May 30, 2024 • 35 mins
Get ready to learn about the underground and frequently misunderstood world of zoophilia. With the help of paraphilia researcher Alexandra Zidenberg and hosts of the zoophile podcast Zooier Than Thou, we'll unravel what it really means to be attracted to animals. We'll learn what it is that attracts "zoos" to non-human animals, explore the hot-button issue of animal consent, wrestle with the ethics of bestiality, understand the incredible diversity within the zoophile community itself, and hear about the immense challenges zoophiles face in a society that's quick to judge what they don't understand. Tune in for an ultra-taboo episode that will challenge what you thought you knew about the world.
Resources from Alexandra Zidenberg:
- Website: https://www.alexandrazidenberg.com/
- Dissertation: https://harvest.usask.ca/items/aeb0600d-3e6d-48e1-9008-906c050cae23
- Twitter: https://x.com/Lexi_M_Z
Resources from Zooier Than Thou:
- Podcast website: https://zoo.wtf/
- Twitter: https://x.com/zooierthanthou
- BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/zoo.wtf
See citations and a transcript here: https://www.tabooscience.show/044-zoophilia/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ashley (00:00):
Sexual contact between humans and animals is as old as
time, but our attitudes aboutit are constantly changing.
You can see it in thehistory of bestiality laws.
While not all civilizations havehad laws against sex with an
animal, I mean, ancient Greeceseemed to be just fine with it.
(00:20):
The earliest recorded bestialitylaws are old, from the
Hittites, starting in 1650 BC.
They said that if a man had sex with a pigor a dog, the man would be put to death.
But if the pig is the onewho initiated, it's fine.
Those early societies seem to basetheir bestiality laws on cleanliness.
(00:45):
Even the Torah says that sexwith an animal defiles the human.
That belief continued into Christianreligions, which continued into
Christian societies, which wouldoften put both the animal and the
human to death for acts of bestiality.
In 1642 in Plymouth Colony, a 16 year oldboy was convicted of buggery with a mare,
(01:06):
two goats, five sheep, two calves, anda turkey, and the animals were killed in
front of him before the boy was hanged.
Many of our current bestiality lawsstill echo these beliefs, that sex
with an animal degrades a person.
Here in North Carolina, whereI'm based, the law still calls
(01:27):
bestiality a crime against nature.
But I'm willing to bet that you,listening right now, Don't really
object to sex with an animal becauseyou think it's bad for the human.
If you object, it's probably becauseyou think it's bad for the animal.
And that's a shift that onlystarted in the last 150 years or so.
(01:48):
And even more recently,in the last few decades.
The law has started to reflecta belief, without much evidence,
that not only is bestiality bad foranimals, but those who do it are
one step away from committing sexualviolence against their fellow humans.
Suffice it to say, society has neverbeen super comfortable with human
(02:08):
animal sex, but the reasons for thataren't as firm as you might think.
But whatever the reasons foroutlawing bestiality, it's clear
that there have always beenpeople having sex with animals.
Not just the curious farmhand or lonelyshepherd seizing on an opportunity.
In fact, there are people who havea deep, usually lifelong attraction
(02:32):
to non human animals, and often formromantic relationships with them.
It's called zoophilia, andit's really an orientation.
And today, we're going to explorehow common it is The idea of animal
consent and what life is likewith an attraction, this taboo.
(02:52):
I'm Ashley Hamer and this is TabooScience, the podcast that answers the
questions you're not allowed to ask.
(03:19):
So I started this episode talkingabout how long people have had sex
with animals, an act called bestiality.
But the first thing you needto know is that zoophilia and
bestiality are different things.
Alexandra Zidenberg (03:31):
So zoophilia refers specifically to the
attraction to non human animals.
So it literally translatesto a love of animals.
That's about the attraction,those feelings, what people like.
Bestiality describes an act.
So that is the act of receivingsexual gratification from animals.
(03:55):
Sometimes they overlap and people whoare zoophilic or who are in the zoophile
community will commit acts of bestiality,but they're not always the same thing.
So somebody might commit an act ofbestiality and not be a zoophile at all.
Ashley (04:11):
That is Dr.
Alexandra Zidenberg.
Alexandra Zidenberg (04:13):
I am an assistant professor currently at the Royal
Military College, but I will be startingat the School of Criminology at the
University of Montreal in a couple weeks.
My main area of research is inpsychology, and specifically
looking at human sexuality.
and a bit of forensic psychology,and kind of where they overlap.
(04:36):
Um, and within that domain, I do quitea bit of research on paraphilias.
Ashley (04:40):
Dr.
Zidenberg did her doctoraldissertation on zoophilia, but
it wasn't her original plan.
Her dissertation was originallyfocused on sexual offending, but when
her PhD supervisor passed away, shewas forced to promote a couple of
side projects to her main project.
Alexandra Zidenberg (04:57):
The first was looking at what veterinarians know about animal
sexual abuse, and the other was, um, abroader project that looked at zoophilia.
They were never meant to gotogether in the same document,
because they are quite different.
They really discuss differentconstructs, they use different language,
they're with different populations.
(05:17):
But after the passing of my supervisor,they kind of got mashed together
into something that made sense forme to finish my degree and get the
PhD after my name and all of that.
Ashley (05:30):
But the spark for her interest in zoophilia as a research topic came
when she was studying what veterinariansknow about animal sexual abuse, and she
kept running into different terms forpeople who were attracted to animals.
Every paper on the topic used differentterminology and different definitions.
Which makes it hard to look at zoophiliaas a coherent body of research.
Alexandra Zidenberg (05:51):
What I also saw was a lot of the time when people are looking
at sexual attraction to animals, it wouldkind of be like a yes or no checkbox.
Are you attracted to animals?
And that's fine.
You can do some statistics with that.
You can get some information, but asI read more and more, it seemed that
sexual attraction to animals was just asvaried as sexual attraction to humans.
(06:15):
So a yes or no checkbox.
Wouldn't really work for humanbeings, because our sexuality is
just a lot more complex than that.
And whether or not somebody isattracted to humans or animals,
it's pretty much the same.
So we wanted to create something thatwould capture that complexity, and that
could be used to better understand thecommunity and the people within it.
Ashley (06:38):
So, she and her team began writing their own survey questions.
They used research from other papersand feedback from other experts in
human sexuality and forensic psychologyto get the questions exactly right.
And then they sent the survey to theadmins of a large online community of
zoophiles in hopes that they'd distributeit to the members of that community.
(06:59):
And they got some notes.
Alexandra Zidenberg (07:03):
They came back with a lot of comments and a lot of wording
changes and things that could be added,which is a little bit overwhelming because
it's quite difficult to work through someof those kind of research psychometric
questions with people who are nonexperts, but it was so valuable because
(07:23):
neither me or my co author Mark Oliverhave a sexual attraction to animals.
So we didn't really know what toask or the language that would
resonate best with the community.
So getting that feedback wasreally, really invaluable.
