Sections 7 and 8 of "A Defense of Bestiality"
Let’s workshop the final sections of an essay defending the moral permissibility of bestiality under certain circumstances, the seventh concerning human wellbeing and the eighth the conclusion
Sections 1 and 2 can be found here.
Section 3 can be found here.
Section 4 can be found here.
Section 5 can be found here.
Section 6 can be found here.
A Defense of Bestiality
Dedicated to Gary Varner
7. Human-Wellbeing Case
7.1. Argument
Bestiality is morally impermissible, so some argue, because it is detrimental to the wellbeing of humans. Not only does engaging in sexual activity pose physical and psychological and emotional risks to humans, it also threatens to alienate them from society (if not from the very essence of being human).
The core reasoning here should be clear.
1. If bestiality violates the wellbeing of humans, then bestiality is morally impermissible.
2. Bestiality violates the wellbeing of humans.
Therefore, bestiality is morally impermissible.
This human-centered strategy seems to be the only viable one left for justifying the impermissibility of bestiality.[i] If not that it negatively impacts human wellbeing in some fashion, what other grounds for rejecting bestiality can there be aside from the ones already explored? Besides (and as might be expected considering that most of what we deem morally right or morally wrong reflects what is conducive to human survival and flourishing), it seems clear that—whatever animal-centered language we might use—the real issue with bestiality centers around us. Think about it. As far as most of us are concerned at least, what makes bestiality wrong cannot be—to cite a common benchmark for rape among humans—something as simple as unwanted penetration (of “sexual regions,” in particular). On top of the fact that bestiality need not involve any penetration whatsoever (see Cases 4 and 6), so many of the standard husbandry and research practices supported by rejecters of bestiality involve unwanted penetration (catheter insertion, vaginal massage, anal electrocution, and so on)—penetration, in fact, that can be quite painful and damaging, which is why those new to inseminating cows are recommended to work only upon those both thoroughly restrained and slated for slaughter soon after. If these animal-victimizing practices are kosher—yes, even when they are overtly sexual (as in when the forearm-cramping farmer fingers boar buttholes to enliven boar erections)—then where else to turn but to the human, how the human is affected, as justification for our moral proscription against bestiality? That it is really all about us makes so much sense. By some magic similar to what we see in performative speech acts (the “I do” of marriage ceremonies or the “I hereby name this vessel ‘Charlotte’” of boat christenings), merely the addition of human intent and arousal changes the fisting of a horse or the fingering of a pig from a kosher farmhand procedure to the epitome of moral depravity.[ii] That it is really all about us makes so much sense when we consider the flagrant arbitrariness by which we decide, to give an independent example, which animals are friends and which are food—so full of ourselves on the matter that we scream in protest with our Burger-King breath at how any one could eat dog or cat or horse or guinea pig or bonobo or elephant or dolphin (even when such creatures have died of old age). We are the ones who say it is okay to train a dog to do this trick (catch a potentially tooth-chipping frisbee), but not okay to train it to do that trick (lick a vagina—indeed, not okay even when the animal does it out of untrained desire).[iii] Clearly it is all about us. And that is the power of the argument at hand.
So the crux of the matter comes down to whether premise 2 is true. Cases like 6 and 9 seem to show that it is not. But the opponent of bestiality might offer the following cumulative rationale.
First, engaging in sex with animals increases the likelihood of spreading zoonotic diseases. The viruses and bacteria and funguses and parasites common to nonhuman animals could pose a terrible threat to human health. And we are not just talking about the single human who engages in bestiality becoming ill or disabled or worse. The disease can spread to other humans, leading to outbreaks. Humans have contracted several zoonotic diseases from animals. Q fever and leptospirosis are two bacterial examples. HIV, a viral example, is one of the most devastating. The consensus is that HIV originated from a type of chimp in central Africa. Interspecies sexual activity is a leading explanation for how it spread to humans (another being that tribal hunters came into close contact with infected blood while butchering chimps for meat). For all we know, animals might carry diseases that have even stranger and more torturous consequences. Just as not wearing a mask at the time of an airborne pandemic is immoral (so at least one might say), engaging in sex with animals is too.[iv]
Second, engaging in sex with animals increases the likelihood of physical injury. To say nothing of the physical harm that humans could inflict on animals, humans who engage in bestiality face the risk of allergic reactions and injuries. More often than one would think hospitals see patients suffering from genitalia bites and rectal injuries from sexual encounters with animals.[v] The risk of injury was brought to wide public attention by the documentary Zoo, which recounts with rather graphic footage the tale of Kenneth Pinyan. Pinyan died from a perforated colon as a result of a deep thrust from a horse at a Washington farm (a pound town, so to say, where authorities seized hundreds of hours of bestiality video).
