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Psychopathia Sexualis Written by Krafft-Ebing (1935)

7. Unnatural Abuse (Sodomy).

I follow the usual terminology in describing bestiality and pederasty under the general term of sodomy. In Genesis, whence this word comes, it signifies exclusively the vice of pederasty. Later, sodomy was often used synonymously with bestiality. The moral theologians, like St. Alphonsus of Ligouri, Gury, and others, have always distinguished correctly, i.e., in the sense of Genesis, between sodomia, i.e., concubitus cum persona ejusdem sexus, and bestialitas, i.e., concubitus com bestia.

The jurists brought confusion into the terminology by establishing a "Sodomia ratione sexus" and a "Sodomia ratione generis." Science, however, should here assert itself as `ancilla theologiae', and return to the correct usage of words.

(a) Violation of Animals (Bestiality).

Violation of animals, monstrous and revolting as it seems to mankind, is by no means always due to psychopathological conditions. Low morality and great sexual desire, with lack of opportunity for natural indulgence, are the principle motives of this unnatural means of sexual satisfaction, which is resorted to by women as well as by men.

To Polak we owe the knowledge that in Persia bestiality is frequently practiced because of the delusion that it cures gonorrhea; just as in Europe an idea is still prevalent that intercourse with children heals venereal disease.

Experience teaches that bestiality with cows and horses is none too infrequent. Occasionally the acts may be undertaken with goats, bitches, and, as in a case of Tardieu's and one by Schauenstein show, with hens.

The action of Frederick the Great, in the case of a cavalryman who had committed bestiality with a mare, is well-known: "The fellow is a pig, and shall be reduced to the infantry".

The intercourse of females with beasts is limited to dogs. A monstrous example of the moral depravity in large cities is related by Maschka; it is the case of a Parisian female who showed herself in the sexual act with a trained bull-dog, to a select circle of `roues', at ten francs a head.

CASE 229. In a provincial town a man was caught in intercourse with a hen. He was thirty years old, and of high social position. The chickens had been dying one after another, and the man causing it had been "wanted" for a long time. To the question of the judge, as to the reason for such an act, the accused said that his genitals were so small that coitus with women was impossible. Medical examination showed that actually the genitals were extremely small. The man as mentally quite sound. There were no statements concerning any abnormalities at the time of puberty.

CASE 230. On the afternoon of 23rd September, 1889, W., aged sixteen, shoemaker's apprentice, caught a goose in a neighbor's garden, and committed bestiality on the fowl until the neighbor approached. On being accused by the neighbor, W. said, "Well! Is there anything wrong with the goose?" and then went away. At his examination he confessed the act, but excused himself on the ground of temporary loss of mind. Since a severe illness in his twelfth year, he several times a month had attacks, with heat in his head, in which he was intensely excited sexually, could not help himself and did not know what he was doing. He answered for himself in the same way at the trial, and stated that he knew nothing of the `species facti' except from the statements of the neighbor. His father states that W., who comes of a healthy family, had always been sickly since an attack of scarlatina in his fifth year, and that, at the age of twelve, he had a febrile cerebral disease. W. had a good reputation, learned well in school, and later helped his father in his work. He was given to masturbation.

The medical examination revealed no intellectual or moral defect. The physical examination revealed normal genitals; penis relatively greatly developed; marked exaggeration of the patellar reflexes. In other respects, negative result.

The history of the condition at the time of the deed was not to be depended upon. There was no proof of previous attacks at mental disturbance, and there were none during the six weeks of observation. There was no perversion of the `vita sexualis'. The medical opinion allowed the possibility that some organic cause (cerebral congestion), dependent upon cerebral disease, may have exercised an influence at the time of the commission of the criminal act.

But there is another group of cases falling well within the category of bestiality, in which decidedly a pathological basis exists, indicated by a heavy taint, constitutional neuroses, impotence for the normal act, impulsive manner of performing the unnatural act. Perhaps it would serve a purpose to put such cases under the heading of a special appellation; for instance, to use the term "bestiality" for those cases which are not of a pathological character, and the term "Zooerasty" for those of a pathological nature.

CASE 231. `Impulsive Sodomy'. A., aged sixteen; gardener's boy; born out of wedlock; father unknown; mother deeply tainted, hystero-epileptic. A. had a deformed, asymmetrical cranium, and deformity and asymmetry of the bones of the face; the whole skeleton was also deformed, asymmetrical and small. From childhood he was a masterbator; always morose, apathetic, and fond of solitude; very irritable, and pathological in his emotional reaction. He was an imbecile, probably much reduced physically by masterbation, and neurasthenic. Moreover, he presented hystereopathic symtoms (limitation of the visual field, dyschromatopsia; diminution of the senses of smell, taste and hearing on the right side; anaesthesia of the right testical, clavus, etc.).

A. was convicted of having committed masterbation and sodomy on dogs and rabbits. 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 father's rabbit-pen in order to gratify his vile desire. Rabbits with torn rectums were repeatedly found. The act of bestiality was always done in the same manner. There were actual attacks which came on every eight weeks, always in the evening, and always in the same way. A. would become very uncomfortable, and have a feeling as if some one were pounding his head. He felt as if losing his reason. He struggled against the imperative idea of committing sodomy with the rabbits, and thus has an increasing feeling of fear and intensification of headache until it became unbearable. 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. As soon as this was done he lost all anxiety; the nervous cycle was completed, and he was again master of himself, deeply ashamed of the deed, and fearful of the return of an attack. A. stated that, in such a condition, if called upon to choose between a woman and a female rabbit, he could make choice only of the later. In the intervals, also, of all domestic animals he is partial only to rabbits. In his exceptional states simple caressing or kissing, etc., of the rabbit sufficed, as a rule, to afford him sexual satisfaction; but sometimes he had, when doing this, such `furor sexualis' that he was forced to wildly perform sodomy on the animal.

The acts of bestiality mentioned were the only acts which afforded him sexual satisfaction, and they constituted the only manner in which he was capable of sexual indulgence. A. declared that, in the act, he never had a lustful feeling, but satisfaction only, inasmuch as he was thus freed from the painful condition into which he was brought by the imperative impulse.

The medical evidence easily proved that this human monster was a psychically degenerate, irresponsible invalid, and not a criminal.

CASE 232. X., peasant, aged forty; Greek-Catholic Father and mother were hard drinkers. Since his fifth year patient had epileptic convulsions. Sexuality was first manifested at seventeen. The patient had inclinations neither for women nor for men, but for animals (fowls, horses, etc.). He had intercourse with hens and ducks, and later with horses and cows. Never onanism.

The patient painted pictures of saints; was of very limited intelligence. For years, religious paranoia, with states of states of ecstacy. He had an "inexplicable" love for the Virgin, for whom he would sacrifice his life. Taken to hospital, he proved to be free from infirmity and signs of anatomical degeneration.

He always had an aversion for women. In a single attempt at coitus with a woman he was impotent, but with animals he was always potent. He was bashful before women; coitus with women he regarded almost as a sin.

CASE 233. T., thirty-five years of age. Father an inebriate; mother psychopathic. Never had a severe illness; never showed special peculiarities. At the age of nine immorality with a hen; later on with other domestic animals. When he began to have sexual relations with women his bestial desires disappeared. Married when twenty, and found sexual satisfaction.

When twenty-seven he began to drink. Then his former perverse inclinations were awakened. One day he took a she-goat to a neighboring village to have her covered. He felt a strong desire to commit sodomy with her, but he at first overcame the impulse. Palpitation of the heart, pain in the chest, and a violent orgasm made him succumb. T. declared that these bestial acts gave him greater lustful gratification than `coitus com femina'.

His acts of bestiality remained unnoticed. He was finally sent to an insane asylum account of `delirium tremens', when, during his examination upon admission, he made the above revelations.

In the explanations of zooerasty great difficulties are encountered. The attempt to reduce it to fetichism, as is possible in `zoophilia erotica', has utterly failed.

It is questionable whether `zoophilia' can ever lead to sexual acts with beasts (eventually bestiality). If it be in reality a fetichistic manifestation, this possibility cannot be based upon the present knowledge of fetichism.

Even in the case of `zoophilia erotica fetischistica', acts of bestiality were never committed; in fact, the sex of the animals there in question was never considered. The only thing that at present can be done is to consider zooerasty as an original perversion of the `vita sexualis', and place it on the same level with antipathic sexuality.

The following case, although it is only rudimentary and abortive, seems to support this theory and to establish complete unconsciousness of the motive of the impulse.

CASE 234. Y., twenty years of age, intelligent, well educated; claimed to be free from taints by heredity; physically sound except evidences of neurasthenia and `hyperaesthesia urethrae'; said he never masturbated. Always fond of animals, especially dogs and horses. Since the age of puberty increased love for animals, but sexual ideas in connection with sport seem to have been absent.

One day when he mounted a mare for the first time he experienced a sensation of lust; two weeks later, on a similar occasion, the same sensation with erection.

During his first ride he had ejaculation. A month after the same thing happened. Patient felt disgusted at the occurence, and was angry with himself. He gave up the saddle. But from now on pollutions almost daily.

When he saw men on horseback, or dogs, he had erections. Almost every night he had pollutions accompanied by dreams in which he rode on horseback or was training dogs. Patient came for medical advice.

Treatment with sounds removed the `hyperaesthesia urethrae' and diminished pollutions. The patient followed reluctantly the advice of the physicians to have coitus, partly on account of dislike for women, partly on account of diffidence in his virility.

He made abortive attempts at coitus, but could not even bring about an erection, which, however, took place the moment he saw a man on horseback. This depressed him; he considered his condition abnormal beyond remedy.

Continued medical treatment. A further attempt at coitus was successful with the assistance of fancied images of riders and dogs, which stimulated erection.

Patient grew more virile; his love for animals waned; erections at the site of riders and dogs disappeared, nocturnal pollutions with dreams of animals became less frequent; he dreamed now of girls. Erection, which at first did not support `ejaculatio praecox', and pathological coitus grew normal under treatment with sounds. Patient found normal sexual gratification, and was freed from his perverse sexual impulse.

The preceding case justifies the assumption of an original perversion, for instead of the idea of the normal object (woman), it is the idea of animals (dogs and horses) frequently seen which awakens sexual feelings and desires. There may have been a latent sadistic element in the case, for, at least in the `vita sexualis' of the dreams, the riding of horses and the training of dogs played a prominent part.

The following case, that of a `stuprator bestiarum', is of pathological interest.

CASE 235. Mr. X., forty-seven years of age, of high social position, came to me for advice on account of a troublesome anomaly of his `vita sexualis'. He was about to be married and in his present condition considered it morally impossible to enter upon matrimony.

X. was evidently heavily tainted--his father, two of his sisters and one brother were highly neurotic. The mother was presumed to have been a healthy woman.

The sexual instinct awoke early in X.; he began to masturbate spontaneously at the age of eleven.

He was decidedly hypersexual, practised masturbation with passion, and at the age of fourteen he forgot himself so far as to sodomise bitches, mares and other female animals. He ascribed these acts to excessive sexual desire and to want of opportunity to satisfy his cravings in the normal ways--he spent his childhood and boyhood in a lonely part of the country and later on he visited a boarding school.

X. admitted that he was quite conscious of the abomination of his acts, and said that he fought with all his will power against these bestial impulses. But the greed, the lust, the pleasure which they gave, always overpowered him. When grown up to manhood he never had homosexual desires, nor did he feel an inclination for women.

Up to this part of his confession the opinion seems justified that his bestiality was not a perversion, but only a perversity which found root in his habits.

But it strikes one as peculiar that his erotic dreams were always about bestial intercourse, and that when at the age of twenty-five he sought to improve his condition by `coitus cum muliere', he derived not the slightest gratification from it, although he was quite potent and the `puella' pleasing and sympathetic.

He had the same experience at other attempts which he repeatedly made during the subsequent twenty-two years. He described coitus as a mere mechanical act devoid of lustful excitement. He might as well have coitus with a piece of wood. It simply disgusted him, whilst `cum bestia' he experienced the height of pleasure.

The mere sight of animals excited him wildly. The society of ladies caused him `ennui'. When he went with a girl she had to resort to all kinds of manipulations to prepare him for the act.

For two months prior to his first visit to me X. had exerted all his will power to resist the impulses to masturbate and bestiality.

He was physically a peculiar being, evidently a `degenere superieur'. There were no symptoms of anatomical degeneration, no traces of neurasthenia.

I made strong suggestions to be on his guard against masturbation and bestiality, and to seek more the society of ladies; prescribed anaphordisiacs, advised frugality, slight hydrotherapy, plenty of open-air exercise, steady occupation, and had the satisfaction to learn that the patient at the end of ten months experienced a slight gratification in repeated sexual intercourse `cum femina' and that he was almost free from his former perverse desires.

An analogous case is reported by Moll, "Libido Sexualis", p. 421.

Another remarkable case of zooerasty is published by Howard ("Alienist and Neurologist", 1896, vol. xvii.,1.). It refers to a young man of sixteen years of age who found sexual gratification only with pigs.

The rarety of cases of real zooerasty seems to be remarkable. But this may be explained by the ease with which they are kept secret.

The present state of our knowledge does not permit of a final judgement as to whether zooerasty is an original anomaly or a perverse condition aquired through fetichistic influences.

Moll (Libido Sexualis, p.432) is inclined to the belief that it is an arrest of unindifferentiated sexuality coupled with hypersexuality directed to beasts (analogous to masturbatory impulses) and that this craving for sexual dealings with beasts is permanent and does inhibit the development of libido towards the human female. Practically speaking, sexual feeling and psychical potency seem to be absent, even the power to differentiate between the male and female beast as an object for sexual accomplishment. Cf. Howard's case, in which only a certain speices of animal was preferred.

The forensically important distinction between bestiality and zooerasty can never be difficult `in concreto'.

Whoever seeks and finds sexual gratification exclusively with animals, although the opportunities for the normal act are at hand, must be at once suspected of a pathological condition of the sexual instinct. At any rate more so that the sexually inverted person, for in sexual acts with animals the psychical infection is wanting, i.e., the possibility of the perversion of one part leading to the perversity of the other.

It may be assumed, however, that the number of cases of zooerasty as compared with those of sexual inversion is unequally smaller. This follows `a priori' from the character of both these perversions. The zooerast as compared with the sexual invert is much farther removed from the normal object. This would qualify the perversion of the former as a much greater condition--because more degenerative--than that of the later.

Submitted by Equadept

PlayHorse

Taken from:

Studies In The Psychology Of Sex, Vol. II

By Havelock Ellis

The erotic symbols with which we have so far been concerned have in every case been portions of the body, or its physiological processes, or at least the garments which it has endowed with life. The association on which the symbol has arisen has in every case been in large measure, although not entirely, an association of contiguity. It is now necessary to touch on a group of sexual symbols in which the association of contiguity with the human body is absent; the various methods by which animals or animal products or the sight of animal copulation may arouse sexual desire in human persons. Here we encounter a symbolism mainly founded on association by resemblance; the animal sexual act recalls the human sexual act; the animal becomes the symbol of the human being.

The group phenomena we are here concerned with includes several sub-divisions. There is first the more or less sexual pleasure sometimes experienced, especially by young persons, in the sight of copulating animals. This I would propose to call Mixoscopic Zoophilia; it falls within the range of normal variation. Then we have the cases in which the contact of animals, stroking, etc., produces sexual excitement or gratification; this is a sexual fetichism in the narrow sense, and is by Krafft-Ebing termed Zoophilia Erotica. We have, further, the class of cases in which a real or simulated sexual intercourse with animals is desired. Such cases are not regarded as fetichism by Krafft-Ebing, but they come within the phenomena of erotic symbolism as here understood. This class falls into two divisions: one in which the individual is fairly normal, but belongs to a low grade of culture; the other in which he may belong to a more refined social class, but is affected by a deep degree of degeneration. In the first case we may properly apply the term bestiality; in the second case it may perhaps be better to use the term `zooerastia', proposed by Krafft-Ebing. In England it is not uncommon to use the term "unnatural offense;" this is an awkward and possibly misleading practice which should not be followed. In Germany a similar confusion is caused by applying the term "sodomy" to these cases as well as to pederasty. Krafft-Ebing considers that this error is due to the jurists, while the theologians have always distinguished correctly. In this matter, he adds, science must be `ancilla theologiae' and return to the correct usage of words.

