking affirmation in Leviticus, the Ministers condemned
bestiality, whether penetration had occurred or not, because it is 'against
the order of nature', 'unnatural' and a 'confusion'. Again, Richard Capel, a
17th-century Stuart moralist, argued that bestiality is the worst of sexual
crimes because 'it turnsman into a very beast, makes a man a member of a
brute creature' (quoted in Thomas, 1983:39). Violation of Procreative IntentIn matters of sexual relations 'Be
thee holy' means more than 'Be thee separate' for Christian morality has long
required that sexual intercourse flow not from pleasure or play but
exclusively from a procreative intent. Bestiality has thus also been
condemned because it is held to be a violation of the Christian rule that
procreation is the sole purpose of sexual intercourse. Crimes against nature
have therefore been proclaimed to be those in which the emission of seed is
not accompanied by a procreative intent, as in masturbation, anal and oral
sex, incest, adultery, rape and bestiality. Monstrous OffspringBestiality has also been condemned
because of the off spring a sexual union between human and beast is thought
to produce or because of the evil that such offspring are held to signify or
portend (Davidson, 1991:41-43). This particular condemnation has itself been
part of a complex cultural framework that includes animism, paganism and a
fascination with monsters. Classical antiquity, for example,provides numerous
seemingly non-judgemental references to interspecies sexual intercourse,
including stories where animals were thought to be in love with humans. Such
cases arevery prominent in De natura animalium (c.A.D.200), for example, the
Roman historian and sophist Aelian's miscellany of facts about animals and
humans, genuine or supposed, which he gleaned from Greek writers, including
Aristotle. Drawing on material from and about Rome, Greece, India, Libya and
Egypt, Aelian documented how widespread was the belief in the actual
offspring of animal/human unions ('creatures of composite nature'). As he
wrote, '[m]any creatures are begotten with two faces and two breasts: some
bornof a cow have the foreparts of a man; others on the contrary spring up
begotten of a man but with the head of a cow' (1958: xvi,3:305). Although
Aelian provided his readers with no clues as to how such offspring were
regarded, they cannot always have been viewed with disfavor given his
ubiquitous and often reverential references to creatures such as satyrs,
centaurs and minotaurs. How easily the rigid boundaries
between animals and humans can become blurred is recorded in a history of
Ireland by the 12th-century chronicler Giraldus of Wales. Without further
comment he related how in the Glendalough mountains a cow gave birth to a
man-calf, the fruit of a union between a man and a cow, the local folk 'being
especially addicted to such abominations' (Cambrensis, 1863:85). He reported
elsewhere how Irish men and women had sexual intercourse with cows, goats and
lions and how the populace believed that such unions were occasionally
fertile. Indeed, Giraldus pondered whether it is murder to kill the product
of a man-cow union, for '[w]ho can disallow the claims of a creature which
stand serect, laughs, and goes on two feet to belong to the humanspecies?'