Third, engaging in sex with animals increases the likelihood of entrenching destructive habits and attitudes within humans. If we engage in sex with animals, then it is easier to slip into engaging in sex with noncompliant animals. And if we engage in sex with noncompliant animals, then then it is easier to slip into engaging in sex with noncompliant humans. Therefore, if we engage in sex with animals, then it is easier to slip into engaging in what is obviously immoral: namely, rape of humans. Or look at it this way. If we engage in sex with animals, then it is easier to slip into using them as a means to our own ends. And if we use them as a means to our own ends, then it is easier to slip into using our fellow humans as a means to our own ends.[vi] It is worth noting that empirical evidence links bestiality and various forms of criminal conduct, especially of a sexual nature: public masturbation, rape, necrophilia, child molestation. The link between bestiality and human-to-human predation, reflected in several studies showing the significant number of prisoners who have had sexual interactions with animals, is a major reason behind the legal crackdown on bestiality in recent years.[vii] We all know anecdotally that serial killers, Dahmer comes to mind, often start out as animal abusers.
Fourth, engaging in sex with animals is antisocial. On top of not being evolutionarily advantageous, it is extremely weird and fails to create meaningful connections between humans. It violates the deepest of our norms and values regarding appropriate sexual conduct, undermining societal health and cohesion. On top of debilitating feelings of shame and devastating internal conflict disruptive of one’s very sense of self, those who engage in bestiality will be targets of law enforcement, as well as of distressing ridicule and persecution, to which career-loss isolation even from friends and family is the chief solution. The situation is only heightened in our current epoch. If merely assigning Mark Twain in a college class, or citing a statistic that does not harmonize with the “lived experience” of a student from a “vulnerable population,” can get the professor “canceled” from his source of livelihood and subjected to mob ridicule and violence, what the hell will become of someone who engages in sexual activity with an animal—especially if that person already has the white optics of an oppressor? Humans need social networks. Bestiality is clearly immoral.[viii]
Fifth, engaging in sex with animals threatens to alienate us from our human identity.[ix] A car can be a type of thing distinct from every other type of thing only so long as there are limits beyond which its changes—say, being melted down to liquid metal and plastic—would render it no longer a car. It is important, likewise, that there be limits beyond which a human cannot cross without becoming nonhuman. One of those limits is sexual activity beyond our species. Look at it this way. Imagine the animal lover is as conscientious as can be: she ensures the animal’s welfare is honored; she uses condoms or perhaps merely engages in heavy petting to be on the safe side; she allows the interaction to take place only if there is instrumental value for each party; she allows the animal to lead the way; and so on. Even so, the animal lover will always know deep down that she is a sexual pervert.[x] The human, unable to shake memory of past depravity, will be daily damaged by guilty reminders. She will know she does not belong to the human community.
7.2. Response
As Cases 4, 6, and 9 especially show, bestiality need not negatively impact human wellbeing. What reason is there, then, to get into the weeds of addressing the above points? But in case my strong views on this matter have clouded my judgment, I will respond to each.
First, it is said that bestiality is immoral because it poses a risk of transmission of zoonotic disease. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.
(1) Just because an activity comes with risk of disease transmission does not in itself make it morally wrong. Engaging in sexual activities with other humans, after all, poses such a risk. But that does not make human-to-human sexual relationships wrong. Indeed, one of the reasons why HIV and other STDs have higher rates of transmission among male homosexual populations is because, in addition to the fact that male homosexual populations are statistically more likely to engage in unprotected sex with multiple partners, the rectal canal is more susceptible to tearing compared to the vaginal canal. We do not condemn—indeed, we see it as barbaric to condemn—male homosexual sex on such grounds, though. We do not even find it immoral for a man with HIV to have sex with a man who does not have HIV—so long as everyone is informed and consenting.
(2) It is possible for humans to engage in safe sex with animals. Hygienic practices and precautionary measures can go a long way. Instead of raw thrusts into the anal cavity of a dog clammed up in resistance to what it does not want done to it, a human—on top of proceeding only when the dog is accepting and showing positive signs of interest (such as self-initiated cuddling and rubbing) and uncoerced and free to opt out and the like—can wear a condom, can sanitize the relevant genital areas, can enter the vaginal canal (as opposed to the more fragile anal canal), can make sure the animal gets veterinary tests before and after. Going through such a checklist would reduce transmission chances to less than that of what exists in sexual interactions between humans. Besides, the human could aways be extra safe and not penetrate at all!
