Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger,
Speaker 1: and hey audience. For this episode, we just want to
Speaker 1: let you know up top that this is something that
Speaker 1: you may not want to listen to with children in
Speaker 1: the car or something like that, or you know, you
Speaker 1: may want to discern when and where you actually listened
Speaker 1: to the episode because the topic is controversial and a
Speaker 1: little touchy. That's right. If you remember back to two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, we published an episode titled the Science of Necrophilia,
Speaker 1: in which we set out to explain and demystify a
Speaker 1: taboo and disturbing practice, and I think we achieved that.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to explore the topic of
Speaker 1: zoophilia with the same goals in mind. Now that being said, again,
Speaker 1: we want to give listeners fair warning about the topic,
Speaker 1: even though we'll be tackling it with the same level
Speaker 1: of tact and a quorum that we apply to other
Speaker 1: topics of this nature exactly. So, if you just are
Speaker 1: a subscriber to our show and this is downloaded to
Speaker 1: your feet and it's auto playing, or something like that.
Speaker 1: Now is your opportunity to hit pause and wait until
Speaker 1: you're in a more comfortable situation, or or skip to
Speaker 1: the next episode if you want to. Uh So, here
Speaker 1: we go. This is the zoophilia episode of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your mind. All right, now we have disclaimers out
Speaker 1: of the way, let's jump right into it. Was just say,
Speaker 1: a clinical definition. What are we talking about when we
Speaker 1: talk about zoophilia? Okay? So, zoophilia is typically defined as recurrent,
Speaker 1: intense sexual fantasies, urges, and sexual activities with non human animals.
Speaker 1: Sometimes viewers and listeners don't like it when we use
Speaker 1: the term non human animals, but here I think it's
Speaker 1: especially appropriate. Uh. There are defined variations about this based
Speaker 1: on species. There's a lot of variations on this. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to like really like rattle everybody's heads with
Speaker 1: all the various terminology, but suffice to say there's variations
Speaker 1: based on dogs, cats, horses, pigs, birds, dolphins, lizards, and insects. Now,
Speaker 1: the word zoo file is Greek for animal lover. But
Speaker 1: today zoophilia is defined as a paraphilia. That means it's
Speaker 1: an unusual sexual activity that deviates from what is considered
Speaker 1: normal at a particular time in a particular society, and
Speaker 1: these are currently classified as psychological disorders that become basically
Speaker 1: the person's prime means of gratification. It displaces their sexual
Speaker 1: content with a consenting adult partner. This can include anything
Speaker 1: from fantasies to sexual urges to actual behaviors. But in
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen a paper was written by Ranger and
Speaker 1: feder Off, and this was in the Journal of the
Speaker 1: American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law about definitions in
Speaker 1: regards to this. And I have to admit that until
Speaker 1: we sat down in did the research for this episode,
Speaker 1: I was a little murky on the terminology myself. So
Speaker 1: zoophilia can be confusing, especially when you try to distinguish
Speaker 1: it from the term beast. Reality, it's worth reminding ourselves
Speaker 1: before we get too far into this. Humans are not
Speaker 1: the only ones who risk misreading sexual interest in other species.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of evidence we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before, whether it's chimpanzees, dogs, or horses. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the issues here, of course, is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: we find plenty of examples of sexual violence and other
Speaker 1: species as well as cases of interspecies sexual activity. But
Speaker 1: but humans are the only practitioners who truly possess rationality
Speaker 1: and consciousness in a in the human sense. Naturally, we've
Speaker 1: discussed in past episodes, you know, to what degree to
Speaker 1: other animals have consciousness? To what degree are other animals aware?
Speaker 1: And you know, you can go back and forth, and
Speaker 1: there's some tremendous research that's been done in those areas.
Speaker 1: But even in cases where there is arguably consciousness, it
Speaker 1: is a different consciousness, you know, they are just separate
Speaker 1: mind states at work here. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: we're the only species that has ethics and laws and
Speaker 1: a very you know, written down and culturally enforced manner,
Speaker 1: and we're the only ones to whom consent has a
Speaker 1: human meaning, right, And this is super important to the topic.
Speaker 1: But we're actually going to diverge here and we're gonna
Speaker 1: sort of split the topics so that we can cover
Speaker 1: this concisely today. So let's begin by using this distinction.
Speaker 1: Going forward, for the rest of the episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to refer to zoophilia as a psychological condition and a
Speaker 1: psychological condition as well discuss that does not necessarily involve
Speaker 1: contact with the animal exactly, whereas beast reality is a
Speaker 1: legal term that is used to describe the act of Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: if you look at the Diagnostic UH and Statistical Manual
Speaker 1: of Mental Disorder is probably our favorite book on the
Speaker 1: show to site UH. It includes zoophilia. It's been in
Speaker 1: there since the third edition. The current edition defines it
Speaker 1: as quote recurrent and intense sexual arousal involving animals, But
Speaker 1: it doesn't differentiate between the sex, age or type of animals,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't specify what sex acts, if any, actually
Speaker 1: occur with an animal, and what circumstances maybe, and what
Speaker 1: the purpose maybe of this zoophilia. So Ranger and Federof
Speaker 1: again I turned back to their paper. They make a
Speaker 1: really good point in that when you compare all of
Speaker 1: the studies of which we found out, there is a
Speaker 1: lot of research with this, like so much way more
Speaker 1: than there was when we did our necrophilia episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: It turns out that because none of those distinctions are
Speaker 1: made in the d s M, they aren't really made
Speaker 1: in a lot of the papers either. So the terminology
Speaker 1: that's used to compare and contrast this psychological condition as
Speaker 1: it's to find is very loose and subsequently they find
Speaker 1: it to be somewhat meaningless. Essentially that like we need
Speaker 1: to come up with a better terminology or a better categorization, right,
Speaker 1: and and that's something we'll get into as well. Somebody
Speaker 1: has done that. Yeah. I think what one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things to come out of the research here is
Speaker 1: that there is a there is a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot has been written about zoophilia, and yet there are
Speaker 1: and so many questions that still remain. There's still there's
Speaker 1: still so much room for additional research. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: most of the studies we looked at, they concentrate on
Speaker 1: the act of beast reality, and we decided, okay, ground
Speaker 1: rules for this episode. First of all, we're gonna try
Speaker 1: to just stay away from just like sensationalized stories about
Speaker 1: acts of beast reality, right, We're to focus on the
Speaker 1: zoophiliac preference for a human to be attracted to another animal. Also,
Speaker 1: there is so much conversation about legal issues surrounding zoophilia
Speaker 1: that there's no way we could possibly put it all
Speaker 1: into this episode as well, it would have to be
Speaker 1: an entire other episode. So we're leaving out legal and
Speaker 1: ethical questions out of our notes. For today's episode. We'll
Speaker 1: probably circle back around and ask some of those questions
Speaker 1: again at the end of the episode, and certainly we
Speaker 1: want to hear from you the audience what comes up
Speaker 1: for you. In fact, in our discussion module on Facebook,
Speaker 1: we've already been talking about this and some interesting points
Speaker 1: about legal and ethical issues have already been brought up.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, We've reached out just to see what
Speaker 1: kind of initial questions and initial levels of understanding of
Speaker 1: this topic might be there. And I think that's ultimately
Speaker 1: what this episode is about, an attempt to understand zoophilia
Speaker 1: to the extent that most of us can. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So now that we've got like a setup and a
Speaker 1: framework for the episode, let's let's do this. Let's get
Speaker 1: into this because there's a lot of interesting information here.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the history and myth underpinning zoophilia. So
Speaker 1: there is a long tradition of it being in mythology,
Speaker 1: and it usually we chooses animals that have characteristics that
Speaker 1: symbolize what our human ideals are, right, and if you look,
Speaker 1: there's prehistoric depictions of zoophilia that have been found in Siberia, Italy, France,
Speaker 1: and Sweden allegedly, also the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Hebrews, and
Speaker 1: Romans took part in similar activities as well. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: also evidence that during the Middle Ages, zoophilia was a
Speaker 1: tolerated practice, and this was up until the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: It became religiously and culturally shamed because of a prohibition
Speaker 1: against all nonreproductive sexual activities. So this is important when
Speaker 1: we were talking about the definition of it earlier regarding
Speaker 1: quote deviancy, right, that it entails the rest of society
Speaker 1: agreeing upon what deviancy is. And apparently at this point
Speaker 1: it was not. Uh So today, of course, there is
Speaker 1: a taboo surrounding it because not just of you know,
Speaker 1: religious reasons of nonreproductive sexual activities, but also because society
Speaker 1: has a moral concern about cruelty to animals. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's that's definitely something we're going to come back to
Speaker 1: again and again here. Now, when we mentioned mythology and zoophilia,
Speaker 1: I imagine a few examples come to everyone's mind, particularly
Speaker 1: as far as Western traditions are concerned. So the Greek
Speaker 1: god Zeus, for instance, took the form of a bull,
Speaker 1: a swan, an eagle, to seduce or kidnap or in
Speaker 1: one case, copulate with a mortal woman. I totally remember
Speaker 1: reading that as a kid, like reading about Greek myths
Speaker 1: and being like, wait a minute, like that there was
Speaker 1: like some it was like there was there was something
Speaker 1: missing from the narrative explaining how that whole thing worked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I definitely remember reading the myths as well and having
Speaker 1: having some questions about what was really going on here.
