Bestiality and Zoophilia: On Sexual Abuse and Sexual Orientation (article)

Early anthropologists gathered documentation about sexual practices around the world. Some of them already noticed the practice of bestiality among different cultures. For example, the social anthropologist and moral philosopher Edward Westermarck, in his Moroccan studies, mentioned that bestiality was not uncommon and was practiced even for curative or prophylactic purposes. Sexual intercourse with a she-mule was meant to be a remedy for polyuria, and sexual intercourse with a she-ass, on three successive days, for gonorrhea. Boys before puberty had “intercourse with she-asses for the purpose of getting sexual capacity and making the penis grow,” and a superstitious belief prevailed about having intercourse with a black dog as a “permanent safeguard against imprison-

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ment” (Edward Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco, vol. II, 1926, 289). Bestiality was, however, despised and ridiculed when related to grown-up men.

In Morocco, Westermarck had collected popular sayings that revealed how bestiality was approached among people who both made jokes about and anticipated evil because of bestial acts: “He who has intercourse with a she-ass, neither Muhammadans nor Christians will bear him” and “He who has intercourse with a she-camel, may God give him a lot of bugs and an ant” (Edward Westermarck, Wit and Wisdom in Morocco: A Study of Native Proverbs, 1930, 88). Other animals mentioned in similar sayings were a mare, a she-mule, a she-calf, a ewe, a she-kid, a bitch, a sow, a she-monkey, a she-fox, a female hare, a hen, an owl, and a tame pigeon. Sexual relations with bears, moose, beavers, caribous, and porcupines have been reported among native North Americans. The list of possible animal sexual partners can be extended, from insects to apes and dolphins. Indigenous North American and Middle Eastern cultures had ambivalent, albeit in many instances approbative, attitudes toward bestiality.

Historical Highlights

Hani Miletski, whose work includes Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia (2002) and the article “A History of Bestiality” in Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual Relations with Animals (Eds. Andrea M. Beetz and Anthony L. Podberscek, 2009, 1–22), has presented many historical highlights of bestiality and concluded that it has been an integral part of humanity since the dawn of civilization. Because of its believed evil consequences, bestiality was condemned by Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the Old Testament (The Book of Leviticus), bestiality is described as widespread, perverse, and worshipping wrong Gods in the country of Canaan. Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks incorporated human-animal sexual acts into their religious worship and rituals, arts, and mythologies. While bestiality was punishable by torture and death in Ancient Egypt, it was never punishable in Ancient Greece (Joseph R. Rosenberger, Bestiality, 1968). Ancient Romans invented a public spectacle where women (and sometimes men) were raped by animals to amuse the audience at the Colosseum and Circus Maximus. Many Roman emperors and their wives engaged in bestiality, or watched others engage in bestiality.

During the Middle Ages, bestiality became connected with magic and witchcraft, and strictly regulated and punished by Catho-

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lic legislation. The Inquisition accused some witches of having made a pact with the demon-animal. There were also tales about sexual human-animal unions that resulted in half-human births. The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas adopted this idea and classified bestiality as the most serious sin against nature (Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, 1994). During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, the bestiality trials frequently linked to witch trials (Midas Dekkers, Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, 1994).

The Age of Enlightenment paved way in France for the 1810 Napoleonic code that decriminalized both bestiality and private sexual acts between consenting adults (Edgar Gregersen, Sexual Practices: The Story of Human Sexuality, 1983). Bestiality was not included in civil codes in some countries while others prosecuted violent sexual acts with animals. The high degree of violence in human-animal sexual acts has been exemplified in brutal practices. For example, during World War II, the national-socialist physician Josef Mengele conducted human-animal breeding experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp by training and forcing dogs and ponies on Jewish and Polish young women (J. Rupert Rosenfeld, The Animal Lovers, 1967). In the mid-1920s, utopian artificial insemination experiments had been planned by the Soviet zoology professor Ilia Ivanov in a project for hybridizing humans and apes (Alexander Etkind, “Beyond Eugenics: The Forgotten Scandal of Hybridizing Humans and Apes,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 39(2), 2008, 205–210). However, the “New Soviet Man” could not be constructed by means of this project.

Psychiatric and Sexological Approaches

In the emergent field of psychiatry and sexual research, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, in his book Psychopathia Sexualis (1894), coined the term “zoophilia,” referring to non-pathological sexual contacts with animals, and “zoophilia erotica,” meaning a fetishist-like sexual attraction to animal skin or fur, and to pathological sexual contacts with animals (“zooerasty”). The terms have been used in various ways by different writers. The common legal term for the sexual abuse of animals is “bestiality,” but nowadays certain zoophiles and researchers prefer to use that term when referring to human-animal sex acts, and the term “zoophilia” to refer to the desire and fantasy to have sexual relationships with animals.

