Bestiality & Hawaii to Hawaii !

If you thought America couldn’t get any weirder at
the moment, you should probably know that the Ohio Senate has only
just got round to voting through a bill banning bestiality^[1], but it still has to go
through more lawmakers before it becomes law. 

Oh, and that  it’s one of the 10 US states where bestiality
currently isn’t illegal.

The others are:

Hawaii, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, West
Virginia and Wyoming, and the District of Columbia, according
to Michigan State University College of
Law^[2].

The seriousness of the crime also varies in the states where it
has been outlawed. Some see it as a misdemeanour, and others class
it as a felony. Some states also require the defendant to undergo
psychological assessments and counselling, for instance, or
prohibit the perpetrator from owning or living with animals.

Did you know that right now it’s entirely legal for a man, or
woman, in Texas to walk into a pet store, buy a dog, take that dog
home and then have sex with it?

The facts will make you sick

Provided he doesn’t cause the animal any pain, in the eyes of
the law, that man has done nothing wrong. You can also do it in
chilly Finland or on the beaches of Hawaii as well as in Japan and
certain parts of Australia, which also do not prohibit sexual
activities between humans and animals.

5 years ago you could do it in many more countries, including
such paragons of modern civilisation as Sweden and Denmark and more
than a handful of US States, according to the animal law centre
at Michigan State University^[3].

These facts will probably make you feel surprised, and quite
possibly angry or sick as well, but they’re true.

One point of (slight) comfort before we continue, it is totally
illegal in South Africa, and has been for centuries.

Humans having sex with animals is called bestiality, and it
isn’t nearly as rare as you might think. Estimates of prevalence
vary, but by any estimation the numbers are still substantial.
Writing in the 1940’s, famed sexual researcher Alfred
Kinsey^[4] estimated that 8%
of men and 3.6% of women had engaged in some sort of sexual act
with an animal.

However, these figures were disputed in academia due to the fact
that an unreasonably high proportion of the subjects in Kinsey’s
widely-cited study were prisoners. Also, a later study in 1974
by Morton M
Hunt ^[5]put the prevalence of men
and women having intimate relations with animals at 4.9% and 1.9%
respectively.

Risk factor for penile cancer

When researching the topic, one isn’t surprised to find that few
academic institutions have conducted serious studies on the matter,
making it difficult to find strong estimates for the prevalence
today. One recent paper which sought to find a link between sex
with animals and penile cancer has offered a little insight,
however.

The study, which took place in Brazil and was published in
the Journal of Sexual Medicine^[6], found a 34% prevalence
of bestiality amongst men, most of whom were from rural
backgrounds, as well as determining that it was a risk factor for
penile cancer.

You might also have heard the term zoophilia, and how does this
differ from bestiality? In practice, the concepts are very close
together but still different in one crucial aspect. Bestiality
refers to the actual act of engaging in sexual intercourse with an
animal, regardless of the motivation and circumstances.

Zoophilia^[7] refers more to the
bigger picture of people who have a desire to form sexual
relationships with animals. Not all zoophiles necessarily engage in
acts of bestiality, but the vast majority do, hence the two terms
often being used interchangeably.

It’s also important to remember that bestiality works both ways,
and these figures and debates relate to both people who have sex
with animals, as well as those who allow, and often encourage,
animals to have sex with them.

The most common animals involved are dogs, followed by horses.
Other farm animals such as donkeys, sheep, camels and even chickens
are also popular choices. Both male and female animals can be
involved depending on the preferences of the human regarding
penetrating, or being penetrated.

However, while zoophilia is more present in people who live or
work on farms, it is certainly far from absent in cities and towns.
A widely publicised documentary by Vice^[8], subtly
titled Animal Fuckers, focused on the sexual
exploits of two Danish citizens, both of whom lived in urban areas
and regularly engaged in sexual intercourse with animals. Outrage
in the wake of the documentary quickly turned to pressure and the
government outlawed sexual acts featuring animals in October last
year.