Speaker 1: Um and and certainly that you know, this is an
Speaker 1: odd case in and on itself. Just to consider a
Speaker 1: a humanoid entity such as Zeus taking the form of
Speaker 1: an animal, uh and then engaging in the sex act
Speaker 1: with a human. We again we have we have an
Speaker 1: inhuman agent, but one that's essentially humanoid in nature, in
Speaker 1: an original form, and it takes the form of a
Speaker 1: beast to pursue and only in some tellings engaged sexually
Speaker 1: with a human female. This is how you can tell
Speaker 1: that it's taboo in our society now, right, Like imagine,
Speaker 1: just try to imagine for Ragnarok. I just went and
Speaker 1: saw that this weekend. It is about similar mythologies, right,
Speaker 1: it's a different cultures mythology. But there would never in
Speaker 1: a million years be a movie where Odin turns into
Speaker 1: a bowl and goes to Earth and has sex with
Speaker 1: a human woman that would probably not get past the
Speaker 1: the sensors. Now, in other myths, it's important to know
Speaker 1: we have many varieties of this tale. So in some cases, yes,
Speaker 1: humans or humanoid entities take a page from the Zeus
Speaker 1: playbook and they masquerade as an animal, and then sometimes
Speaker 1: that masquerade results in in sex. But we also have
Speaker 1: the reversal in which an animal masquerades as a human,
Speaker 1: and in these cases, certainly the sex isn't physically human,
Speaker 1: but it kind of presents fifty of the zoophilic essence.
Speaker 1: I read. I read an article for this title, The
Speaker 1: Mythology of Masquerading Animals or Best Reality, by Windy Donager
Speaker 1: who published in the journal Social Research. In this and
Speaker 1: she makes some some I think, very interesting points that
Speaker 1: kind of help illuminate again the mythic underpinnings of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here today. So she says that animals,
Speaker 1: first of all, often stand in as surrogates in our myths,
Speaker 1: surrogate parents for a royal child, for example, a surrogan
Speaker 1: victim for a child taken into the woods to be murdered.
Speaker 1: We all remember some of the tellings of Snow White, correct,
Speaker 1: with the UH taking the child into the woods to
Speaker 1: a murder and bringing back an animal's heart instead. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this gets back to the idea of the animal
Speaker 1: being a symbol for human ethics, human culture, human beliefs. Now,
Speaker 1: there there are two complementary animal paradigms here, she says,
Speaker 1: lowly animals standing in for low social classes and regal
Speaker 1: or high animals standing in for higher human classes or
Speaker 1: even the gods. And she points out that some argue
Speaker 1: that Christianity itself borrows from the Greek tale of Zeus
Speaker 1: taking the form of a swan to impregnate Lata. The
Speaker 1: argument here is that instead we get married, and the
Speaker 1: symbol of the dove is a sort of mythological reverberation
Speaker 1: of the Greek myth. In either case, we see humans
Speaker 1: marrying above or beneath their stature. Interesting. Okay, I had
Speaker 1: not thought of it that way, but yeah, that definitely
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, And in the the whole stature question,
Speaker 1: it's going to come back again and again because I
Speaker 1: think so much in the zoo zoophilia UH conundrum has
Speaker 1: to do with what is the level of the human
Speaker 1: and what is the level of the animal that Like,
Speaker 1: So this idea is interesting because I think it's somewhat
Speaker 1: ties into present day language as well. Class is something
Speaker 1: that's very difficult to discuss even today, Like we have
Speaker 1: a hard time talking about it in I guess public company, right.
Speaker 1: Uh So it seems like in order to get around
Speaker 1: that these myths used animals as like a substitute for
Speaker 1: class affiliations. Yeah. Indeed. Now she argues that even non
Speaker 1: religious stories with human animal sexual interaction have theological ramifications.
Speaker 1: And I found this very interesting. She she points to
Speaker 1: the trope of feet betraying the status of an entity.
Speaker 1: So we've covered before. One of my favorite topics is
Speaker 1: succubiny and incubie and uh and and there are stories
Speaker 1: about how you can identify a succubus because her feet
Speaker 1: will give her away. Yeah, so she may look like
Speaker 1: a beautiful woman, but if you look at her feet,
Speaker 1: they're like duck feet. Because I believe in the witchcraft
Speaker 1: treaties that I was reading about this, the argument is
Speaker 1: that that God would never present, uh you know, a
Speaker 1: completely um unbeatable challenge that there be for the faithful
Speaker 1: if you're faithful enough to doubt it and then look
Speaker 1: at the feet, think it was a way out. And
Speaker 1: somehow over the years that's turned more into like goat
Speaker 1: hooves instead of duct feet. Yeah, there's been more more
Speaker 1: monstrous version of the feet. But I see it come
Speaker 1: up to time and time again. Uh. It even came
Speaker 1: up recently on the Netflix series Big Mouth. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're watching risque comedy about puberty, but there's
Speaker 1: a demon that shows up and its nature is given
Speaker 1: away by its feet. So, um, this is not only
Speaker 1: the case with lesser beings, but even in the higher beings.
Speaker 1: She appoints to the case in Hinduism where the feet
Speaker 1: of mortals touched the ground while higher beings float quote
Speaker 1: like a hovercraft, and then they're There are additional examples.
Speaker 1: You have the idea of feet of clay, the bruised
Speaker 1: heel of Eve Christ as quote, the hunted stag whose
Speaker 1: foot is stained with blood. You have Achilles in his
Speaker 1: heel as well, which she also points out that he
Speaker 1: was the son of a goddess with equine qualities and
Speaker 1: was raised by a centaur. So you get into this
Speaker 1: this area where where you have to ask why Why
Speaker 1: the feet? What is it about the feet that gives
Speaker 1: us some clue to the stature of an animal or
Speaker 1: or a being. Probably because they're incredibly vulnerable to write like, like,
Speaker 1: in terms of human anatomy, I think of feet as being,
Speaker 1: you know, especially before we built like steel toed boots,
Speaker 1: they're incredibly vulnerable pieces of anatomy. Well, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's a that's a huge part of it, because to
Speaker 1: to wear shoes is an act of a sort of
Speaker 1: a you know, a higher state of humanity. I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean we we have more conflicted feelings about that today. Obviously,
Speaker 1: an idea of like walking barefoot through the park has
Speaker 1: a certain appeal now that it might not have had previously. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is a way to pick up parasites or
Speaker 1: get something stuck in your foot. Uh And And likewise,
Speaker 1: we get into this area where we consider the legs
Speaker 1: of an organism, how many legs does it have? And
Speaker 1: this is often used to determine status. When we see
Speaker 1: that in Leviticus, we see that with Aristotle. Uh And
Speaker 1: the argument here is that a lot of this derives
Speaker 1: from the fact that hands define humans, and therefore, if
Speaker 1: you lack a pair of a feat that means that
Speaker 1: you probably have hands. Uh. And also our ancestors were trackers,
Speaker 1: they were hunters. This is how we identified other forms
Speaker 1: of life, tracking their movements. And this is the strategy
Speaker 1: we turned to when a strange creature must be identified. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's also the sphinx four ft two feet
Speaker 1: three feet in the riddle of the sphinx, you know
Speaker 1: the uh of being that is that has a different
Speaker 1: number of legs in the morning and uh the afternoon
Speaker 1: in the evening. And the argument here is that tales
Speaker 1: of transformation, animals turning into people, people turning into animals.