(3) Especially when we consider indirect forms of sexual engagement (Cases 4, 6, and 9), the risk of disease transmission through bestiality might not be higher than other forms of human-to-animal interactions we accept as morally permissible: helping to guide the horse penis into the semen-collection tube, or fondling the sow to be more receptive to insemination, or helping the pig give birth, or pulling the lodged plug of feces from the anus of the constipated elephant (despite the flood of pent-up fecal-staph juice), or allowing the dog (despite the risk of illness spread by its fleas and ticks) to sleep in our beds and lick our faces out of love. Any contact with animals—sexual or not—poses a risk of disease transmission. We get diseases from them all the time, sometimes just by being in their vicinity.[xi] That does not make our interaction with them immoral. And what about our consumption of animal flesh: red meat, dairy, shellfish?[xii] Consumption of animal products is responsible for some of the biggest threats to human health: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer. But even here we do not say that such consumption is immoral. In fact, the majority of us in the US regard a plant-based diet as something extreme.[xiii]
Second, it is said that bestiality is immoral because it increases the likelihood of humans being injured. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.
(1) Not all instances of bestiality pose a significant risk for physical injury. Cases 4 and 6, where the risk is minimal (if not nonexistent), make this clear. Even in more hardcore scenarios, humans can take precautions to protect themselves. That is what humans do in human-to-human interaction where physical risks are present: telling a friend where one is, carrying mace, or so on.
(2) Risk of injury alone does not make an activity immoral. Many of us admire skydivers, mountain climbers, Alaskan crab fisherman, MMA fighters, astronauts, and so forth. If individuals are allowed to assume risk of physical harm in other contexts, the risk of physical harm should not stand in the way of their freedom to engage in bestiality.
Third, it is said that bestiality is immoral because it increases the likelihood of entrenching destructive habits and attitudes within humans. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.
(1) Saying that to engage in sex with animals increases the probability of engaging in animal rape, which then increases the probability of engaging in human rape, is a clear slippery-slope fallacy. The argument fails to consider other factors that might block the cascade into depravity. How can it be that engaging in sex with compliant animals need not lead to engaging in sex with noncompliant animals? We can easily imagine a world—close to, if not the same as, our own—where people have a strong desire to ensure that sexual activity occurs only between compliant parties. In such a world, engaging in sex with compliant animals would increase the likelihood of engaging in sex with noncompliant animals no more significantly than engaging in sex with compliant humans would increase the likelihood of engaging in sex with noncompliant humans.[xiv]
(2) Saying that to engage in sex with animals increases the probability of treating animals as a mere means, which then increases the probability of treating fellow humans as a mere means, is another slippery-slope fallacy. Consider the following two points.
(a) While there are cases where humans violently subordinate animals to sentient sex toys (see Case 1-3), there are cases where humans go to the opposite extreme: not only do they refrain from cruelty and harm while ensuring that the animal is consenting and experiencing pleasure and having its goals respected, they also regard the sex as a way to form interspecies companionship based upon trust and compassion. Using the slippery-slope logic of the objection at hand, then, such forms of bestiality would actually decrease the likelihood that these humans would treat fellow humans as mere tools and increase the likelihood that these humans would treat fellow humans more compassionately and with greater respect for their goals.[xv]
(b) Even if bestiality in every case involved treating animals as mere tools, that need not mean that those who practice bestiality will be more likely to treat fellow humans as mere tools. Factory farmers do not seem more likely to treat fellow humans as mere tools, even though factory farming is presumably a case where one treats animals as mere tools. And most of us, as consumers of factory-farmed meat, do not feel a greater urge to treat fellow humans as mere tools just because we knowingly consume factory-farmed meat. We do not feel a greater urge even though we laugh at Chick-fil-A commercials where cows beg us, in a plea for mercy made more twisted by its lighthearted delivery, to “Eat mor chikin”—laugh as hard as we once did at licorice advertisements showing gators chasing “dainty morsels” in the form of “tar-brushed” infants. Just as humans are capable of—if not inclined toward—speech-code switching in different social contexts (nightclubs, family dinners, workday offices), humans are capable of—if not inclined toward—ethics-code switching in different moral contexts.
