Bored Academics Are Justifying Zoophilia As A Valid Sexual Orientation

However, this is not a positive, in itself. Some taboos exist for a reason and produce net good for society through their social condemnation. The case made for the morality of zoophilia is based on problematic philosophical premises and is not the lofty, impressive, ethical heavyweight paper that Peter Singer has suggested.

I’m not a superstitious person, but sometimes, it feels like the universe magically conjures up discourse directly in tandem with the articles I write. Just after sharing my thoughts on why we ought to appreciate the social and moral utility of our disgust response in judging normative ethics, I was dealt with such an extraordinary testament to my point. Moral philosopher Peter Singer logged onto X last week to illustrate my point for me by sharing an article published in March under a pseudonym in the Journal of Controversial Ideas entitled “Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible.” Singer endorsed its “thought-provoking” arguments as worthy of calling for a serious and open discussion on animal ethics and sex ethics.

This stirred up a wave of backlash from passersby, some familiar and some not with Singer’s work, expressing appall at the entertainment of such an idea. Well, I’m up to the task. As a vegan (yes, some of us exist on this side of the aisle), I already accept many premises that Singer subscribes to, including the moral impermissibility of harming and exploiting animals. I find the Journal of Controversial Ideas to be an interesting and probably worthwhile endeavor to explore complicated and taboo moral questions without the fear of cancellation. 

The Zoophilia Question Based on Harm and Consent

Just because a moral argument is controversial, gross, offensive, or transgressive does not mean it is profound or logically coherent. Singer often rightly cites that not too long ago, this overly punitive, disgust-driven society led to the ostracization and punishment of homosexuals. Cleary our intuitions and disgust reflexes can lead us astray. However, that doesn’t mean we should throw the wine out with the cork.

In “Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible,” author Fira Bensto (pseudonym) claims that the case for zoophilia is “rather straightforward so that it should be the default position within many philosophical quarters.” He defines zoophilia as the human engagement in romantic and/or sexual relationships with (non­human) animals. He also describes zoophilic orientation as a valid, unproblematic sexual orientation, just like heterosexuality or bisexuality, distinguishing it from a fetish or paraphilia. His assertion is that there is nothing intrinsic (or necessary) to zoophilia, be it in its romantic or sexual aspects, that makes it wrong. While he grants some instances of zoophilia are clearly morally impermissible, this is only so because of the same kind of conditions that make other activities, including sexual activities, wrong – namely, causing harm or lacking consent.

The question the author asks is, what is the meaningful ethical difference between affectionately caressing your pet and sexually caressing your pet?

The first example used to illustrate his point is of a woman who has a loving relationship with her dog – one in which she cares for the dog’s well-being, makes sure he is fulfilled, and engages in sexual activity with the dog when it is aroused to both of their gratifications. The question the author asks is, what is the meaningful ethical difference between affectionately caressing your pet and sexually caressing your pet? There are two main objections to zoophilia the author purports to debunk – harm and consent.

The Harm Issue

The author’s point is that while there are certain acts of bestiality that would inherently inflict harm on animals, such as zoosadism or sexual acts on small animals that necessitate harming them, that does not encompass all sexual relations between humans and animals. “What critics of zoophilia need to show is that harm is a necessary feature of sex with animals,” Bensto says. He goes on, “Many sexual interactions with animals, such as that between Alice and her dog, do not seem to cause any pain, bodily damage, or psychological distress. In fact, there is sometimes positive evidence that the animal is having a pleasant experience.”

Sure, a dog may not feel psychologically harmed from sexual relations with a human. Animals lack agency and complex cognitive thought. It’s perfectly possible they don’t have any understanding of what is happening. However, what about psychological harm suffered by humans, both who engage in zoophilia and who are made aware of it? This harm is intrinsically tied to the issue of consent. It’s psychologically harmful to humans to engage in sexual activity with an animal that cannot consent, both because it is sexually degrading and lacking dignity and involves the debasement of an innocent being, similar to the wrongness of pedophilia. We will dive more into why animals can’t consent later.

Bensto challenges the notion that the moral permissibility of zoophilia is comparable to pedophilia by claiming that we oppose sexual engagement with children on the basis of future harm. That is, there is reason to believe that even if a child does not feel harmed in the moment, they will feel harmed in the future. This makes sex acts with children wrong but not so for animals since they lack the capacity for reflection. This, however, is not the primary issue, even if it does play a role in the immorality of pedophilic acts. 