Speaker 1: It comes down to the same thing. She says, stories
Speaker 1: about animal lovers present two variants of a single truth.
Speaker 1: A human being is really an animal, but the weight
Speaker 1: of reality is placed differently in different variants, so that
Speaker 1: when the story ends and the masquerade is over, either
Speaker 1: there is a human or there is an animal. It
Speaker 1: does matter. Generally speaking, the forms are distributed as in
Speaker 1: as in the motif marriage to beast by day man
Speaker 1: by night, And of course the opposite is uh is
Speaker 1: true in some cases where the entity is a man
Speaker 1: by day and a beast by night, but it's going
Speaker 1: to be one of these two. And you and I
Speaker 1: were talking about this before we went into the studio
Speaker 1: to this is sort of both the constant struggle but
Speaker 1: also the desires sometimes to give into the feral animal
Speaker 1: nature of humanity, right, And there's so many examples in
Speaker 1: the episodes we've done of various cultures trying to attain
Speaker 1: that state, yeah, without any kind of a zoophilic or
Speaker 1: more sexual connotation as well, like animal transformations, and it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, it goes back into prehistory. So Donator argues,
Speaker 1: quote the key seems to be that the true form
Speaker 1: is the one that appears at night, an interesting assertion
Speaker 1: of the primacy of what is hidden the time of
Speaker 1: dreaming over what is apparent the time of the workaday world.
Speaker 1: So probably wondering, well, what are these myths saying? Well,
Speaker 1: she argues that on one hand, ancient people live closely
Speaker 1: with animals, so their forms and their behaviors were natural
Speaker 1: metaphors for human sexuality, and they also may have employed
Speaker 1: unconscious symbolism in identifying the animal aspects of themselves. But
Speaker 1: we're also talking about sexual trickery here, both both the
Speaker 1: with mythic animals and mythic humanoids. But this is this
Speaker 1: is really quite in keeping with not only human sexuality,
Speaker 1: but the reproductive strategies of countless species. So to what
Speaker 1: extent are we just you know, using these animals as
Speaker 1: metaphors to understand it all? And she also points out
Speaker 1: that animals sometimes mistake us for their mates, uh, often
Speaker 1: through the process of imprinting. She brings it all to
Speaker 1: it to a head, I think with this this final
Speaker 1: quote here, she says animals to have their sexual illusions,
Speaker 1: Thus they provide us with both basic data and basic
Speaker 1: metaphors with which to formulate our own sexual masquerades. For
Speaker 1: we too are subject to the magic of imprinting when,
Speaker 1: like those mocking birds, we use animals as mirrors in
Speaker 1: the construction of our own self deceptive self images. So
Speaker 1: this actually brings up something for me that is going
Speaker 1: to come up in the research later, but I want
Speaker 1: to just put a pin on it here, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: Kinsey did some research into this, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that data later, but it ties in very closely with
Speaker 1: what she's saying about early humans living closely with animals, right,
Speaker 1: and Kinsey's research touched upon that that. Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to his research, and it's been since been disputed
Speaker 1: that rural farm communities are more likely to have instances
Speaker 1: of zoophilia than like urban ones where there's less animals. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say this, I think that one of the
Speaker 1: tame comes from all this is that we can't just
Speaker 1: look at myths and religious treatments as near literal invocations
Speaker 1: of beast reality, Like can't say, well, zeus turn into
Speaker 1: a swan and copulated with a woman. Therefore, this is
Speaker 1: proof positive that that beast reality and zoophilia were were
Speaker 1: common and accepted. But at the same time, I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a there's a lot of truth in her
Speaker 1: statement about quote we about us using animals as mirrors,
Speaker 1: because I think I think it not only explains a
Speaker 1: lot about what's going on in mythic zoophilia, but it
Speaker 1: might just tie into some of the pathological aspects of
Speaker 1: the topic that we're discussing here. Yeah, yeah, I tend
Speaker 1: to agree. I think my position on this, after looking
Speaker 1: at all the research, is somewhere around that we as
Speaker 1: human beings are not very good at understanding feelings of
Speaker 1: strong emotion and and like we sometimes confuse those. But
Speaker 1: also there's lots of evidence to that this. There's no
Speaker 1: confusion going on here right as we're going to discuss.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know, let's keep going. This is
Speaker 1: a this is a weird one for us. It's hard
Speaker 1: to come down on any particular add on this, but well,
Speaker 1: I mean outside of saying outside of the law, right right, Um,
Speaker 1: And I'd say it's hard to come down on a
Speaker 1: position that that clearly explains exactly. Yeah, that's what I meant.
Speaker 1: So why don't we take a break, will visit a sponsor,
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, we're going to get
Speaker 1: into who exactly zoo files are. Alright, we're back. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to talk about ancient people's and mythological tales,
Speaker 1: but let's get into the into understanding exactly who zoo
Speaker 1: files are. Right. So, as I mentioned earlier, and actually
Speaker 1: I see this now in your note that you made
Speaker 1: the same Uh made the same comment that I just
Speaker 1: made earlier. In the nineteen fifties, Dr Alfred Kinsey, everybody
Speaker 1: remembers that movie with Liam Neeson, right, Uh, published the
Speaker 1: Kinsey Reports on the American Sexual Practice. And in that report,
Speaker 1: it claimed that eight percent of males and four percent
Speaker 1: of females had had at least one sexual experience with
Speaker 1: an animal. There was also a high are prevalence for
Speaker 1: these acts for people who worked on farms. There's according
Speaker 1: to the that research, it was up to seventeen percent. Mail. Now,
Speaker 1: Kinsey had a book that came out in nineteen and
Speaker 1: this was with Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin. It's called
Speaker 1: The Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. That also reported
Speaker 1: that fifty percent of the population of male Americans who
Speaker 1: lived on rural farms claimed to have sexual contact with
Speaker 1: other species. Subsequently, Kinsey advised clinicians to assure such men
Speaker 1: if they came to them and you know, they were
Speaker 1: having some kind of a crises about this, that this
Speaker 1: was a normal part of being raised in a rural environment.
Speaker 1: And the reasons why we're one that females were scarce
Speaker 1: into that premarital relations were strictly forbidden. This is somewhat
Speaker 1: unfortunate as we find the sort of the history of
Speaker 1: studying zoophilia move forward to present day, because it caused
Speaker 1: most people to assume that zoo files were male, woman deprived,
Speaker 1: rural and poorly educated. So it going back to our
Speaker 1: discussion of class I mean, it turns into a purely
Speaker 1: class issue, like this is a a working class, lower
Speaker 1: class conundrum. This is what essentially, this is what poor
Speaker 1: uneducated people do. Yeah. And in fact, in some of
Speaker 1: the later research that we'll talk about in here, you'll
Speaker 1: find that one of the first qualifiers that's added to
Speaker 1: any of the anonymous case studies is just so you know,
Speaker 1: this person has like a real job, like this person
Speaker 1: is a doctor, or this person is a lawyer. You know,
Speaker 1: they they feel the need to qualify it somehow like that. Now,
Speaker 1: along with zoophilia, psychologist John Money has studied paraphilia extensively,
Speaker 1: and he claims to have identified about forty variant behaviors
Speaker 1: of paraphilia. Money was actually world renowned in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and he claimed that zoophilic behavior was actually transitory
Speaker 1: when there were no other sexual outlets available to people.