Psychiatrists and sexologists started to write case studies

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and overviews on the varieties and peculiarities of sexual behavior, both in urban and non-urban areas. The cases of zoophilia concern only a thin slice of all sexual behaviors. Statistics have shown a decline of officially reported cases of bestiality, due to demographic changes from agricultural to industrial and post-industrial societies. However, the pet-centered mindsets in current Western societies may well have sustained and even increased the possibilities of human-animal sexual relations and orientations in ways that have not yet been thoroughly studied. The prevalence and nature of sexual contact with animals among the general population has not been extensively charted since Alfred Kinsey’s time.

The current psychiatric diagnostic system, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, 2013), classifies zoophilia in the subcategory “other specified paraphilic disorder” (“paraphilias not otherwise specified” in the DSM-III and IV). In the DSM-5, zoophilia is diagnosed as a disorder only when it is accompanied by distress or interference with normal functioning. The ICD-10 of the World Health Organization lists a sexual preference for animals as “other disorder of sexual preference.” Psychiatrists tend to see zoophilia associated with other clinically more central problems rather than a clinically significant problem by itself.

Not only psychiatry and sexology have been studying zoophilia. Psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, theology, ethics, political science, law, humanities, mental health, veterinary medicine, animal rights, and animal welfare are additional fields interested in the issues of zoophilia.

Josef Massen first proposed nine forms of zoophilia, gradually increasing in severity and overlapping in various ways: 1) incidental experience and latent zoophilia; 2) zoophilic voyeurism; 3) frottage (non-consensual physical contact as a source of pleasure); 4) the animal as a tool for masturbatory activities; 5) the animal as a surrogate object for a behavioral fetishism (sadomasochistic practices); 6) the animal as a fetish; 7) physical contact and affection; 8) the animal as a surrogate for a human sex partner; and 9) the animal as a deliberately and voluntarily chosen sex partner. This list is, of course, not exhaustive in its description of the forms of zoophilia (Zoophilie: Die sexuelle Liebe zu Tieren [Translated: Zoophilia: Sexual Love to Animals], 1994, 57).

To better map different shades of zoosexuality, Anil Ag-

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grawal proposed in his article “A New Classification of Zoophilia” (Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 18[2], 2011, 73–78) grouping zoophilias, in the same manner as necrophilias, into a continuum. The pathologically least deviant being in class I and the most deviant in class X; actual sexual activities with animals starting from class VII: I Human–animal role-players; II Romantic zoophiles; III Zoophilic fantasizers; IV Tactile zoophiles; V Fetishistic zoophiles; VI Sadistic bestials; VII Opportunistic zoophiles; VIII Regular zoophiles; IX Homicidal zoophiles; and X Exclusive zoophiles (the complete exclusion of human sex partners).

Romantic zoophiles and zoophilic fantasizers are usually persons caring for and relating to animals that give them reciprocal companionship. There is a big difference in these mutually supporting and sharing human-animal relations compared with sadistic means of getting sexual pleasure by torturing or killing animals. To grasp the developmental and motivational bases of non-caring, pain-inflicting relations to living sentient animals, interdisciplinary research efforts are needed. Such research can help us gain more insight into how animals may get traumatized by human sexual approach—and how sometimes non-abusive zoophilia can bring reciprocal pleasure for humans and animals (see Andrea M. Beetz, Love, Violence, and Sexuality in Relationships between Humans and Animals, 2002).

Against Animal Sexual Abuse—For Non-Abusive Zoophilia?

From the viewpoint of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), all bestiality (with or without physical injury) is harmful to animals and necessarily abusive, because animals are unable to give or withhold consent. In 1999, the HSUS started a campaign against sexual abuse of animals that the society equates to the eroticization of violence, control, and exploitation. Contrary to this view, zoophiles question that animals are unable “to refuse sexual advances in a way that humans can understand, if the humans are willing and sensitive enough to perceive and interpret the signs correctly, and to act accordingly” (Andrea M. Beetz, “Bestiality and Zoophilia: Associations with Violence and Sex Offending,” in Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual Relations with Animals, Eds. Andrea M. Beetz and Anthony L. Podberscek, 2009, 63).

Most non-sexual zoophiles identify themselves as supporters of animal welfare and are prone to claim that some forms of animal sexuality can be for non-reproductive purposes, that human-animal non-abusive sexual activities (from petting to intercourse)

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can provide mutual pleasure, and that some animals (for example, dolphins) are sexually attracted to humans. That is why zoophiles oppose laws that prohibit non-abusive forms of bestiality, and hold the laws unjust and discriminatory. By 2017, jurisdiction in 45 U.S. states ban bestiality, and even globally such jurisdictions have increased since the 2000s. However, not all laws are explicit about which human-animal sexual activities are considered illegal. There are also countries that permit human-animal sexual activities but prohibit animal-oriented pornography.