(3) Studies have provoked worry about the link—correlation, not causation—between bestiality and human-to-human sexual cruelty: rape, molestation, and the like. But these studies should be approached with caution. One problem is that they routinely fail to distinguish between different forms of bestiality, lumping the wicked and disgusting forms right in with the benign and lovely. Saying that there is a link between bestiality and interpersonal violence among humans, in this case, is like saying there is a link between zany beliefs and interpersonal violence among humans. Just as we need to clarify whether we are talking about zany beliefs of the happy sort (like that everyone must share, cooperate, and help others in order to achieve ultimate union with the supreme care bear that literally is the Andromeda galaxy) or whether we are talking about zany beliefs of the toxic sort (like that Jews are the scum of the earth and need to be obliterated as bullhorns of Ezra Pound reading his Canto 45 pump throughout the death camps), we must clarify whether we are talking about the sweet or the cruel forms of bestiality.[xvi] Those who rebuke—let us say at the most visceral level—the abusive sorts of bestiality we see in Cases 1-3, and who also make it a point to engage exclusively (and as a point of pride) in cruelty-free and mutually-voluntary forms where animal welfare is prioritized, will not be more likely to rape other humans or engage in other sexually-immoral activities. At least this seems reasonable to presume, especially if these people (unlike those in the studies, for all we know) do not have the features of which cruel bestiality might in most cases simply be a downstream effect—features that provide deeper grounds for the link the studies seem to establish: having been abused as a child, or having a psychopathic lack of empathy, or so on. So yes, immoral bestiality (the kind marked by coercion, suffering, and perhaps even death of the animal) might be a reliable predictor of predatory behavior of a sexual nature among humans. But moral bestiality (the kind marked by respect for the autonomy and desire and interest of the animal) is not going to be a reliable predictor of that. The link, I imagine, would go the other way: engaging in care-oriented sexual activity with animals is a reliable predictor of human-to-human prosocial behavior—behavior that promotes the well-being, happiness, and positive development of other humans.
(4) It might be prudent for society to regard bestiality as a red flag. Given the aforementioned correlation, perhaps its presence should put us on guard—the way the presence of young men with an “urban look,” for example, should perhaps put a store clerk on guard. But even if it was so much of a red flag that it makes sense to criminalize it for pragmatic purposes, that still does not make bestiality immoral. Look at it this way. Social isolation is correlated with negative consequences to society at large. Same with drinking alcohol. Same with anal sex (especially in homosexual communities). Same perhaps even with zany beliefs. But that does not make those things immoral.
Fourth, it is said that bestiality is immoral because it is fundamentally antisocial behavior. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.
(1) As was once true of homosexuality, bestiality is illegal and extremely weird. But even though engaging in sexual activity with animals—just like wearing sneakers on one’s hands or snorting one’s father’s ashes (as Keith Richards apparently did)—threatens the conceptual distinctions we use to organize and navigate our world, that does not necessitate its immorality. I am not saying that disruption of the conceptual schemes by which we make sense of reality and our place in it is no big deal. But just because an activity shakes up the established order, as miscegenation surely did at one point in the US, that does not make it morally wrong. And for whatever it is worth to add, the shaking effects over time might stop after we become accustomed to interacting with uncloseted animal lovers. But change of societal norms and values often requires the bravery of those first few waves of people willing to face the ridicule and violence of the old guard.
(2) Bookbinding, however much a niche activity nowadays, unites people. This goes for bestiality, as is evident by the many online groups (one thinks of bestiality forums) and the many offline groups (one thinks of pound-town ranches in Washington as well as pro-bestiality marches in Germany). Since bestiality is so bizarre (bizarre enough that those who engage in the practice are likely to conceal their behavior from society at large),[xvii] members of these small groups—as was true for the ancient Israelites—lean harder on one another than they would if they did not feel so vulnerable to persecution. People in bestiality communities are likely to be more conscious about defending themselves and articulating where they stand compared to the mainstream culture whose antagonism poses an existential threat—a situation that no doubt fosters a highly-cognizant ideological bond. The issue about bestiality failing to forge human communion needs to be put aside, then. Yes, the communities are small and hidden, as homosexual communities once were. But this need not be the case if one day we become more welcoming.
(3) It might be said that, even if it creates Pentateuch-level solidarity between humans, bestiality remains antisocial in that it (like incest) disrupts traditional attitudes and practices on which social order depends, thereby leading to estrangement (and all the emotional and physical difficulties associated). But the same was once said about homosexuality.[xviii] And yet surely it seems barbaric, at least from where we stand now, to say that a good reason for homosexuality’s impermissibility was because homosexual practices, in violating social taboos, alienated us from friends and family while—if only to add insult to injury—serving no direct role in perpetuating our species. Once we become more tolerant, there will be no such effect.
(4) Bestiality could be kept hidden, as homosexuality long was, even in the most intolerant of times. Bestiality, then, need not result in ostracism any more than would watching midget porn or using goliath dildos in the privacy of one’s home. It is logically possible, as has often enough been actually practiced, for a woman to do everything the same as a normal woman except that instead of using a vibrator at night she lets her dog lick her. Surely we can imagine that everything else would remain relevantly the same in such a possible world.