Speaker 1: Uh In a n T study that found that males
Speaker 1: ranked quote sexual expressiveness as the highest motivating factor for
Speaker 1: their zoophilia and emotional involvement as the lowest, it subsequently
Speaker 1: was reversed where female zoo files reported that emotional involvement
Speaker 1: was their highest motivating factor and sexual expressiveness was their
Speaker 1: lowest motivating factor. So okay, we're already beginning to see
Speaker 1: why there needs to be categorization difference both between the
Speaker 1: gender of the humans involved but also the gender of
Speaker 1: the animals involved. Right then, in the two thousands, further
Speaker 1: research found all that stuff to be false. While there
Speaker 1: are case reports of individuals who seek treatment for this
Speaker 1: as an unusual sexual preference, many like minded people are
Speaker 1: coming together on the Internet in forums that are dedicated
Speaker 1: to zoo file communities. This is something that came up
Speaker 1: in our discussion module. People we're mentioning like there's certain
Speaker 1: areas of Reddit, I guess or like um. They had
Speaker 1: mentioned particular websites that you can go to if like
Speaker 1: this is your interest, right right, And I think I
Speaker 1: want to if anyone out there is already like god,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can keep going to this world.
Speaker 1: Right Well, bear in mind, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: some of the classifications for zoo files, and again, most
Speaker 1: of these classifications do not involve contact with the animal
Speaker 1: with or at least several of them do not. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's an important like thing for trying
Speaker 1: to understand this better too. And I saw this This
Speaker 1: is probably important to mention that, like in the literature,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of comparison to how this is
Speaker 1: studied with how pedophilia is studied. And we've actually had
Speaker 1: people right into us and say, oh, can you guys
Speaker 1: do an episode on the paraphilia of pedophilia, and we
Speaker 1: we have not done that yet. We we did get
Speaker 1: into it a little bit on the the Robot sex spot.
Speaker 1: You're right, I forgot about that, and one of the
Speaker 1: take comes in that, as I recall, was that a
Speaker 1: great deal of the research into pedophilia was based on
Speaker 1: studies of criminals, and there was this theory that was
Speaker 1: put forth that, well, what if there are two types
Speaker 1: of individuals with these inclinations, those who act upon them
Speaker 1: and those who have them under control, And it seems
Speaker 1: that you could make a similar argument for for other
Speaker 1: paraphilias as well. Yeah, this is especially interesting to me
Speaker 1: that that's a similar thing that happened in zoophilia studies
Speaker 1: at the beginning. But it's especially interesting to me because
Speaker 1: I just binged Mine Hunter on Netflix, which is obviously
Speaker 1: you have as well, and so it's about if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen it, it's about the early days of the
Speaker 1: FBI learning how to psychologically profile serial killers, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of similarities in how they studied for that
Speaker 1: and the problems with their methodology that come into these
Speaker 1: other psychological profiles for what are defined as criminal acts. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So it should also be noted that most of the
Speaker 1: published studies on zoophilia use non clinical samples for their data.
Speaker 1: That means like a lot of it is anonymous data
Speaker 1: or it's just you know, people that they're they're they're finding,
Speaker 1: for instance, on these internet sites, the claims that they're making.
Speaker 1: The studies find that the majority of self identified zoo
Speaker 1: files actually don't have sex with animals because there's no
Speaker 1: other sexual outlet, but because it is actually their sexual preference.
Speaker 1: So then you get into a complicated thing. They're right
Speaker 1: where it's it's the same thing as saying, well, if
Speaker 1: heterosexuality is your sexual preference, then why isn't that defined
Speaker 1: as a as a deviant disorder? Right? And once again
Speaker 1: it comes down to society and ethics and culture. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: reasons here include a attraction to animals out of desire
Speaker 1: and affection, but also be sexual attraction that's based on
Speaker 1: love for animals. Now, This is a really crucial study
Speaker 1: in zoophilia. Research came out in two thousand two. It's
Speaker 1: Dr Hani Miletski, and they surveyed ninety three zoo files
Speaker 1: for more information. She found the following statistics. Only twelve
Speaker 1: percent of her sample engaged in sex with animals because
Speaker 1: there were no human partners available. Okay, So that seems
Speaker 1: to automatically disqualify that that idea that Kinsey presented us,
Speaker 1: the idea of saying, a rural individual who does not
Speaker 1: have contact with human females and then there four turns
Speaker 1: to animals. Yeah, exactly seven percent said the reason why
Speaker 1: was because they were too shy to have sex with humans.
Speaker 1: So again, that is a very low percentage comparatively to
Speaker 1: sort of I think the stereotypical understanding. This number is
Speaker 1: going to blow you away. A hundred percent of the
Speaker 1: women said it was because they were sexually attracted to animals.
Speaker 1: So all of the women that she interviewed said that.
Speaker 1: Six of the women said that it was because of
Speaker 1: their love affection for the animals. Of the women also
Speaker 1: said it was because the animal itself wanted to have
Speaker 1: sex with them. Now, Letski's sample trended towards dogs and horses.
Speaker 1: And this is something I think we were finding throughout
Speaker 1: the literature, right that that those seem to be the
Speaker 1: most common. Specially dolphins come up occasionally as well. But
Speaker 1: let's be honest, how many of us have like ready
Speaker 1: access to dolphins. Yeah. One of the things we see
Speaker 1: time and time again is that it tends to concern
Speaker 1: domesticated animals, and and you and you have to realize
Speaker 1: that domesticated animals are in and of themselves a rather
Speaker 1: perverse thing, you know. I mean, it's a very human thing.
Speaker 1: It's what we've been doing for ages. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a part of human civilization. But we subjugated animals and
Speaker 1: transformed them and and use them as tools. We use
Speaker 1: them as as you know, beasts of labor. We use
Speaker 1: them as a as a as a ready food source,
Speaker 1: we use them to fulfill our desires. And and that
Speaker 1: is occasionally brought up as an argument in favor of zoophilia, saying, well, look,
Speaker 1: this is how we use animals elsewhere in our world,
Speaker 1: why not for this area as well. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: as many of the listeners know, I'm an animal person
Speaker 1: who've got two dogs and two cats, and Uh, I
Speaker 1: think about this a lot, right that like that sort
Speaker 1: of the negotiation, the deal between us is like they
Speaker 1: get to live in comfortable domesticity where they're fed and
Speaker 1: sheltered and everything, but the subsequent expectation is that they
Speaker 1: need to follow the human rules of being right. And
Speaker 1: with my my female pit bulldog that I recently acquired
Speaker 1: in the last two years, she is uh, what's referred
Speaker 1: to as a reactive dog. She's very difficult in terms
Speaker 1: of how she relates to other dogs and like territorial right, uh,
Speaker 1: And so that's been a challenge for us. We've had
Speaker 1: to do a lot of training with her. But there's
Speaker 1: a part of me inside that's like, why am I
Speaker 1: uh forced her to try to behave in a way
Speaker 1: that isn't natural for her? Oh? Yeah. We run into
Speaker 1: that all the time with our with our cat Mochi,
Speaker 1: because Mochi is an indoor cat and she's our first
Speaker 1: purely indoor cat, and so she has all of these
Speaker 1: natural inclinations to to hunt, mainly that are not met
Speaker 1: by her indoor life, and so she has to take
Speaker 1: those impulses out, usually on my feet while I'm trying
Speaker 1: to walk around the house, he'll attack me. And I
Speaker 1: feel like I can only get so mad about that
Speaker 1: because on on one hand, yes, I my feet should
Speaker 1: not be hunted for sport. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: we're the ones who took a wild creature or you know,
Speaker 1: by we, I mean humans. We took this wild creature
Speaker 1: and decided it should live inside of a of an
Speaker 1: artificial environment. Right, And so then you get to this
Speaker 1: point with zoophilia, and it's that is an extremeline to draw.