Animals Cannot Consent

Even if a child did not feel harmed during the sexual encounter, nor in the future looking back at the encounter in retrospect, it would still be wrong. I have encountered victims of child molestation at the hands of members of their own family who claim it was no big deal to them and never has been. Of course, there is no way of easily accessing accurate self-reports about how that child genuinely felt at the moment and if their retrospective claims of feeling unharmed are merely a result of psychological defenses.

What, then, makes it wrong? The child’s lack of capacity to consent. Children are not developmentally sophisticated enough to understand, perceive, or contemplate sex, rendering any sexual acts inflicted on them as predatory. Likewise, neither is a dog or a severely mentally incapacitated adult. Consent requires awareness and understanding, contrary to Bensto’s belief that it only requires a nod of the head or pleasant facial expressions. Using this standard, children would be able to consent to sex, as most cases of self-reported child sex abuse occur without any resistance. It is usually precipitated by a period of grooming. 

Consent requires awareness and understanding, contrary to Bensto’s belief that it only requires a nod of the head or pleasant facial expressions.

Bensto is also too dismissive of the potential for harm, declaring the risk of harm an argument from ignorance that is premised on a particularly pessimistic view of our knowledge of the inner lives of animals and/or a sweeping precautionary principle. An argument from ignorance is an assertion that a claim is either true or false because of a lack of evidence to the contrary. This would only be an argument from ignorance in formal logic, but this is not the case in the practical sense. Humans cannot deduce the ultimate truth in the face of uncertainty – part of ethics is how to deal with uncertainty. When applied to practical matters, we have to make a decision. Do we have reason to believe this act may cause harm? “The problem with it is that assessing the well­-being of animals is far from an insuperable challenge, especially when it comes to face-to-­face interactions with animals,” Bensto writes, but then admits shortly after he believes we should treat animals with great caution because it is not easy to understand how they feel – especially when we do not know them well. This only refutes his point.

Faulty Consent Claims

Bensto says, “What critics of zoophilia need to establish is that sex with animals is always too risky for the long-­term well-­being of animals.” As Bensto previously mentioned, animals’ appearance of enthusiasm is supposedly enough for them to consent. After all, it’s not hard to assess what an animal is feeling. However, what an animal is feeling is not necessarily determinative of the ethics of the act. Plenty of animals happily march up to their slaughter, unaware of the horrors awaiting them in factory farms. Bensto states that it is an “overreaction” to infer from this maxim that having sex with animals is wrong because it’s unclear how this argument applies uniquely to sex and not to other interactions with them. Again, let’s defer to children as an example. 

Children cannot consent to sexual relationships, yet we accept that other interactions with them, even ones they have little capacity to understand, at least initially, are not immoral. It is not a violation to hug your child or change their diaper. Not all activities hold the same weight or moral significance. When it comes to gaining consent from others, the amount of consent required is proportional to the significance of the act. For example, when it comes to looking at someone, the amount of consent you need from another person is minimal, but when it comes to something more invasive and physical, such as punching someone in the face, the amount of consent required is much greater (think professional boxers vs a random attack). This claim that, because we require animals to have a certain capacity for consent to sexual acts, this must extend into far-reaching, inconsequential interactions, is unfounded.

Bensto defines consent as a “voluntary (i.e. uncoerced) verbal or behavioral indication of agreement to engage in a specific activity or the mental attitude signified by this indication.” To demonstrate that animals can consent to sex, Bensto cites that animals give signals in the form of postures, gestures, and sounds to indicate their intent and willingness to do something. There is nothing unique about sexual intercourse to Bensto that would suddenly change this paradigm.

Accepting this logic would mean you would need to accept the moral permissibility of predatory sexual relations, such as engaging in sexual relations with someone of unsound mind, like someone who is severely mentally disabled.

Let’s say they have such little awareness of what’s going on that they don’t even have the capacity to feel harmed. What’s wrong with that? Er, a lot. For one, even from a utilitarian perspective, we have reason to apply deontological rules and ethics. Following a social rule, such as “do not violate the dignity or sanctity of others,” is necessary to uphold the greatest moral good because if people didn’t follow it, it would cause net harm (revulsion, trauma, self-disgust, guilt, degradation). No one would ever accept Bensto’s characterization of consent, fortunately, because the psychological attitudes of a society are important for calculating what the moral standards for that society should be.

Animals Lack Agency

Bensto mistakes moral patients for moral agents when he questions our inability to discern what animals want and their ability to consent instead of chalking it up to our tendency to deny any agency to animals. Animals, however, lack the conditions necessary to be a moral agent. Animals do not have self-awareness or moral understanding, which is why we do not hold them morally responsible for things we find heinous when committed by humans, like rape and murder. 