Among children, both boys and girls, it is common to find that the copulation of animals is a mysterously fascinating spectacle. It is inevitable that this should be so, for the spectacle is more or less clearly felt to be the revelation of a secret which has been concealed from them. It is, moreover, a secret of which they feel intimate reverberations within themselves, and even in perfectly innocent and ignorant children the sight may produce an obscure sexual excitement. It would seem that this occurs more frequently in girls than in boys. Even in adult age, it may be added, women are liable to experience the same kind of emotion in the prescence of such spectacles. One lady recalls, as a girl, that on several occasions an element or physical excitement entered into the feelings with which she watched the coquetry of cats. Another lady mentions that at the age of about 25, and when still quite ignorant of sexual matters, she saw from a window some boys tickling a dog and inducing sexual excitement in the animal; she vaguely divined what they were doing, and though feeling disgust at their conduct she at the time experienced in a strong degree what she now knows was sexual excitement. The coupling of the larger animals is often as impressive and splendid spectacle which is far, indeed, from being obscene, and has commended itself to persons of intellectual distinction; but in young or ill-balanced minds such sights tend to become both prurient and morbid. The Countess Pembroke, Sir Philip Sidney's sister, appears to have found sexual enjoyment in the contemplation of the sexual prowess of stallions. Aubrey writes that she "was very salacious and she had a contrivance that in the spring of the year...the stallions...were to be brought before such a part of the house where she had a vidette to look on them." Although the modern editor's modesty has caused the disappearance of several lines from this passage, the general sense is clear. In the same century Burchard, the faithful secretary of Pope Alexander VI, describes in his invaluable diary how four race horses were brought to two mares in a court of the Vatican, the horses clamorously fighting for the possession of the mares and eventually mounting them, while the Pope and his daughter Lucrezia looked on from a window "cum magno risu et delectatione." I have already referred to the curous case of a sexually hyperaesthic nun who was always powerfully excited by the sight or even the recollection of flies in sexual connection, so that she was compelled to masturbate; this dated from childhood. After becoming a nun she recorded having had this experience, followed by masturbation, more than four hundred times. Animal spectacles sometimes produce a sexual effect on children even when not specifically sexual; thus a correspondant, a clergyman, informs me that when a young and impressionable boy, he was much affected by seeing a veterinary surgeon insert his hand and arm into a horse's rectum, and dreamed of this several times afterward with emissions.

While the contemplation of animal coitus is an easily intelligible and in early life, perhaps, and almost normal symbol of sexual emotion, there is another sub-division of this group of animal fetichisms which forms a more natural transition from the fetichisms which have their center in the human body: the stuff-fetichisms, or the sexual attraction exerted by various tissues, perhaps always of animal origin.

A further degree of perversion in this direction is reached in a case of erotic `zoophilia', recorded by Krafft-Ebing. In this case a congenital neuropath, of good intelligence but delicate and anaemic, with feeble sexual powers, had a great love of domestic animals, especially dogs and cats, from an early age; when petting them he experienced sexual emotions, although he was innocent in sexual matters. At puberty he realized the nature of his feelings and tried to break himself of his habits. He succeeded, but then began erotic dreams accompanied by images of animals, and these led to masterbation associated with ideas of a similar kind. At the same time he had no wish for any sort of sexual intercourse with animals, and was indifferent as to the sex of the animals which attracted him; his sexual ideas were normal. Such a case seems to be fundamentally one of fetichism on a tactile basis, and thus forms a transition between the stuff-fetichisms and the complete perversions of sexual attraction toward animals.

Krafft-Ebing considers that complete perversion of sexual attraction toward animals is radically distinct from erotic `zoophilia'. This view cannot be excepted. Bestiality and `zooerastia' merely present in a more marked and profoundly perverted form a further degree of the same phenomenon which we meet with in erotic `zoophilia'; the difference is that they occur either in more insensitive or in more markedly degenerate persons.

A fairly typical case of `zooerastia' has been recorded in America by Howard, of Baltimore. This was the case of a boy of 16, precociously mature and fairly bright. He was, however, indifferent to the opposite sex, though he had ample opportunity for gratifying normal passions. His parents lived in the city, but the youth had an inordinate desire for the country and was therefore sent to school in a village. On the second day after his arrival at a school a farmer missed a sow which was found secreted in an outhouse on the school grounds. This was the first of many similar incidents in which a sow always took part. So strong was his passion that on one occasion force had to be used to take him away from the sow he was caressing. He did not masterbate, and even when restrained from approaching sows he had no sexual inclination for other animals. His nocturnal pollutions, which were frequent, were always accompanied by images of wallowing swine. Notwithstanding careful treatment no cure was effected; mental and physical vigor failed, and he died at the age of 23. Moll (Untersuchungen uber die Libido Sexualis) presents the case of a neurotic man who from the age of 15 had been sexually excited by the sight of animals or by contact with them. He had repeatedly had connection with cows and mares; he was also sexually excited by sheep, donkeys, and dogs, whether female or male; the normal sexual instinct was weak and he experienced very slight attraction to women.

It is, however, somewhat doubful whether we can always or even usually distinguish between `zooerastia' and bestiality. Dr. G. F. Lydston, of Chicago, has communicated to me a case (in which he was consulted) which seems fairly typical and is instructive in this respect. The subject was a young man of 21, a farmer's son, not very bright intellectually, but very healthy and strong, of great assistance on the farm, very capable and industrious, such a good farm hand that his father was unwilling to send him away and lose his services. There was no history of insanity or neurosis in the family, and no injury or illness in his own history. He had spells of moroseness and irritability, however, and had also been a masturbator. Women had no attraction for him, but he would copulate with the mares upon his father's farm, and this without regard to time, place, or spectators. Such a case would seem to stand midway between ordinary bestiality and pathological zooerastia as defined by Krafft-Ebing, yet it seems probable that in most cases of ordinary bestiality some slight traces of mental anomaly might be found, if such cases always were, as they should be, properly investigated. Moll also remarks ("Perverse Sexualempfindung", in Senator's and Kaminer's Krankheiten und Ehe) that in this matter it is often hardly possible to draw a sharp line between vice and disease.

We have here reached the grossest and most frequent perversion in this group; bestiality, or the impulse to attain sexual gratification by intercourse, or other close contact, with animals. In seeking to comprehend this perversion it is necessary to divest ourselves of the attitude toward animals which is the inevitable outcome of refined civilization and urban life. Most sexual perversions, if not in large measure the actual outcome of civilized life, easily adjust themselves to it. Bestiality (except in one form to be noted later) is, on the other hand, the sexual perversion of dull, insensitive, and unfastidious persons. It flourishes among primitive peoples and among peasants. It is the vice of the clodhopper, unattractive to women or inapt to court them.

Three conditions have favored the extreme prevalence of bestiality: (1) primitive conceptions of life which built up no great barrier between man and the other animals; (2) the extreme familiarity which necessarily exists between the peasant and his beasts, often combined with separation from women; (3) various folk-lore beliefs such as the efficacy of intercourse with animals as a cure for venereal disease, etc.. Instances of this widespread belief--found among the Tamils of Ceylon as well as in Europe--are quoted from various authors by Bloch, Beitrage zur Aethiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, and Moll, Untersuchen uber die Libido Sexualis. On the frequency of bestiality, from one cause or another, in the East, see, Stern, Medizin und Geschlechtsleben in der Turkei.

The beliefs and customs of primitive peoples, as well as their mythology and legends, bring before us a community of man and animals altogether unlike anything we know in civilization. Men may become animals and animals may become men; animals and men may communicate with each other and live on terms of equality; animals may be the ancestors of human tribes; the sacred totems of savages are most usually animals. There is no shame or degradation in the notion of a sexual relationship between men and animals, because in primitive conceptions animals are not inferior beings separated from man by a great gulf. They are much more like men in disguise, and in some respects possess powers which make them superior to men.

This is recognized in those plays, festivals, and religious dances, so common among primitive peoples, in which animal disguises are worn. Sometimes (as among the Aleuts) the animal pantomine dances of savages may represent the transformation of a captive bird into a lovely woman who falls exhausted into the arms of the hunter (H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific). A system of beliefs which accepts the possibility that a human being may be latent in an animal obviously favors the practice of bestiality. When men admire and emulate the qualities of animals and are proud to believe that they descend from them, it is not surprising that they should sometimes see nothing derogatory in sexual intercourse with them. For an example of the primitive confusion between the intercourse of women with animals and with men see, Boas, "Sagen aus British-Columbia," Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie.

A significant relic of primitive conceptions in this matter may perhaps be found in the religious rites connected with the sacred goat of Mendes described by Herodotus. After telling how the Mendesians reverence the goat, especially the he-goat, out of their veneration for Pan, whom they represent as a goat ("the real motive which they assign for this custom I do not choose to relate"), he adds: "It happened in this country, and within my remembrance, and was indeed universally notorious, that a goat had indecent and public communcation with a woman." (Herodotus, Book II). The meaning of the passage evidently is that in the ordinary intercourse of women with the sacred goat, connection was only simulated or incomplete on account of the natural indifference of the goat to the human female, but in rare cases the goat proved sexually excitable with the woman and capable of connection. Dulare (Des Divinites Generatrices, Chapter II) brings together the evidence showing that in Egypt women had connection with the sacred goat, apparently in order to secure fertility. The goat has always been a kind of sacred emblem of lust. In the middle ages it became associated with the Devil as one of the favorite forms he assumed. It is significant of a primitively religious sexual association between men and animals, that witches constantly confessed, or were made to confess, that they had intercourse with the Devil in the shape of an animal, very frequently a dog. The figures of human beings and animals in conjunction carved on temples in India, also seem to indicate the religious significance which this phenonmenon sometimes presents. There is, indeed, no need to go beyond Europe even in her moments of highest culture to find a religious sanction for sexual union between human beings, or gods in human shape, and animals. The legends of Io and the bull, of Leda and the swan, are among the most familiar in Greek mythology, and in a later pictorial form they constitute some of the most cherished works of the painters of the Renaissance.

As regards the prevalence of occasional sexual intercourse between men or women and animals among primitive peoples at the present time, it is possible to find many scattered references by travelers in all parts of the world. Such references by no means indicate that such practices are, as a rule, common, but they usually show that they are accepted with a good-humored indifference.

Bestiality is very rarely found in towns. In the country this vice of the clodhopper is far from infrequent. For the peasant, whose sensibilities are uncultivated and who makes but the most elementary demands from a woman, the difference between an animal and a human being in this respect scarecly seems to be very great. "My wife was away too long," a German peasant explained to the magistrate, "and so I went with my sow." It is certainly an explanation that to the uncultivated peasant, ignorant of theological and juridical conceptions, must often seem natural and sufficient.

Bestiality thus resembles masterbation and other abnormal manifestations of the sexual impulse which may be practiced merely `faute de mieux' and not as, in the strict sense, perversions of the impulse. Even necrophily may be thus practiced.

But it is by no means only their dulled sensibility or the absense of women, which accounts for the frequency of bestiality among peasants. A highly important factor is their constant familiarity with animals. The peasant lives with animals, tends them, learns to know all their individual characters; he understands them far better than he understands men and women; they are his constant companions, his friends. He knows, moreover, the details of their sexual lives, he witnesses the often highly impressive spectacle of their coupling. It is scarcely surprising that peasants should sometimes regard animals as being not only as near to them as their fellow human beings, but even nearer.

The significance fo the factor of familiarity is indicated by the great frequency of bestiality among shepherds, goatherds, and others whose occupation is exclusively the care of animals. Mirabeau, in the eighteenth century, stated, on the evidence of Basque priests, that all the shepherds in the Pyrenees practice bestiality. It is apparently much the same in Italy. Mantegazza mentions (Gli Amori degli Uomini) that at Rimini a young goatherd of the Appennines, troubled with dyspepsia and nervous symptoms, told him this was due to excesses with the goats in his care. A finely executed marble group of a satyr having connection with a goat, found at Herculaneum and now in the Naples Museum, perhaps symbolizes a traditional and primitive practice of the goatherd.

In South Italy and Sicily, especially, bestiality among goatherds and peasants is said to be almost a national custom. Bayle (Dictionary, Art, Bathyllus) quotes various authorities concerning the Italian auxilaries in the south of France in the sixteenth century and their custom of bringing and using goats for this purpose. Warton in the eighteenth century was informed that in Sicily priests in confession habitually inquired of herdsmen if they had anything to do with their sows. In Normandy priests were advised to ask similar questions. In the extreme north of Europe, it is reported, the reindeer, in this respect, takes the place of the goat.

The importance of the same factor is also shown by the fact that when among women in civilization animal perversions appear, the animal is nearly always a pet dog. Usually in these cases the animal is taught to give gratification by `cunnilinctus'. In some cases, however, there is really sexual intercourse between the animal and the woman.

Moll mentions that in a case of cunnilinctus by a dog in Germany there was a difficulty as to whether the matter should be considered as an unnatural offence or simply an offence against decency; the lower court considered it in the former light, while the higher court took the more merciful view. In a case reported by Pfaff and mentioned by Moll, a country girl was accused of having sexual intercourse with a large dog. On examination Pfaff found in the girl's pubic hair a loose hair which under the microscope proved to belong to the dog. In such a case it must be noted that while this evidence may be held to show sexual contact with the dog, it scarcely suffices to show sexual intercourse. This has, however, undoubtedly occurred from time to time, even more or less openly. Bloch remarks that this is not an infrequent exhibition given by prostitutes in certain brothels. Maschka has referred to such an exhibition between a woman and a bull-dog, which was given to select circles in Paris. Rosse refers to a case in which a young unmarried woman in Washington was surprised during intercourse with a large English Mastiff, who in his efforts to get loose caused such severe injuries that the woman died from haemorrhage in about an hour. Rosse also mentions that some years ago a performance of this kind between a prostitute and a Newfoundland dog could be witnessed in San Fransisco by paying a small sum; the woman declared that a woman who had once copulated with a dog would ever afterwards prefer this animal to a man. Rosse adds that he was acquainted with a similar performance between a woman and a donkey, which used to take place in Europe (Irving Rosse, "Sexual Hypochondriasis and Perversion of the Genesic Instinct", Virginia Medical Monthly, October, 1892, p.379). Juvenal mentions such relations between the donkey and the woman. Krauss states that in Bosnia women sometimes carry on these practices with dogs and also--as he would not have believed had he not on one occasion observed it--with cats. "It seems to me," writes Dr. Kiernan, of Chicago, (private letter) "that what Rosse says of the animal exhibitions in San Francisco is true of all great cities. The animal employed in such exhibitions here has usually been a donkey, and in one instance death occurred from the animal trampling the girl parnter. The practice described occurs in country regions quite frequently. Thus in a case reported in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska, a sixteen-year-old boy engaged in rectal coitus with a large dog. In attempting to extricate his swollen penis from the boy's rectum the dog tore through the sphincter and in into the glutens muscles. (Omaha Clinic, March, 1893). In a Missouri case, which I verified, a smart, pretty, well-educated country girl was found with a profuse offensive vaginal discharge which had been present for about a week, coming on suddenly. After washing the external genitals and opening the labia three rents were discovered, one through the fourchette and two through the left nymphae. The vagina was excessively congested and covered with points bleeding on the slightest irritation. The patient confessed that one day while playing with the genitals of a large dog she became excited and thought she would have slight coitus. After the dog made entrance she was unable to free herself from him, as he clasped her so firmly with his fore legs. The penis became so swollen that the dog could not free himself, although for more than an hour she made persistant efforts to do so. (Medical Standard, June, 1903,p.184). In an Indiana case, concerning which I as consulted, the girl was a hebephreniac who had resorted to this procedure with a Newfoundland dog at the instance of another girl, seemingly normal as reguards mentality, and had been badly injured; a discharge resulted which resembled gonorrhoea, but contained no gonococci. These cases are probably more frequent than is usually assumed.

Women are known to have had intercourse with various other animals, occasionally or habitually, in various parts of the world. Monkeys have been mentioned in this connection. Moll remarks that it seems to be an indication of an abnormal interest in monkeys that some women are observed by the attendants in the monkey-house of zoological gardens to be very frequent visitors. Near the Amazon the traveler Castelnau saw an enormous Coati monkey belonging to an Indian woman and tried to purchase it; though he offered a large sum, the woman only laughed. "Your efforts are useless," remarked an Indian in the same cabin, "he is her husband." (So far as the early literature of this subject is concerned, a number of facts and fables regarding the congress of women with dogs, goats and other animals was brought together at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Schurig in his `Gynaecologia', Section II, cap. VII; I have not drawn on this collection.)

In some cases women, and also men, find gratification in the sexual manipulation of animals without any kind of congress. This may be illustrated by an observation communicated to me by a correspondent, a clergyman. "In Ireland, my father's house adjoined the residence of an archdeacon of the established church. I was then about 20 and was still kept in religious awe of evil ways. The archdeacon had two daughters, both of whom he brought up in great strictness, resolved that they should grow up examples of virtue and piety. Our stables adjoined, and were separated by a thin wall in which was a doorway closed up by some boards, as the two stables had formerly been one. One night I had occasion to go to our stable to search for a garden tool I had missed, and I heard a door open on the other side, and saw a light glimmer through the cracks in the boards. I looked through to ascertain who could be there at that late hour, and soon recognized the stately figure of one of the daughters, F.F. was tall, dark and handsome, but had never made any advances to me, nor had I to her. She was making love to her father's mare after a singular fashion. Stripping her right arm, she formed her fingers into a cone, and pressed on the mare's vulva. I was astonished to see the beast stretching her hind legs as if to accommodate the hand of her mistress, which she pushed in gradually and with seeming ease to the elbow. At the same time she seemed to experience the most voluptuous sensation, crisis after crisis arriving." My correspondent adds that, being exceedingly curious in the matter, he tried a somewhat similar experiment himself with one of his father's mares and experienced what he describes as "a most powerful sexual battery" which produced very exciting and exhausting effects. Nacke (Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen, 1899, No.2) refers to an idiot who thus manipulated the vulva of mares in his charge. The case has been recorded by Guillereau (Journal de Medicine Veterinaire et de Zootichnie, January, 1899) of a youth who was accustomed to introduce his hand into the vulva of cows in order to obtain sexual excitement.