Animal abuse and interhuman violence are often linked. Such a proposed link from animal abuse to interhuman violence is called by Piers Beirne “the progression thesis,” which originated in the 1980s but became more evaluated and discussed in the late 1990s. He coined this term in his article “From Animal Abuse to Interhuman Violence? A Critical Review of the Progression Thesis” (Society and Animals, 12[1], 2004, 39–65). Thus, Clifton P. Flynn found that boys committing animal cruelty are more likely to have a personal history of corporal punishment in his article “Animal Abuse in Childhood and Later Support for Interpersonal Violence in Families” (Society & Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies, 7[2], 1999, 261). Massachusetts SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) files and police records show that animal abusers were 5.3 times more likely to have a criminal record of violence. Researchers on SPCA records have noticed that 70% of all animal abusers have committed at least one other criminal offense and almost 40% have committed crimes of violence against people.

Although animal abuse does not inevitably lead to violence toward humans, researchers have pinpointed an association between animal abuse and a host of antisocial behaviors, including violence. This was presented in the work of Arnold Arluke, Jack Levin, Carter Luke, and Frank Ascione in their article “The Relationship of Animal Abuse to Violence and Other Forms of Antisocial Behavior” (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14[9], 1999, 963–975). Animal cruelty is often one of the first indicators of domestic violence. Reports also suggest that 40% of sex offenders who victimized children admitted engaging in sex with animals, while between 80% and 90% of domestic violence victims said their abusers started with abuse to their pets. For example, in Angela Browne’s 1987 study of the respective social situations of battered women who do and who do not kill their spouses, 62% of the for-

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mer and 37% of the latter told that their mates had forced or urged them to perform various sexual acts, including “sex with animals” (When Battered Women Kill, 1987, 96–97). Beirne, however, argues that research on “the progression thesis” lacks methodological and conceptual clarity (2004, 56). He concludes that the link between the abuse of animals and interhuman violence is not embedded only in individual pathological biographies but also in the institutionalized social and cultural practices of violence.

Psychohistorical research could contribute to this area and give valuable insight. Psychohistory of human-animal relations could include impacts from psychobiographical studies, the history of childhood, childrearing, parenting, family, and other social groups as well as large groups, ideologies, and mentalities. How we relate to animals concerns not only our loving and caring attitudes toward animals but also our violent and cruel attacks against animals (via gun culture). I suggest that all evolutionary psychogenic modes of childrearing proposed by Lloyd deMause can be applied to our relating to and handling animals, which includes (routinely) killing, abandoning, ambivalence about, intruding on, socializing, and helping them. All these modes still exist in our societies, and the general trend toward improved human-animal relations is hardly all-embracing since we are increasingly losing species and the biodiversity of our planet.

Scientific research has not always been carried out without the sexual abuse of animals. For example, Harry Harlow’s infamous experiments on rhesus macaque monkeys included zoosadism. He used the “Pit of Despair,” a small isolation cell in which the monkeys lived for different periods, even up to a year after which the victimized apes were totally deranged, depressed, and uninterested in the opposite sex. Harlow’s other device was then used; it was called the “Rape Rack,” an apparatus to tie the female apes and force them to copulation to become fertilized. The outcomes were not surprising: the traumatized mother monkeys were unable to care for their children, abusing or neglecting them. “Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were,” Harlow wrote, reflecting on the results of his experiments (quoted in Deborah Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, 2002, 217).

Based on Robert T. Francoeur’s 1982 discussion in Becoming a Sexual Person about the three interrelated aspects of sexual

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orientation (affectional orientation, sexual fantasy orientation, and erotic orientation), Hani Miletski’s study examined the question: “Is there a sexual orientation toward animals?” The study involved a 350 item, 23 page anonymous questionnaire, which was self-administered and returned by postal mail by 82 men and 11 women who previously had sexual relations with animals. It was found that most of the participants in the study reported having feelings of love and affection for their animals, sexual fantasies about them, and being sexually attracted to animals—all three aspects of sexual orientation mentioned above (Hani Miletski, “Is Zoophilia a Sexual Orientation? A study,” in Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual Relations with Animals, Eds. Andrea M. Beetz and Anthony L. Podberscek, 2009, 82–97).

“Zoophilia is a phenomenon which is ultimately as complex as sexuality itself and comprises just as many varieties,” Gieri Bolliger and Antoine F. Goetschel have reminded us (“Sexual Relations with Animals [Zoophilia]: An Unrecognized Problem in Animal Welfare Legislation,” in Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual Relations with Animals, Eds. Andrea M. Beetz and Anthony L. Podberscek, 2009, 24). Because the boundaries between the sub-groups of zoophilia can be blurred, they prefer distinguishing between violent and non-violent zoophilia. From the point of view of humanity, violations of the sexual integrity and dignity of animals are crimes against our sentient partners in the shared biosphere.

The next step of interspecies sex has already been taken through human relations with post-human artificially intelligent sex robots. Will the sex robots of the future change the game and start to abuse their human sex slaves?

“Eros, you the cruelest of all gods: / I do not flee, I do not wait, / I only suffer like a beast,” the Finnish-Swedish modernist poet Edith Södergran characterized the god of love in her poem “To Eros.” The face of Eros is constantly changing, in the interface between sexual human and sexual non-human animals.

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