It was fantastic and it madefor a much better survey.
Ashley (07:43):
So once they had their feedback and tweaked the survey
accordingly, they sent it out among thecommunity and got a ton of responses.
Dr.
Zidenberg credits that to the changes theywere able to make, since the questions
made sense to the people they were asking.
(08:03):
Once they got the answers,they crunched the numbers and
came up with four subscales.
Instead of one binary yes no checkboxto see if someone was attracted
to animals, they found that everymember of the community lands
on a four dimensional spectrum.
Those dimensions include zoophilia.
Alexandra Zidenberg (08:21):
That talks about a general love for animals,
a sexual attraction to animals.
Ashley (08:26):
Opportunism.
Alexandra Zidenberg (08:27):
So those are people who are not necessarily
attracted to animals, but if theopportunity to have sex with an animal
was Presented, they would take it.
Ashley (08:37):
Zoonecrophilia and zoosadism.
Alexandra Zidenberg (08:40):
So those are people who derive pleasure
from animals in pain or havingsexual contact with a dead animal.
Ashley (08:48):
And then the furry sex subscale, which looks at a person's sexual
interest in anthropomorphized animals,fursuits, and a desire for their
human partners to act like an animal.
There's some overlap between all four ofthose scales, but the important thing to
know is that But everyone's different.
The same people don't fallinto each of the same groups.
(09:10):
And while concepts like zoosadism do soundpretty shocking, the vast majority of
zoophiles hardly register on that scale.
They love and care for animals andwould never want to see them in pain.
But even zoophiliaspecifically is on a spectrum.
Aqua (09:26):
Somebody can fall anywhere on a spectrum from not zoosexual.
Ashley (09:30):
Zoosexuality is often used interchangeably with zoophilia, though
some people consider it different frombeing zooromantic, romantically but
not sexually attracted to animals.
But for our purposes, considerit the same as zoophilia.
I should also mention here thatzoophiles often refer to themselves
as zoos, and you'll hear thatterm a lot in this episode.
Aqua (09:52):
So on that line, somebody can be non zoo or they can be
exclusively zoosexual at the other end.
Most people fall somewhere in the middle.
Ashley (10:02):
That is Aqua, one of the hosts of Zooier Than Thou, a podcast for zoophiles.
They work alongside their co host Toggle,who I also spoke to for this episode.
Toggle (10:12):
I would suggest that I am an aromantic zoophile and I am
interested in both animals and humans.
I do have specific animalsthat I'm most attracted to.
Um, male dogs, both male and femalehorses, and boars, like, male pigs.
Those are the ones I'minterested in the most.
(10:34):
Oh, I also like kangaroos, Ithink they're pretty great.
Aqua (10:37):
I think I fall somewhere in the middle.
I am still interested in humanrelationships, and I, I still pursue them.
One does not replace the other.
I need both, they satisfy differentneeds, and I've learned in the past that
if you ignore one side or the other fortoo long, then That causes problems.
(10:57):
As far as the kinds of animals that I'minterested in, pretty standard issue.
Dogs, horses, I tend to lean male.
You know, I have some othersthat are less practical.
I really like cetaceans of all kinds,so that's dolphins, killer whales.
Ashley (11:13):
Toggle and Aqua are in good company.
Research suggests that dogs andhorses are the most popular animals
when zoophiles are surveyed.
I also spoke to Steeeeeeeeeve, that'sSteve with nine E's, another contributor
to Zooier Than Thou and a member of thezoophile community since the mid 90s.
Dogs also top his list.
(11:34):
I asked him what appeals tohim about non human animals.
Steeeeeeeeeve (11:44):
They have a lot going for them.
So there's, there's a simpletruth to animals where everything
is right on the surface.
And, you know, if, if we were describinghuman behavior, we might call it.
earnestness, where they're just reallyforthright about their motives and
there's no effort at deception, right?
(12:08):
Everything is right up front.
Toggle (12:10):
How a dog behaves is part of what makes them attractive.
That confidence, in particularfor me, is very important.
It's kind of like a, you know,what do you like in a guy?
I like confidence.
Aqua (12:23):
Maybe the, the way to think about this is if somebody who is not
a zoo, they're out in the world andthey see another person that is really
attractive to them for some reason.
Their appearances, their personality,and they go, oh yes, okay, I
want to get to know this person.
Much better.
Uh, now replace them with an animal.
(12:44):
It's that simple.
It doesn't really make sense to me either.
I stopped trying to make sense of it,and started trying to just work with it.
Ashley (12:59):
In studies of LGBTQ people and other sexual minorities,
most discover their attractionsa few years before puberty.
That's about the time kids hitadrenarche, which is the body's first
shot of hormones as puberty approaches.
But there are many LGBTQ people whoknew it about themselves even earlier.
And the same is true of zoophiles.
(13:20):
Many realize that they have thesefeelings for animals around 8, 9, 10
years old, but some as young as 5 or 6.
That's when Steve and Aqua discovered it.
Steeeeeeeeeve (13:31):
I'd say going back as far as when I was five years old, I
could, I could tell right away I wasemotionally interested in, in animals
and then romantically and then, youknow, as your body develops and you
become sexually active, then thatwas a natural progression for me.
Aqua (13:48):
I was very young, like five or six.
One of my siblings was takinghorseback riding lessons.
And so I, of course was alongfor the ride, even if I didn't
really want to be there.
And, you know, there were otherhorses around, there were stables,
and there wasn't really all that muchsupervision, but you also couldn't
really get into too much trouble.
(14:08):
So, that's what I basically didfor An hour and a half was just
wander around and look at horses.
And, uh, you know, eventually Isaw something that I really liked.
And that stuck with me for a long time.
It wasn't scary.
It didn't feel wrong.
It just felt private.
And it was something that I was,uh, I was pretty comfortable keeping
(14:32):
to myself for, for many years.
Ashley (14:34):
For Toggle, the discovery happened a little later, and fair warning, while
I promise to avoid explicit descriptionsin this episode, Toggle's experience does
involve sexual contact with an animal.
Toggle (14:46):
I think the discovery was very much intertwined with the
discovery of me being a furry as well.
I was drawing furries before Iknew what a furry was, but as I got
older I became curious about thedog at my grandmother's house, who
was very openly curious about me.
And one day, I let him knock meover and go at it, and I said,
(15:10):
Wow, this is actually great!
Um, and I started exploring thatand trying to understand it.
There would be points where it feltexactly right while I was experimenting
with this very very willing and veryeager dog who always wanted to play
(15:33):
around and I would I remember like wewould do it and then Afterwards, I'd have
this calm, like, this feels right, thisfeels like it's supposed to be this way.
And then, like, 24 hours later, Iwould feel really guilty, because
I was Christian, and somehow, Ididn't absorb that, like, gay was
supposed to be wrong, but I didabsorb that bestiality was wrong.
(15:57):
So I had those kind ofconflicting feelings, um, and
so I started exploring online.
I'm trying to find an outlet that way.