(ibid.). Similar superstititions appear in 17th-century New England, one case
being related in the New Havencourt records. Moreover, the poetry of John
Donne and the speeches and sermons of John Winthrop, Cotton Mather and his
brother John, Samuel Danforth and William Bradford, are infected with the
fear that colonial agricultural society was a frontier existence beset not
only with the internal dangers of alcohol, idleness and lust but also
surrounded by forests, wild animals and savages (Thomas,1983: 38-41; Canup,
1988). Superstition combined with religious doctrine to assail bestiality and
to portray its progeny as monsters resulting from the decay of civilization
and the encroachment of the wilderness. Monstrous progeny were a visible
reminder of how evil it was totransgress the God-given boundaries separating
man from beast. The social control of the object
of such fears has been subject to great cultural variation in both style and
volume. In some societies, the censure of bestiality has been accompanied by
surprisingly few prosecutions. For example, despite the horror with which
bestiality was viewed by puritan zealots and legal writers in England
(Sharpe, 1983:65-6)and in colonial America (Chapin, 1982:127-9), it was
rarely indicted and was unlikely to result in a conviction. In other
societies,the number of convicts executed is staggering. Thus, in Sweden,
from 1635 to 1778 there were as many as 700 executions for bestiality and an
even greater number of males was sentenced to flogging, church penalties and
public forced labor in chains (Liliequist, 1990). Upon conviction, both human
and animal were usually put to death, often by burning at the stake but
occasionally by beheading, hanging or from blows to the head. The bodies of
the condemned, both human and animal, were finally burned or butchered and
buried together. If the penalties for bestiality
and the entire range of unnatural acts had been strictly enforced, as Goodich
(1979:66-7) has noted, then Europe and colonial America would have become
vast penal institutions inhabited by populations restricted in diet and
dress, excluded from church services, and condemned to a joyless life of
fasts, prayers and flagellation. While the relative frequency with which
bestiality was condemned in early modern societies partly reflects the
greater contacts between humans and animals in rural societies, such public
displays of atonement have largely been dispensed with in modern urban
societies. It is far more efficient for the state to deal with bestiality
behind closed doors, or even to ignore it, and for the local folk community
either to ridicule those who engage in it or to ostracise them. Indeed, since the mid-19th century
many 'unnatural offences', including bestiality, have effectively been
decriminalised. In the US there is no federal bestiality statute and only 27
of the 50 states now have such a statute. Nowadays, a defendant will probably
becharged with a misdemeanor like public indecency, a breach of the peace or
cruelty to animals. Indeed, following the lead of Jeremy Benthamand others,
the social control of bestiality has formally passed from religion and
criminal law to a psychiatric discourse at whose center lie diseased
individuals who are often depicted as simpletons or imbeciles with
psychopathic personalities and who allegedly sometimes also have aggressive and
sadistic tendencies. However, at once subverting this psychiatrisation and
also echoing certain aspects of the spirit of decriminalisation, there has
gradually emerged a pseudo-liberal tolerance of bestiality. This tendency
implies that because bestialityis an interesting and vital part of almost
every known culture it should not only be tolerated but even, within certain
limits, celebrated (e.g. Dekkers, 1994; and see Shell, 1993: 148-75; and on
the Internet see 'alt.sex.bestiality'). Naming Interspecies Sexual AssaultAre the decriminalisation and the
psychiatrisation of bestiality and the drift to toleration of it signs of
increasing civility and social progress? A superficial answer to this
question is 'yes', if by it one means that censured humans are no longer
brutalised by execution or by solitary confinement with hard labor. But that
would be to look at bestiality solely from an anthropocentric position, which
is what the juridico-religious dogma surveyed here does exclusively. Seldom,
either in times pastor now, do popular images of social control include
recognition of the terror and the pain that judicial interrogation and
execution inflict on animals convicted of sexual relations with humans.
Neither in the Mosaic commandments nor in the records of past or present
court proceedings, neither in the rantings of puritan zealots nor in
psychiatric testimony, is bestiality censured because of the harm that it
inflicts on animals. But, especially in the case of smaller creatures like
rabbits and hens, animals often suffer great pain and even death from
human-animal sexual relations. While researchers have examined the
physiological consequences of bestiality for humans (e.g. Tournier et
al.,1981), they pay no such attention to the internal bleeding, the ruptured
anal passages, the bruised vaginas and the battered cloaca of animals, let
alone to animals' psychological and emotional trauma. Such neglect of animal
suffering mirrors the broader problem that, even when commentators admit the
discursive relevance of animal abuse to the understanding of human societies,
they do not perceive it, either theoretically or practically, as an object of
study in its own right. In principle, the attempt to