The possibility of sexual excitement between women and animals involves a certain degree of sexual excitability in animals from contact with women. Darwin stated that there could be no doubt that various quadrumanous animals could distinguish women from men--in the first place probably by smell and secondarily by sight--and be thus liable to sexual excitement. He quotes the opinions on this point of Youatt, Brehm, Sir Andrew Smith and Cuvier (Descent of Man, second edition,pg.8). Moll quotes the opinion of an experienced observer to the same effect. Hufeland reported the case of a little girl of three who was playing, seated on a stool, with a dog placed between her thighs and locked against her. Seemingly excited by this contact the animal attempted a sort of copulation, causing the genital parts of the child to become inflamed. Bloch discusses the same point; he does not consider that animals will of their own motion sexually cohabit with women, but that they may be easily trained to it. There can be no doubt that dogs at all events are somtimes sexually excited by the presence of women, perhaps expecially during menstruation, and many women are able to bear testimony to the embarrassing attentions they have sometimes received from strange dogs. There can be no difficulty in believing that, so far as `cunnilinctus' is concerned dogs would require no training. In a case recorded by Moll (Kontrare Sexualempfindung, 3rd edition,p.560) a lady states that this was done to her when a child, as also to other children, by dogs who, she said, showed signs of sexual excitement. In this case there was also sexual excitement thus produced in the child, and after puberty mutual `cunnilinctus' was practiced with girl friends. Guttceit (Dreissig Jahre Praxis, Theil I, pg.310) remarks that some Russian officers who were in the Turkish campaign of 1828 told him that from fear of veneral infection in Wallachia they refrained from women and often used female asses which appeared to show signs of sexual pleasure.

A very large number of animals have been recorded as having been employed in the gratification of sexual desire at some period or in some country, by men and sometimes by women. Domestic animals are naturally those which most frequently come into question, and there are few if any of these which can altogether be excepted. The sow is one of the animals most freqently abused in this manner. It is worth noting that in Greek the work xoipos means both a sow and a woman's pudenda: in the `Acharnians' Aristophanes plays on this association at some length. The Romans also (as may be gathered from Varro's `De Re Rustica') called the feminine pudenda `porcus'. Cases in which mares, cows, and donkeys figure constantly occur, as well as goats and sheep. Dogs, cats, and rabbits are heard of from time to time. Hens, ducks, and expecially in China, geese, are not uncommonly employed. The Roman ladies were said to have had an abnormal affection for snakes. The bear and even the crocodile are mentioned. The Arabs, according to Kocher, chiefly practiced bestiality with goats, sheep and mares. The Annamites, according to Mondiere, commonly emply sows and (more especially the young women) dogs. Among the Tamils of Ceylon bestiality with goats and cows is said to be very prevalent.

The social and legal attitude toward bestiality has reflected in part the frequency with which it has been practiced, and in part the disgust mixed with mystical and sacrilegious horror which it has aroused. It has sometimes been met merely by a fine, and sometimes the offender and his innocent partner have been burnt together. In the middle ages and later its frequency is attested by the fact that it formed a favorite topic with preachers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Is it significant that in the Penitentials,--which were criminal codes, half secular and half spiritual, in use before the thirteenth century, when penance was relegated to the judgment of the confessor,--it was thought necessary to fix the periods of penance which should be undergone respectively by bishops, priests and deacons who should be guilty of bestiality.

In Egbert's Penitential, a document of the ninth and tenth centuries, we read: "Item Episcopus cum quadrupede fornicans VII annos, consuetudinem X, presbyter V, diaconus III, clerus II." There was a great range in the penances for bestiality, from ten years to (in the case of boys) one hundred days. The mare is specially mentioned (Haddon and Stubbs, `Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents', vol. III, p.422). In Theodore's Penitential, another Anglo-Saxon document of about the same age, those who habitually fornicate with animals are adjudged ten years penance. It would appear from the `Penitentiale Pseudo-Romanum (which is earlier than the 11th century) that one year's penance was adequate for fornication with a mare when committed by a layman (exactly the same as for simple fornication with a widow or virgin), and this was mercifully reduced to half a year if he had no wife. The `Penitentiale Hubertense' (emanating from the monastery of St. Hubert in the Ardennes) fixes ten years' penance for sodomy, while Fulbert's Penitential (about the 11th century) fixes seven years for either sodomy or bestiality. Burchard's Penitential, which is always detailed and precise, specially mentions the mare, the cow and the ass, and assigns forty days bread and water and seven years penance, raised to ten years in the case of a married man. A woman having intercourse with a horse is assigned seven years penance in Burchard's Penitential.

The extreme severity which was frequently exercised toward those guilty of this offense, was doubtless in large measure due to the fact that bestiality was regarded as a kind of sodomy, an offense which was frequently viewed with a mystical horror apart altogether from any actual social or personal injury it caused. The Jews seemed to have felt this horror; it was ordered that the sinner and his victim should both be put to death (Exodus, CH.22,v.19; Leviticus,Ch.20,v.15). In the middle ages, especially in France, the same rule often prevailed. Men and sows, men and cows, men and donkeys were burnt together. At Toulouse a woman was burnt for having intercourse with a dog. Even in the 17th century a learned French lawyer, Claude Lebrun de la Rochette, justified such sentences. It seems probable that even today, in the social and legal attitude toward bestiality, sufficient regard is not paid to the fact that this offense is usually committed either by persons who are morbidly abnormal or who are of so low a degree on intelligence that they border on feeble-mindedness. To what extent, and on what grounds, it ought to be punished is a question calling for serious reconsideration.

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Beastiality in Our Modern World

Author Unknown, Wrote:

In our twentieth century contemporary society, we are exposed to many changing, controversial issues, problems and attitudes. Our rapidly altering environment and technology place many new ideas regarding the experience of living in our modern world before us. Among the research that is being pursued into our everyday lives and attitudes is that in the realm of human sexuality.

This, while being the only one aspect of our contemporary lives, is one which is being stressed more and more iin relation to the understanding of man's current behavior patterns. Fortunately, this realm of study and research has been taken into the scientific community whose rigid patterns of analysis result in more objective conclusions.

What we are stressing in the above is that sexuality has moved out of the strict bounds of morality as it has been perceived and decreed by religion. While one cannot condemn the methods that were used to control both population and `pairing relationships' that religion utilized to prevent the return to tribalism, one can draw a debate over whether this is still legitimately within the responsiblilty of the religious powers of today.

The advantages of applying the rigorous methods of study by the scientific community are many and quite varied. Scientific analysis can arrive at conclusions regarding human sexuality without the compulsion of putting their findings in the context of `good' or `bad':i.e. moral patterns that mayor may not deny one the ability to reach a desirable position within the bounds of some religious dogma or tenet.

We are essentially dealing with the issue of creating a gult in order to control one's moral and sexual behavior. This, applied on a higher level, is to control a society, because "...sexual guilt is a burden from which few human beings can completely emancipate themselves in a society which is based on the supposedly Christian values, and over which hangs the shadows of hundreds of years of ecclesiastical disapproval."

So, it is certainly not our purpose to condemn religion, but, merely, to place this aspect of our collective behavior into the hands of science as we have with so many of our other emerging problems.

The levels that these studies of human sexuality are conducted on are as manifold as those of the complex animals being studied. While sexuality may be the overall title of the majority of the studies, there are many subtitles that denote more specific areas of concern. Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, Dr. David Reuben are all readily recognizable researchers into the broad area of sexual problems and the resulting strains these problems can place upon the interpersonal relationships in and out of the marital experience.

While the following study also falls under the general heading of human sexuality, we deal also with a very specific aspect of that complex subject--human and animal relationships known as bestiality.

Since we have now looked at the society, attitudes and the resulting pressures placed upon the individual, we can now delve into the depths of our own studies. As mentioned, our concern is with human-animal relationships. Bestiality is not the logical outgrowth or extension of some unique twentieth century problem. No...the phenomenon is one that has followed man throughout history. As far back as we have recorded history incidences of bestiality have occurred.

Mentioned not only in myths and literature, bestiality was also a part of many of the early societies. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used the phenomenon not only as part of their religions, but also celebrated the acts in their art, literature and folk lore. The Egyptians assigned to many of their symbolic Gods either an animal form or a half-man, half-animal form.

The Greeks also used the half-man, half-animal symbol for their gods, but, more interestingly, even allowed their gods the privilege of assuming the shape of a particular animal, or many forms of animals, to wander among the common subjects. The Greeks further accepted the fact that when these gods wandered among their worshippers they would often copulate with human females to produce half-man, half-god beings with a variety of powers above and beyond those of normal mortals. Zeus, the most powerful of the Greek deities, assumed the shape of a bull at times and the form of a serpent at others.

Can we look at this breif history and attribute to it the origin of interest in human-animal sexual relations? Maybe. But, we cannot dismiss the subject lightly either. It has had an important input. Because, "the attitude which a society has towards sex affects us all, and no one can entirely escape the pressure of ideas which are generally held, however violently he may disagree with them."

This, the interest in this type of human sexual behavior was certainly not lost with the fall of the above mentioned civilizations. The celebration in literature and the preoccupation of later masters such as Da Vinci and Michelangelo, with bestiality, only further illustrate the point. Recall the portrait of Leda with The Swan as another example. Sculpture also reflects this same obsession with human-animal sexuality. No, bestiality was not something that died with men in earlier times, but an aspect of life that has followed humanity through time. The real divergence comes from the acceptance or condemnation of the practice of bestiality by a particular society.

Bestiality has been explained as simple transference of sexuality to the `animal as object' - or man as object. These ideas still leaves the practice tenuously tied to teh accepted, `normal' heterosexual relationships that have always existed for the purpose of procreation.

Other studies have given rise to the `festish theory'. Proponents claim this is a love of, or, sensual obsession with the fur or skin of the animal and may also include a fantasy that involves the male of the human species (in the case of female subjects).

Other theorists have postulated the motivation behind human-animal sexual relations in terms of masturbatory fantasy. Proponents will be willing to accept the possibility of the transference to a more closely connected perception of a heterosexual encounter than just for tactile or simple fantasy transference.

Whether one accepts either of the above explanations for the repeated occurrences of bestiality, they are a far cry from the simplistic dismissal of bestiality as a purely rural phenomenon. We have at least moved beyond the lonely shepherd tending his flock and being driven to attacking a member of his flock out of sheer desire for some sexual release or out of pure lust, that is too often a common cliche explanation.

Another cliche that various researchers have dismissed in modern times is that of the young rural female and her turning to bestiality simply due to her close proximity to animals. This realm of thought finds itself with the acceptance of the fundamental presumption of rural backwardness or innocence. After ignoring this basically invalid proposition of rural isolation, there is some validity to the idea that in the more rural environment man is tied to the soil and to his animals. But, to move from here to the belief that just because a person have viewed a wide variety of sexual relations between his animals, then he can simply indulge in such relations without thought, guilt, or some transference of sexual object is less than likely. This is as naive as our contrived rural `personality'. One can hardly believe that a twentieth century human being can perceive himself that close to his environmental niche. These arguments and cliches are almost self-destructive in their exposition.

Having hopefully cleared the road of these absurd theories and cliches, we can look at bestiality in our modern world. The simple fact that population and demographic distribution show a population density that is more urban in nature that rural in the twentieth century allows us to speculate statistically. We can rest fairly certain with the hypothesis that, since more people live in urban areas, the occurrence-incident ratio of bestiality would prove to be higher for the urban dweller than the rural farmer.

The predominate occurrences of bestiality is not with animals of a typically rural nature, but with large dogs. These objects of human sexuality can be commonly seen on almost any street in the city. Also, one cannot dismiss the added frustrations of the urban dweller, a subject of many other studies. The inability to develop inter-personal relationships in the cold urban environment can certainly be seen to provide an impetus and opportunity for the use of an animal as transference, or even as a masturbatory fantasy projection for the lonely male or female.

This is not to dismiss the use of the stallion, the donkey, the sheep or even the pig as an object of bestiality. Nor, is this to say that instances of rural bestiality do not occur. I simply hope to clarify the prevailing mythology about bestiality as a purely rural, backward practice.

So, bestiality is among us, has been, and probably will continue to remain with us as long as we have man and beast. Even the oft-used cliche about `Beauty and the Beast' can have deeper implications than we normally assure. Bestiality will likely as not continue.

One would hope that further research would at least make possible the abolition of some of our archaic sexual taboos and laws, thereby leaving men with the freedom to emancipate their minds from the need to condemn another's choice of sexual behavior. Human beings are complex creatures, each unique and special in his needs and desires. In the same way, sexual satisfaction is as varied as the people engaged in sexual practices. With some luck, studies like this one will open minds and expand human acceptance and awareness of the many facets of human sexual behavior.

The most crucial single element precipitating animal-human sex relations is that of alienation. Often the type of person who is most susceptible to finding charms in an animal is the same individual who feels cut off from the rest of society. As the alienation syndrome becomes more pronounce, the harder the individual gropes, often in sheer desperation, to locate the meaning in life.

The reader will find that bestial relations are not confined to the poor and the uneducated. In fact, my studies have revealed that a number of wealthy and upper middle class women are motivated toward bestial activity, chiefly due to two reasons. The first is boredom, stemming from the fact that they have just about everything that they actually need and are constantly searching for new ways to encounter thrills. The other reason is an unswerving desire to rebel. Since a woman of means can feel more independent, she is often more likely to try things that other women wouldn't.

One basic motivating factor militating toward female-bestial copulation is lack of opportunity. If a woman is left by herself for long periods of time, as so often occurs in the case of wives of high-powered business executives, then it is only natural for a woman, particularly if she is highly sexed, to look elsewhere for sexual stimulation. Perhaps such satisfaction will be obtained through an affair with a man, but such is not necessarily the case, particularly in the instance of the woman whose husband is faring well economically.

Today there exists in this country something of a controversy regarding sexual actions and attitudes. On one hand there are those individuals who maintain that newspaper and magazine accounts provide ample evidence that we, as a society, are running wild when it comes to sex. This camp believes that with each report of sexual variations such as bestiality we have more positive proof that young people in particular are breaking loose from the sexual establishment and running blind into any and all forms of eroticism that they can possibly conjure up.

And then there is the other argument which holds that when it comes to sex there is nothing new under the sun. And research shows that there is more than a little basis for this attitude. Bestiality, for example, existed during the Biblical period and before, as a wide variety of accounts will attest. So when we hear today, either through the newspapers or any other means, that a young girl has been discovered having sexual relations with a dog or other such animal there is no justification for the automatic assumption at young people are trying something new and altogether different.

However shocking this may seem it should be remembered, as we pointed out earlier in this introduction, that there is nothing new about bestiality. Egyptian vases, Roman frescoes and other such objects d'art clearly show girls copulating with animals, allowing them to perform oral-genital sex, and in fact performing oralism on them!

Bullfinch's `Mythology' abounds with legends of human-animal relations, and it should be remembered that however fictional a legend might appear the fact remains that the legend is nothing more than a perpetuation of fact.

And so, with this established, we will be concerned here with the `reasons' why a young girl, a girl who might have easily have her pick of any male to satisfy her sexual cravings, would choose to reject the human partner and seek instead the sexual comforts of an animal.

When we turn out attention to examine something as important as the facets of human sexuality, especially when one of those facets seems on the surface to be as unconventional bestiality, then we can only hope to serve a purpose in contributing to the growing body of information and in contributing to a storehouse of information which every individual has a right to ONLY if there is no attempt whatsoever at censorship.

While these cases may shock some and offend others, the fact remains that they need to be told.

Very definitely bestial sex is today in vogue among American females. And to all intents and purposes, the perpetrator and primal beneficiary of this vogue is the common household canine. Indeed, the beast that has long been considered man's best friend, is now man's best competitor for the attentions of America's women.

It would be easy enough for punsters and comedians to comment that American women are `going to the dogs' and dismiss the subject with so little discussion. But the fact remains that dogs now pose a very definite threat to American men.

It used to be, during previous generations, that bestial sex with dogs existed but only in limited proportions. An occasional woman would have sex with a dog, rumors might or might not have gone around concerning her action, and that would be the end of the matter. Societal restraints have always discouraged bestial sex in the past. But these societal restraints are quickly vanishing.

Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of American women commit bestial sex acts every year. Although many of these acts take place on farms with the large horses, jackasses and goats to be found there, the predominant form of bestial sex in America is the bestial sex that occurs between women and dogs.

Why dogs? The answers are both complex and very simple. Dogs are easy to obtain and until very recently aroused very little suspicion. If, for example, a girl lived in an apartment with a billy goat suspicions would be immediately aroused. If that same lady, for the same bestial reasons, lived in the same apartment with a large dog, few people would think it at all strange. Thus dogs, by their sheer numbers, their ability to allay suspicions, and by their availability, have become the number one bestial sex partner of America's new generation of sexually liberated young women.