I actually was looking for bestiality,but I found furry art instead.
And suddenly, that worldopened up, and the two kind of
were intertwined in that way.
(16:19):
Um, so that origin story for bothkind of, uh, Wraps up and I was
like 13 when I discovered the furryfandom and also discovered that
I really really really like dogs
Ashley (16:33):
We're not going to spend too long on the intersections between
the furry fandom and zoophilia Exceptto say that intersections do exist.
Furry pornography may be designedfor people who like cartoon
animals but it also appeals topeople who like real animals.
So those two groups arebound to cross paths.
The furry community is sensitive abouthaving zoophiles within their ranks.
(16:56):
And being a furry absolutelydoes not make you a zoophile.
But zoophile furries are out there.
That brings me to my next question.
How many zoophiles exist?
What kinds of people have thisattraction toward non human animals?
And how common is it?
Here's Dr.
Zidenberg again.
Alexandra Zidenberg (17:16):
So I would say it's probably more
people than you would expect.
So some of those online forums havehundreds of thousands of people in them.
And that is not necessarily Everyone whois interested in those activities or is
sexually attracted to animals in general.
So I would say it's probably afairly good slice of the population.
(17:40):
It's really hard to pin down prevalence.
The literature, depending on whereyou're looking, It says about
2 10 percent of the population.
If we look at more atypical samples,like people who frequent sadomasochist
clubs, or people who are incarcerated,that rate can jump up to about 30%.
(18:05):
But unfortunately we don't haveany good prevalence studies.
Steeeeeeeeeve (18:09):
Well, here's the test.
If you want to see if there arezoophiles around, just check to
see if there are humans around.
And wherever there are humans, therewill be a certain number of zoophiles.
And it's every walk of life.
I know a lot of female zoos.
I know a lot of male zoos.
I know trans zoos.
And they're in every occupation, inevery economic bracket, from super
(18:33):
wealthy people to the poorest peopleyou've ever met in your life, men, women.
young, old, differentlyabled, different ethnicities.
So it's, it's everywhere.
It's a whole rainbow and it seems likethere's nothing in common that you
could point to and say like, well okay,this person is more likely to be a zoo.
(18:54):
The only thing that tells youthat they're a zoo is them
telling you that they're a zoo.
But it's just a, it's like peoplewere picked at random by space aliens
and they just beamed them up with noconcern for what group they might belong
to and said, These are all the zoos.
Ashley (19:13):
The research bears this out, and this makes sense if you
think of it as an orientation.
You find LGBTQ people in every walk oflife as well, since it's not a product
of culture or upbringing, but seemsto be something inherent to a person.
(19:37):
But there's still theelephant in the room.
Is it wrong?
That's not a question I'm goingto answer on this episode.
Spoiler alert.
But we can address the reasonsmany people think it's wrong.
At the top of that list, as Aquaand Toggle can tell you, is the idea
that animals can't consent to sex.
Aqua (19:57):
To be honest, the consent debate, we're kind of done with it because we've
had 20 something years, each of us,to really think it through carefully.
and examine every position, givingthe animals the benefit of the doubt.
And there really isn't any argumentthat withstands rigorous discussion.
(20:21):
They all tend to fall backto a position of disgust.
Ashley (20:25):
The main zoophile argument is this.
Animals express consent and alack of consent, with humans
and other animals, all the time.
Here's Steeeeeeeeeve.
Steeeeeeeeeve (20:34):
If a male of the same species attempts to initiate mating
with an unwilling female, she registersher disapproval, uh, in a variety
of ways, some of which are lethal.
Say there's people who breed and tradein, you know, equine livestock, right?
So, they're, they're breeding horses,and the horses don't necessarily want to
(20:59):
breed, but the human owner of these horsessays, No, I, I, there's a profit motive
here, so this is legal, we're doing this.
So, it's not uncommon for the mare,the receptive partner there, to,
if she's not, you know, interestedin the stallion to kick him in the
head so hard that it ends his life.
So, did she consent?
No.
(21:19):
Was that ambiguous?
I'd say also no.
I mean, he's layingthere dead on the ground.
You know, he, he shot his shot.
Things didn't work out, right?
And there's a lot of stuff that leadsup to that that's incremental degrees
of like, hey man, I'm not into this.
And there's also incremental degreesof, yes, I am receptive, I am into
(21:40):
this, let's do this right now.
And, you know, I feel like that'snot an unfamiliar concept for humans.
I feel like there's a variety ofdifferent levels of communication,
verbal and non verbal, that enableus to guess with varying degrees of
accuracy whether someone is interestedin a romantic or sexual advance.
(22:03):
And I think that the degree to whichwe can't also see that happening in non
human animals, which, you know, sharea lot of our evolutionary background.
is equated directly to a lack of empathy.
So if you just, if you just can't andor won't imagine that other beings
(22:26):
also want sex and have differentways of communicating that, then I
think that it's going to be difficultfor you to understand that animals
can and do consent as they dowith members of their own species.
Aqua (22:40):
At least among the zoos that I know, consent is rule number zero.
If you're not sure that you havemutual consent before and during some
activity, it doesn't have to be sex.
It can be anything.
It doesn't happen.
That activity stops.
The zoos that I know, and myselfincluded, we, we practice cooperative
care and methods like consent testing.
(23:02):
In just mundane interactions with theanimals that we care for, that could be
trimming a dog's claws, uh, instead offorcing them through this experience that
is scary and painful if you do it wrong.
We ask permission, and the dog canwithdraw that permission at any time,
and they're never punished for it.
Ashley (23:22):
I'm a cat person, as anyone can probably tell if they stuck
around to the end of an episode,and when I read up on consent
testing, it was super familiar to me.
The idea that if you want to pet acat, you allow the animal to approach
you, let them sniff you, try one pet,stop and see if they move in for more.
These are all forms of consent thatthe cat is giving you to pet them.
(23:44):
We get consent from animals forstuff like this all the time.
Zoophiles are just arguing thatanimals can consent to more than that.
But as Toggle says, the concept ofanimal consent seems to only be reserved
for arguments against zoophilia.
Society doesn't seem to careabout it in any other arena.
Toggle (24:03):
Certainly in animal agriculture, animals are not consenting to the sexual
interactions that they have with humansin those situations, for the most part.
Or, at the very least, humansaren't interested in whether
or not they're consenting.
And your meat on your table depends onThat being a quick and efficient process
without any regard for the animal'sfeelings there, so I think this is
(24:27):
like the first time, like, when theyencounter this that anyone starts to
even think about whether or not animalsare consenting to any interaction,
and then they don't go further.
Aqua (24:37):
I think most people intuitively understand that animals are capable of
consenting to something and expressingit clearly, but consent is not a
precondition for basically any other useor interaction that we have with animals.
Ashley (24:58):
But saying bestiality is okay because animals are treated
worse in agriculture isn'ta super compelling argument.
To their credit, Aqua hada good response to this.