understand bestiality as a form of animal abuse might profitably draw on the
perspectives and insight of the three major tendencies that lie at the
philosophical and theoretical heart of the animal protection community,
namely, utilitarianism (e.g. Singer, 1990) liberal rights-theory (e.g. Regan,
1983; Francione, 1996) and feminism (for a comprehensive bibliography, see
Donovan and Adams, 1995:353-61). We might insist, following liberal-rights
theory for example, that if bestiality is engaged in with a mammal, then it
is a harm inflicted on a moral patient entitled to the fundamental right of
respectful treatment. But discursive support for this specific task is very
difficult to find either in the writings of the animal protection community
or in its day-to-day activities. Moreover, though in the last decade some of
the most important contributions to the understanding of animal abuse have
been made by feminism, except for very brief statements by Carol Adams
(1995a, 1995b:65-69) and Barbara Noske (1993), feminists have altogether
ignored the harmful effects of bestiality on animals. Departing from this
curious silence, Adams (1995a) insists that we should understand bestiality
as forced sex with animals because sexual relationships of unequal power
cannot be consensual. In making this argument, and in asserting that all forms
of masculinist oppression are linked, Adams thereby begins to claim the
perspective of animals as a central concern of feminism. I agree with Adams that, in
seeking to replace anthropocentrism with anac knowledgement of the sentience
of animals, we must start with the fact that in almost every situation humans
and animals exist in a relation of potential or actual coercion. Whether as
domestic pets or as livestock, where they are throughly dependent on humans
for food, shelterand affection, or as feral creatures, where humans have the
capacity to ensnare them and subject them to their will, animals' interaction
with humans is always infused with the possibility of coercion. So it is with
sex. In the same way that sexual assault against women differs from normal
sex because the former is sex obtained by physical, economic, psychological
or emotional coercion - any of which implies the impossibility of genuine
consent - so, too, Adams' assertion that bestiality is always sexual coercion
('forced sex') is surely a correct description of most, if not all,
human-animal sexual relations. However, I am not convinced that
bestiality must entail sexual coercion simply because human-animal sexual relations
always occur in a context of 'unequalpower' (however theorised). If unequal
power is the definitive criterion, then sexual coercion would be an essential
characteristic not only of intercourse between human adults and infants or
children but of most adult heterosexual and even homosexual intercourse as
well. Sexual coercion is not sex that occurs always and only in a context of
unequal power, though on occasion, of course, situations of inequality imply
coercion because for a variety of reasons the party with less power cannot
freely dissent from participation. Ultimately, sexual coercion occurs
whenever one party does not genuinely consent to sexual relations or does not
have the ability to communicate consent to the other. Sometimes, one participant
in a sexual encounter may appear to be consenting because she does not
overtly resist, but that does not of course mean that genuine consent is
present. For genuine consent to sexual relations to be present - somewhat to
modify Box's (1983: 124) original formulation - both participants must be
conscious, fully informed and positive in their desires. If genuine consent - defined in
this way - is a necessary condition of sex between one human and another,
then there is no good reason to suppose that it may be dispensed with in the
case of sex between humans and other sentient animals. Bestiality involves
sexual coercion because animals are incapable of genuinely saying 'yes' or
'no' to humans in forms that we can readily understand. A different way of putting
this is to suggest that ifit is true that we can never know what it is like
to be a nonhuman animal, as the philosopher Thomas Nagel (1974) has implied,
then presumably we will never know if animals are able to assent - in their
terms - to human suggestions for sexual intimacy. Indeed, if we cannot know
whether animals consent to our sexual overtures, then we are as much at fault
when we tolerate interspecies sexual relations as when we fail to condemn
adults who have sexual relations with infants or with children or with other
'moral patients' - to use Tom Regan's(1983) term - who, for whatever reason,
are unable to refuse participation. If it is right to regard unwanted sexual
advances to women, to infants and to children as sexual assault, then I suggest
sexual advances to animals should be viewed likewise. Moreover, like infants, young
children and other 'moral patients' (Regan, 1983), animals are beings without
an effective voice. Some animals, such as the cows and other farm yard
animals - including those I viewed in the film Barnyard Love (supra, pp.
318-319) - are not equipped to resist human sexual advances in any meaningful
way owing to their docile and often human-bred natures. Other animals, in
trying to resist human sexual advances, can certainly scratch, bite, growl,
howl, hiss and otherwise communicate protest about unwanted advances. But in
most one-on-one situations an animal is incapable of enforcing her will to
resist sexual assault, especially when a human is determined to effect his purpose.