Denying these supposedly `deviant' sexual behavior patterns is to deny our collective experience as human beings. As we have seen in the introduction, to deny the existance of bestiality would be to deny our history, and, as a logical extension, to deny our existence. We are not talking about the realm of philosophy so much as we are talking about what is basic, scientific evidence that bestiality has existed, does exist and most likely will always exist. This, one might be forced to ask why there is so much condemnation and so much secrecy surrounding this aspect of sexuality.

We are dealing here with the importance of the recognition of sexuality in all its varied and diverse forms. The grip that religion and societal control, trough the vehicle of guilt implantation, is lessened somewhat when we deal with the case incidence occurrence of bestiality on a clinical level. The realm of scientific evaluation of sexual patterns lessens the burden of applying a moral value judgment in the sense of a sexual practice being `good' or `bad'. Certainly, the point of our studies was not to say that there should be no societal controls, but, we must question the necessity of control that merely implants guilt and bad feelings that are directly related only to sexual behavior.

Not only guilt, but also very real penalties under the law, are used to try to repress the sexual practices of bestiality. United States penalties range from a year's imprisonment up through life at hard labor, though a few states do have a fine and or imprisonment penalty. The average sentence, a few years ago, was two to five years imprisonment. However, many sentences are suspended under various conditions, such as agreement to enter psycho-therapy--not warranted unless on some other grounds, but certainly preferable to imprisonment.

Thus, it should be certainly clear that we have not only a moral control, but a legal control as well. As mentioned above, we are not arguing against societal control or jurisdiction, but we are questioning its applicability towards such a sensitive area as that of human sexuality, whatever form it might take.

We can also see that studies such as this one, carried on by the scientific community, can lead to more understanding of the phenomenon and also to a decline in the moral stigma attached to human-animal sexual relations. If we can finally leave the realm of morality and religion, then it might be possible to eventually see a decline in the legal penalties associated with bestiality. Through the use and aide of modern science, we may gain a more modern attitude to that realm of human behavior and sexuality that has often propelled human beings to seek out the sexual companionship of animals.

End

Courtesy of Equadept

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Our Sexuality

Our Sexuality

by Robert Crooks and Karla Baur

ZOOPHILIA (zoo-FIL-e-uh), sometimes called
`bestiality', involves sexual contact between humans
and animals. Eight percent of the males and almost
four percent of the females in Kinsey's sample
populations reported having had sexual experiences
with animals at some point in their lives. The
frequency of such behavior among males was highest for
those raised on farms (17% contact). The animals most
frequently involved in sex with humans are calves,
sheep, donkeys, large fowl (ducks and geese), dogs and
cats. Males are most likely to have contact with farm
animals and to engage in penile-vaginal intercourse or
to have their genitals orally stimulated by the
animals. Females are more likely to have contact with
house-hold pets involving oral stimulation or
masterbation of a male dog. Less commonly, some
females have trained dogs to mount them and engage in
intercourse.

Sexual contact with animals is commonly only a
transitory experience of people to whom a sexual
partner is inaccessible or forbidden. Most males and
females who experiment with animals make a transition
to normal relations with human partners.
Occasionally, a person may engage in such behavior as
a `sexual adventure' or because a human partner is
unavailable. True Zoophilia exists only when sexual
contact with animals is preferred regardless of what
other forms of sexual outlet are available. Such
behavior, which is quite rare, is generally only
expressed by people with deep-rooted psychological
problems or distorted images of the other sex.

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Ever Since Adam and Eve
The evolution of human sexuality- Malcolm Potts and Roger Short 1999
Human Beings, with their remarkable interest in sex, are unique in the
variety of other species with whom copulation occurs. Alfred Kinsey
reported that as many as 17% of boys raised on farms had had at least one
sexual encounter with an animal.
Bestiality has been condemned by the churches and, for example, in 1750
one Jaques Ferron was hanged for having intercourse with a female
donkey; several people, including the local abbot, testified to the honor of
the donkey, who was assumed to have been raped and was acquitted of any
part in the crime.
In 1991, an Englishman, Alan Cooper, was brought to court accused of an
`act of lewd, obscene and disgusting nature and outraging public decency
by behaving in an indecent manner with a dolphin' in the sea off of the
British coast.
Unlike Ferron's donkey, the dolphin, called Freddie, appears to have been
a consenting adult and a defense witness described Freddie as `extending
the finger of friendship' for masturbating by Mr. Cooper. As we have seen,
dolphins are highly sexual animals and do indeed use their penises to
explore the environment, sometimes springing them out like a jack-knife.
Mr. Cooper was acquitted.
*** courtesy of Equadept

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Intimate Matters ,A History of Sexuality in America
John D'Emilio and Estelle B Freedman 1988
Childhood observation of sexual activity is common in agricultural societies, and
all regions remained agricultural throughout the colonial period. "Procreation was
everywhere, in the barnyard as well as in the house," one historian has written of
17th century New England.
Colonial laws against Bestiality, and scattered prosecutions for buggery with farm
animals, attest to one influence of the barnyard.
In Connecticut, for example, a man confessed to having had sexual relations with
a variety of animals since the age of ten;
Massachusetts executed several teenage boys for buggery.
Sexual relations with animals required harsh punishment, for colonists believed
that these unions could have reproductive consequences. The mating of humans
and animals, they feared, would produce monstrous offspring. For this reason,
colonists insisted on punishing not only the man but also the beast, who might
bear such monsters.
Thus William Hacketts, "found in buggery with a cow, upon the Lord's day," had
to witness the execution of the cow before his own hanging took place.
Sixteen year old Thomas Grazer of Plymouth confessed to buggery "with a mare,
a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey." The court ordered a lineup
of sheep at which Grazer identified his sexual partners, who were "killed before
his face," and then "he himself was executed."
Although executions were rare, sexual observation or experimentation with
animals was no doubt as widespread in colonial America as in other agricultural
societies.
*** courtesy of Equadept

PlayHorse

The Prehistory of Sex
Timothy Taylor 1996
The association between men and animals is also made clear in a number of
scenes of bestiality. In one from a Neolithic rock art scene in the Val Camonica of
northern Italy, a man is penetrating what appears to be a donkey. Those from
Siberia are particularly interesting, showing copulation among moose, as well as
men copulating--or attempting to copulate--with moose, the man in one case being
on skis. These animals are not domestic but, as social anthropologist Tim Ingold
has observed among modern herders in Lapland, managed herds of wild animals.
Bestiality may well have been part of Neolithic life and it can still be widely
documented today. In rural America high rates of sexual contact between male
adolescents and farm animals have been reported. For city dwellers, inflatable
substitutes are available; mail-order catalogs exhort potential buyers to "enjoy the
pleasures of country life without the smell." Dogs and cats are sometimes co-
opted as sex partners; dogs are featured relatively often in the erotic encounters
that women reported to Nancy Friday.
Nondomesticated animals are also possibilities. To the prehistoric moose pursued
on skis may be added a recent case of a man with a male dolphin. Women (and
sometimes men) insert snakes, mice and other small animals into different
orifices, and in a wide variety of poorly documented but believable accounts,
chickens (alive and dead), fish and moths are used sexually in ways best left to the
imagination. Sex with captive primates has also been reported.
*** courtesy of Equadept

PlayHorse

The Century of Sex, Playboy's History of the Sexual Revolution 1900-1999
James R. Peterson 1999
Linda Marchiano, a.k.a. Linda Lovelace the former porn star, had written her life
story in a 1980 biography titled `Ordeal'. The book recounted her path from porn
star to born-again prude. Overnight she became the darling of Gloria Steinem,
who had passed her along to MacKinnon & Dworkin. Marchiano told
commissioners that for two and a half years she had been held captive and forced
to perform as Linda Lovelace, "the sex freak of the 70s." The happily married
housewife now blamed Chuck Traynor for her previous excesses. Her first
husband and manager had dragged her from "prostitution to porn films to celebrity
satisfier." She told of being forced to have sex with five strangers in a motel room
and of her ultimate degradation, having sex with a "D-O-G." Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop released a statement warning, "pornography may be dangerous to
your health."
The world contemplated having warning stickers on erections. Koop, an
outspoken foe of abortion, spoke from the heart, unsupported by any research.
"Pornography's a destructive phenomenon. It does not contribute anything to
society, but rather takes away from and diminishes what we regard in society as
good." For Koop, pornography "intervenes in normal sexual relationships and
alters them." When asked if he had scientific studies to support such conclusion,
Koop admitted it was just his hunch. He promptly convened a body of social
scientists, to produce `The Report of the Surgeon General's Workshop on
Pornography and Public Health.' It would conclude that the evidence still showed
no direct harm. The commission buried itself in the grotesque. It listened while a
born-again Christian claimed that seeing a deck of pornographic playing cards at
the age of twelve warped him for life. Soon he was shoplifting Playboys from the
local grocery store. "From the pictures, I was stimulated to practice oral and finger
stimulation on my parents' dogs." FBI agent Kenneth Lanning gave a presentation
of child porn and fetish magazines. The commission looked at pictures of nails
driven through foreskins, pins driven through scrotums, nipples pierced by rings,
men and women having sex with dogs and a young girl disemboweled by fist-
fucking. A reporter for `Time' quoted: "There's an awful lot of porn online." It is
not just naked women. The adult BBS (bulletin board system) market seems to be
driven largely by a demand for images that can't be found in the average magazine
rack--a grab bag of deviant material that includes images of bondage,
sadomasochism, urination, defecation and sex acts with a barnyard full of
animals". The appearance of material like this on a public network accessible to
men, women and children around the world raises issues too important to ignore--
or to oversimplify." Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition,
appeared on `Nightline' to sound the clarion call: "This is bestiality, pedophilia,
child molestation. According to the Carnegie Meldon survey, one quarter of all the
images involve the torture of women."
*** courtesy of Equadept

PlayHorse

LAW AND NATURE
Series: Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
David Delaney
Amherst College, Massachusetts

CHAPTER TEN

FEAR OF FALLING: LAW AND BESTIALITY

INTRODUCTION


I love you, little girl. I'm in love with you. You're
so sweet, so funny, so - oh Cherry my darling! He
hugged her neck, hard, her head over his shoulder,
rubbing his cheek against her sleek coat. . . James
awoke as the sun came peeking over the eastern
horizon. He was lying in the soft straw outside the
stable, shorts again covering his loins. Cherry was
asleep on the ground beside him, the top of her head
resting on his left arm. James was happy.
(Mathews 1994,193)

James is the fictionalized name adopted by Mark
Mathews, author of the autobiographical book The
Horseman: Obsessions of a Zoophile. Mark Mathews is
the pseudonym adopted by George Wilbur, an "out"
zoophile, founder of Zoophile Outreach Organization
and featured subject of both a BBC documentary,
Hidden Loves, and an episode of the Jerry Springer
show. Cherry, if it isn't obvious, is a horse that
James/Mark/George owns. The passage quoted comes at
the end of a book in which the narrator recounts his
path from self-loathing to self-acceptance. Guided by
a sympathetic psychologist, the author comes to
realize that he and other members of the zoophile
community practice a "non-threatening alternate
behavior." The aim of the book is to point the way
toward greater social acceptance. The author
analogizes the struggle of zoophiles to the historical
struggles of African-Americans and gays and lesbians.
"I am not normal," he writes.

But we are human beings, sharing most of the
characteristics of humanity. As such, rather than
forcing us into chemical treatment or imprisoning us,
or casting us out, perhaps it is time for society to
take a closer look at its attitudes toward us. As long
as we don't harm or hurt any people or our partners,
as long as we are still productive, functional members
of society, why, then, the opprobrium? Why not let us
be? Is society harmed by diversity or enriched? Please
think about it.    (208)

His is a version of the story that love conquers all,
intertwined with the story of social progress as the
widening circle of toleration and equality. This is
clearly a potent combination.
There are many different ways of making sense of
zoophilia or bestiality or buggery. Historically in
the West the most common way of making it legally
meaningful has been with reference to "the abominable
and detestable crime against nature." Human sexual
relationships with animals - the acquisition of carnal
knowledge of them - has traditionally been deemed
"unnatural" and has been punishable largely on that
basis. But James/Mark/George suggests that it is not
about sex so much as it is about love: who can love
and be loved by whom, how love can and cannot be
expressed, how love can be denied by law and violence
delivered in support of that denial. Not incidentally,
though this point is not emphasized in The Horseman,
another way to frame the issue may be to ask what an
owner can and cannot do with his property.
In the previous chapter we saw that scientific
experiments on animals often result in extreme
suffering and death. These results are commonly
justified by the fundamental belief that they are not
us. Even higher primates whose resemblance to us
supports their role as "animal models" are located
just the other side of the line that announces the
distinctiveness of humans vis-à-vis animals as
figures of nature. They are very much like us but they
are not us. Their deficits tell us so. In this chapter
we explore another dimension of human-animal
interaction but one that seems to emphasize the
corollary notion that we are not them. Here we
continue to examine some of the complex boundary work
that goes into constructing and revising humanness
vis-à-vis "the animal," but here we do so in
connection to the realm of the emotions and
sexuality. We shall also treat law's shifting
relationship to these tasks. The first sections
consider how conceptions of emotions are used to mark
the boundary between humans and animals (again, as a
figure of nature). But emotions occupy a very
ambiguous location in these borderlands, sometimes
marking out what is distinctively human while at other
times tending to signify the domain of nature within
the human vis-à-vis "higher" faculties such as reason.
Looking more closely, we shall consider the role of
the passions and, more particularly, sexual desire,
lust and arousal, in making the beast within
intelligible. That is to say, we shall explore how
animality helps us make sense of the sensual, hedonic
aspects of human existence. The relationship between
disgust and desire has been construed as a proxy for
the combative relationship between civilization and
the (always threatening) state of nature that,
according to the emergence stories discussed in
chapter 4, is ongoing and never ending. This is a
struggle that may be metaphorically corporealized as
one between our minds and hearts or between our guts
and genitals.

The second section takes up the question of bestiality
in light of these conceptions of emotions and sex and
surveys a range of contemporary positions within this,
admittedly fringe, arena of the politics of nature.
The third major section examines the historical
involvement of formal legal discourse in making sense
of bestiality and its use of bestiality as a resource
for making sense of itself. My focus is on the
historical paradox rooted in the conventional
stricture that that which is "against the order of
nature" is also that which is "not fit to be named."
The unnamable, unspeakable nature of this offense
followed from a conception of the relationship
between language and the disgusting, such that
particularized descriptions of unnatural practices are
understood as contaminating the speech act or texts
themselves. By naming the unnamable, legal actors ran
the risk of actually participating in the furtherance
of the defilement and degradation engendered by the
underlying act. As one judge declared:

This was a prosecution of "the abominable and
detestable crime against nature." The statute gives no
other definition of the crime, obviously out of regard
to the better sentiments of decent humanity, and to
leave the record undefiled by details. The court has
read the evidence of the record, and for the same
reasons which influenced the framers of the statute,
refuses to defile the reports by a recital of the
sordid, immoral, depraved, and detestable statements
therein contained.
(Sanders v. State, 25 NE 2d 995, 1940)

Or, as another more tersely put it, "The charge is too
horrible to contemplate and too revolting to discuss"
(Harvey v. State, 115 SW 1193, 1909). On the basis of
such sentiments legislators, prosecutors, and judges
refrained from specifying the overt practices which
constituted a punishable offense and sought to
contain the disgusting within the confines of silence.
This policy of containment, though, had a number of
effects. First, by uncoupling potential legal violence
from the word, legal actors ran the counter risk of
decoupling violence from reason, accountability, and
legitimacy. That is, this strategy risked transforming
law into brute (and mute) force. Second, it thereby
created opportunities for defense attorneys to
challenge convictions by advancing arguments
concerning the vagueness of statutes and indictments
and arguments that the acts committed were not
embraced by the letter of the law. Because much of the
rhetorical force was carried by general references to
nature, the arguments by attorneys and judges became
arguments about the limits of "the natural" and "the
unnatural" and of law itself. Because the unnatural
was (said to be) unmentionable and the line between
the natural and unnatural indefinite, then the
differences among a variety of acts could variously be
emphasized or deemphasized. In some case  the fact
that one of the participants was an animal seemed to
make all the difference. In other cases, though, it
didn't seem to matter at all as legislators and
appellate judges expanded the category "unnatural"
(and contracted the category "natural") by punishing
both gay and straight oral sex as being no different
from bestiality or "traditional" sodomy.