Aqua (25:09):
In this case, when we are talking about sex for pleasure versus sex
for business, If somebody thinks bothof those are a problem, that's fine.
What we're doing is zooming out so thatthe problem, the same problem, is now
being examined at its proper scope.
Ashley (25:27):
To distill the argument, animals consent to things all the time.
and emphatically refuseconsent all the time too.
And if your main objection to bestialityis that animals can't consent to
sex, you'd better be up in arms aboutcommercial breeding practices too.
Otherwise, you're saying that when itmakes someone money, it's fine, but when
it brings someone pleasure, it's not.
(25:49):
But bestiality is just oneelement of zoophilia, and not
all zoophiles engage in it.
Steeeeeeeeeve (25:55):
So say that you know for sure that you are only
attracted to humans of the oppositegender identity from yourself.
That doesn't mean that you aredefinitely, currently having
sex with one of those humans.
Or that you have recently.
Or I mean what if you haven'thad sex with anyone yet, right.
(26:16):
It doesn't change your orientation, itjust doesn't change who you're attracted
to, it just means that the currentcircumstances of your life don't include
that expression of your sexuality.
Ashley (26:27):
And objecting to that to that sexual orientation, that
thing about a person that theywere probably born with and can't
change, that's unproductive at best.
Alexandra Zidenberg (26:37):
I think what is really important to remember is whether
or not the actual acts themselves arelegal or illegal or moral or immoral,
where you live for within your own person.
Just Being attracted to animals,it might seem icky to us.
(26:58):
It might make us feel, um,uncomfortable, but it's not a
crime to be attracted to animals.
People are attracted toa wide variety of things.
And if we were all judged by someof the more niche things we were
interested in, that would probablybe very difficult for a lot of us.
So, again, whether or not it's legal ormoral or you consider it ethical, just
(27:22):
being attracted to animals is fine.
You might not like it, it might not beyour thing, but there's nothing legally or
really ethically wrong with an attraction.
Ashley (27:42):
That is certainly not the prevailing belief out there.
I mean, there's a reason most of theseguests are not appearing on camera.
Being out as a zoophile isa really risky proposition.
Even studying it like Dr.
Zidenberg does can be hazardous.
Alexandra Zidenberg (27:57):
I think most people who are, are somewhat public
and do paraphilia research or researchon topics that are more difficult
for the public to understand, willoccasionally get like a, a gif of a, a
woodchipper sent to them or, or picturesof firing squads or whatever it is.
Ashley (28:19):
And for zoophiles themselves, it can be rough out there.
Especially if you speak about itto the public, like Toggle does.
Toggle (28:26):
Death threats are not uncommon.
Um, suicide baiting, it'sa daily thing, actually.
I have someone who screens my emails sothat I don't have to deal with that stuff.
But on, you can't getaround it on Twitter.
Ashley (28:39):
And zoophiles frequently face doxing, where personal information
like their real names, addresses,and workplaces are revealed online.
Toggle (28:47):
So that can result in people calling your job and trying
to get you fired, or showing up atyour house, or sending you mail,
or, you know, various other socialconsequences that are extremely dire.
And that is something that you risk whenyou try to put yourself out this way.
You're suddenly visible tothe right people, but also
to all the wrong people too.
Aqua (29:08):
On the legal side, it really depends on the circumstances,
but it doesn't get better.
Wellness checks from police oranimal control officers who are there
to look for exigent circumstancesto seize animals on the property.
Ashley (29:24):
And those exigent circumstances can encompass a lot of things.
A criminologist specializing in animalsexual abuse named Jenny Edwards
appeared on an animal control podcastto explain that signs of someone
sexually abusing animals could includethe existence of butt plugs, BDSM
gear, or even a complete medical kit.
Things that people in the LGBTQ andkink communities also commonly have.
(29:49):
This is nothing new.
The law targets the communities it'smost popular to hate in order to get a
toe in the door to target everyone else.
Toggle (29:57):
We are target practice.
Funny fact about a cage, they'renever built for just one group.
So when that cage is done withthem, it will come for you.
Aqua (30:06):
Run the Jewels.
Ashley (30:09):
But I don't want to make it seem like having an attraction
to animals curses you to a lifeof isolation and death threats.
You can live a full,fulfilling life as a zoophile.
Toggle (30:19):
The perception is, and we get this a lot, no one loves you.
No one can love you.
No one will ever accept you for who youare, and You're always gonna be sad and
lonely, and there's, there's, you should,you should just kill yourself right now!
That idea that we're unlovable andunacceptable and One thing we've
(30:41):
been able to do with the podcastis really completely dispel that.
We've had people on the podcast comeout to their parents, we've had one of
their parents come onto the show and talkto us about when their son came out to
them, um, I've come out to my parents,we've had people write in talking about
(31:02):
coming out to their friends, their family,Their loved ones, like their, their
significant others, with acceptance.
It is not given that someone whois a zoosexual can't find some
kind of kindred or acceptance fromthe people that they need it from.
Ashley (31:21):
In fact, isolation is antithetical to the goals of Zooier Than Thou.
The podcast's slogan isExposure is the Solution.
Toggle (31:30):
Essentially, in the same way that coming out is so important for
gay people and their visibility andtheir own welfare, like, peace of
mind, being visible for zoophilesis how we dispel the caricature.
We do it by being in a podcastand openly talking publicly about
(31:51):
what we're doing and who we areand what we're interested in.
Zoos can do it by coming out to peoplethat they care about and suddenly
that person sees a whole personwhen they think about a zoophile.
So in theory when they see injusticebeing perpetrated, they think of you.
(32:12):
And now, other zoophiles arealso humans, that matter,
instead of just cartoon villains.
Ashley (32:20):
I'm hoping that in some small part, this episode did that for you.
Zoophilia is a sexual orientation, justlike any other, and the vast majority
of zoophiles care deeply about animals.
And they are people, just like you.
Steeeeeeeeeve (32:35):
The more that we make that effort to imagine what it's like
for other people, and imagine that theirlives are just as precious and lovely.
The more we move away from persecution andwar and mob violence and police reactions
(32:57):
to that and, you know, the really yuckystuff that fills up the news headlines.
Yeah, so if anyone's open to suggestionsout there and wants to Try making
the world a little better place.
I'd say just maybe imagine whatthings are like for other people a
little more and you'll find that maybethey're not so different than you.
Ashley (33:25):
Thanks for listening.
Big thanks to Dr.
Alexandra Zidenberg forsharing her research.
You can check out her dissertationat the link in the show notes.
And thank you to Steve for being sogenerous with his time and information.
And massive thanks to Aqua and Toggle,who actually pitched this episode to
me and gave me more resources on thetopic than I knew what to do with.
(33:46):
I really appreciate all the effort.
Again, their podcast is ZooierThan Thou, and you can find a
link to it in the show notes.
I'd say you can find it where youfound this podcast, but it's not
on some of the major platforms, thereasons for which should make sense
now that you've heard this episode.
Taboo Science is written andproduced by me, Ashley Hamer.