Moreover, animals are disadvantaged in yet another way, for when they are
subjected to sexual coercion and to sexual assault,it is impossible for them
to communicate the facts of their abuse to those who might give them aid. In short, because bestiality is in
certain key respects so similar to the sexual assault of women, children and
infants, I suggest that it should be named interspecies sexual assault. For many of the same reasons that,
as it applies to humans, the concept of sexual assault is more widely
applicable than that of rape so, too, interspecies sexual assault comprises a
wider range of actions than those found in dictionary definitions of
bestiality or in notions embedded in popular culture, both of which tend to
focus narrowly on penetration of the vagina, anus or cloaca of an animal by a
human penis. But if the concept of interspecies sexual assault is not
exhausted by penile or digital insertion, then how wide should its scope be?
Should it include touching, kissing and fondling? If it is extended to
fondling, for example,then to the fondling of what, with what and by whom?
Given animals' inability to communicate consent to human sexual overtures, I
would like to establish - or at least to aim for - the general principle that
interspecies sexual assault comprises all sexual advances by humans to
animals. Admittedly, such a principle clearly has inherent problems which I
cannot pretend to know how to solve. For example, how do we establish a
general rule for identifying actions that are physically identical to those
defined as interspecies sexual assault but which have a different intent?
Consider the following tale related to me by a colleague. When I was a little girl I didn't take my dog to bed
- she was too big for that - but instead lay regularly in her basket. I even
sucked her nipples since I had seen her pups do that. She allowed it and
didn't prevent it, even though she wasn't suckling at the time. My mother, a
doctor herself, was thank goodness not too narrow-minded and left us alone in
our tactile relationship. (Personal
communication, September 20, 1996) This innocent and affectionate
suckling was probably not sexual in nature, it certainly was not assaultive
and it doubtless caused the dog no harm. Many actions like this can ofcourse
be either sexual or affective in nature, depending on their social contexts
or on the physiological responses of the actors (for both human and nonhuman
animals, innocent, nonsexual physical touching and strokings low the pulse
and respiration and lower the blood pressure, but quite the opposite
responses are produced by sexual arousal). But where, precisely, should a
sociological line of demarcation be drawn? It is clear, to me at least, that
the milking of a cow, for example, has nothing to do with sexual assault. But
how about electrically-inducede jaculation for insemination? Is this
interspecies sexual assault? Simple assault? Neither? In arguing that interspecies
sexual assault comprises all sexual advances by humans to animals, I do not
mean to dilute the severity of the condemnation of the sexual assault of one
human by another. However, I suspect that, for different reasons, some
feminists and most conservative opponents of the animal protection community
will wish to accuse me of just this. Such a reponse assumes, wrongly I
believe, not only that there is some anthropocentric chain of moral claims
and priorities wherein those of humans are necessarily far above those of
animals but also that the interests of humans and animals are incompatible. On
the contrary, sexism and speciesism operate not in opposition to each other
but in tandem. Interspecies sexual assault is the product of a masculinity
that sees women, animals and nature as objects that can be controlled,
manipulated and exploited. Listen only to some of the sexist language that
prepares the way for bodily sexual assault (and see Dunayer, 1995). Much of
this is voiced in speciesist terms. When a man describes women as 'cows',
'bitches', '(dumb) bunnies', 'birds', 'chicks', 'foxes', 'freshmeat', and
their genitalia as 'beavers' or 'pussies', he uses derogatory language to
distance himself emotionally from, and to elevate himself above, his prey by
relegating them to a male-constructed category of 'less than human' or, more
importantly, 'less than me'. Reduced to this inferior status, both women and
nonhuman animals are thereby denied subjectivity by male predators who can
then proceed to exploit and abuse them without guilt. Unchallenged, sexist
and speciesist terms operate in concert to legitimate sexual assaults on
women and animals. Towards a Typology of Interspecies Sexual AssaultBetween the ages of 12 and 14, I used to fuck my
horses. Every day I would wake upto feed the horses, clean the stalls, and
fuck the mare. (The Advocate, November 15, 1994) - Jeff Heiskell, leadsinger
of The Judybats Thus far, in outlining and