EMOTIONAL BORDERLANDS

The Horseman loves Cherry, but does Cherry love the
Horseman? Undoubtedly the most common answer to this
would be "no." Among the most commonly cited but
increasingly challenged features indicative of
human uniqueness is our capacity to experience
emotions. An emotional life is one of the principal
deficits of nonhuman forms of being. We love, hate,
grieve, feel shame, disgust, and remorse. Our inner
lives and social relations are given form and meaning
by the affective commitments and dispositions that
make us who we are. In contrast, though nonhuman
animals may commonly seek pleasure and avoid pain, it
is commonly held that they are incapable of emotions.
(Recall Justice Scalia's joke about the "painful
sentiments" of a slug in Sweet Home.) Jeffery Masson
(1997) writes, "Instinctive love that crosses the
species barrier is a remarkable phenomenon. We humans
experience it all the time: We love dogs, cats,
horses and many other ani­mals. Yet while many
scientists readily admit they love the animals they
study, few will concede that the animals they study
return that love" (xv). What may appear to be
emotional responses in animals can be rather easily
dismissed as anthropomorphic projections. In "A Tear is
an Intellectual Thing: The Meaning of Emotions" (2000),
Jerome Neu asks, "What are the limits on the emotional
life of animals lacking poetic imagination? Can they
have emotions not grounded in the simple perception
of reality? Do they have the intellectual capacity to
be moved by imagined events?" Asserting the primacy of
the mental, he answers "no." "The psychological
meaning of emotional responses depends on the thoughts
that we can plausibly see behind them. So far as those
thoughts are limited, so also is the range of
emotional experience and emotional expression" (13).
One deficit, then, provides sufficient grounds for
another: no thoughts, no feelings.
But this version of what Midgley (1984) calls absolute
dismissal and so the firmness of the boundary that it
marks has been complicated in both directions. On
the one hand, one finds arguments that emotional lives
are not restricted to human beings. Some claim that at
least some animals are capable of experiencing and
expressing at least some emotions. As Peter Steeves
writes: "Fear is one of the few emotions which
scientists are unafraid to attribute to animals
without concern for anthropomorphizing" (1999, 138).
And Neu acknowledges, "We have little trouble
ascribing fear and anger to apes, dogs and certain
other animals on the basis of their behavior, because
we have little trouble granting them the degree of
awareness needed to account for what certainly seems
to be fearful or angry behavior in ordinary
circumstances. . . But," he adds, "fear and anger are
relatively primitive emotions" (2000, 13). So here the
line between emotional and non-emotional forms of
being may not correspond precisely to that which
distinguishes humans and animals. The difference is
marked by the slipperier zone that separates the
"relatively primitive" from the more advanced
emotions. But again, others challenge this
demarcation. In "Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections
on the Emotional World of Dogs" (1997), Masson claims
that dogs commonly feel not only anger and fear but
love, loyalty, gratitude, dignity, humiliation, and
compassion. And if dogs can feel these then why not
cats, horses, and pigs? Why not blowfish, lobsters,
and Scalia's slug, or even creatures further out along
the Great Chain of Being? How confident are we in
dismissing the possibility even if we cannot discern
the emotions or find these creatures lovable?
On the other (human) side of the line, emotions are
commonly construed as being baser than reason by
reliance on animal and nature discourses. In fact,
the emotions as a figure of nature have for a long
time been used to relegate women, children, and
various ethnic and racial others to the status of the
not-quite-fully-human vis-à-vis Anglo and Teutonic
adult males. And, of course, the allegedly essential
emotional natures of these others have historically
been a primary ideological justification for
excluding them from political power and holding them
to different legal standards. Particularly useful for
purposes of relative dehumanization are those
emotions gathered under the name of the passions. And
of all of the passions, those associated with
sexuality and the erotic have commonly been construed
as among the basest.
Robert Solomon discusses what he calls "the myth of
the passions" or culturally prominent ways of
understanding passionate aspects of human being. "The
passions," he writes, "have been generally agreed to
be primitive and 'natural,' disruptive and irrational,
lacking in judgment and purpose of reason, without
scruples, and sometimes shockingly short of taste"
(1993, xvi). They are "those shortsighted and
self-indulgent less-than-wholly-human lapses in our
objectivity and our knowledge of Reality" (xii-xiv).
According to this common understanding, "The passions
. . . belong to an 'inferior' faculty that must be
mastered. These invading forces must be contained, as
emissaries of the devil or malicious tricks of bored
or vengeful demons" (11). In his Philosophy and the
Passions (2000), Michel Meyer relates these views
directly to key themes of nature discourse. "To be
affected by nature becomes a process whereby one is
subjected to nature. . . The same goes for being
affected by, or having, passion. This becomes the
inscription of nature in the human being" (100). And
having identified the passions with nature, he then
dwells at some length on the vagueness of the boundary
and on its vulnerability when passions are aroused.

The ambiguity [of the human/nature distinction]
emerges from not really knowing whether human nature
is above all natural or human, if we should be
situated within the general order of nature, or if
that which is human should be considered by itself
because it is human. . . Passion is the point of
convergence between nature and human nature, of nature
in the human being. Through passion, we lose sight of
our specificity as human beings and abandon ourselves
to our instincts, as though we were nothing other than
nature. . . Passion places us above nature because
it prolongs our own sense of it, so it is not pure
nature even though at the same time it is . . . The
result of all of this is that passion is natural and
it is not, it is human and it is not. It is the
paradoxical concept of coherence which should permit
people to be both part of nature and human. . .
Passion makes us by unmaking us, it links us to nature
and our animal nature, which we transcend as it does
so because passion is itself a human, and only human
reaction.    (102)

The passions, according to common readings, then,
represent the corporeal, animal wildness within each
of us. Indeed, Meyer identifies the passions as "the
state of nature within the self" (loa). As such it is
locked in an eternal struggle with reason and the
internalized voice of humanity. Meyer asks, "Is
having mastery over passions equivalent to changing an
opinion, or to domesticating one's body?" (56). This
eternal internal battle between the passions and
reason is among the principal fronts in the war
between mind and body, the distinctively human and the
generally animalistic forces of nature. Crucially,
the passions are visceral: we get hot, hot and
bothered, we sweat, our knees go weak, we get knots in
our stomachs, we stammer, we get an erection or begin
to ooze. And sometimes we lose it - we lose control.
Solomon puts the point nicely.

The passions render us passive. . . Various passions
"strike" us, "overwhelm" us, "consume" us, "paralyze"
us; we "fall" into them, "give way" to them, and we
attempt to "hold them down," "keep the lid on,"
maintain control, and suppress them. . . The entire
history of human thought (Eastern as well as Western)
has tended to view the passions as forces in some
sense "outside" us, beyond our control, eruptions from
an unconscious Freudian "id" or Cartesian "animal
spirits" sapping the strength of Reason. (1993,68)
Focusing on the Freudian version of this story he
says, "The battle [between id and superego] defines
the life of the human spirit: 'us' against 'it,'
reason and civilization against the monstrous demands
and aberrations of the passions. Controlling these
wild beasts is the purpose of human society, religion
and reason" (xvi).
And so, the passions, more so than emotions more
generally, complicate - indeed, threaten to
annihilate - any simple reading of the boundary
between humans and animals. And of all the passions
none are as problematic (philosophically as well as
existentially) as those involving desire, lust,
arousal, and sex. Here, in our dreams and longings
or drives and urges we may encounter nature in its
inescapable essence.

CONTAINING DESIRE

Sexual desire can be understood in countless ways,
many of them drawing on images of nature. Like other
"basic" emotions, desire can be easily naturalized as
universal. It can also be scientized and biologized
with reference to androgens ("masculinizing hormones")
and estrogen ("feminizing hormones") and thence
technologized through the administration, for
example, of synthetic anti-androgens such as
cyproterone and other manufactured hormones (Regan and
Berscheid 1999). Of course, sexual desire has been
profoundly psychologized and the sciences of
psychology and psychiatry themselves founded on the
scientization of desire. On the other hand, desire
necessarily has a deep cultural and political history
and, according to many, the historical politics of
desire is inseparable from the history of modernity as
such. And, as in other areas, the historicization and
politicization of sexual desire seems necessarily to
entail its denaturalization. As Foucault has written,
"In the space of a few centuries a certain inclination
has led us to direct the question of what we are, to
sex. Not so much to sex as representing nature, but to
sex as history, as signification, as discourse" (1978,
78). But, of course, as the History of Sexuality
documents, this discourse has been very much a
discourse of nature. Desire, its expression,
repression, and representation, has been inextricably
tied to the project of creating modem subjectivities.
Nonetheless, outside of some academic discourses the
social and political history of desire has more
commonly been displaced and "nature" remains a
critical tool in effecting this displacement.
If modernity is most clearly identified by the
emergence of a certain sort of self,  few notions are
as intimately bound to that self as are its desires.
It is an "I" that desires and it is desire that the
"I" often coalesces around and through which it
reveals itself to the world. Desire, as complex and
idiosyncratic as it doubtless is, points toward a
future at the same time that it exposes an
incompleteness of the present. Desire, as a passion,
can burn, it can consume. Kept within limits it may
center and orient one's being. But it can also, in
both romantic and anti-romantic views, pose the danger
of annihilating and negating one's being. As an
incendiary incompleteness it can expand, radiate, and
destroy. Desire has the capacity to overpower reason,
overwhelm the voice of humanity. Roger Scruton, in
his conservative treatise, "Sexual Desire: A Moral
Philosophy of the Erotic" (1986), recognizes how desire
has the "capacity to 'overcome' the subject, so that
he is 'mastered' by it" (19). And this is the
problem, the danger. Desire is like the landslides
examined in chapter 6. It can erupt and destroy
everything in its path, wiping out all of our
accomplishments in the blink of an eye. To quote
Michel Meyer again, "Desire is the essence of our
passions. . . and It is well known that the passions
enslave" (2000, 165).
Desire, then, can be naturalized in any number of
senses. It is itself a prominent figure of nature. It
becomes particularly dangerous when it ripens
(blossoms? erupts?) into arousal. Martha Roth
describes the dangers well. "We seem to believe that
arousing lust is asking for trouble because other
passions are always aroused as well. Our passions -
the feelings that sweep over us and, in sweeping,
change us - are like a nest of coiled serpents; when
one awakens, they all stir" (1998, 5). On the other
hand, Scruton draws the line very differently, denying
animals not only the ability to desire but even to be
(properly speaking) aroused.

Only a rational being can experience desire, and
those sentiments that are so often slighted, as being
indicative of our "animal" nature, are sentiments
that no mere animal has ever felt. . . Animals are
never sexually aroused; they do not feel sexual
desire, nor do they have sexual fulfillment. Almost
all that matters in sexual experience lies outside
their capacities, not because they reach for it and
fail to obtain it, but because they cannot reach for
it.    (1986,35-36)

Not incidentally, desire, lust, arousal, strongly
associated as they are with nature, are also
understood by romantics as signifying that which is
most unrelentingly oppressed, repressed, distorted by
civilization. Speaking of romanticism, Robert Solomon
says, "Against this repres­sive conception of rational
control of the passions, there has always been a
'counter-culture' to point out the 'unnaturalness' of
damming up nature's torrents" (1993, 11). As we saw in
chapter 4, the renunci­ation of the passions - along
with the control of fire - was understood by Freud as
having initiated the order of civilization and of law
itself. Conventional understandings of sexual desire,
then, implicate many of the central themes of this
book. It is easily and frequently understood in terms
of a force of nature, animality, and corporeality. Sex
may be imaginative but it is also inseparable from
embodiment: touch, sensuality, pleasure, and pain.
Moreover, sexualities are hard to consider without
reference to limits, knowledge, and control - some of
the core themes of nature discourse. And the limits,
and control of desire, have been of central concern to
the story of modern law.
Historically, another significant way of making sense
of sexuality has been through the division of those
modes of desire and expression deemed "natural" and
those deemed not only "unnatural" but "against the
order of nature." This division has had a close but
imprecise relation to that between the permitted and
the forbidden. Again, there is a long history of both
the naturalization and denaturalization of sexuality.
I only want to register the work that "nature" has
historically performed in the ongoing politics of
desire (as a politics of nature), and to note that
while invocations of nature in the domain of sexuality
seem to connote a positive assessment of that which is
deemed natural - that is, what is natural is to be
celebrated, endorsed, or reinforced - appearances are
deceiving.
So what's so natural about (some forms of) sex?
According to prominent historian of sex John Boswell,
"Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that nature designed
semen and ejaculation to create children and thereby
propagate the species. To expend semen for any purpose
other than reproduction was 'contrary to nature,' and
therefore sinful" (1980, 149). Or, as glossed by Jonas
Liliequist, "Nature referred to the hierarchical order
of God's creation, where every living thing had its
determined and appropriate position. Crossing the
boundaries of creation or using a member not intended
for procreative purposes, was a direct injury to God"
(1992, 57). The unnatural or the perverse was, as
stated by classical sexologist Richard von
Krafft-Ebing, "Any expression of the sexual impulse
which fails to correspond to the purposes of nature,
i.e. procreation" (41). So the limit of the natural in
the domain of sex is approached as one departs from
genital-to-genital (and face-to-face) heterosexual
contact engaged in for the purposes of propagation.
All else is beyond nature and, perhaps, against
nature. As Foucault has shown, in the nineteenth
century sexuality emerged as an important object of
scientific inquiry and the project of sexology began
itself to spawn a multitude of deviances and oddities
on a par with contemporary anthropology. It invented,
among other figures, the homosexual, the hysterical
woman, and the sexual child. It sought to achieve "a
natural order of disorder" (1978,44). In the twentieth
century many specimens of exotica were cataloged
under the general heading of "paraphilias," which
constituted a veritable menagerie of wayward desires
and troubled pleasures. Among these are the
acrotomophiles ("amputee partner"), coprophiles
("smell or taste of feces or seeing someone
defecate"), fornicophiles ("small creatures, ants,
insects or snails crawling on genitals"), urophiles
("being urinated upon or swallowing urine"), and, of
course, our friends the zoophiles and zooerasts - the
latter distinguished from the former by lower level of
intensity and lower frequency of contact (Money 1986).
As tokens of scientific knowledge the paraphiles
become not only classifiable but explicable and, in
some theories, treatable, manageable, curable. But
the practices (and identities) are not only unnatural
or rare. They are also disgusting. And if one of the
tasks of law was to reinforce nature by punishing the
unnatural, it was also the case that formal sanctions
were a kind of backup when a more fundamental law
failed to keep desires and pleasures within bounds.
This was the law of disgust.

THE LAW OF DISGUST

A discussion of emotions and sexuality, and especially
perverse sexualities such as zoophilia, would be
incomplete without mentioning the controlling role of
disgust. It would be difficult to understand the
cultural work of the unnatural and the most common
justifications for punishing those who engage in
unnatural practices without taking into account the
repeated declarations that these acts are repulsive.
As it happens, disgust may also be a highly
significant boundary marker itself. To the extent
that emotions are understood as either marking or
complicating the human/animal (nature) distinction,
the emotion of disgust is oriented toward reinforcing
the boundary. In a very illuminating study, The
Anatomy of Disgust (1997), William Miller is explicit
about the police functions of disgust.