(5) It might be said that bestiality is still antisocial in that time spent with an animal is time away from humans. But that sets the bar too high on permissible action. We do not condemn the artist for recoiling from society a bit more than usual in the pursuit of her passion. We do not tend to say that a widow who lives only with her dog and who does not get out much is living an immoral life. We do not say that anchorites, ascetics many of us revere as saintly, are doing something wrong by literally allowing themselves to be walled away from direct human contact. One might insist that a practice that results in too little time developing intimate bonds with fellow humans makes that practice immoral. As an admirer of Thoreau’s withdrawal from society into (somewhat) secluded life at Walden Pond, I am not convinced. I am willing to grant it for the sake of the argument, however. For we can easily imagine that the practitioner of bestiality has an otherwise regular life, socially balanced enough to satisfy Aristotle even on his most stringent days: a life of attending afterschool playdates and opera performances as well as of playing pickup basketball games and coaching little league. This person need not be exclusively into animals or primarily spend time with animals. He could very well have rich human interactions.
Fifth, it is said that bestiality is immoral because it is threatens to alienate us in some sense from our human identity as separate from animals. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.
(1) If only to set the context for points to come, it might be important to remember that the radical difference traditionally drawn between humans and animals—where humans are conceived as belonging to a self-governing kingdom cut off from nature (rather than as being as much a bloom of nature as a literal flower)—has largely been discredited. Putting aside the most powerful evidence (namely, the arguments for everything that any creature on Earth does and thinks and desires being ultimately a function of the remote past before any of those creatures were around),[xix] we now know (a) that all living organisms, from humans to ants, share a common ancestor as well as common genetic material and we know (b) that various animals have complex cognitive abilities, social structures, and emotional experiences that were once thought to be exclusive to humans.
(2) Even in a world where bestiality is accepted, several human features would suffice—and individually, at that—to perform the job of holding our human identity intact (which makes sense, of course, especially given the many bestiality-friendly cultures throughout history that saw themselves as human). There is our power to make wild leaps of creativity and to think abstractly (even about hypothetical matters of logic and ethics). There is our love for art and science. There is our capacity for deep empathy and connection through literature and community involvement. There is our desire for contemplation and self-awareness and self-improvement (as indicated in all our creative productions and therapy sessions, our incessant journaling and meditating and exercising and practicing). There is our passion for learning—often enough just for its own sake. There is our skill at inventing complex tools and culture (music, art, religion, sport). In light of these distinguishing marks, it is hard—at least when we look at things rationally—to see bestiality as jeopardizing our humanity. The person who connects at a spiritual level with his dolphin partner could be human—all-too-human—in every other way. Especially when we assume that no other human knows about the interspecies romance, especially when we assume that the human brings human-level ethical conscientiousness to bear in the interaction, it seems strange to say that his sexual activity threatens to render him nonhuman.
(3) The same could have been said about homosexuality: those who engage in homosexuality are removing themselves, or at least putting themselves in danger of being removed, from the human race. In times before it became a socially-acceptable matter of personal morality (which resulted in it being taken out of the DSM as a mental illness), homosexuality itself threatened the established notion of what it means to be human.[xx] Haunted by an intractable feeling that what they were doing was horrible, many homosexuals organized their lives to keep hidden—faking marriages, for example, in fear of social ostracism. In a time when being labeled a “homosexual” could spell career ruin and estrangement from family, some even turned to drugs to tamp down their sexual feelings. And too many turned to self-violence and suicide. But still, surely it seems barbaric, at least from where we stand now, to say that a good reason for the immorality of homosexuality was because homosexual practices put our notion of what it is to be human at risk. Look at it from another angle. Today we dress up our pets, talk to them like humans, cuddle them under the blankets, kiss them on the mouth, and have connections with them sometimes more intensely emotional and longer-lasting than with our human partners. It is easy to imagine people saying, especially in times of greater cultural anxiety about preserving the mistaken sense of our radical difference from animals, that such behavior—such displays of love between human and animal—so elevates the animal into the human realm (and thereby blurs the human-animal boundary) that those who do such things are nonhuman.