opposing conventional notions of bestiality, I have suggested their
replacement with a concept of interspecies sexual assault. Sexological
surveys and historical studies of court records of bestiality prosecutions
have use fully revealed glimpses of the number and variety of species thus
abused, among them mules, cows, sows, dogs, mares, ducks, sheep, goats,
rabbits and hens. These diverse creatures include companion animals, farmyard
animals, livestockand animal labourers. Although interspecies sexual assault
often results from the same malicious masculinity and comprises the same
harmful actions as those that constitute the sexual assault of one human by
another, it is clearly not a unitary social practice but one with differing
social forms. In what follows I try to identify
some key categories of a typology of interspecies sexual assault, including:
(i)sexual fixation; (ii) commodification; (iii) adolescent sexual experimentation;
and (iv) aggravated cruelty. These four categories are structured in terms of
both differing human-animal social relationships and also the degree of harm
that is suffered by abused animals. Sexual
Fixation (or 'zoophilia') This is the form of interspecies
sexual assault that occurs when animals are the preferred sexual partners of
humans. It is hard to believe that this was not the case when, for example,
in colonial New England in 1642, Thomas Granger was indicted for buggery with
"a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey"
(Bradford, 1650: 320). Rare descriptions of sexual fixation with animals are
provided by Kree (1974) and by Krafft-Ebing (1886:376-7), who designates it
as 'impulsive sodomy': A. was convicted of having committed
masturbation and sodomy on dogs andrabbits. When twelve years old he saw how
boys masturbated a dog. He imitated it, and thereafter he could not keep from
abusing dogs, cats and rabbits in this vile manner. Much more frequently,
however, he committed sodomy on female rabbits -- the only animals that had a
charm for him. At dusk he was accustomed to repair to his masterÕs rabbit pen
in order to gratify his vile desire. Rabbits with torn rectums were
repeatedly found...At the height of the attack there were sounds of bells,
cold perspiration, trembling of the knees, and, finally, loss of resistive
power,and impulsive performance of the perverse act...A. stated that if
called upon to choose between a woman and a female rabbit, he could make
choice only of the latter. Sexual fixation with animals is
probably the least common form of interspecies sexual assault; one author
(Dekkers, 1994:149) estimates that the percentage of humans who have sex
exclusively with animals is far below 1%, though this figure lacks suitable
evidence. The psychological literature contains no adequate accounts of it,
yet Adams (1995a:30) asserts that there is a similarity in the respective
world views of the zoophiliac, the rapist and the child sexual abuser. 'They
all view the sex they have with their victims as consensual,' she claims,
'and they believe it benefits their sexual "partners" as well as
themselves' (1995a: 30). It is possible that Adams' claim is correct. But it
will remain unsupported until a significant number of methodologically-sensitive
life histories have been completed on zoophiliacs. It is just as likely that
'fixated humans' assault animals sexually not because they believe it
benefits their sexual 'partners' but because they enjoy inflicting pain on
other creatures who, in this particular case, just happen to be animals
because animals are more available to them than humans. Do they often not
start with animals and eventually 'graduate' to humans? CommodificationViolation of Procreative Intent This is the predominant element in
interspecies sexual assaults that are packaged as commodities for sale in a
market. It often involves a two fold assault - one by a man on a woman who is
assaulted and humiliated by being forced to have sex with an animal, the
other on the animal who is coerced, without the possibility of giving genuine
consent, into having sex with a human. Examples include live shows of women
copulating with animals in bars and sex clubs or depictions of interspecies
sexual assaults in pornographic films such as Barnyard Love and Deep Throat.
In the latter, for example, Linda Marchiano ('Linda Lovelace') is filmed
having intercourse with a large dog resembling a German shepherd. During this
act and for a long time after it, Marchiano herself 'felt nothing but acute
revulsion' (1980:107-14; and see Hollander, 1972:35), and she agreed to be
filmed in this two-hour episode only because her boyfriend and batterer
threatened to kill her. Consider also the more problematic
case of Deena the stripping chimpanzee (Adams, 1990). For $100 Deena and her
trainer would appear at a social gathering, during which Deena would perform
a striptease act for the partygoers. Is this interspecies sexual assault?