Speaker 1: That is like, well, as part of the negotiation of domesticity,
Speaker 1: we have sexual relationships. Um, so I think that that
Speaker 1: is why a lot of people, ourselves included, have a
Speaker 1: really difficult time talking about this. But hey, the show
Speaker 1: is called Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's I think
Speaker 1: we felt like we had to tackle this but also
Speaker 1: do it in you know, a mature conversational way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to to chan all the other words of
Speaker 1: of the Timothy Leary, you know, putting ourselves in that
Speaker 1: state of vulnerable open mindedness, and uh, it's it can
Speaker 1: be a very uncomfortable state of open mind. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as we all know that we're all uncomfortable together,
Speaker 1: I think we're good. Uh. Two more quotes from Honey
Speaker 1: Militzky study, and these are related. I actually, only eight
Speaker 1: percent of the males that she interviewed wanted to stop
Speaker 1: their zoo philip behavior. None of the females that she
Speaker 1: interviewed did so. Again, so a hundred percent of them
Speaker 1: said they were a hundred percent of the females she
Speaker 1: interviewed said they were sexually attracted to animals, and none
Speaker 1: of them said they wanted to stop their behavior. Seventy
Speaker 1: one of all of her subjects considered themselves to be
Speaker 1: totally well adjusted in their current lives, so the idea
Speaker 1: of the of the paraphilia being a mental disorder was
Speaker 1: sort of anathema to them. Huh. Now, I we don't
Speaker 1: have the data here for this, but I wonder how
Speaker 1: that matches up with like just the public in general.
Speaker 1: What percent of just humans consider think that they have
Speaker 1: a you know, a well adjusted life. Man. That is
Speaker 1: a really good question, and I bet it's changed with
Speaker 1: our generation. Yeah, I mean since obviously, you know, uh
Speaker 1: Madmen was basically about this. Since like the fifties, the
Speaker 1: idea of psychological dysfunction in American society has become more
Speaker 1: and more prevalent. But I feel like our generation is
Speaker 1: the first one that's really kind of comfortable just sitting
Speaker 1: in it and saying like, oh, yeah, we're screwed up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you know, to what extent are you more
Speaker 1: likely to express contentment with your life if there is
Speaker 1: this um, this, this this abnormal aspect to it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you're if you're willing to go
Speaker 1: down this particular abnormal road far enough, then of course
Speaker 1: you're going to be okay with it. You're going to
Speaker 1: wrap it into your understanding of your personal reality. I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's that's kind of an open question. I
Speaker 1: can think of arguments on either side. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess you can see that. And just
Speaker 1: like behaviors that aren't considered deviant but are just like
Speaker 1: not necessarily popular. Right. Um, So there's other studies that
Speaker 1: seem to indicate that zoo files are not suffering from
Speaker 1: significant distress or impairment as a result of their behavior.
Speaker 1: Malitsky's study said that most subjects reported being happy and
Speaker 1: that they were not interested in altering their behavior. Then,
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, Christopher Earls and Martin Lamier published
Speaker 1: a study on a fifty four year old convict. So
Speaker 1: again we're getting into this where you're you're talking with
Speaker 1: people who are already imprisoned. But this was a person
Speaker 1: who had strong sexual interest in horses. They hooked this
Speaker 1: person up to a penile pleasmo graph and they showed
Speaker 1: him nude pictures of a variety of humans in various ages,
Speaker 1: and then they also showed him slides of cats, dogs, sheep, chickens,
Speaker 1: and cows. It was only when they showed him images
Speaker 1: of horses that he responded physically. This seems to suggest
Speaker 1: that zoophilia, while extraordinarily rare, maybe a sexual orientation instead
Speaker 1: of a disorder. But this is this is I think
Speaker 1: like the huge questions surrounding all the research on this
Speaker 1: right is how do you define that? And then how
Speaker 1: do you how do you provide evidence for that? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to have to say this was definitely a
Speaker 1: stumbling point for me with this topic, like trying to
Speaker 1: think about how zoophilia works as an orientation, for instance,
Speaker 1: how would it be supported by natural selection? For instance,
Speaker 1: if you take homosexual behavior that there are numerous evolutionary
Speaker 1: mechanisms possibly involved there. But I'm I'm having a hard
Speaker 1: time seeing what what those mechanisms might be. For spiel Leah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it might be as simple as they're just
Speaker 1: being no adaptive benefits whatsoever. Uh. And again I wonder
Speaker 1: if if you could chalk it up to being just
Speaker 1: a complication of domestication in general, which again, is itself
Speaker 1: a fairly unnatural act from a biological perspective. See. I
Speaker 1: think that is a real interesting approach. And I didn't
Speaker 1: see that in any of the literature so far, but
Speaker 1: maybe it's out there. But you're right. I think the
Speaker 1: idea of domestication in general and like the things that
Speaker 1: go along with it, maybe so unnatural in and of
Speaker 1: themselves that they promote this behavior. So Earls and lump Lalomier.
Speaker 1: Sorry I'm butchering that name. I know, I am. They
Speaker 1: revisited the topic again in two thousand nine. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then this was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Speaker 1: It's another case study. This time it was about a
Speaker 1: forty seven year old man who was attracted to horses.
Speaker 1: He described his attempts with women as quote, foreign, distasteful, repulsive, mechanical, forced,
Speaker 1: and unsuccessful. Now this is the guy I was talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. He obtained a medical degree. He married a
Speaker 1: human woman and they had two children, but their sex
Speaker 1: life relied on him imagining her to be a horse,
Speaker 1: so obviously their marriage didn't last. So this is an
Speaker 1: interesting study in the sense that okay, like again, it
Speaker 1: seems to revisit the idea of orientation versus disorder. But
Speaker 1: then also the way that they slip in the differences
Speaker 1: between these two guys status is like one of them
Speaker 1: is a prisoner and the other one is a doctor
Speaker 1: who's anonymously living happily and has a family, well not
Speaker 1: happily apparently. So we see we see both the sort
Speaker 1: of the the example of that would have been expected
Speaker 1: by by the earlier model models. We had a lower class,
Speaker 1: in fact incarcerated individual with criminal tendencies to engage in this,
Speaker 1: but then also a successful, higher class individual who had
Speaker 1: who was very wrapped up in this way of thinking
Speaker 1: as well. So then along comes a familiar figure. This
Speaker 1: is a guy that we first met, at least I
Speaker 1: did in our necrophilia episode. Apparently his thing is taking
Speaker 1: paraphilias and really trying to categorize them. This is Dr A.
Speaker 1: Neil Aggrawall, and in two thousand and eleven, he published
Speaker 1: a comprehensive typology of zoophilia in the Journal of Forensic
Speaker 1: and Legal Medicine. And yet same guy he did the
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine study on necrophiles that we've previously covered.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have an entire gallery on stuff to
Speaker 1: Play your mind dot com based on his previous research
Speaker 1: of necrophiles. And I think in both cases this is
Speaker 1: super useful because it it basically breaks uh, this behavior,
Speaker 1: this admorramalavier down to a spectrum. And in doing that
Speaker 1: you can you can see the different the different levels
Speaker 1: of sort of commitment or interaction with it, and uh
Speaker 1: and and and and you you were presented with examples
Speaker 1: that in some cases are more sympathetic, like they're easier
Speaker 1: for you to wrap your head around and say, okay,
Speaker 1: well I could I could see how someone could could
Speaker 1: think like this and potentially act like this, even if
Speaker 1: this other place on the spectrum is just very difficult
Speaker 1: to wrap my mind around. Yeah, and we're going to
Speaker 1: go through his taxonomy. I guess you would call it um.
Speaker 1: I think that you out there, may you know, listen
Speaker 1: to it and go, well, wait a minute, that doesn't
Speaker 1: exactly fit everything that I am imagining here, and both
Speaker 1: of us I think as we're you know, going through
Speaker 1: it like, well, this could be refined a little bit.