(34:07):
The theme song is by DannyLipka of DLC Music episode.
Music is from Epidemic Sound.
I welcome your feedback andideas about the show, whether
it's positive or negative.
You can send them in two ways.
Email me atAshley@tabooscience.show,or you can leave a voice memo at
pod line fm slash taboo science.
(34:29):
No pictures of wood Chippers,please, and thank you.
The next episode comes by Popular Demand.
Age play and diaper fetishes,known in the lingo as ABDL.
You know you've always wonderedabout the diaper thing.
Hope you tune in.
I won't tell anyone.
Sexual contact between humans and animals is as old as
time, but our attitudes aboutit are constantly changing.
You can see it in thehistory of bestiality laws.
While not all civilizations havehad laws against sex with an
animal, I mean, ancient Greeceseemed to be just fine with it.
(00:20):
The earliest recorded bestialitylaws are old, from the
Hittites, starting in 1650 BC.
They said that if a man had sex with a pigor a dog, the man would be put to death.
But if the pig is the onewho initiated, it's fine.
Those early societies seem to basetheir bestiality laws on cleanliness.
(00:45):
Even the Torah says that sexwith an animal defiles the human.
That belief continued into Christianreligions, which continued into
Christian societies, which wouldoften put both the animal and the
human to death for acts of bestiality.
In 1642 in Plymouth Colony, a 16 year oldboy was convicted of buggery with a mare,
(01:06):
two goats, five sheep, two calves, anda turkey, and the animals were killed in
front of him before the boy was hanged.
Many of our current bestiality lawsstill echo these beliefs, that sex
with an animal degrades a person.
Here in North Carolina, whereI'm based, the law still calls
(01:27):
bestiality a crime against nature.
But I'm willing to bet that you,listening right now, Don't really
object to sex with an animal becauseyou think it's bad for the human.
If you object, it's probably becauseyou think it's bad for the animal.
And that's a shift that onlystarted in the last 150 years or so.
(01:48):
And even more recently,in the last few decades.
The law has started to reflecta belief, without much evidence,
that not only is bestiality bad foranimals, but those who do it are
one step away from committing sexualviolence against their fellow humans.
Suffice it to say, society has neverbeen super comfortable with human
(02:08):
animal sex, but the reasons for thataren't as firm as you might think.
But whatever the reasons foroutlawing bestiality, it's clear
that there have always beenpeople having sex with animals.
Not just the curious farmhand or lonelyshepherd seizing on an opportunity.
In fact, there are people who havea deep, usually lifelong attraction
(02:32):
to non human animals, and often formromantic relationships with them.
It's called zoophilia, andit's really an orientation.
And today, we're going to explorehow common it is The idea of animal
consent and what life is likewith an attraction, this taboo.
(02:52):
I'm Ashley Hamer and this is TabooScience, the podcast that answers the
questions you're not allowed to ask.
(03:19):
So I started this episode talkingabout how long people have had sex
with animals, an act called bestiality.
But the first thing you needto know is that zoophilia and
bestiality are different things.
Alexandra Zidenberg (03:31):
So zoophilia refers specifically to the
attraction to non human animals.
So it literally translatesto a love of animals.
That's about the attraction,those feelings, what people like.
Bestiality describes an act.
So that is the act of receivingsexual gratification from animals.
(03:55):
Sometimes they overlap and people whoare zoophilic or who are in the zoophile
community will commit acts of bestiality,but they're not always the same thing.
So somebody might commit an act ofbestiality and not be a zoophile at all.
Ashley (04:11):
That is Dr.
Alexandra Zidenberg.
Alexandra Zidenberg (04:13):
I am an assistant professor currently at the Royal
Military College, but I will be startingat the School of Criminology at the
University of Montreal in a couple weeks.
My main area of research is inpsychology, and specifically
looking at human sexuality.
and a bit of forensic psychology,and kind of where they overlap.
(04:36):
Um, and within that domain, I do quitea bit of research on paraphilias.
Ashley (04:40):
Dr.
Zidenberg did her doctoraldissertation on zoophilia, but
it wasn't her original plan.
Her dissertation was originallyfocused on sexual offending, but when
her PhD supervisor passed away, shewas forced to promote a couple of
side projects to her main project.
Alexandra Zidenberg (04:57):
The first was looking at what veterinarians know about animal
sexual abuse, and the other was, um, abroader project that looked at zoophilia.
They were never meant to gotogether in the same document,
because they are quite different.
They really discuss differentconstructs, they use different language,
they're with different populations.
(05:17):
But after the passing of my supervisor,they kind of got mashed together
into something that made sense forme to finish my degree and get the
PhD after my name and all of that.
Ashley (05:30):
But the spark for her interest in zoophilia as a research topic came
when she was studying what veterinariansknow about animal sexual abuse, and she
kept running into different terms forpeople who were attracted to animals.
Every paper on the topic used differentterminology and different definitions.
Which makes it hard to look at zoophiliaas a coherent body of research.
Alexandra Zidenberg (05:51):
What I also saw was a lot of the time when people are looking
at sexual attraction to animals, it wouldkind of be like a yes or no checkbox.
Are you attracted to animals?
And that's fine.
You can do some statistics with that.
You can get some information, but asI read more and more, it seemed that
sexual attraction to animals was just asvaried as sexual attraction to humans.
(06:15):
So a yes or no checkbox.
Wouldn't really work for humanbeings, because our sexuality is
just a lot more complex than that.
And whether or not somebody isattracted to humans or animals,
it's pretty much the same.
So we wanted to create something thatwould capture that complexity, and that
could be used to better understand thecommunity and the people within it.
Ashley (06:38):
So, she and her team began writing their own survey questions.
They used research from other papersand feedback from other experts in
human sexuality and forensic psychologyto get the questions exactly right.
And then they sent the survey to theadmins of a large online community of
zoophiles in hopes that they'd distributeit to the members of that community.
(06:59):
And they got some notes.
Alexandra Zidenberg (07:03):
They came back with a lot of comments and a lot of wording
changes and things that could be added,which is a little bit overwhelming because
it's quite difficult to work through someof those kind of research psychometric
questions with people who are nonexperts, but it was so valuable because
(07:23):
neither me or my co author Mark Oliverhave a sexual attraction to animals.
So we didn't really know what toask or the language that would
resonate best with the community.
So getting that feedback wasreally, really invaluable.
It was fantastic and it madefor a much better survey.
Ashley (07:43):
So once they had their feedback and tweaked the survey
accordingly, they sent it out among thecommunity and got a ton of responses.
Dr.
Zidenberg credits that to the changes theywere able to make, since the questions
made sense to the people they were asking.
(08:03):
Once they got the answers,they crunched the numbers and
came up with four subscales.
Instead of one binary yes no checkboxto see if someone was attracted
to animals, they found that everymember of the community lands
on a four dimensional spectrum.
Those dimensions include zoophilia.
Alexandra Zidenberg (08:21):
That talks about a general love for animals,
a sexual attraction to animals.