Clearly, this case is one that combines commodification with aspects of
sexual objectification. The chimp had been trained to perform like a human
female stripper - a marketable action that it could not possibly have freely
chosen to do, and whose social context it could not have fully understood.
Though it is true that sexual abuse does not necessarily involve actual
physical contact, perhaps this particular act should be understood less as
sexual assault than - like Adams (1990) suggests - as a violation of an
animal's right to dignity. Adolescent sexual experimentation This seems to be typically
practised in rural areas by young maleswith easy access to animals. It is
probably the most common form of interspecies sexual assault, as shown by
quite disparate studies of 17th-and 18th-century Sweden (Liliequist, 1991)
and of mid-20th-century rural America. With regard to the latter, for
example, it has been documented that about 8% of the male population has some
sexual experience with animals and that 'a minimum of 40-50% of all American
farm boysexperience some form of sexual contact with animals' (Kinsey,
Pomeroy and Martin, 1948:671), as do 5.1% of American females(Kinsey et al.,
1953:505). But these findings are highly suspect both because Kinsey's
methodology lacked probability sampling and because his aggressive personal
interviewing techniques ensured elevated levels of reportings. Moreover, in
most Western societies - where petownership has dramatically increased and
where, with the rise of 'factory farming', there has been a steady decline in
the percentageof the human population living in agricultural areas or
residing with farm animals inside their houses - it cannot be certain thatit
is farm animals who are nowadays the most common objects of interspecies
sexual assault by humans. Precisely what the practice of adolescent
sexual experimentation with animals represents symbolically and culturally
and how it contributes to gender socialisation, varies from one social
context to another. It can be performed either alone or with other
adolescents who either watch or else participate. In a group context, some
boys of necessity teach how it is done while others learn. It can be
performed for a variety of reasons, including mere curiosity, cruelty,
showing off for other boys, and acquiring the techniques of intercourse for
later use on girls. An anonymous colleague has told me, for example, that
when she was doing anthropological fieldwork in rural Algeria, she and a
co-worker witnessed a very nervous young male (on the night before his
wedding)'practising' sexual intercourse with a donkey for the explicit
purpose of not appearing hopelessly unskilled with his wife the following
night. Presumably, too, there is some point towards the end of their
adolescence when young males desist from experimental sexual activities with animals
because such practices are regarded as unmanly or, perhaps, as perverse. Aggravated Cruelty It is reasonable to suppose, given
their great predominance in sexual experimentation with animals, that young males
also disproportionately engage in aggravated cruelty during acts of
interspecies sexual assault(i.e. a level of cruelty over and above that
already presented in most such acts). It is true that no specific pattern of
aggravated cruelty has yet been uncovered among young males who engage in
interspecies sexual assault, but this is so perhaps only because this
category has not yet been researched. Psychologists have shown that children
and adolescents who assault animals appear to be over whelmingly young males
of normal intelligence (Tapia, 1971; Felthouse,1981) who are often sexually
abused at home and whose family situations also often contain spousal abuse
(Friedrich, Urquiza and Beilke, 1986; Hunter, 1990:214-6). Quite apart from the occurrence of
cruelty during adolescent sexual experimentation, aggravated cruelty can be a
major element in interspecies sexual assault in other ways. In mid-19th
century England, for example, one case was reported where two-feet-long
knotted sticks were thrust into mares' wombs, which were then vigorously
rented, and another where the penises of cart horses and donkeys were cut off
(Archer, 1985:152). Multiple cases of such atrocities were confirmed in
several English counties in 1993 (The Times, 1993, March 2, May 8, June 4).