Speaker 1: But he he's literally the only person of the other
Speaker 1: than the DSM to provide any kind of classification, So
Speaker 1: it seems like there should be more work done here.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's take one more break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will jump into these classifications. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, so aggrawall, as we mentioned, his claims for
Speaker 1: his classification system on zoophilia are based on scientific and
Speaker 1: clinical literature along with his own theoretical speculation. So let's
Speaker 1: get into it like he did with necrophilia. There are
Speaker 1: ten classifications. We're gonna take some pauses along the way
Speaker 1: because some of them I think have a little bit
Speaker 1: more relevance to our discussion here than others. So here
Speaker 1: we go. The first one is human animal role players.
Speaker 1: These are people who have never had sex with animals,
Speaker 1: but they are sexually aroused through wanting to have sex
Speaker 1: with humans who pretend to be animals. Um. The obvious
Speaker 1: indication here, and maybe some of you aren't familiar with,
Speaker 1: the subculture seems to include include furry fandom. But here's
Speaker 1: what's interesting. A study was done on furries by a
Speaker 1: guy named David J. Rust and he found that only
Speaker 1: two percent of furries were zoo files. Now furries, for
Speaker 1: anyone who's not familiarly, you can look up pictures of
Speaker 1: furries fairly safely. Uh. And these are just a lot
Speaker 1: of times they're just people interacting with each other in
Speaker 1: big furry fake animal costumes. You know. It's it's like
Speaker 1: like sports mascots and sense. And they have conventions that
Speaker 1: they have a convention here in Atlanta every year they do.
Speaker 1: In fact, I have an interesting story about that convention. So, uh,
Speaker 1: my previous employer, we were doing a job search and
Speaker 1: we were flying candidates in to interview for the job search,
Speaker 1: and we had set them up at the local Marriott
Speaker 1: here in town for them to spend the night and
Speaker 1: then they would come in the next morning, they do
Speaker 1: their job presentation and then go back home. Right. It
Speaker 1: was turned out to be the same day that the
Speaker 1: furry Convention was in town, and the Marriott wards where
Speaker 1: the fairy convention was held. So this candidate was like
Speaker 1: not traumatized, but like kind of like WHOA, what are
Speaker 1: going on? Like why were there all these people dressed
Speaker 1: up like stuffed animals. Now you have a more i
Speaker 1: think clinical explanation of what a fury is in the
Speaker 1: notes here. Yeah, so a furry is quote someone who
Speaker 1: has an interest in fictional anthropomorphic animal characters that have
Speaker 1: human characteristics and personalities and or mythological that goes back
Speaker 1: to what we talked about beginning, or imaginary creatures that
Speaker 1: is as human and or superhuman capabilities. Some furries are
Speaker 1: not sexually motivated at all, right, but but some definitely are. Interesting. Fact,
Speaker 1: I have many times over the past several years turned
Speaker 1: to Devian Art, the website, which is not all Devian.
Speaker 1: I don't really know about the history of the website,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot that's where artists put up
Speaker 1: their work, and I find it it's a great place
Speaker 1: to get in touch with an artist, find a particular
Speaker 1: image and say, hey, we'd love to use this image
Speaker 1: on our episode. Yeah, there's a lot of really cool
Speaker 1: art on there. It's I guess like the best way
Speaker 1: to describe d V and art if you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with it, is it's like the Facebook for artists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's like a social media platform that lets you
Speaker 1: share a network and you see, you see a great
Speaker 1: deal of ariet I mean they're they're professional artists that
Speaker 1: have Deviant Art pages, and there are you know, very
Speaker 1: amateur pages, and then you have I have a deviant
Speaker 1: Art account just so I can contact people, even though
Speaker 1: I do not create visual art myself. That but its
Speaker 1: been anyway. It ties into a zippilia and more importantly,
Speaker 1: I think into fury culture, because you do see a
Speaker 1: lot of furry uh related art on that website, and
Speaker 1: some of it's very innocent and some of it is
Speaker 1: is more r rated. Yeah. I have to be honest that, like,
Speaker 1: of all of the sort of subcultural fandoms, I have
Speaker 1: the hardest time understanding furry culture. Um I I think
Speaker 1: most listeners of the show note like, I really try
Speaker 1: to be open minded about most things and flexible in
Speaker 1: my beliefs, but that's one that's been tough for me
Speaker 1: to wrap my head around. And the very first time
Speaker 1: I encountered it was actually um a story about the
Speaker 1: work environment, and it was back when I was doing
Speaker 1: graphic design. Another graphic designer I knew worked at this
Speaker 1: company where her coworker was apparently spending all of this
Speaker 1: time in Adobe illustrator drawing uh, anthropomorphic donkeys and like
Speaker 1: horse people having sexual relations with cat people, and it
Speaker 1: was super confusing for them at the time. I don't
Speaker 1: even think people defined furry as like as as a
Speaker 1: subculture at that point. This is like very early two
Speaker 1: thousand's and that was my first experience with it. I
Speaker 1: was just like, this person's artwork is amazing, Like they were,
Speaker 1: they were very good at what they did, but I
Speaker 1: just couldn't quite wrap my head around it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the important thing to drive them home about
Speaker 1: about furries especially is that it is it's something that
Speaker 1: takes place between adults, adult humans, adult consenting humans, and
Speaker 1: it may not have a sexual dimension to it at all. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then likewise, outside of furries, there are there are
Speaker 1: other areas of of animal role play that that have,
Speaker 1: you know, erotic dimensions to them that don't involve furry costumes,
Speaker 1: people pretending to be ponies, people were pretending to be dogs,
Speaker 1: Andrew Lloyd Webber's cats. Look, let's be honest, like, there's
Speaker 1: plenty there's plenty of people out there who like fell
Speaker 1: in love with Mr Musta Files or whatever, right or
Speaker 1: or I think for a lot of us. We grew
Speaker 1: up with superhero films. We watched what Batman? What was
Speaker 1: the second Batman? Uh, the one that had the Catwoman
Speaker 1: with the stitches. Yes, we saw Batman returns. And how
Speaker 1: are you supposed to feel about this? Uh? This this
Speaker 1: sex figure, this sex icon presented to you dressed and
Speaker 1: kind of behaving like a cat. Totally fun fact that
Speaker 1: I just learned. Apparently when they shot that film, Michelle
Speaker 1: Peiffer really put a live burden her mouth. What yeah, crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a fun aside to shake things up here. Okay,
Speaker 1: But before we move off of animal role play, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to drive home again too that there is
Speaker 1: an entire realm of animal role play that is non
Speaker 1: sexual and is as old as human culture. Like just
Speaker 1: the idea of engaging in a ritual where you become
Speaker 1: an animal or you summon animistic forces. I mean you
Speaker 1: find that in in in cultures around the world throughout history.
Speaker 1: So I feel like this is a great starting place
Speaker 1: for understanding these inclinations because I feel like this is
Speaker 1: this is the realm that is that is closest to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess the quote unquote normal perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think what you said earlier to about consent
Speaker 1: is what's really important with this particular identification to write
Speaker 1: is that you know whether or not, like I can
Speaker 1: wrap my head around it. I'm perfectly fine with two
Speaker 1: consenting adults dressing up in these costumes and doing whatever
Speaker 1: they want to do, because hey, that's their life, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that humans do that honestly, I would rather watch it
Speaker 1: take place with animal costumes. Like what if we can
Speaker 1: have all of our political debates take place, that would
Speaker 1: be Yeah, I would enjoy you know what we just
Speaker 1: voted here yesterday in the state of Georgia. It would
Speaker 1: have been a lot nicer if people were wearing uh,
Speaker 1: animal outfits. Yeah, Okay, let we we spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time on that first definition. Let's get to the
Speaker 1: second one. You want to take that, sure, this would
Speaker 1: be the romantic zoo files, those who who keep animals
Speaker 1: as pets as a way to get psycho sexually stimulated
Speaker 1: without actually having any kind of sexual contact with them.