Ashley (08:26):
Opportunism.
Alexandra Zidenberg (08:27):
So those are people who are not necessarily
attracted to animals, but if theopportunity to have sex with an animal
was Presented, they would take it.
Ashley (08:37):
Zoonecrophilia and zoosadism.
Alexandra Zidenberg (08:40):
So those are people who derive pleasure
from animals in pain or havingsexual contact with a dead animal.
Ashley (08:48):
And then the furry sex subscale, which looks at a person's sexual
interest in anthropomorphized animals,fursuits, and a desire for their
human partners to act like an animal.
There's some overlap between all four ofthose scales, but the important thing to
know is that But everyone's different.
The same people don't fallinto each of the same groups.
(09:10):
And while concepts like zoosadism do soundpretty shocking, the vast majority of
zoophiles hardly register on that scale.
They love and care for animals andwould never want to see them in pain.
But even zoophiliaspecifically is on a spectrum.
Aqua (09:26):
Somebody can fall anywhere on a spectrum from not zoosexual.
Ashley (09:30):
Zoosexuality is often used interchangeably with zoophilia, though
some people consider it different frombeing zooromantic, romantically but
not sexually attracted to animals.
But for our purposes, considerit the same as zoophilia.
I should also mention here thatzoophiles often refer to themselves
as zoos, and you'll hear thatterm a lot in this episode.
Aqua (09:52):
So on that line, somebody can be non zoo or they can be
exclusively zoosexual at the other end.
Most people fall somewhere in the middle.
Ashley (10:02):
That is Aqua, one of the hosts of Zooier Than Thou, a podcast for zoophiles.
They work alongside their co host Toggle,who I also spoke to for this episode.
Toggle (10:12):
I would suggest that I am an aromantic zoophile and I am
interested in both animals and humans.
I do have specific animalsthat I'm most attracted to.
Um, male dogs, both male and femalehorses, and boars, like, male pigs.
Those are the ones I'minterested in the most.
(10:34):
Oh, I also like kangaroos, Ithink they're pretty great.
Aqua (10:37):
I think I fall somewhere in the middle.
I am still interested in humanrelationships, and I, I still pursue them.
One does not replace the other.
I need both, they satisfy differentneeds, and I've learned in the past that
if you ignore one side or the other fortoo long, then That causes problems.
(10:57):
As far as the kinds of animals that I'minterested in, pretty standard issue.
Dogs, horses, I tend to lean male.
You know, I have some othersthat are less practical.
I really like cetaceans of all kinds,so that's dolphins, killer whales.
Ashley (11:13):
Toggle and Aqua are in good company.
Research suggests that dogs andhorses are the most popular animals
when zoophiles are surveyed.
I also spoke to Steeeeeeeeeve, that'sSteve with nine E's, another contributor
to Zooier Than Thou and a member of thezoophile community since the mid 90s.
Dogs also top his list.
(11:34):
I asked him what appeals tohim about non human animals.
Steeeeeeeeeve (11:44):
They have a lot going for them.
So there's, there's a simpletruth to animals where everything
is right on the surface.
And, you know, if, if we were describinghuman behavior, we might call it.
earnestness, where they're just reallyforthright about their motives and
there's no effort at deception, right?
(12:08):
Everything is right up front.
Toggle (12:10):
How a dog behaves is part of what makes them attractive.
That confidence, in particularfor me, is very important.
It's kind of like a, you know,what do you like in a guy?
I like confidence.
Aqua (12:23):
Maybe the, the way to think about this is if somebody who is not
a zoo, they're out in the world andthey see another person that is really
attractive to them for some reason.
Their appearances, their personality,and they go, oh yes, okay, I
want to get to know this person.
Much better.
Uh, now replace them with an animal.
(12:44):
It's that simple.
It doesn't really make sense to me either.
I stopped trying to make sense of it,and started trying to just work with it.
Ashley (12:59):
In studies of LGBTQ people and other sexual minorities,
most discover their attractionsa few years before puberty.
That's about the time kids hitadrenarche, which is the body's first
shot of hormones as puberty approaches.
But there are many LGBTQ people whoknew it about themselves even earlier.
And the same is true of zoophiles.
(13:20):
Many realize that they have thesefeelings for animals around 8, 9, 10
years old, but some as young as 5 or 6.
That's when Steve and Aqua discovered it.
Steeeeeeeeeve (13:31):
I'd say going back as far as when I was five years old, I
could, I could tell right away I wasemotionally interested in, in animals
and then romantically and then, youknow, as your body develops and you
become sexually active, then thatwas a natural progression for me.
Aqua (13:48):
I was very young, like five or six.
One of my siblings was takinghorseback riding lessons.
And so I, of course was alongfor the ride, even if I didn't
really want to be there.
And, you know, there were otherhorses around, there were stables,
and there wasn't really all that muchsupervision, but you also couldn't
really get into too much trouble.
(14:08):
So, that's what I basically didfor An hour and a half was just
wander around and look at horses.
And, uh, you know, eventually Isaw something that I really liked.
And that stuck with me for a long time.
It wasn't scary.
It didn't feel wrong.
It just felt private.
And it was something that I was,uh, I was pretty comfortable keeping
(14:32):
to myself for, for many years.
Ashley (14:34):
For Toggle, the discovery happened a little later, and fair warning, while
I promise to avoid explicit descriptionsin this episode, Toggle's experience does
involve sexual contact with an animal.
Toggle (14:46):
I think the discovery was very much intertwined with the
discovery of me being a furry as well.
I was drawing furries before Iknew what a furry was, but as I got
older I became curious about thedog at my grandmother's house, who
was very openly curious about me.
And one day, I let him knock meover and go at it, and I said,
(15:10):
Wow, this is actually great!
Um, and I started exploring thatand trying to understand it.
There would be points where it feltexactly right while I was experimenting
with this very very willing and veryeager dog who always wanted to play
(15:33):
around and I would I remember like wewould do it and then Afterwards, I'd have
this calm, like, this feels right, thisfeels like it's supposed to be this way.
And then, like, 24 hours later, Iwould feel really guilty, because
I was Christian, and somehow, Ididn't absorb that, like, gay was
supposed to be wrong, but I didabsorb that bestiality was wrong.
(15:57):
So I had those kind ofconflicting feelings, um, and
so I started exploring online.
I'm trying to find an outlet that way.
I actually was looking for bestiality,but I found furry art instead.
And suddenly, that worldopened up, and the two kind of
were intertwined in that way.
(16:19):
Um, so that origin story for bothkind of, uh, Wraps up and I was
like 13 when I discovered the furryfandom and also discovered that
I really really really like dogs
Ashley (16:33):
We're not going to spend too long on the intersections between
the furry fandom and zoophilia Exceptto say that intersections do exist.
Furry pornography may be designedfor people who like cartoon
animals but it also appeals topeople who like real animals.
So those two groups arebound to cross paths.