Just as they lack the capacity to be held morally responsible for these unethical acts, they cannot be held to moral human standards like consent. In Bensto’s attempt to disprove one of the conditions of consent (requires the consented action does not harm the consenting individual), he states he has already established some sexual acts with animals do not harm them. This was only established by completely disregarding the human and societal component of harm and by dismissing the possibility that animals can feel violated as fallacious despite not being fallacious at all. The second condition of consent Bensto tackles is for the consenting individual to have a specific capacity or status that animals would lack. 

In opposition to this standard, Bensto points out that it’s unclear what this capacity is hinting at, suggesting such capacities may be consciousness or free will but that “the former is shared with many animals, and there is much controversy about whether humans themselves have the latter capacity.” This is a dubious “rebuttal” because no one would ever claim those are the only necessary conditions for consent over agency (the capacity to discern right from wrong). It’s convenient for Bensto to avoid addressing this point, as his entire argument falls apart on its basis. If consciousness were the only condition that needed to be met to consent, then all of us would de facto consent to any sexual act, at any age or mental state.

Animals lack the conditions necessary to be a moral agent; they do not have self-awareness or moral understanding.

The third condition of valid consent may require that the consenting individual be properly informed about the activity she is consenting to, the identity of the other participants, or its outcomes. Basically, the consent should not be based on deception or by misleading the consenting party. Bensto insists there doesn’t, at the surface, seem to be any lacking crucial information that would otherwise lead animals to refuse to engage in sex, but grants there may be aspects of the activity the animal doesn’t understand – and doesn’t have the cognitive capacities to understand. 

Bensto insists that this reality is not a problem because “information that we do not have the capacity to grasp cannot constitute a deal breaker.” Again, this means a severely cognitively disabled person cannot be violated since they can’t grasp the information, and neither do child victims. Supposedly, the primary problem with child sex abuse, according to Bensto’s logic, is that they grow into self-reflective adults. This is, of course, a foolish belief. If there is compelling reason to suspect an action would inflict harm on a sentient being, it is immoral to commit such an action (as far as is possible and practicable).

Bensto writes, “For many animals, however, there is nothing special about sex. In order to avoid anthropocentrism we should be very careful when determining what would be a deal breaker for them, and thereby whether their consent is well­-informed.” Bensto attempts to refute that zoophilia is inherently deceptive by insisting there is no reason animals need to possess the same understanding of sex as humans. What humans find sexual may not be for the animals involved. They may interpret a human’s sexual gratification merely as affection, or more graphically, interpret ingesting ejaculation, as Bensto says, as being fed. It’s amazing Bensto doesn’t hear himself. To be morally consistent, this would mean that a child who misinterprets sexual acts as lesser, less consequential forms of affection does necessarily involve deception because there’s no reason to believe they need to possess the same understanding of sex. If Bensto wants to again claim this doesn’t apply to children because of the potential for future understanding, then wiping their memory would relegate the sexual predation as morally permissible.

The final component of consent is power. Quoting Catherine A. Mackinnon in his paper, Bensto says, “For a sexual interaction to count as rape there must be ‘exploitation of inequalities,’ the latter must be ‘deployed as forms of force or coercion in the sexual setting.’” Indeed, a sexual interaction between a human and an animal inherently involves an exploitation of inequalities, namely cognition and awareness. This apparently goes over Bensto’s head, who insists it's "unclear what exploiting power inequalities means exactly" but that it "seems unlikely to be a conspicuous feature of sex with animals." 

Closing Thoughts

Bensto repeatedly fails to make a good case for any of his arguments, failing to rebut the strong ethical opposition to zoophilia. Disgust is not irrelevant to consequentialism. In the article arguing for the moral permissibility of zoophilia, the author says, “I should point out that I am not interested here in the psychological and social factors that explain our ordinary aversion toward zoophilia. Though I suspect that such factors permeate most attempts at proving that zoophilia is wrong, I leave them to social scientists and psychologists.” 

The problem is, we should be interested in psychological and social factors. These are very important aspects of determining whether something causes net good or harm. Some utilitarians act like the social fabric and psychological healthiness of a society play no role in the well-being calculation. It’s simply not true that animals can consent to sex with humans, for one. Bensto has not satisfied the rigorous standard needed to satisfy that condition. Even so, consent is not the singular issue involved with zoophilia. The psychological harm it inflicts on humans and society at large is a serious, wide-scale issue. Bensto attempts to legitimize zoophilia as a legitimate sexual orientation, but it is more similar to a predation like pedophilia than it is to a formally taboo but now socially acceptable orientation like homosexuality.

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