A TO Z OF SEX: ZOOPHILIA

Thanks to us, everyone’s seen a man

bugger a donkey and heard about what happens when you break a chicken’s neck while your dick is up its arse. But bestiality wasn’t always the remit of the laughable pervert, in previous civilizations sex with animals was by turn sacred, practical, or just good value entertainment. Our kids are raised on stories of trans-special lust--just think of The Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast or, most silly of all, Swan Lake, a story about a man in tights falling in love with some sort of trumped-up pond life--all of which seem to condone broadening our sexual horizons beyond the tedious limitations of humanity. No wonder an estimated 4.5 percent of the American population takes the message a bit too seriously. Much like the Egyptians. With lots of anthropomorphic gods, having sex with animals was one step closer to divine congress. Herodotus, the 5th Century historian, was shocked by how much ritual goat screwing went on in Egypt, writing, “a monstrous thing happened in this province, a woman having open intercourse with a he-goat.” The goat was deified in Egypt, according to Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, “because of its sexual organ; for this animal is very amorous,” so showing a goat your fanny was meant to strengthen its virility. Clearly some goats got carried away. As we learnt with the sex lives of the emperors, Romans didn’t do vanilla sex, and bestiality was just one of the repertoire of available pleasures. There were brothels named according to the type of animal they offered. The caprarii was for goats, the belluarii for dogs, and the ansenarii for birds. According to historian Gerald Carson, bears, crocodiles, leopards and giraffes were trained to copulate with women for public entertainment. Snakes were pushed into their vagina or enticed to writhe around their breasts. They would soak a woman’s pussy in the urine of female chimps, which would entice the male chimp into a lusty frenzy, with one spectacle said to have included "a hundred tiny blonde girls being raped simultaneously by a horde of baboons." These spectacles were performed at the Roman Games mostly involving young girls, who were frequently devoured or maimed in the process – a grand finale. The shows were sometimes touted as reenactments of the stories of the Gods, with a favourite being the scene in which Pasiphaie allows herself to be mounted by the white bull (she mothered the Minotaur). In most places, sex with animals went out of vogue when the Old Testament decreed death to anyone who defiles themselves with a beast. These days it is illegal on the grounds of consent. Ironically a cow has a choice about whether it wants to be touched up, but not whether it is artificially inseminated, fed other cows dead remains and slaughtered. Zoophiles – who want zoosexuality to be recognized as a genuine and legitimate sexual orientation – claim the animals clearly consent and are free to walk, swim, fly or trot away. One academic Piers Beirne decided to dedicate his time to this question by watching reels of animal pornography to assess the animals’ reactions. Fish, fowl and small critters are clearly unwilling and normally internally combust. Dogs seem to be the most excited by the human attention, and the responses of cows or horses varied between boredom and indifference, or he adds, a “calculated detachment”--which I guess is like when girls say no and mean yes. I’ll leave you with some statistics from one of the most recent studies of more than a 100 zoophiles by Andrea Beetz (2002). Dogs are the most frequently involved species. More than half enjoyed their canine several times a week and a quarter had never had sex with a human. Two specialized in sex with big cats and another two with dolphins. Most practiced masturbation of the animal (96%), followed surprisingly by mutual oral-genital contact (80%) and kissing (72%). But if anyone is worried about the dogs involved in these relationships, rest-assured, three-quarters reported a strong emotional attachment to their pet lover, and 35% are regularly involved in animal protection work. CAMERON KING