(4) This last point brings up an important question. How do we distinguish sexual activity with our pets from other activities we engage in with our pets (often in the course of developing meaningful bonds with them)—activities like kissing and cuddling? Rudy makes this point well. “[W]ithout a coherent and agreed upon definition of sex (which queer theory persuasively argues is impossible), the line between ‘animal lover’ and zoophile is not only thin, it is nonexistent. How do we know beforehand whether loving them constitutes ‘sex’ . . . ?”[xxi]
(5) What is a human, anyway, evolves—like a language—in light of historical factors. Perhaps our notion of being human will expand wide enough to tolerate sexual openness to all creatures, just as our notion of being human has expanded wide enough to tolerate openness to the same-sex sexual encounters that have been occurring just as long. Such expansion need not conflict, by the way, with the various human features that individually suffice to keep our human identity intact, features I listed above.
(6) There are elements common to living organisms, interspecies sex—like homosexual sex—being one of them. Bestiality ought not threaten our link to the human community anymore than does drinking and eating and dying—things we also share with a variety of living organisms. Humans, as I said at the outset, have in addition to these common behaviors more distinguishing features like the ability to make tools and reason abstractly and draw improbable connections and make unlikely leaps in creativity.
(7) Even if those who engage in bestiality find it harder to see themselves as humans and even if regular humans find it harder to see those who engage in bestiality as humans, that seems to have no bearing on whether bestiality is immoral.
7.3. Conclusion
When we scrutinize the legitimacy of the taboo on bestiality, again and again—despite the animal-centered language we like to use now—it becomes clear that what matters mainly is how the interaction affects humans. But need every case of bestiality negatively impact humans? From what I have argued in this section, the answer is no: humans need not be hurt or alienated or stripped of their humanity. The answer is no even according to the most inappropriately catholic standards of what it means to respect human wellbeing, the standards we see employed more and more in universities where professors are terminated merely for engaging in the “violence” of exposing students to traumatizing words or to viewpoints that do not accord with their—what is that authoritarian slogan?—“lived experience.” For even if one says, ridiculously, that the wellbeing of certain humans is violated just hearing about an act of bestiality, we can imagine a world were such humans need not hear about any such act.
8. Concluding Remarks
The taboo on bestiality is one of the most fundamental, crucial as it has been—like a hellfire sermon against gays by a closeted evangelical—to sustaining the illusion of human exceptionalism against the hard truth of our becoming so blurred with animals in the heights of sexual activity that, as Dekkers puts it, “every sexual encounter retains a whiff of bestiality.”[xxii] The taboo on bestiality is so fundamental, in fact, that we slander our intellectual consciences, again and again, to keep it in place: castrating horses without any qualms and yet apoplectic about hearing some “sicko” even mention the idea of letting the pining dog take her up the butt.
I have argued, nevertheless, that bestiality is morally permissible in certain situations. Let me conclude with a more direct argument that ropes together the entire discussion. Although the rationales of its premises allude to the various anti-bestiality grounds covered in this paper, I frame the argument around what I regard as the decisive factor: namely, whether bestiality respects the moral worth of animals.
1. Either animals have no moral worth or they have at least some moral worth.
2. If animals have no moral worth, then bestiality is morally permissible in certain situations.
Rationale.—If animals have no moral worth and so in themselves deserve no more consideration of their wellbeing than a rock, then we are morally permitted to use them however we please—unless, of course, there is some reason beyond the consideration of the animal that morally forbids us. As discussed in this paper, however, the core extra-animal reasons—namely, that bestiality violates intuition (section 3) or God’s will (section 4) or nature (section 5) or human wellbeing (section 7)—fail, ultimately for being irrelevant or being false or being inconsistent with other moral beliefs and practices, to render bestiality immoral in all situations. Therefore, if animals have no moral worth, then bestiality is morally permissible in certain situations (perhaps even, yes, in zoosadistic Cases 1-3).
3. If animals have at least some moral worth, then bestiality is morally permissible in certain situations.
Rationale.—Sexual activity between humans and animals need not involve disrespect for the animal’s moral worth (see sections 2 and 6). Especially when the human participant prioritizes animal wellbeing (yes, perhaps even if that means waiting, so I might raise the bar to unreasonable heights, for the developmentally-mature animal to pursue him), sexual interaction between humans and animals can be more respectful and comfortable and consent-honoring and empathetic and hygienic and bond-building and beneficial and autonomy-preserving than many of the qualm-free ways we treat animals: eating them, poisoning them so they do not enter our homes, grooming them to be our tools and playthings, training them to do potentially injurious tricks, crating them in claustrophobic cages, castrating them, sterilizing them, dissecting them for science, performing medical tests on them, forcing them to mate with other animals so that we get another round of servants and food. Sexual interaction between humans and animals can be more conducive to animal wellbeing, so it should be specifically highlighted, than many of the practices that, despite being for the most part outwardly indiscernible from bestiality, are a cultural mainstay: such as not only kissing them on the mouth when they snuggle in bed with us, but also bringing them to orgasm to collect their semen—doing so, of course, with a clinical hand (or, as is not uncommon, with a prostate-stimulating electric rod) that allows us, although I do wonder what plethysmographs might reveal, both to duck the law and to tell ourselves in sleep-tight conscience that we never veered into the bedrock of sin.[xxiii] Since sexual activity between humans and animals need not involve disrespect for the animal’s moral worth, the only ground for the immorality of bestiality would have to transcend consideration of the animal. But the core extra-animal reasons on offer—namely, that bestiality violates intuition or God or nature or human wellbeing—fail, even when taken jointly, to render bestiality immoral in all situations. Therefore, if animals have moral worth, then bestiality is morally permissible in certain situations (at least in Case 4 and Cases 7-9).