Humans are most likely the only species that
experiences disgust, and we seem to be the only one
that is capable of loathing its own species. We also
seem to be driven to aspire to purity and perfection.
And fueling no small pan of those aspirations is
disgust with what we are or with what we are likely to
slide back into. . . Ultimately the basis for all
disgust is us - that we live and die and that the
process is a messy one emitting substances and odors
that make us doubt ourselves and fear our neighbors.
(xiv)

Indeed, for Miller, "To feel disgust is human and
humanizing" (11). Moreover, disgust is best seen as a
cultural achievement and can serve as a measure of our
progressive distanciation from nature. Perhaps
paradoxically, disgust, like the passions, is
visceral. When we are disgusted we may gag, we may
become nauseated, sickened. Disgust, says Miller,
"makes us pay with unpleasant sensation for the
superiority it asserts" (32).
But what is disgust? Or rather, what elicits disgust
and why does it do so? What do we get for our pains?
Superiority to whom or what? Psychologist Paul Rozin
and his colleagues have studied the disgusting in some
detail. In their entry on disgust in "The Handbook of
Emotions "(2000) they tell us:
Anything that reminds us that we are animals elicits
disgust. . . Disgust serves to "humanize" our animal
bodies. Humans must eat, excrete, and have sex, just
like animals. Each culture prescribes the proper way
to perform these actions by, for example, placing
most animals off limits as potential foods, and all
animals and most people off limits as potential
sexual partners. People who ignore these proscriptions
are reviled as disgusting and animal-like.    (642)

Or, as Martha Nussbaum has put it, disgust "wards off
both animality in general and the mortality that is so
prominent in our loathing of animality" (1999, 24).
So, disgust operates around the human/animal
borderlands, patrolling, enforcing, and reinforcing
human uniqueness and superiority, keeping the line
clear and keeping us within bounds. It is this
cultural achievement that causes sensations of nausea
and gagging that repel us and compel us to feel our
humanity in our guts. Nausea is an embodied expression
of what Miller calls "a psychic need to avoid
reminders of our animal origins" (1997, 6).
But disgust is not only a boundary marker, it is also
a barrier, a limit that in repelling us counteracts
any possible attraction that the disgusting might
have for us. To the extent that desire represents
animality and nature more generally, then the struggle
between disgust and desire may be a proxy for the
larger struggle between the human, the civilized,
against the animal or the savage. If we are pulled
toward our own animality, or back to "our animal
origins," or, in the case of zoophiles, to actual
nonhuman animals as sexual partners, the law of
disgust is to exert a greater force to counteract
this attraction. To quote William Miller again,disgust
acts like a barrier to satisfying unconscious desire.
This is the disgust. . . that Freud called a reaction
formation, in which the role of disgust joins with
shame and morality to work as a dam (the image is
Freud's) to hold back sexual instinct. . . Disgust is
there to prevent the activation of unconscious desire,
or, more precisely, disgust is part of the very
process that makes such desires unconscious.    ( 109)

But again, rather than clarifying the boundary, the
operation of the disgust-desire contest may complicate
it. "The disgust that operates as an initial barrier
must operate that way because of a necessary admission
that what lies behind the disgust is not foul at all
but fair" (111). Furthermore, disgust provides not
only a barrier but a floor, it polices not only what
is within and beyond set limits, but separates the
high from the low. Again, from Miller:

Disgust evaluates (negatively) what it touches,
proclaims the meanness and inferiority of its object.
And by so doing it presents a nervous claim of right
to be free of the dangers imposed by the proximity of
the inferior. It is thus an assertion of a claim to
superiority that at the same time recognizes the
vulnerability of that superiority to the defiling
powers of the low.    (9)

Disgust, then, turns out to be one of the most
culturally significant resources for making sense of
nature and of ourselves in relation to nature.
Disgust is not only humanizing but civilizing. As such
it can be deployed to inscribe boundaries, barriers,
and floors within human societies. That is, it can be
useful for dehumanizing, animalizing, and
naturalizing, and thereby dominating others. For
those of us consigned to the nether worlds of the
disgusting this creates difficulties. Nussbaum argues
that, "Because disgust embodies a shrinking from
contamination that is associated with the human desire
to be non-animal, it is more than likely to be hooked
up with various forms of shady social practice, in
which the discomfort people feel over the fact of
having an animal body is projected outwards onto
vulnerable people and groups" (1999, 22). "We need a
group of humans," she asserts, "to bound ourselves
against, who will come to exemplify the boundary line
between the truly human and the basely animal. If
those quasi-animals stand between us and our own
animality, then we are one step further away from
being animal and mortal ourselves" (29). As the social
consequences of this run counter to our professed
commitment to tolerance and inequality we should, she
argues, dismantle or un-tell the disgust civilization
story. We should, in fact, turn it on its head:

The really civilized nation must make a strenuous
effort to counter the power of disgust, as a barrier
to the full equality and mutual respect for all
citizens. This will require a recreation of our
entire relationship to the bodily. Disgust at the
body and its products has collaborated with the
maintenance of injurious social hierarchies. The
health of democracy therefore depends on criticizing
and undoing that social formation. (32)
The politics of disgust that Nussbaum endorses returns
us, then, to the politics of nature, to the Horseman's
plea for social acceptance. And, not incidentally, it
implicates a need for legal reform. Disgust, she says,
"is never a good reason to make a practice (for
example sodomy) illegal. . . this disgust-reaction
should itself be distrusted, as a device we employ to
deny our own capacities for evil" (22).
One last point on the politics of disgust concerns the
close association between the disgusting and the
immoral and between the immoral and the illegal. Many
disgusting practices - eating maggots, for example ­
are typically regarded as neither immoral nor illegal.
But many sexual practices that are conventionally
deemed disgusting are considered unnatural and
immoral and have been criminalized on that basis. The
most socially significant of these are sodomy and oral
sex. Perhaps if the sense that is made of
non-procreative sex relies on the complex of
conventional antagonisms, it is a relatively easy
matter to regard instances of these practices as
having more than individual significance. There may
appear to be more at stake than this or that
individual's moral failings or aesthetic
sensibilities. Occasions of sex without the
possibility of reproduction may be interpreted as
posing dangers of the highest magnitude. When desire
overcomes disgust, when passion overpowers reason and
overwhelms the voice of humanity, it may be taken as a
sign that animality is overtaking humanity where it
matters most. It may signify the ultimate triumph of
nature where human claims of distinctiveness and
superiority are most vulnerable to doubt. These
episodes of depravity and degeneration may represent
the real and palpable peril of regression. As such
they may be interpreted as the most profound
repudiation of humanness: the repudiation of the
founding renunciation, the Great Refusal (as Herbert
Marcuse [1966] put it) as the Great Reversal. These
acts reveal the always provisional, tentative, and
fragile nature of the emergence stories and so the
vulnerability of civilization itself.
The anxieties may be heightened because of the further
association between the disgusting and ideas of
contagion and contamination. If what elicits our
disgust is not destroyed - or at least contained or
somehow sanitized - there is the danger that it may
spread. There is the danger that the consuming,
incendiary nature of desire within individuals may
find a greater social expression. Disorder begets
disorder. Enforcing prohibitions, reinforcing the law
of disgust among those for whom it has proven
insufficient, is nothing less than taking appropriate
measures to prevent the breakdown of human society
and the destruction of civilization. All of this, in
fact, is encoded in the very word "sodomy." As one
Kentucky Supreme Court said, "The word 'sodomy' is
derived from the city of Sodom, where the crime
against nature had its origins and was universally
prevalent until that city was destroyed by the wrath'
of God" (Commonwealth v. Poindexter, 118 SW 943,1909).
As we shall see, the contamination could spread not
only by relaxation of the prohibition or even by
demonstrations or initiations of impressionable youth.
From William Miller again: "Disgust does not move us
to condemn for pure pleasure because it always makes
us bear some of the costs of condemnation. Disgust
never allows us to escape clean. It underpins the
sense of despair that impurity and evil are
contagious, endure, and take everything down with
them" (1997, 205). It could also spread, so to speak,
by word of mouth. Talking about it - whatever form
"it" may have taken - might in itself be disgusting.
Talking or writing about it ­or at least doing these
in the wrong way - might very well hasten and further
the contamination, the risk, the breakdown. Hence the
associations between the disgusting and the obscene,
the unmentionable, the silenced, and the censored. Or,
this, at least, is a common way of understanding you
know what. These complex relationships and
associations among sex, silence, contagion and
pollution, danger and nature, reason and violence
have had important implications for how social actors
have responded to alleged episodes of the abominable
and detestable crime against nature.
  Before we examine more closely the specific politics
of bestiality and law's response to its occurrence, it
might be worth while to return to the animal
experiment laboratories that we discussed in the
previous chapter, recalling that the justifications
for the infliction of pain there all came to rest on
the assertion that they are not us. An important event
in the historical politics of animal rights was the
1982 theft and circulation of videotapes from the
University of Pennsylvania Head Injury laboratories
by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
The videos were made by researchers as part of their
internal documentation of a project that involved
subjecting baboons to severe trauma. They were
subsequently edited and narrated by animal rights
activists. The videos show repeated incidents in which
unanesthetized baboons - arms and legs bound, heads
encased in devices engineered to deliver an immense
amount of force - were made to experience what some
observers recognized as suffering. According to the
narrator, the videos also document numerous violations
of both state law and standard scientific protocols,
the latter allegedly rendering whatever data might be
obtained virtually useless for the stated purposes of
the research project. The videos also document
technicians ridiculing the animals and hurting them in
ways that had nothing to do with the production of
knowledge. Over the years PETA has circulated the
images and, one must admit, their propaganda and
educational value is considerable. The images are very
disturbing. But imagine if, instead of injuring and
destroying the animals, the technicians were captured
on tape kissing the baboons on the lips or
masturbating them, or performing oral sex on them. Or
imagine if the videos documented a technician himself
becoming aroused and engaging in anal sex with a
primate. Many would say that such representations -
or the contemplation of such actions - were not merely
disturbing but disgusting, revolting, nauseating.
Seeing such images, we might say, pollutes our
consciousness. Indeed, for some readers my asking you
to imagine such scenes is too much of an affront to
human decency; that even to imagine imagining is too
repulsive and degrading. Such is the power of disgust.

ON BESTIALITY

The binaries that organize the emotional domains of
disgust and desire, in setting up boundaries,
barriers, and floors, suggests an either/or structure
that itself reinforces the limits of nature. But we
know well that there are degrees and gradations of
disgust and that some desires and practices are more
forbidden than others. Some candidates for the
disgusting are judgment calls, some are idiosyncratic.
Some things approach the line but don't cross. And the
line itself has shifted significantly over time - in
part in response to the shifting politics of disgust
and desire. At any given time, though, there may be
something approaching consensus that some things
simply are disgusting. Some activities, it seems, are
un-controversially and obviously beyond the pale. In
the cultural hierarchy of disgusting practices in the
modem West, few practices rank lower than human sexual
contact with nonhuman animals. As Midas Dekkers puts
it, "At all times and in all places bestiality has
been punished. People simply do not approve of others
having sex with animals. That is what makes them human
beings" (1994, 130). Or, as a theologian recently put
it, "The 'yuck' factor is immense and many people feel
disturbed by the mere thought of it" (Linzey 2000,
29). But even here, if one deigns to look more
closely, one might discern finer distinctions. If one
can imagine the intelligibility of a monogamous,
long-standing (heterosexual?) relationship between a
man and a horse - as the Horseman invites us to - one
might acknowledge a qualitative distinction between
that and the exploitative, pornographic, commercial
representation of a woman having "sex" with an eel or
anteater. One might also distinguish these from, the
fatal sexual mutilation of a chicken in a motel room.
One might even be genuinely indignant at the
suggestion that there are no significant differences
here, Such is the politics of bestiality. Though not
nearly as visible as the politics of nature with
regard to wilderness, endangered species, or animal
experiments, there is a contemporary politics of
bestiality. On the one hand, as we saw in our opening
discussion of the Horseman, it is possible to attempt
to assimilate at least some bestial practices to the
liberal story of progressively expanding tolerance for
an "alternate lifestyle," to form a sort of identity
politics, to organize and mobilize around issues of
equal protection. And no less an authority than Martha
Nussbaum would seem to lend credence to the project.
Opposed to this movement are organizations such as the
Humane Society and Animal Sexual Abuse Information and
Resources (ASAIR) for whom bestiality represents a
particularly troubling form of abuse and exploitation.
According to ASAIR, for example, "Bestiality is an
abuse practiced by a growing cult-like group of
deviants and impressionable teens, as well as curious
experimenters" (www.asairs.com). "The zoophile's world
view," claims ASAIR, "is similar to the rapist's and
child abuser's. They all view the physical
gratification they have with their victims as
consensual, and they believe it benefits their
partners as well as themselves." And, they contend,
"Serial killers often start by abusing and killing
animals." Among the practical objectives of these
organizations is the re-criminalization of bestiality
in those states in which it had been inadvertently
decriminalized in the 1970s along with sodomy. In an
article published in Theoretical Criminology (1997)
Piers Bierne writes:

Indeed, since the mid nineteenth century many
"unnatural offences," including bestiality, have
effectively been decriminalized. Nowadays, a defendant
will probably be charged with a misdemeanor like
public indecency, a breach of the peace or cruelty to
animals. Indeed, the social control of bestiality has
formally passed from religion to criminal law to a
psychiatric discourse at whose center lies the
diseased individuals . . . However, at once
subverting this psychiatrization and also echoing
certain aspects of the spirit of decriminalization,
there has gradually emerged a pseudo-liberal tolerance
of bestiality. This tendency implies that because
bestiality is an interesting and vital part of almost
every known culture it should not only be tolerated
but even, within certain limits, celebrated.    (325)

An important point of contention between the
antagonists concerns the question of consent. Dealing
with this issue requires opponents to render animals
and the human-animal interface in terms of the crucial
aspect of language. As Carol Adams, a proponent of the
convergence of feminist theory and animal advocacy,
says, "Silence is a major problem. Unlike most forms
of sexual contact, in which a partner can report the
experience, only one of the participants can talk; and
because of the stigma surrounding bestiality, that
party usually remains silent" (1995, 30). And ASAIR
claims, "Practicers of Bestiality and Zoophiles Abuse
Helpless Victims Who Can't Say No" (www.asairs.com).
In response a zoophile who goes by the name of
EquAdept claims in a webpage entitled "The Essence of
Zoophilia," "Despite what those 'consensuality
bashers' may believe, the fact is that reading animal
body language is not difficult for true zoophiles
since they are intimately familiar with said animals
on a level not appreciated or fathomed by nonzoos"
(www.home.worldonline.dk/horses). And, indeed,
EquAdept counts him or herself among the ranks of
animal rights activists. "Bestiality only becomes a
'bad' thing when animals are physically
forced/coerced/trained into sex against their will, at
which it then becomes abuse or rape and I disapprove
of that with every fiber of my being." So, perhaps,
this is a factional issue between animal lovers.
Like-wise, a zoophile identified as Anthony reports
that, "If an animal consents to sex. . . he runs up to
you, knocks you down, and fucks you. If an animal does
not consent to sex it will kick you or bite you or run
away. I see absolutely no ambiguity there. I think
consent with animals is a much less hazy notion than
it is with humans" (quoted in Andriette 1999). Or as
another, Equinox, says, "When I look at a horse, I
don't see a dumb animal. I don't see just an animal. I
see a living thing that has a personality, likes and
dislikes, that has the ability to communicate which
goes beyond words" (quoted in Andriette 1999). And, as
presumably neutral observer Peter Steeves stresses,
"Consent. . . must not be reduced to the linguistic
matter of talking; there must be other paths toward
consent" (1999, 153). Some of the central political
questions here are: Who speaks for the animals? Can
the animal make her feelings known? Who loves animals?
What is love anyway?
As I suggested above, another point of contention is
whether there are meaningful, and morally significant,
differences among people who have sex with animals.
EquAdept believes that the distinction is crucial. And
the difference is rooted in love.

"The key to distinguishing between true zoophilia and
true bestiality is emotional content, perhaps thought
of best as romantic or spiritual involvement. There
is a difference between making love with an animal as
an act of love and simply fucking them as an act of
lust. . . It is not the act, but the presence or
absence of love in that act (the willingness to please
the other partner over themselves) as an example and a
level of commitment to the care, the feelings and the
desires of that animal that distinguishes one from the
other. Those who are bestialists are simply driven by
pleasure, experimentation and adventure of sexual
intercourse with an animal."

But Adams rejoins: "Just as pedophiles differentiate
between those who abuse children and those who love
children - placing themselves, of course, in the
latter group - zoophiles distinguish between animal
sexual abusers (bestialists) and those who love
animals (zoophiles). In each of these cases the
distinctions are only self-justifications" (1995,30).
So here, in this perhaps marginal front in the nature
wars, we see the familiar lines being drawn. But
ultimately, perhaps, we are dealing here with a more
fundamental question regarding nature and its
irreducible unknowability. Steven Laycock explores
this issue in an essay called "Animals as Animals: A
Plea for Conceptual Clarity."