The furry community is sensitive abouthaving zoophiles within their ranks.
(16:56):
And being a furry absolutelydoes not make you a zoophile.
But zoophile furries are out there.
That brings me to my next question.
How many zoophiles exist?
What kinds of people have thisattraction toward non human animals?
And how common is it?
Here's Dr.
Zidenberg again.
Alexandra Zidenberg (17:16):
So I would say it's probably more
people than you would expect.
So some of those online forums havehundreds of thousands of people in them.
And that is not necessarily Everyone whois interested in those activities or is
sexually attracted to animals in general.
So I would say it's probably afairly good slice of the population.
(17:40):
It's really hard to pin down prevalence.
The literature, depending on whereyou're looking, It says about
2 10 percent of the population.
If we look at more atypical samples,like people who frequent sadomasochist
clubs, or people who are incarcerated,that rate can jump up to about 30%.
(18:05):
But unfortunately we don't haveany good prevalence studies.
Steeeeeeeeeve (18:09):
Well, here's the test.
If you want to see if there arezoophiles around, just check to
see if there are humans around.
And wherever there are humans, therewill be a certain number of zoophiles.
And it's every walk of life.
I know a lot of female zoos.
I know a lot of male zoos.
I know trans zoos.
And they're in every occupation, inevery economic bracket, from super
(18:33):
wealthy people to the poorest peopleyou've ever met in your life, men, women.
young, old, differentlyabled, different ethnicities.
So it's, it's everywhere.
It's a whole rainbow and it seems likethere's nothing in common that you
could point to and say like, well okay,this person is more likely to be a zoo.
(18:54):
The only thing that tells youthat they're a zoo is them
telling you that they're a zoo.
But it's just a, it's like peoplewere picked at random by space aliens
and they just beamed them up with noconcern for what group they might belong
to and said, These are all the zoos.
Ashley (19:13):
The research bears this out, and this makes sense if you
think of it as an orientation.
You find LGBTQ people in every walk oflife as well, since it's not a product
of culture or upbringing, but seemsto be something inherent to a person.
(19:37):
But there's still theelephant in the room.
Is it wrong?
That's not a question I'm goingto answer on this episode.
Spoiler alert.
But we can address the reasonsmany people think it's wrong.
At the top of that list, as Aquaand Toggle can tell you, is the idea
that animals can't consent to sex.
Aqua (19:57):
To be honest, the consent debate, we're kind of done with it because we've
had 20 something years, each of us,to really think it through carefully.
and examine every position, givingthe animals the benefit of the doubt.
And there really isn't any argumentthat withstands rigorous discussion.
(20:21):
They all tend to fall backto a position of disgust.
Ashley (20:25):
The main zoophile argument is this.
Animals express consent and alack of consent, with humans
and other animals, all the time.
Here's Steeeeeeeeeve.
Steeeeeeeeeve (20:34):
If a male of the same species attempts to initiate mating
with an unwilling female, she registersher disapproval, uh, in a variety
of ways, some of which are lethal.
Say there's people who breed and tradein, you know, equine livestock, right?
So, they're, they're breeding horses,and the horses don't necessarily want to
(20:59):
breed, but the human owner of these horsessays, No, I, I, there's a profit motive
here, so this is legal, we're doing this.
So, it's not uncommon for the mare,the receptive partner there, to,
if she's not, you know, interestedin the stallion to kick him in the
head so hard that it ends his life.
So, did she consent?
No.
(21:19):
Was that ambiguous?
I'd say also no.
I mean, he's layingthere dead on the ground.
You know, he, he shot his shot.
Things didn't work out, right?
And there's a lot of stuff that leadsup to that that's incremental degrees
of like, hey man, I'm not into this.
And there's also incremental degreesof, yes, I am receptive, I am into
(21:40):
this, let's do this right now.
And, you know, I feel like that'snot an unfamiliar concept for humans.
I feel like there's a variety ofdifferent levels of communication,
verbal and non verbal, that enableus to guess with varying degrees of
accuracy whether someone is interestedin a romantic or sexual advance.
(22:03):
And I think that the degree to whichwe can't also see that happening in non
human animals, which, you know, sharea lot of our evolutionary background.
is equated directly to a lack of empathy.
So if you just, if you just can't andor won't imagine that other beings
(22:26):
also want sex and have differentways of communicating that, then I
think that it's going to be difficultfor you to understand that animals
can and do consent as they dowith members of their own species.
Aqua (22:40):
At least among the zoos that I know, consent is rule number zero.
If you're not sure that you havemutual consent before and during some
activity, it doesn't have to be sex.
It can be anything.
It doesn't happen.
That activity stops.
The zoos that I know, and myselfincluded, we, we practice cooperative
care and methods like consent testing.
(23:02):
In just mundane interactions with theanimals that we care for, that could be
trimming a dog's claws, uh, instead offorcing them through this experience that
is scary and painful if you do it wrong.
We ask permission, and the dog canwithdraw that permission at any time,
and they're never punished for it.
Ashley (23:22):
I'm a cat person, as anyone can probably tell if they stuck
around to the end of an episode,and when I read up on consent
testing, it was super familiar to me.
The idea that if you want to pet acat, you allow the animal to approach
you, let them sniff you, try one pet,stop and see if they move in for more.
These are all forms of consent thatthe cat is giving you to pet them.
(23:44):
We get consent from animals forstuff like this all the time.
Zoophiles are just arguing thatanimals can consent to more than that.
But as Toggle says, the concept ofanimal consent seems to only be reserved
for arguments against zoophilia.
Society doesn't seem to careabout it in any other arena.
Toggle (24:03):
Certainly in animal agriculture, animals are not consenting to the sexual
interactions that they have with humansin those situations, for the most part.
Or, at the very least, humansaren't interested in whether
or not they're consenting.
And your meat on your table depends onThat being a quick and efficient process
without any regard for the animal'sfeelings there, so I think this is
(24:27):
like the first time, like, when theyencounter this that anyone starts to
even think about whether or not animalsare consenting to any interaction,
and then they don't go further.
Aqua (24:37):
I think most people intuitively understand that animals are capable of
consenting to something and expressingit clearly, but consent is not a
precondition for basically any other useor interaction that we have with animals.
Ashley (24:58):
But saying bestiality is okay because animals are treated
worse in agriculture isn'ta super compelling argument.
To their credit, Aqua hada good response to this.
Aqua (25:09):
In this case, when we are talking about sex for pleasure versus sex
for business, If somebody thinks bothof those are a problem, that's fine.
What we're doing is zooming out so thatthe problem, the same problem, is now
being examined at its proper scope.
Ashley (25:27):
To distill the argument, animals consent to things all the time.
and emphatically refuseconsent all the time too.
And if your main objection to bestialityis that animals can't consent to
sex, you'd better be up in arms aboutcommercial breeding practices too.
Otherwise, you're saying that when itmakes someone money, it's fine, but when
it brings someone pleasure, it's not.
(25:49):
But bestiality is just oneelement of zoophilia, and not
all zoophiles engage in it.