Therefore, bestiality is morally permissible in certain situations.
It should go without saying that the cumulative case I have made in this paper does not depend upon the truth of some narrow ethical view. Yes, bestiality’s occasional permissibility follows straightforwardly from the main consequentialist angles in ethics. According to utilitarianism, for example, an act of bestiality can easily be regarded as permissible, especially if it results in a significant increase in reality’s net wellbeing (or happiness, or satisfaction of preference, or however the particular form of utilitarianism is spelled out).[xxiv] The same goes in the case of ethical egoism, especially if the act of bestiality results in a significant increase in my net wellbeing. As this paper makes clear, however, bestiality can be permissible even assuming that the wellbeing of animals ought to be respected regardless of the downstream consequences of so doing. Aside from a relativist who (when trying to figure out the morality of an action) appeals to the say-so of some entity (a society, a God, a person) that rejects bestiality, my argument should appeal to a broad range of ethical frameworks. It should appeal, in fact, to the most committed human exceptionalists and speciesists, as well as to the most committed animal-rights activists and protectionists.
And that is how it should be. For whether bestiality can ever be morally permissible is a question, however emotionally complicated, that is rationally uncomplicated. In a cosmos of countless suns and reams of death, how terribly smallminded and progress-impeding—on par with thinking that God stopped the rain just to protect your hairdo—to think the orangutan’s licking in Case 7 or the human’s licking in Case 11 are some of the worst moral horrors, rather than what they really amount to: uncontroversial enjoyment of earthly beings thrown into this, like this, with such a transient lifespan.
Notes
[i] There is one further option: some might take the immorality of bestiality to be a brute fact. The problem with such a maneuver should be clear. Since the predicate “is immoral” is presumably not baked into the subject “bestiality” (as is suggested by the apparent conceivability of cases where bestiality is not immoral), this ethical fact would be brute not in the sense of providing the full explanation for its own truth but rather brute in the sense of having objectively no reason whatsoever why it is true—an absolute given regardless of the circumstances or mitigating factors; regardless as to whether the animal is being harmed; regardless as to what the Bible says; regardless as to whether the animal is consenting; regardless as to whether the sexual activity is in alignment with the animal’s goals and purposes; regardless as to whether we find it disgusting; regardless as to whether human safety is threatened; and so forth. But by saying that something is true for no reason whatsoever we have transcended the possibility of rational discussion. Furthermore, one can imagine someone who thinks miscegenation is immoral saying the same thing. Set in this context, the brute-fact approach looks vile. It can be used to “justify” any stance, even ones we find morally repugnant. Lastly, there is pretty much no truth more secure (at least as far as I am concerned) than the principle of sufficient reason, which effectively says that you cannot get something from nothing. Even if we do not know and could never know the explanation for something, everything has an explanation. Otherwise we would be saying, in effect, that something can come from nothing. But it is absurd to say that x—an event or a fact or whatever—can have reality even though reality (yes, reality all-things-considered) is ultimately not enough for x to have reality. See Istvan 2021a for more on this last point.
[ii] See Barwick 2022.
[iii] Let me pause on the topic of training. Some say that training an animal to accept sexual activity with humans violates the animal’s sexual integrity and for that reason is immoral. I am not convinced. Training happens through the animal kingdom and the human private and public spheres. We are fine, specifically, with training animals to be our pets and helpers—yes, even when that training engenders strong dependency. So long as loving techniques are used and safe measures are put in place and the creature in question is not stunted from achieving the level of flourishing it is slated to achieve by virtue of being a member of the species to which it belongs, and so forth—saying that an animal has been trained to do such and such sexual activity does not in itself render the sexual activity immoral.
[iv] See Balderi n.d.; Belliotti 1993, 232.