Similarly, in 1991 at a zoo in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a deer was found
with fatalwounds that included a fractured jaw and extensive bleeding from
the rectum and vagina (Standard Times, 1991, July 26). Sometimes, aggravated
cruelty against animals takes place in conjunction with the humiliation of
women. This has been documented both in Nazi concentration camps (Fleis-mann,
1968:50-71) and in the course of partner abuse (Adams, 1995b:65-9). In the
latter, it can take the form of battering, which involves the use of animals
for humiliation and sexual exploitation by batterers and/or marital rapists.
Recent reports from LosAngeles 'tell of a man who, after fights with his
girlfriend, sought revenge by raping her pet chicken' (quoted in Holmes, 1991:27).
Moreover, if one allows that, like humans, animals are capable of
experiencing non-physical pain, then aggravated cruelty also occurs whenever
interspecies sexual assault produces emotional or psychological pain and
suffering (Ascione, 1993; Masson and McCarthy,1995). Conclusion This paper has tried to replace
anthropocentric censures of bestiality with a concept that I term
'interspecies sexual assault'. My argument about the meaning and causes of
interspecies sexual assault has derived largely from how the situation of
animals as abused victims parallels that of women and, to some extent, that
of infants and children. Specifically, bestiality should be understood as
interspecies sexual assault because (1) human-animal sexual relations almost
always involve coercion; (2) such practices often cause animals pain and even
death; and (3) animals are unable either to communicate consent to us in a
form that we can readily understand or to speak out about their abuse. Though
space does not permit it here, this concept of inter-species sexual assault
can doubtless be strengthened with the discursive support of utilitarianism
and of liberal rights-theory. As I have proposed it, the concept
of interspecies sexual assault clearly needs further elaboration. Key problems
remain. For example, given the lack of studies of interspecies sexual
assault, my fourfold typology is quite provisional. Between the categories of
aggravated cruelty and adolescent sexual experimentation, especially, there
is obvious overlap. One must be able to distinguish, too, not only between
the malicious masculinity behind aggravated cruelty and other situations of
adolescent sexual experimentation and exploration, but also between the
latter and innocentand affective fondling. Some difficulties seem to resist a
clear answer - for example, is electrically-induced ejaculation for
insemination a form of interspecies sexual assault and, if so, is it an
instance of commodification or of aggravated cruelty or both? Finally, in advancing the concept of
interspecies sexual assault, I must stress that I do not wish to add to
either the psychiatrization or the criminalization of a practice which
nowadays occupies a place at the outer margins of public and legal concern.
But this leaves me in uncomfortable position. If a sexual assault on an
animal by a human is a harm that is objectionable for the same reasons as is
an assault on one human by another - because it involves coercion, because it
produces pain and suffering and because it violates the rights of another
being - then it would seem to constitute a sufficient condition for the
censure of the human perpetrator. Clearly, we need to confront the nature of
the censure that inevitably accompanies the relocation of bestiality as
interspecies sexual assault. Should the censure involve criminalization? If
so, of what severity? Should culpability be strict, or should the scales of
justice depend on such factors as the moral sigificance of what was done, the
degree of harm and the species of animal assaulted? Even if a cultural
consensus could be established about the harmfulness of interspecies sexual
assault - or any other form of animal abuse - for animals that are kept in
confinement by humans, its effectiveness as aright would nevertheless be
undermined by the rival cultural powers associated with the rights to private
property and to privacy. Not coincidentally, it is of
course precisely invocations of these rival rightsthat men use when they
sexually abuse women and children. The right toprivacy would undermine the
detection and prosecution ofinterspecies sexual assault; the right to private
property would be invokedto defend it. As Ted Benton (1994:147-48) has argued
about the latter, those who wish to ascribe rights to animals, including the
right to respectful treatment, would eventually be forced to challenge the
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Acknowledgement.
I am indebted to Carol Adams, Ted Benton, Katherine Berney, Jim
Messerschmidt, Barbara Noske and Andrew Rowan for their generous comments on
an earlier version of this paper. Republished by Verschwiegenes
Tierleid Online – Menschen für Tierrechte, TVG Saar e.V. with
kind permission of the author, Piers Beirne. June, 2004 Contact:
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