Speaker 1: This is what This is an area that seems to
Speaker 1: me to fall under that area of like like impulse,
Speaker 1: but no action like someone who's who is able to
Speaker 1: to keep impulses under control, which would otherwise shoot them
Speaker 1: into another category here. Then the third category is zoophilic
Speaker 1: fantasize ers. These are people who fantasize about having sexual
Speaker 1: intercourse with animals but never actually do so. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is this is even more so so in a
Speaker 1: way Number two the romantic zoo files that I get
Speaker 1: a sense that this is this might be something that's
Speaker 1: almost subconscious, you know. But but with number three, with
Speaker 1: zoophilic fantasizers, the fantasy is more overt. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then number four we have hactile zoo files of
Speaker 1: those who get sexual excitement from touching, stroking, or fondling
Speaker 1: the animals or their genitals, but do not actually have
Speaker 1: sexual intercourse with animals. Okay, the best thing I can
Speaker 1: come up with this this is a scene from a
Speaker 1: bad movie. This is the only thing that comes to
Speaker 1: mind with this. Uh, both Man Hunter and Red Dragon.
Speaker 1: There's the scene where the um the blind woman is
Speaker 1: led by France's Dollar Hide to like a zoo or
Speaker 1: something like that, and they have a tiger under anesthesia
Speaker 1: and she starts stroking the tiger, and it's in this
Speaker 1: weird kind of sexual way that is implied to be
Speaker 1: sexual towards dollar hide. That's like the closest thing I
Speaker 1: am coming to with any kind of sort of example this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I only vaguely remember that scene from the movie. Maybe
Speaker 1: I just kind of you might have hacked it out honestly. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: they did it again in the Hannibal TV show too well. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: number five are fetishistic zoo files, those who keep various
Speaker 1: animal parts, especially for that are used as erotic stimuli
Speaker 1: as a crucial part of their sexual activity. Now that
Speaker 1: this is essentially for fetishism, though, right, I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's and that's not that different from weather fetishism, and
Speaker 1: in in and in and and therefore is not really
Speaker 1: that far I think out of the uh the understanding
Speaker 1: of most most humans. I guess um, the terminology various
Speaker 1: animal parts makes me think though, even though he says,
Speaker 1: especially for that, you've also got like I don't know,
Speaker 1: feet and stuff like that in a freezer or something. Well, um,
Speaker 1: this is another area where it comes down to like
Speaker 1: my use of image databases, so I use Getty images
Speaker 1: a lot for for work, finding images for our our
Speaker 1: podcast episodes and other bits of content, and you run
Speaker 1: across a lot of artsy shots of of of men
Speaker 1: and women, and of course, yeah, you see people with fur,
Speaker 1: you see people with whether. You also see quite a
Speaker 1: few images of people posing with antlers, especially women posing
Speaker 1: with antlers, so like that would count. That's that's definitely
Speaker 1: part of an animal's body. Uh, you know, a detachable part.
Speaker 1: But okay, all right, what's the next one? All right,
Speaker 1: this is where we get into darker territory. For sure,
Speaker 1: this is a sadistic be steels those who derive sexual
Speaker 1: arousal from torturing animals. They're also this is known as
Speaker 1: a zoos sadism, but it does it does not involve
Speaker 1: sexual intercourse with the animals, right, And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of distinction in the literature again with the terminology zoos
Speaker 1: Sadism is brought up a lot by self professed zoos
Speaker 1: sexuals or zoo files and they say, I am not that, Like,
Speaker 1: I want to make it clear, I do not believe
Speaker 1: myself to be hurting these animals, but there are people
Speaker 1: and I think this is the one that like would
Speaker 1: really solidly fall under the disorder right area, Uh, then
Speaker 1: we've got opportunistic zoo sexuals. There was a similar one
Speaker 1: of these for for necrophiles as well. These are the
Speaker 1: people who have normal sexual encounters but would have sexual
Speaker 1: intercourse with animals if the opportunity arose. All right, so
Speaker 1: so far we haven't had anywhere the there's actual intercourse
Speaker 1: with animals, Like it's just sort of what we're seeing
Speaker 1: the spectrum intensify until we get there. That's the last three.
Speaker 1: I guess. Okay, yeah, this is where with number eight,
Speaker 1: this is where we get to regular zoo sexuals, those
Speaker 1: who perfer sex with animals to sex with humans but
Speaker 1: are capable of having sex with both, such as zoo files,
Speaker 1: will engage in a wide variety of sexual activity with
Speaker 1: animals and love animals on an emotional level. So I
Speaker 1: guess you could say like that the example that I
Speaker 1: listed earlier of the anonymous doctor who loved horses but
Speaker 1: also had a family, he would be a regular zoo sexual.
Speaker 1: Then this is this is super dark. I'm even uncomfortable
Speaker 1: reading this, but we've got to do it. Homicidal beastials.
Speaker 1: These are people who need to kill animals in order
Speaker 1: to have sex with them. So this is like a
Speaker 1: combination of zoophilia and necrophilia. Uh. And although they are
Speaker 1: capable of having sex with living animals, they have an
Speaker 1: insatiable desire to have sex with dead animals. I don't
Speaker 1: know what to add to that. It's just upsetting. And
Speaker 1: then number ten again I need a reminder, right Like,
Speaker 1: the spectrum here has to do with with with contact
Speaker 1: like from just like very marginally um zoophilic to just
Speaker 1: zoo feel like, so number ten is exclusive zoo sexuals,
Speaker 1: those who only have sex with animals to the exclusion
Speaker 1: of human sexual partners and from from some of the data,
Speaker 1: especially that survey that was conducted by Militzky, it seems
Speaker 1: like there are quite a few people like that fall
Speaker 1: into that category. Now by quite a few, I mean
Speaker 1: like when you interview the bad odd spectrum of zoo files,
Speaker 1: within that there are a number of them. Okay, now
Speaker 1: that we've gotten the really dark stuff out of the way.
Speaker 1: Some studies have actually called zoophilia a risk factor for
Speaker 1: future harm to humans. You would you would think that,
Speaker 1: especially again, like based on mind Hunter and Serial Killers, right, like,
Speaker 1: one of the predictors is harming animals when you're younger. Um,
Speaker 1: But there's a paper that refutes that and advocates actually
Speaker 1: for better diagnostic criteria. This is again Ranger and feder Off.
Speaker 1: They discard zoophilia as a potential risk factor for future
Speaker 1: violence against humans because of how disparate the various definitions are.
Speaker 1: So if we look back at at agra walls, you know,
Speaker 1: out of the ten classifications, only one, two, two of
Speaker 1: them were outright sadistic and homicidal. And then you get
Speaker 1: into the consent issues with a couple of the other ones. Right,
Speaker 1: So they say, the other problem here is that these
Speaker 1: arguments don't use peer review evidence. Uh, and that the studies,
Speaker 1: because they're difficult to conduct, lack control groups, and most
Speaker 1: of them are correlational. So they use Kinsey's report Actually
Speaker 1: that whole example of forty of males from farm communities
Speaker 1: having sex with an animal at least once. They say,
Speaker 1: this is an example of that, right, like we this
Speaker 1: isn't peer reviewed, there isn't a control group, it's pretty correlational.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence to support that a large proportion of
Speaker 1: sex offenders come from farm communities, you know. Um. New
Speaker 1: York Magazine ran an interview by Alexa Sulis ray well,
Speaker 1: a few years back with an unnamed zoo file uh
Speaker 1: titled what It's Like to Data horse Um. I touched
Speaker 1: on a lot it. It touches on a lot of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here, but I don't think it's
Speaker 1: necessarily content that we we want to discuss on the show.
Speaker 1: But I'll make sure that we've link to it on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode. Is stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind for anyone who wants to essentially read a
Speaker 1: self identifying zoo files account. Yeah. Again, like we're trying
Speaker 1: to in the format of this episode stay away from
Speaker 1: specific examples of beast reality. But I will say that
Speaker 1: the article, though it presents about his sympathetic example of
Speaker 1: of sexual zoo zoophilia as you can find, and yet
Speaker 1: I still have severe problems with it. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes down to what criminologists and
Speaker 1: sociologists uh. Piers Burnet points out in the nine paper.