I cannot know whether the "terror" and "suffering"
exhibited by a wounded deer are authentic expressions
of an inaccessible subjectivity or my own projection.
I can imagine what it might be like - for me - to be
pursued by hunters intent on taking my life. I can
imagine what it would be like - for me - to be
mortally wounded and to be slipping, in agony, toward
the brink of death. And I can imagine what it would be
like - for me - to experience mortal terror and to
cling desperately to life. The deer, it would seem,
mirrors my own projected fears, my own agony. But is
the pain I "see" a reflection or an expression? I do
not, and cannot, know. And I must live with the
question.    (1999,275)

He continues:

We project our own image upon the manifold objects of
our world, and are deceived by this projection much
like the parakeet that "sees" another bird in its
mirror. We discover that the animal is sentient, that
it desires to live, feels pain and anguish. Or
alternatively, we discover that what we call an
animate being is merely a complex interaction of
organic chemicals, a soulless algorithm devoid of
genuine sentience; we discover that there is nothing
it is like to be a deer or a dog or a bat. Both
"discoveries," the humane and the brutal (or
brutalizing), involve ventriloquism. It is we who make
it appear that the voice we offer on behalf of the
animal is the animal's own, that what we say is what
the animal would say if only it had a human voice.
(277)

"We can, and we do," he contends, "interrogate a mute
reality which offers us only silence in response"
(275). Questions like" 'What is it like to be a bat,
a dog, a horse, a baboon?' open up an authentic
dimension of philosophical investigation - in this
case, that of the unknowable" (271).
Historically and at the present time arguments about
the unnaturalness of interspecies sexual relations
have been mobilized to direct official state violence
toward human (and in the past, nonhuman) participants.
But, as Dekkers says:

Laws against bestiality are not necessary. Even
without a court in the background it is bad enough to
be found committing bestiality. This is why it is
taboo. A man who is caught with a calf is a dirty old
man, a woman with a dog a slut, a foreigner with a
goat a laughing stock. No one who has gained notoriety
as a chicken violator will get very far in life.
(1994, 128)

But what is it, after all, that has called forth such
a response? Is the story about disgust, refusal, and
the collapse of civilization sufficient to explain it?
Peter Morriss explains the prohibition in terms of the
damage bestiality is imagined to inflict on the
categories through which we make ourselves meaningful.
"My suggestion is that there is abhorrence, not
because bestiality degrades animals, but because it
upgrades them ­it treats them as something better than
they are. . . It denies a hierarchy in which animals
are always lower than humans. So it blurs, or denies,
the boundaries, particularly the boundary between the
human and the animal" (1997, 271). "The gist of it,"
he says, "is that animals engage in mindless lust; we
are supposed to practice something on an altogether
higher plane. But we can not pretend we are doing
something very different from what animals do when we
are doing it with an animal: the whole edifice then
collapses" (272).
There is, of course, a long, long cultural history of
boundary reinforcement from which we might infer an
equally long history of transgression, anxiety, and
vulnerability. There are the familiar biblical
injunctions from Leviticus. Likewise, in his Man and
the Natural World (1983), an examination of ideas in
sixteenth-century England, Keith Thomas wrote that
"Bestiality. . . was the worst of sexual crimes
because, as one Stuart moralist put it 'it turns man
into a very beast, makes a man a member of a brute
creature'" (39). Writing of conceptions of bestiality
in seventeenth-century Sweden, Jonas Liliequist
remarks: "The mixing of categories and the comparison
of the bugger with a brute animal connoted a deeper
cultural meaning, reflecting both popular attitudes
and learned 'doctrines. First of all, if reason
distinguished man from animals in God's order of
creation, then bestiality was an act against reason"
(1992, 67). Some contemporary observers agree. In
Scruton's understanding, "The bestial act, which
abrogates the responsibility of the object, abrogates
also the responsibility of the subject and that is
its point. It is an attempt by the subject to flee
from the burden of inter-personality, to be merely an
animal, in this encounter which could otherwise not be
accomplished without intolerable disgust" (1986,27).
He continues:

The truly bestial desire remains locked in the sense
of the merely animal nature of its object. For the
truly bestial person, jealousy would indeed be
impossible, as would shame before the object of
desire. All the "trouble" of desire is vanquished in
his mind, with the abolition of the conditions which
create it. Here lie both the appeal of bestiality and
the real source of the common revulsion which it
inspires. The bestial person sees himself as he sees
the object of his desire: a "mere" animal, acting in a
realm where no moral idea troubles the senses, a realm
from which the crippling awareness of the other's
perspective has been removed. This realm, where
responsibility is no longer recorded in the
intentional structure of experience, is safer than the
human world.    (292)

Interestingly, zoophiles may agree with the gist of
this, even if they draw very different conclusions.
The point may be that animals are better than people.
Zoophiles, claims EquAdept, "enjoy the satisfaction
they will never be lied to, betrayed, have their
emotions toyed with to hurt them or have silly games
played upon them. Their animal companions will always
be faithful to the end" (www.home.worldonline.dk/horses).
 But among the many paradoxes and reversals here
 consider: if engaging in bestiality represents a
 repudiation of the distinctively human, it may also,
 in a way, be a sort of backhanded endorsement of
 the ideal of humanness. As Dekkers put it:
Human beings fall for other human beings. And if they
occasionally fall for an animal, they are attracted by
the animal's human features. What attracts the dog
lover is not the doggishness of the dog - the fact
that it drools and pants and stinks and molts - but
its human qualities ­- faithfulness, gratitude,
patience in waiting for its master. . . The fact is
that in some respects some animals are even more human
than human beings themselves. No human being has such
an entreating expression as a basset hound, no human
being is as loyal as his dog. (1994. 31)

That is, horses and dogs may be "animal models" in
ways not unlike primates in animal laboratories. They
are like us, but they are not us. Of course,
culturally prominent readings of animality are not
incidental to efforts to make sense of bestiality: the
impossibility of reproduction, the asserted claims
concerning the impossibility of reciprocation and the
impossibility of speech all play into renderings of
the human vis-à-vis the animal. Bestiality as
corporeal performance of the Great Refusal may
represent an expression of Romanticism not unlike
Thomas Birch's celebration of the pure wild that was
and is before and beyond the civilizing distortions
of language and law (see chapter 7). Animal bodies are
vehicles for getting back to nature - however
momentarily - that a trek in the woods can never
approach. As one zoophile has put it,
You never forget that you're dealing with a member of
a different species when you're having a sexual
encounter with an animal. . . For myself, it is to a
degree becoming that species. It's a way of being with
animals that is difficult to attain otherwise. It's
sort of like a vacation into another way of being. . .
My own vision of interspecies sexuality is about
contacting the animal spirit within ourselves.    (Quoted
in Andriette 1999)
And neither is disgust incidental. If disgust is the
cultural barrier that keeps us locked inside the
machine; if its visceral-ness is a manifestation of the
literal incorporation of civilization, then the fact
that bestiality is, by virtual consensus, disgusting
may be a large part of its (not the animals')
attraction. Perhaps sex with animals is not an end in
itself but a means to another, more fundamental end.
One is not penetrating (or being penetrated by) the
animal so much as one is escaping the prison house of
language, civilization, law, and rules. But, of
course, it is language, civilization, and law -
including the law of disgust - that points one in the
direction: "This Way Out."

ON LAW

If you were to insert an erect penis into a horse's
vagina, or take a dog's erect penis into your mouth
you would not only be having sex with an animal. You
would also, in many jurisdictions, be breaking the
law. There are rules prohibiting these kinds of things
and spelling out the sorts of punishments attached to
breaking the rules. If you are caught you may be
bodily taken up by the various institutions of
criminal justice. You can be arrested, indicted,
tried, sentenced, and punished. Imagine what this
might be like.
  The desire, always present to some degree, builds to
an intolerable, uncontrollable level. You sneak into
your neighbor's barn - as you have before. You open
your coat and approach the forbidden territory. (Never
mind that you are also trespassing and making
unauthorized use of someone else's property.) You
overturn a tub, the better to fit. Suddenly, you hear
a voice. The light goes on and you see a human face -
seeing you. The expression on the face turns from
incomprehension to comprehension. You're caught.
These things happen. In 2000 Roger Powell was caught
with a pig by a ten-year-old in the woods near a
residential subdivision. In 1999 James Ray was caught
with a sheep in a California high school. In 2000
Robert Broderson was caught with a sheep at Hawkeye
Community College in Waterloo, Iowa. Students found
him naked in the hayloft. Beside the sheep was a blue
nightie. Michael Bessigamo of Yalparaiso, Indiana, was
not caught in the act but because he had a history of
prior violations the police went to him when a motel
room he had rented was found splat­tered with blood
and feathers. These things happen (see press reports
compiled on www.asairs.com).
The authorities are called, you're arrested and given
a hearing. You're indicted. You speak with a lawyer.
You're tried, convicted, sentenced, and punished. When
you're caught, you're caught up in a web of legal
meanings and a web of power. Legal meanings of various
kinds crystallize around the act, the animal, the
bodies. Prosecutors, public defenders, and judges
struggle to make legal sense of what you've done -
what you are. Clearly, inserting an erect penis into a
sheep's vagina is a very different cultural
performance from inserting a finger into a sheep's
nostril and its legal significance is also different.
But what, after all, is that difference? What does it
mean to do that? Or rather, what meanings are
generated and destroyed by the act? How does the law
make sense of it and itself?
As it turns out, law's encounter with bestiality has
changed in fundamental ways in the last few decades.
Where until recently the topic was treated as if it
had no history - the prohibition being read back
through common law and biblical law into nature itself
- now, as Bierne (1997) claims, it is less likely to
be regarded as the abominable and detestable crime
against nature and more likely to be framed in terms
of animal abuse, public lewdness, a crime against
property, or a form of mental illness. First I want
to take a historical detour and look at some early and
mid-twentieth-century cases as interesting encounters
between law and the nature idea.
  There are two noteworthy features of what we might
call "traditional" American law on bestiality. The
first, as I have mentioned, is that it was regarded as
the abominable and detestable crime against nature.
Historically this is the legal form that was used to
make the practice legally meaningful. We might
initially ask what this meant. In what sense was
"nature" wronged? It might appear that such laws are
nature ­endorsing but, as we have already seen, this
is very misleading. The trouble was not that nature
was violated but perhaps that it was celebrated and
embraced and that the domain of humanness was
renounced. The zoophile crosses - and in so doing,
erases  the boundary. He climbs over the barrier of
disgust that marks off the civilized from the wild. He
crawls under the species barrier. He penetrates, and
in so doing, breaches and dismantles the barrier. The
zoophile, through his body, by means of the animal's
body, attempts to get back to nature: to escape the
hell of other people, to escape the confines of
civilization, to escape the prison house of language,
and to communicate in grunts and kicks. In so doing he
commits a breach of the social contract. He repudiates
and threatens to reverse the emergence story. He
enacts the regressive primacy of passion over reason,
desire over disgust. He demonstrates the vulnerability
of civilization, the contingency of all of the pretty
lines that make human life meaningful. So, as we saw,
there is an urgent danger. Perhaps part of the point
is that in inserting an erect penis into a nonhuman,
one not only breaks the law, that is, violates a
particular statute, but one breaks the Law of Laws
through the multiple and mutually rein­forcing
renunciations, repudiations, reversals, and refusals
that the act signifies. This is what makes it, unlike
rape and murder, "abominable and detestable."
In this context it is law's job to negate the
negation, reverse the reversal, reinscribe the erased
boundaries, and reinforce the breached barriers. If
the zoophile is attempting to escape it is the law's
task to call him back, to drag him back, to reclothe
him, enshroud him in language and categories and a
grammar of subjects and objects, to reinscribe him
within webs of meaning and discourse, to reassert the
irrevocability of the founding contract. Historically
this has been done by reviling the bestial and by
inflicting pains on his (or her) body. In doing these
things the law might be seen as reenacting the
emergence story by directing its violence in the name
of reason. The accused is, after all, not taken out
and shot like a beast. He is given a hearing: he is
formally indicted under existing statutes. He is tried
and defended. Evidence is offered and evaluated for
sufficiency. If he is convicted he will be sentenced
according to the letter of the law.
But here we encounter the second notable feature of
traditional bestiality law: its peculiar relationship
to silence. Speaking of buggery, of which bestiality
is a species, legal scholar Les Moran has written:

Anyone attempting to explore the meanings that are
produced and deployed by way of the legal textual
practices of buggery has to solve a riddle. The riddle
relates to a requirement that has had considerable
durability in the Common Law. In order to speak of
buggery within that legal tradition, the speaker had
to proceed according to a command to remain silent. .
. The legal formula by which buggery was to appear in
the law (through the indictment) demanded that the
wrongful act be named by way of a silence.    (1996, 33)

Speaking of sex more generally - and of the repressive
hypothesis which was the focus of his critique -
Foucault wrote:

As if in order to gain mastery over it in reality, it
had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level
of language, control its free circulation in speech,
expunge it from the things that were said, and
extinguish the words that rendered it too visibly
present. And even these prohibitions, it seems, were
afraid to name it.    (1978, 17)

In the specific context of zoophilia this is an
interesting state of affairs. One of the principal
features of animals, of course, is their incapacity
for speech. "Those guilty of the sin that cannot be
named, that makes them less than human, are rendered
mute as animals before God" (Jordan 1997, 106). On
the other hand, one of the distinctive features of
modem law is its intimate association with words, and
most especially with the idea that legal violence is
distinguished from other forms of violence by its
subordination to words as tokens of reason. Yet here
there is an extremely problematic relationship to
words, speech, and reason. It is almost as if, in
order to call the bestial back, law was forced to
abandon its own claims to authority. As the bestial
sought to escape the prison house of language, the
law, in retrieving him, was compelled to go beyond its
own foundations. Needless to say, this strategy is not
without risks. As Moran argues, "Compliance with the
injunction that buggery is 'not to be named' threatens
to make that naming impossible and thereby threatens
to undermine the operation of law" (1996,33). Before
I assess those risks let's return to the theme of
disgust in order to ascertain why some might feel it
worth the risk.
Not only is disgust elicited by direct sensory
exposure to disgusting things but also by exposure to
representations of disgusting things. Describing the
disgusting can itself disgust. The disgusting can be
reproduced by speech (and texts and images) and
therefore reproduced in speech such that language
itself can be understood as contaminated by what it
represents. Words themselves can elicit the same sort
of visceral responses as that to which they refer.
Disgusting words may recreate the images of disgusting
acts in the consciousnesses of speakers and hearers.
(Or, perhaps the greater fear is that they won't.) In
any case, the belief in representational contamination
might justify a strategy of containing the disgusting
within a veil of silence. To do otherwise - to
describe the disgusting - would be to participate in
the furtherance of the disgusting act itself; to
spread the contagion, degrading oneself and one's
inter­locutors in the process. Moreover, to describe
it in law, to deposit traces of the disgusting in
legal texts, runs the risk of defiling law itself.
Many mid-century judges were quite explicit about the
avoidance of explicitness. All the judges can do is
to point in the general direction: yonder, beyond the
boundary, beyond words. (If the disgusting has to be
indicated, though, another strategy is to sanitize it
by relying on Latinate or Hellenic words in preference
to the monosyllabic grunt-like utterances of
Anglo-Saxon.)
But again, as Moran suggests, not saying runs the
potentially equal or greater risk of relinquishing
claims of being a legal utterance at all. To the
extent that law - to be law - is associated with rules
as propositions and clearly communicated commands, to
the extent that legal violence is distinguished from
non- or extralegal violence precisely because it is so
constrained and channeled by words and the force of
reason, then the punishments that followed from the
refusal to say may be of dubious legality. One way
that the problem has been raised in bestiality appeals
has hinged on the problem of vagueness. As one legal
scholar has put it:

No society can ever be minimally free if people do not
know on what grounds they can be sent to jail. It
would be no less tyrannical for the po­lice to arrest
the citizenry for violating secret laws than for them
to arrest people wholly arbitrarily, without any law
at all. Fundamental fairness requires that the law
spell out which acts constitute criminal behavior; a
vaguely worded law is as bad as no law at all.
(Lieberman 1999,526)

And as, Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall noted,
"A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy
matters to policemen, judges and juries for resolution
on ad hoc and subjective basis with the atten­dant
dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application"
(Grayned v. Rockford, 408 US 104, 1972).
Thus in some bestiality (and other forms of
"unnatural" sex) cases in the twentieth century,
judges seemed to be faced with a dilemma: either
disregard the command to be silent, name and describe
the actions, run the risks of participating in the
reproduction and open-ended circulation of the
disgusting and of defiling law itself; or abide by the
command and run the risk of relinquishing claims to be
"law" at all and participate in the infliction of
violence by brute force, unconstrained by language and
reason. In many cases the choice seemed to be clear -
obey the command and remain silent. But for other
judges, as we shall see, the choice was less clear or
the risks too great.
One consequence of this dilemma was that it provided
defense attorneys some room to maneuver. Vagueness
could be exploited in such a way as to extract an
accused zoophile from the web of punishment. And
occasionally convictions were overturned. Because the
difference between guilt and innocence is marked by
readings of the limits of nature and because the
command for silence rendered the location of those
limits imprecise, to say the least, some cases
involving bestiality can be characterized as contests
about where to draw the line. How far is too far? When
does the merely distasteful turn into the criminal? At
what point in a chain of events does the merely
strange begin to threaten the very foundations of
civilization? Historically, the "unnatural" has been
coextensive with the perverse and, as we saw, the
perverse has been identified as any sexual practice
not undertaken for the purposes of reproduction - or,
indeed, any practice other than genital-to-genital
(and face-to-face) heterosexual contact. So sex with
animals has often been simply a precinct of this
larger domain of the unnatural. And because of the
command for silence and the elasticity of words such
as "unnatural," "perverse," and even "sodomy" it is
often impossible to know what specifically is
punishable. Strange to say that to some extent animals
did not seem to matter at all. The unnatural was the
unnatural, the disgusting was disgusting. Differences
that others may have seen between consensual oral sex
between heterosexuals or homosexuals and
non­consensual sex with a chicken were commonly
effaced. All are equally forbidden. In other cases,
though, the animal seemed to make all the difference
in the world.
Consider the case of Raymond Murray (MuITay v. State,
143 NE 2d 290, 1957). He pleaded guilty to committing
"the abominable and detestable crime against nature
with a beast" and was sentenced to not less than two
nor more than fifteen years at the Indiana State
Prison. His plea was submitted without benefit of
counsel and later, with the help of a public defender,
he moved to reopen his case. In the words of the
Indiana Supreme Court, Appellant asserts that the
commission of the act with which he was charged was
not a crime within the meaning of sec. 10-4221, supra,
because a chicken is not a "beast" within the meaning
of such statute. We concur with appellant that: It is
a fundamental rule in the construction of statutes
that penal statutes must be construed strictly, or, as
is otherwise stated, strictly construed against the
state. The rule of strict construction means that such
statutes will not be enlarged by implication or
intend­ment beyond the fair meaning of the language
used, and will not be held to include offenses and
persons other than those which are clearly de­scribed
and provided for although the court may think the
legislature should have made them more-comprehensive.
However, this court has recognized that the
legislature intended to include within sodomy all acts
which are included in the definition of "crime against
nature." (291, internal quotes deleted)              
                                   
Then, the court quoted another long passage from a
1923 case involving cunnilingus:

"We thus have the words of the statute and their fair
meaning. The only thing left for the court to do is to
sensibly apply them as their proposed use in the
statute would indicate. This done, they do not only
cover the thought asserted by appellant, but they have
a wider meaning, the corruption of morals, the
disgrace of human nature by an unnatural sexual
gratification, of which reason and decency forbids a
more detailed description." . . . With this rule in
mind we proceed to consider whether the act committed
by appellant falls within the purview of the statute.
Appellant contends that the term "beast" as used in
sec. 10-4221, supra, does not include "fowl," and
relies upon a definition in 10 C.).S., 219 as follows:
a beast is "Any four-footed animal, as distinguished
from birds, reptiles, fishes and insects."    (292)

But, the court countered, "Webster's International
Dictionary, 2d Ed., defines beast as 1. Any living
creature; any animal; 2. Any four-footed
animal, as distinguished from birds, reptiles, fishes
and insects; 3. An animal; - distinguished from man. .
. In our opinion a chicken is a beast within the
meaning of that term as used in sec. 10-4221, supra"
(292-293). Too bad for Raymond Murray.
The following case illustrates the question of whether
animals matter. In the late 1940s Virginia Tarrant
was indicted in Franklin County, Ohio, on the charge
that she "unlawfully had carnal copulation against
nature with a certain beast, to wit, a dog" (State v.
TaITant, 80 NE 2d 509, 1948). More specifically, she
"took into her mouth the male organ of a dog and
engaged in the act of sodomy over some period of time"
(509). M . Tarrant's attorney identified a problem
with the indictment. He argued that "the term 'carnal
copulation,' is restricted in its meaning so that it
means only the joining of the sex organ of a human
being with the sex organ of a beast. If this is a true
interpretation of the statute," the court
acknowledged, "then the defendant cannot be guilty."
In essence the claim seems to be either that one
cannot acquire carnal knowledge by mouth or that
"carnal copulation" has "two meanings, one meaning
where it concerns human beings and another meaning
where it concerns a human being and his or her
conduct with a beast." The combined features of
orality and the presence of a beast should place the
defendant beyond the meaning and reach of the legal
protection.