[v] See Ascione 2005, 120, 126. Masters nicely describes the threat that a dog poses to humans nicely. “[T]he dog's penis . . . has a massive ball or knot near its midpoint. Once the dog's phallus has been inserted into either vagina or anus, and the ball has become engorged, painless withdrawal is almost impossible until after the dog ejaculates, when shrinkage and flaccidity of both ball and penis occur. . . . [M]ost human injuries resulting from intercourse with canines occur when the participants are surprised or startled and a forced withdrawal of the dog's erect organ is attempted. In one case, a woman was surprised in Washington copulating with a large English mastiff, and when the terrified couple endeavored to hastily sever the connection, the dog's phallus was so forcefully removed as to bring about a fatal hemorrhage in the woman. In another case, at Omaha, Nebraska, a sixteen-year-old boy had himself sodomized by a dog and when the separation was attempted the dog ‘tore through the sphincter and an inch into the gluteus muscles’” (Masters 1966).
[vi] See Cassidy 2009, 105. Kant might have put the point as follows. “Just as cruelty toward animals must be condemned because it suggests a lack of sympathy and makes easier cruelty toward people, bestiality must be abhorred because we . . . cannot embrace the sexual use of animals without weakening our opposition to all coercive or unequal sexual relationships” (Denis 1999, 241).
[vii] See Holoyda 2022; Haynes 2014, 139.
[viii] Cassidy 2009, 91, 95.
[ix] See Wigmore 2021; Morriss 1997, 271; Levy 2003, 454. Levy does not use this argument, however, to claim that bestiality is immoral. Instead, he uses it to show that there are rational reasons for it remaining taboo even if it is sometimes not immoral.
[x] See Baldari n.d.
[xi] See Haynes 2014, 143.
[xii] Red meat, for example, has been linked to an increased risk of colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. High-fat dairy products have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer, including prostate cancer. Raw or undercooked oysters, clams, and mussels, can carry harmful bacteria or viruses that have lead to more or less significant illness—including death.
[xiii] See Haynes 2014, 143.
[xiv] Studies have shown a correlation between those who abuse animals and those who abuse humans. But on top of the fact that there also a correction between those who are abused by humans and those who abuse animals, that is a different issue than the one we are discussing. We are discussing whether nonabusive treatment of animals makes more likely abusive treatment of animals which makes more likely abusive treatment of humans.
[xv] Haynes makes the point well. “Sex between humans and animals can occur without cruelty or demonstrable harm to the animal. Indeed, if we assume that the human seeks to emphasize ‘positive reactions from the animal, such as approaching the person, cuddling, rubbing against the person, not trying to move away, and displaying sexual excitement,’ then bestiality might encourage understanding sexual partners as emotive beings, not objects. . . . Perhaps it is true that violence toward animals may lead to violence toward humans, but then compassion toward animals would seem to lead to compassion toward humans (2014, 138).
[xvi] These studies are more accurately described as justifying worry about the link between human-to-animal sexual cruelty and human-to-human sexual cruelty. And technically, if criticism of these studies are correct (see Holoyda 2022), these studies are most accurately described as justifying some worry about the link between human-to-animal sexual cruelty and other harmful sexual interests—interests that pose a risk to humans.
[xvii] Bolliger and Goetschel 2005, 25–26.
[xviii] Let me specifically address the incest-bestiality connection. Whereas incest is potentially burdensome on society in that its reproductive products are more likely to be mutated for the worse (which can, one might say, drag down the gene pool), bestiality poses no such threat. And whereas incest might disrupt traditional bonds and practices on which social order depends (as in when the son becomes less likely to take care of his mother in old age since their romantic strife resulted in them not talking to one another), bestiality mainly does so because of the taboo on the act (which might result in the son, for example, being excommunicated from the family if it is found out he has a relationship with a cow). In this regard, bestiality seems closer to homosexuality than to incest when considering its negative impact on our society. That is especially the case when we keep in mind that our society systematically tortures animals anyway!
[xix] See Istvan 2021a.
[xx] See Haynes 2014, 146n142.
[xxi] Rudy 2012, 611.
[xxii] Dekkers 1994, 3. Levy nicely articulates the point. “Nowhere does our claim to be essentially different from other animals look weaker than with regard to sexuality [since we copulate as they do and have the same parts]. . . . Sex across the species line had to be prohibited, because it threatened to demonstrate how hollow are our claims to fundamental difference” (Levy 2003, 450).
[xxiii] See Otto 2005, 149. Intent is the difference-maker between standard practice and crime, according to many legal codes. In Delaware, for example, what turns even the overtly sexual practices standard in animal husbandry into bestiality is when the contact is “for purposes of sexual gratification” (see Barwick 2022).
[xxiv] See Chivers 2021; Singer 2001.