Steeeeeeeeeve (25:55):
So say that you know for sure that you are only
attracted to humans of the oppositegender identity from yourself.
That doesn't mean that you aredefinitely, currently having
sex with one of those humans.
Or that you have recently.
Or I mean what if you haven'thad sex with anyone yet, right.
(26:16):
It doesn't change your orientation, itjust doesn't change who you're attracted
to, it just means that the currentcircumstances of your life don't include
that expression of your sexuality.
Ashley (26:27):
And objecting to that to that sexual orientation, that
thing about a person that theywere probably born with and can't
change, that's unproductive at best.
Alexandra Zidenberg (26:37):
I think what is really important to remember is whether
or not the actual acts themselves arelegal or illegal or moral or immoral,
where you live for within your own person.
Just Being attracted to animals,it might seem icky to us.
(26:58):
It might make us feel, um,uncomfortable, but it's not a
crime to be attracted to animals.
People are attracted toa wide variety of things.
And if we were all judged by someof the more niche things we were
interested in, that would probablybe very difficult for a lot of us.
So, again, whether or not it's legal ormoral or you consider it ethical, just
(27:22):
being attracted to animals is fine.
You might not like it, it might not beyour thing, but there's nothing legally or
really ethically wrong with an attraction.
Ashley (27:42):
That is certainly not the prevailing belief out there.
I mean, there's a reason most of theseguests are not appearing on camera.
Being out as a zoophile isa really risky proposition.
Even studying it like Dr.
Zidenberg does can be hazardous.
Alexandra Zidenberg (27:57):
I think most people who are, are somewhat public
and do paraphilia research or researchon topics that are more difficult
for the public to understand, willoccasionally get like a, a gif of a, a
woodchipper sent to them or, or picturesof firing squads or whatever it is.
Ashley (28:19):
And for zoophiles themselves, it can be rough out there.
Especially if you speak about itto the public, like Toggle does.
Toggle (28:26):
Death threats are not uncommon.
Um, suicide baiting, it'sa daily thing, actually.
I have someone who screens my emails sothat I don't have to deal with that stuff.
But on, you can't getaround it on Twitter.
Ashley (28:39):
And zoophiles frequently face doxing, where personal information
like their real names, addresses,and workplaces are revealed online.
Toggle (28:47):
So that can result in people calling your job and trying
to get you fired, or showing up atyour house, or sending you mail,
or, you know, various other socialconsequences that are extremely dire.
And that is something that you risk whenyou try to put yourself out this way.
You're suddenly visible tothe right people, but also
to all the wrong people too.
Aqua (29:08):
On the legal side, it really depends on the circumstances,
but it doesn't get better.
Wellness checks from police oranimal control officers who are there
to look for exigent circumstancesto seize animals on the property.
Ashley (29:24):
And those exigent circumstances can encompass a lot of things.
A criminologist specializing in animalsexual abuse named Jenny Edwards
appeared on an animal control podcastto explain that signs of someone
sexually abusing animals could includethe existence of butt plugs, BDSM
gear, or even a complete medical kit.
Things that people in the LGBTQ andkink communities also commonly have.
(29:49):
This is nothing new.
The law targets the communities it'smost popular to hate in order to get a
toe in the door to target everyone else.
Toggle (29:57):
We are target practice.
Funny fact about a cage, they'renever built for just one group.
So when that cage is done withthem, it will come for you.
Aqua (30:06):
Run the Jewels.
Ashley (30:09):
But I don't want to make it seem like having an attraction
to animals curses you to a lifeof isolation and death threats.
You can live a full,fulfilling life as a zoophile.
Toggle (30:19):
The perception is, and we get this a lot, no one loves you.
No one can love you.
No one will ever accept you for who youare, and You're always gonna be sad and
lonely, and there's, there's, you should,you should just kill yourself right now!
That idea that we're unlovable andunacceptable and One thing we've
(30:41):
been able to do with the podcastis really completely dispel that.
We've had people on the podcast comeout to their parents, we've had one of
their parents come onto the show and talkto us about when their son came out to
them, um, I've come out to my parents,we've had people write in talking about
(31:02):
coming out to their friends, their family,Their loved ones, like their, their
significant others, with acceptance.
It is not given that someone whois a zoosexual can't find some
kind of kindred or acceptance fromthe people that they need it from.
Ashley (31:21):
In fact, isolation is antithetical to the goals of Zooier Than Thou.
The podcast's slogan isExposure is the Solution.
Toggle (31:30):
Essentially, in the same way that coming out is so important for
gay people and their visibility andtheir own welfare, like, peace of
mind, being visible for zoophilesis how we dispel the caricature.
We do it by being in a podcastand openly talking publicly about
(31:51):
what we're doing and who we areand what we're interested in.
Zoos can do it by coming out to peoplethat they care about and suddenly
that person sees a whole personwhen they think about a zoophile.
So in theory when they see injusticebeing perpetrated, they think of you.
(32:12):
And now, other zoophiles arealso humans, that matter,
instead of just cartoon villains.
Ashley (32:20):
I'm hoping that in some small part, this episode did that for you.
Zoophilia is a sexual orientation, justlike any other, and the vast majority
of zoophiles care deeply about animals.
And they are people, just like you.
Steeeeeeeeeve (32:35):
The more that we make that effort to imagine what it's like
for other people, and imagine that theirlives are just as precious and lovely.
The more we move away from persecution andwar and mob violence and police reactions
(32:57):
to that and, you know, the really yuckystuff that fills up the news headlines.
Yeah, so if anyone's open to suggestionsout there and wants to Try making
the world a little better place.
I'd say just maybe imagine whatthings are like for other people a
little more and you'll find that maybethey're not so different than you.
Ashley (33:25):
Thanks for listening.
Big thanks to Dr.
Alexandra Zidenberg forsharing her research.
You can check out her dissertationat the link in the show notes.
And thank you to Steve for being sogenerous with his time and information.
And massive thanks to Aqua and Toggle,who actually pitched this episode to
me and gave me more resources on thetopic than I knew what to do with.
(33:46):
I really appreciate all the effort.
Again, their podcast is ZooierThan Thou, and you can find a
link to it in the show notes.
I'd say you can find it where youfound this podcast, but it's not
on some of the major platforms, thereasons for which should make sense
now that you've heard this episode.
Taboo Science is written andproduced by me, Ashley Hamer.
(34:07):
The theme song is by DannyLipka of DLC Music episode.
Music is from Epidemic Sound.
I welcome your feedback andideas about the show, whether
it's positive or negative.
You can send them in two ways.
Email me atAshley@tabooscience.show,or you can leave a voice memo at
pod line fm slash taboo science.
(34:29):
No pictures of wood Chippers,please, and thank you.
The next episode comes by Popular Demand.
Age play and diaper fetishes,known in the lingo as ABDL.
You know you've always wonderedabout the diaper thing.
Hope you tune in.
I won't tell anyone.
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