We do not believe that the Legislature ever intended
such a construc­tion. The term "carnally," is defined.
. . as "in a manner to gratify animal appetites or
lusts." In the same volume and page, the phrase
"carnal knowledge" is defined as "sexual bodily
connection," "sexual intercourse." . . . The term as
it refers to human beings is not given a
different meaning than the one that is given in
referring to a beast. . . If the act would be carnal
copulation for human beings to perform, we fail to see
how it could be logically argued that it is not carnal
copulation when performed by a human being and a
beast.    (201)

How far is too far?

In State v. Frank (15 SW 330, 1890) the defendant was
charged and found guilty of the unsuccessful attempt
to commit the crime of sodomy with a dog. His attorney
argued that the mere attempt, without more, was not a
crime. The Missouri Supreme Court, though, claimed
that there could "be no doubt. . . that the attempt to
commit the offense of sodomy is a crime in itself, and
punishable as such" (330). Likewise the defendant in
Green v. State (27 SE 567, 1943) was convicted of the
attempt to commit bestiality and the Georgia Court of
Appeals affirmed his conviction on the grounds that,
had he not been frightened off, there was no doubt
that he would have succeeded. Further along the chain
of events the defendant in Hudspeth v. State (l08 SW
1085, 1937) argued that his conviction on charges of
having carnal intercourse with a cow should be
reversed because penetration, which was required to
sustain a conviction, had not been proven. The court
rejected this argument, claiming that "inferences to
be deduced from the circumstances leave no reasonable
doubt upon the subject." Among the pieces of
circumstantial evidence was that the defendant was
found in a neighbor's barn with his "pants unbuttoned,
and there was wet cow dung all over his clothes and
the hairs around his private parts" (l085). On the
other hand, Harold Nichol's conviction for sodomizing
a neighbor's calf was overturned because, even though
"the rear end [of the calf was all bloody," and the
defendant was apprehended hiding in the barn, and "his
pants were off and his B.V.D.'s were bloody," the
court was not persuaded that "the circumstances
exclude every other reasonable hypothesis except the
guilt of appellant" (Hudspeth v. State, 225 SW 2d 841,
1950). More to the point, "The state should have had
the animal examined to prove penetration." Likewise,
the court in Almendaris v. State (73 SW 1055, 1903)
held that "The juxtaposition of appellant to the
jennet is proven, but the act of penetration is only
established by circumstantial evidence."
The defendant's conviction was therefore reversed.

Not what but where

But, after all, do animals matter ? Yes and no. As our
discussion of disgust, desire, and the passions
emphasized, the point of the prohibition is to
maintain the gap between humans and animals; it is to
deny and restrain our animality, to discourage our
indulging in animal appetites. But what seems to
matter here is more the idea of the animal within than
the fact that one of the participants is not human.
Bestiality is only one way in which the crime against
nature can be committed: an animal is not required,
even though the presence of an animal may highlight
the animality of the act. And, in fact, most cases
addressing the crime against nature do not involve
animals at all. What seems to matter most is where a
man puts his penis. Most challenges to convictions
focus more specifically on what sort of orifice the
penis is inserted into and not the species that has
the orifice. Most cases interpreting statutes that
forbid crimes against nature necessitate interpreting
"nature" in order to determine whether a particular
act constituted a legal violation. That is, the
deployment or withholding of legal violence depends on
a reading of nature. In a series of challenges we can
see how nature is rendered in order to make sense of
law itself and the limits of legal violence.
Undoubtedly, the most significant cases are those in
which a defendant had been convicted of having
committed the crime against nature by engaging in oral
sex. In the early twentieth century these cases had a
strongly formal cast to them. For example, in the
Texas case of Prindle v. State (21 SW 360, 1893) the
court said that, "to constitute this offense, the act
must be in that part where sodomy is usually
committed. The act in a child's mouth does not
constitute the offense. However vile and detestable
the act proved may be, and is, it can constitute no
offense, because not contemplated by the statute, and
is not embraced by the crime of sodomy" (361). A
Kentucky court held that, while "The acts charged
against the appellees are so disgusting that we
refrain from copying the indictment in the opinion. .
. We must confess that we are unable to see why the
act. . . is not as much a crime against nature as if
it is done in the manner that sodomy is usually
committed" (Commonwealth v. Poindexter, 118 SW
943,1909). But the fact was that it was not. In
another Texas case (Munoz v. State, 281 SW 857, 1926)
the judge announced that "The undisputed evidence
shows that the appellant performed the disgusting,
abominable and nauseating act of using his mouth upon
the person of one Meyers." But such practices did "not
come within the definition of 'sodomy' as known by the
common law and adopted by legislative enactment in our
state." As a result, the conviction was overturned. A
large part of the problem, for these judges, followed
from silence on the part of legislators. As the
Nebraska Supreme Court wrote, "Our statute fails to
define the manner in which the infamous crime against
nature may be committed. . . It is to be regretted
that acts so infamous and disgusting have not been
declared to be a felony by the legislature of this
state, and we trust that the Law  makers will speedily
remedy this defect" (Kennan v. State, 125 NW 594, 1
10). Therefore courts were forced to rely on the
common law meaning in which "the crime against
nature" = "sodomy" = inserting a penis into an anus.
And as many courts stated, this was a very regrettable
state of affairs.
In the cases in which judges resisted the expansion of
the unnatural there is something more - and more
important - at stake, something nearer the heart of
law. Reading nature wrongly could result in judicial
usurpation of legislative functions. Having grounded a
reversal on the received view of the common law
definition of crime against nature, the Utah Supreme
Court said:

While we, from the standpoint of decency and morals,
fully concur in all that these and other courts have
said regarding the loathsome and revolting character
and enormity of the act charged, yet we, in the
absence of legislative enactment making such acts
criminal and punishable, denounce and punish them as
crimes. To do so would in effect be judicial
legislation.    (State v. Johnson, 137 P 632,1913,634)

Quoting from an Ohio slander case, the court
continued:

In view of the injurious consequences of such a
shocking charge, we confess to be strongly tempted to
make one further innovation; but looking back to that
period of doubt and uncertainty to which we have
re­ferred, and remembering that it is more important
to have a rule, well understood and easily defined, of
practical application, and sufficiently comprehensive
to meet the ordinary needs of justice, than to have
one varying with the changing views of the judges or
variable standards of moral conduct in different
communities, or at different periods we are unwilling
to make any further innovation, but prefer to remit
the matter to the only proper tribunal- the lawmaking
power of the state. (635)

This rather formalist approach to judging nature,
without more specific guidance from the legislature,
must rely on common law meanings of the words. The
common law crime against nature was then a sort of
natural "unnatural," continuing unbroken from time
before mind. Legislators can expand the domain of the
unnatural but they have to be more specific about what
counts. They have to be clear about where the line is
being drawn. In doing so perhaps they can be
understood as creating a sort of artificial or
conventional "unnatural" Indeed, the judges in many of
the cases hoped that legislators would do so and in
many states the legislators did expand what counts as
"crime against nature" by specifying that penetration
of the mouth is a form of "sodomy" (Eskridge 1999).

On the other hand, many courts did not shrink from
upholding convictions by expansively interpreting the
bounds of the unnatural. "We thus have the words of
the statute and their meaning," wrote the Indiana
Supreme Court in Young v. State, 141 NE 309 (1923).

The only thing left for the court to do is to sensibly
apply them as their purposed use in the statute would
indicate. This done. . . they have a wider meaning,
the corruption of morals, the disgrace of human nature
by unnatural sexual gratification, of which reason and
decency forbids a more detailed description. They seem
to be sufficiently broad and extensive to include the
abominable and detestable act, cunnilingus, proved in
this case.    (3 I 1 )

In the second decade of the twentieth century there
was something of a formalist/(proto)-realist split in
state case law on the questions of the unnaturalness
of oral sex and of law's relationship to sexual
bodies. Some judges, as we saw, apprehended a lack of
fit between the legal forms and the offensive acts.
They seemed to be saying: "Here is the form: the crime
against nature. Much as we would like to punish the
defendant, our commitment to formalism and the virtue
of restraint constrains us from doing so. Violence is
to be constrained by words and until those with the
authority to change the legal forms do so we are
powerless to intervene." Other judges, however,
adopted a more commonsense approach to interpreting
the unnatural and the limits of law. Here is how the
Supreme Court of Oregon (State v. Start, 132 P 512,
1913) made sense of nature:

In the order of nature the nourishment of the human
body is accom­plished by the operation of the
alimentary canal, beginning with the mouth and ending
with the rectum. In this process food enters the first
opening, the mouth, and the residuum and waste are
discharged through the nether opening of the rectum.
The natural functions of the organs for the
reproduction of the species are entirely different
from those of the nutritive system. It is self-evident
that the use of either opening of the alimentary canal
for the purposes of sexual copulation is against the
natural design of the human body. In other words, it
is an offense against nature. There can be no
difference in reason whether such an unnatural coition
takes place in the mouth or in the fundament - at one
end of the alimentary canal or the other. The moral
filthiness and inequity against which the statute is
aimed is the same in both cases.    (512)

Consider the history of the unnatural in the State of
Montana. The defendant in State v. Guerin (152 P 747,
1915) was charged with having committed "the infamous
crime against nature" by "taking into his mouth by
force the private member of another male person."
Relying on numerous authorities the trial judge
dismissed the prosecution and the state appealed. The
Supreme Court of Montana reversed. "In denouncing the
crime," the court said, the legislature concluded that
it was so well understood by every intelligent person
that the mere mention of the name would be sufficient.
Ev­ery intelligent adult person understands fully what
the ordinary course of nature demands or permits for
the purposes of procreation, and that any departure
from this course is against nature. It therefore seems
trifling with our intelligence to say that copulation
accomplished by use of the anus is against nature,
whereas the same act accomplished by the use of the
mouth is not. This view contravenes common sense.
(748)

But in 1959 formalism returned with a vengeance in the
extraordi­nary case of State v. Dietz (343 P 2d 539)
in which a dissenting judge brought home the risks of
distorting legal forms. John Dietz was charged with
committing "the infamous crime against nature": he was
acquitted but found guilty of "an attempt to commit
the infamous crime against nature." The judgment
against him, though, stated that he had been convicted
of "the infamous crime against nature." His appeal
raised a number of arguments, one of which was that
oral sex is not covered by the statute in Montana. The
majority, relying on Guerin, upheld his conviction.
What makes the case remarkable is the forceful
dissenting opinion by Justice Adair. While most oral
sex appellate opinions are measurable in paragraphs
this dissent is nearly twenty pages long. It is
nothing less than a detailed legal history of the
crime against nature in common law and in the State
of Montana. As was usual in such cases, the defense
argued that the statute was "indefinite, vague and
uncertain." Justice Adair, however, wanted to
demonstrate that the law was quite definite and that
the act committed wasn't prohibited by the statute.

The definite article "the" in the quoted five word
phrase [the infamous crime against nature]
particularizes the noun; that is, it specifies and
particularizes a particular thing separate and
distinct from others of the same class or group so
that in employing the definite article "the" in the
phrase "the infamous crime against nature" the Montana
Legislature has specified and designated the
particular crime there made punishable, separate and
distinct from numerous other crimes which, solely
because of the character of the punishment provided
therefore, are termed and classified generally as
infamous crimes. . . The statute does not say "one of
the crimes against nature," or "a crime against
nature," or "any crime against nature, but "the
infamous crime against nature." . . . At common law,
sodomy. . . was committed only per anum; penetration
per os did not constitute the crime.    (545, emphasis in
the original)

For Adair it was an inescapable fact that the state
legislature had never expanded the common law meaning
of the crime against nature. That expansion was
attempted by the state supreme court in Guerin but
this attempt was itself illegitimate. Upholding
Dietz's conviction on the basis of Guerin represented
a fundamental breach of legal authority and judicial
responsibility. Adair declared that "ours is a
government of law and not men. Our Legislature has
enacted in the law of this state the definition of
'law' and declared how the law is expressed. . . Law
is a solemn expression of the will of the supreme
power of the state" (552). And the will of the state
is made known by the constitution and by statutes.
Perhaps inadvertently using an ironic turn of phrase,
he wrote, "By 'the law of the realm' our judges are
denied the authority or power to legislate, or to
amend or change the provisions of the statutes or
Constitution and, in construing same they are denied
the authority to insert what has been omitted, or to
omit what has been inserted" (559, emphasis in the
original, internal citations deleted). The crux of the
difficulty was that, "Unless the five word phrase 'the
infamous crime against nature' when committed by man
with mankind, refers to and means coitus per anum and
not otherwise then. . . it would be impossible for a
citizen upon reading the test of it to determine when
he is subject to its penalties" (561).
By the 1970s the naturalization and un-naturalization
of sex was undergoing an important transformation.
Consider this dissent in an Indiana case apparently
concerning consensual oral sex.

The crucial words are "abominable and detestable crime
against nature with mankind or beast." The words
"abominable" and "detestable" are mere epithets and
are not descriptive of behavior at all. The words
"with mankind or beast" give us no information unless
we know what behavior is being conducted "with mankind
or beast." The issue then is whether a person of
ordinary intelligence can know what conduct is
prohibited by the phrase "crime against nature". I do
not think so. Aside from the fact that to be
punishable a crime must be against the sovereign state
of Indiana not against something called "nature," the
words do not tell anyone what behavior constitutes a
crime. What is meant by "nature"? A deviation from a
statistical norm or from some unannounced moral norm?
The words "crime against nature" are also mere
epithets. They could be used to punish whatever
behavior the majority considered morally offensive or
perverse without any advance notice of the kind of
behavior prohibited.    (Dixon v. State, 268 NE 2d 84,
1971)
Justice De Bruler's dissent in Dixon may be taken to
represent an im­portant moment in the legal history of
"nature" insofar as it explicitly repudiates - indeed,
finds meaningless - the nature stories that had
un­derwritten the punishment of unapproved sexual
practices. But perhaps "nature" simply began to be
seen as unnecessary. In 1986 the Supreme Court upheld
the enforcement of anti-sodomy laws based on
invocations of tradition (Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US
186). Of course the tradition in question is one that
sees non-procreative sexuality and homosexuality as
unnatural. On the other hand, in recent bestiality
cases defendants may have nature turned against them
in other ways. Now zoophiles are not evil, nor are
they renouncing the civilizing project. Now they are
mentally ill, disordered. They are the victims of
nature gone awry. Thirty three-year-old Sterling
Rachwal of rural Wisconsin was found not guilty of
sexually abusing horses because of mental illness. He
was ordered to be "held for 19 years in the Winnebago
Mental Health Institute. That sentence won't begin
until he finishes a year term for similar crimes
in Waupaca County" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 31
July 1997). The prosecutor in this case commented, "I
think the community is protected by this type of
agreement. Until [Rachwal] can be treated successfully
and is no longer a danger to the property of others,
and horses, he will remain committed there." His
attorney agreed. "It's everyone's hope and desire that
Sterling get the treatment and help he needs so he can
begin to heal." Sterling's mother agreed as well. And
as the prosecutor in Waupaca County put it,
"Whatever causes the defendant to act in this
fashion is a problem of long standing that won't be
cured in a couple of years. It's going to take a long
time" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 14 May 1997).