Speaker 1: He makes three points. One human animal sexual relations almost
Speaker 1: always involve coercion. That is a really good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the coercion versus persuasion, right, I mean, you know, coercion
Speaker 1: is is kind of that's part and partial to so
Speaker 1: much our interactions with the mesticated animals. Number two, He
Speaker 1: points out such practices can often cause animals pain or
Speaker 1: even death. Uh, and certainly more so in some of
Speaker 1: these classifications that we looked at on the list, and
Speaker 1: the other way around too should And then number three,
Speaker 1: and this one I think is a real sticking point
Speaker 1: is animals are unable either to communicate consent to us
Speaker 1: in a form that we can readily understand, or to
Speaker 1: speak about their abuse. Yeah, so that number three is
Speaker 1: a big one. We we simply exist in different mind states,
Speaker 1: drastically different in some cases. And I feel like in
Speaker 1: order to justify it, to justify the act, you have
Speaker 1: to essentially see the animals having a human mind state
Speaker 1: or convince yourself that you're thinking and acting via the
Speaker 1: appropriate animal mind state. And the former is impossible. In
Speaker 1: the later, I mean, it really seems to be an
Speaker 1: impossible exercise as well. I mean, you can talk about
Speaker 1: putting yourself in the mind state of a of an animal,
Speaker 1: but I'm unconvinced you can you can do so in
Speaker 1: a way that would would satisfy Uh. This this third
Speaker 1: charge from Burnet, by the way, in uh in registering
Speaker 1: our concerns about consent, here Uh, we're exhibiting what is
Speaker 1: a tree And in the cultural treatment of zoophilia, so
Speaker 1: past condemnations tended to center around what it did to
Speaker 1: the status of the human being. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: lowering yourself to this act. Uh, whereas we see an
Speaker 1: increasing um uh amount of stress put on the animal itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we're concerned with the welfare the animal, the
Speaker 1: suffer the animal, the suffering the animal, the lack of
Speaker 1: consent for the animal. Uh. So if I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting to look at that, like, like how the cultural
Speaker 1: attitude towards this has changed, and or at least how
Speaker 1: the the cultural objection to it has changed. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is a huge shift in consciousness and understanding of our
Speaker 1: relationship with animals. I think, Wow, like maybe more than
Speaker 1: anything with zoophilia, just the historical trajectory that you're outlining,
Speaker 1: there is something that's kind of interesting, like what what
Speaker 1: is it about our present industrial state that's brought us
Speaker 1: to the point where we do care more about the
Speaker 1: will Now it's fascinating. So let's talk briefly before we
Speaker 1: wrap up here about the future of zoophilia. This is
Speaker 1: where you know, we'll we'll discuss some of the things
Speaker 1: that were out sort of outside of the format for
Speaker 1: our discussion in this episode. So many zoo files believe
Speaker 1: in the future their sexual preference will be seen as
Speaker 1: a preference and not as a deviancy. Some individuals declare
Speaker 1: that their sexual attraction to animals is an orientation, and
Speaker 1: those are the ones that call themselves zoo sexuals instead
Speaker 1: of zoo files. Some also want to distinguish themselves, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, from zoos sadists. They want to make
Speaker 1: it clear that they don't see their behavior as uh,
Speaker 1: taking any pleasure and harming animals. What about ethics here?
Speaker 1: There's so many questions here were purposely in this episode
Speaker 1: staying away from the legalities, but it's worth remembering as
Speaker 1: as Robert outlined, these animals can't give consent, ranger and
Speaker 1: federal off. In their paper, they argue that of the
Speaker 1: future research on zoophilia studies can't always use forensic or
Speaker 1: prison inmates as sampling of men that are arrested for
Speaker 1: crimes other than beast reality. We can't make generalized conclusions
Speaker 1: based on this data. Uh Now, I'm imagining like a
Speaker 1: spinoff of mind Hunter that's like a whole another group
Speaker 1: of people that are trying to figure out the particularities
Speaker 1: of studying this phenomena. Now, Jesse Bearing had a really
Speaker 1: good right up on this topic in Scientific American in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, and he points out that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of unanswered questions about zoophilia, even if we
Speaker 1: are to accept the idea of it being an orientation
Speaker 1: and not a disorder. So I will propose these here
Speaker 1: for all of us to think about. Okay, First, what
Speaker 1: makes some domestic species such as horses and dogs more
Speaker 1: common erotic targets for zoo files than others? Second? Do
Speaker 1: zoo files find particular members of their preferred species is
Speaker 1: to be more attractive than other individuals from that species?
Speaker 1: And how are their beauty cues such as facial symmetry? Like,
Speaker 1: what's going on there? What percentage of homosexual zoo files
Speaker 1: are there over heterosexual zoo files? So again, like if
Speaker 1: you go back to the D s M, it has
Speaker 1: no classification based on the sex or gender of either
Speaker 1: the humans or the animals. Another question, how do zoo
Speaker 1: files differentiate between a consenting animal partner and one who isn't.
Speaker 1: Now that again obviously seems to be a line of
Speaker 1: legal boundaries, right, and then an important question too, why
Speaker 1: are men more likely to be zoo files than women?
Speaker 1: We know that at least from the research it's available
Speaker 1: to us, as flawed as it is, it seems like
Speaker 1: men are more likely to So what's going on there?
Speaker 1: All right? So we have a number of questions that
Speaker 1: still remain open, questions about just the nature zoophilia moving forward,
Speaker 1: and in you know, we also run into some of
Speaker 1: the same complications we've we've we discussed on our sex
Speaker 1: spots episode. When you consider, all right, well, we're getting
Speaker 1: increasingly into an age where robotic uh similacrums are possible.
Speaker 1: Virtual environments are more and more of an option, and
Speaker 1: you do see a fair amount of I mean, how
Speaker 1: many how many examples are there out right out there
Speaker 1: right now of people taking the form of an animal
Speaker 1: or uh an animal human hybrid in a virtual scenario?
Speaker 1: Oh totally? Like first example, I think of okay, Skyrim,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they have cat people in those yeah, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, if I've got the option to be
Speaker 1: like a cool cat person with claws and stuff, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna choose that person. Why do I want to role
Speaker 1: play as a human being. I am a human being, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, obviously there's lots of avenues available. So as
Speaker 1: we as we move forward in the future, people with
Speaker 1: an inclination for the like a virtual or even perhaps
Speaker 1: robot assisted version and of zoophilia, how are we supposed
Speaker 1: to feel about that because and certainly in the case
Speaker 1: of of of pedophilia, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: concern that well if you if you allow people an
Speaker 1: unreal avenue to explore these feelings, then you were embolding
Speaker 1: them towards a real life crimes um in in you know,
Speaker 1: a real life physical manifestation of their desires. So is
Speaker 1: it is there a similar case with zoophilia? So I
Speaker 1: hope that we have presented this to you in a
Speaker 1: respectful manner. Obviously it was uncomfortable for us. I imagine
Speaker 1: the listening experience. Maybe it was a little more uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for you than some of our usual episodes. It was,
Speaker 1: it was more uncomfortable for us as well. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I hope that we were able to communicate
Speaker 1: this and that you know, it served the mission of
Speaker 1: our show and that we were bringing out different ideas
Speaker 1: and discussion of these topics. So if you're interested in
Speaker 1: more of this, let us know. Like I said, we
Speaker 1: we talked a lot of about our necrophilia episode here.
Speaker 1: You can find that on stuff to blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. And also, I had previously made a gallery
Speaker 1: outlining AGRA walls necrophilia categorization. I don't think I'm going
Speaker 1: to do that with zoophilia here, but that you can
Speaker 1: find that unstuff to blow your Mind dot com as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and hey, if you want to reach out to us,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, most of the people reach out
Speaker 1: to us, they reach out is with the understanding that
Speaker 1: we may use what they say on a future listener mail, uh, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But if you have something you want to share with us,
Speaker 1: or just your feelings about the topic and you don't
Speaker 1: want us to share it with people, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: feel free to do so and just mention that in
Speaker 1: the email. Though. Of course, we're we're not mental health
Speaker 1: professionals and we are not priest, so just bear that
Speaker 1: in mind when need share content with us. And the
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