Hiding in plain sight

It would be naïve to suggest, though, that the problem
disappeared after the laws changed. Even in situations where
zoophilia is legal, it is still far from socially acceptable, and
so those who indulge in it are used to keeping quiet. Instead,
zoophiles tend to communicate and congregate through societies,
like the Germany-based Zoophiles Engagement für Toleranz und
Aufkl^[9]ä^[10]rung^[11], as well as dedicated
websites which offer a judgement-free space to converse.

The largest such site, BeastForum, claims over 1.2
million registered members at the time of writing as well as more
than that number again in unregistered visitors. The forum has
boards where members can share tips on getting their animals to
participate as well as post pictures and videos of their sexual
experiences with the animals.

These discussion are bracingly open and descriptive. Almost all
of the forum’s boards are updated with new posts daily and the
General topics board alone receives dozens of posts every day. The
majority of these posts are well-written, coherent and spark
spirited conversation and suggestions. This niche is not simply
reserved for rural or uneducated people, these people are bank
managers, physiotherapists and teachers, and there are lots of
them.

Even Health24’s resident expert forums have received dozens of
questions, and comments on these questions, over the years.

The size of the community, and thus the demand, has even led to
the formation of so-called “bestiality brothels”, especially in
countries where the practice has been recently outlawed.
The Daily Mail ^[12]brought the issue to
light in 2013 after a slew of such brothels were rumoured to exist
in Germany, though institutions of this nature are likely to
maintain a low profile given their illegality. Such buildings host
an array of animals, with which paying visitors can engage in
intercourse away from the eyes of the law.

Certain cultures enshrine the practice of having sex with
animals, such as those on the northern coast of Colombia. A second
documentary by Vice, entitled Asses
of the Caribbean^[13] (Warning: VERY
NSFW), documented the widespread practice of pubescent boys having
sex with donkeys. In this deeply Catholic culture, women generally
do not have sex until marriage and until that time, many young men
“practice” on donkeys believing it will improve their sexual
prowess and increase the size of their genitals. This practice is
widespread and socially accepted, with one man in particular who
continued his interspecies relationships even after getting
married.

In South Africa, there have been a number of cases of bestiality
that have caught the attention of local news. In 2013 News24
reported on the case of a Pretoria woman found guilty of having sex with two
dogs^[14]. Three years earlier,
an Mpumalanga man was shot after resisting arrest when police found
him having sex with a pig^[15]. These are just two of
many cases that have been brought before South African courts, with
many prosecutions following.

So, why is it wrong? 

Despite the not-insignificant numbers who engage in such acts,
it is still considered highly taboo in most, if not all, societies.
However, on a legal level, there have been several candid
discussions and debates about the actual legality of zoophilia. In
countries like South Africa and the UK, it has been illegal for
centuries and it is unlikely a challenge to this ruling would be
brought in front of the courts. However, in countries where there
are no laws regarding zoophilia, getting it outlawed, as many
animal rights groups are seeking to do, is a slightly more
difficult prospect.

The key debate on the subject is whether the animal finds the
experience harmful in any way, or, conversely if they actually find
it pleasurable.

Virtually all countries have laws against cruelty to animals and
most arguments for the criminalisation of zoophilia are centred
around the fact that it causes pain, both physical and mental, to
the animals and is thus clearly illegal under the aforementioned
laws.

The waters are muddied somewhat by counter-arguments from
zoophiles who posit that they don’t simply have a sexual
relationship with their animals but a romantic one and thus hurting
the animal is totally against their intentions. This is in contrast
to purely-sexual bestiality which can often involve non-consensual
sex with animals and even drugging the animals beforehand so that
they cannot resist. There is little in the way of support for the
latter, either in legal or social realms.

Some prominent activists go as far as to say that animals
actually derive sexual pleasure from the experience and that this
effectively negates any claims of animal cruelty. Again there is
little scientific evidence to support or deny this, and it is
unlikely that there will be in the foreseeable future.

Even religions vary in their tolerance of bestiality. All
branches of Christianity and Judaism, for example, completely
forbid sex between humans and animals, which goes some way to
explaining why it is so taboo in western nations. Islam,
however, has no specific prohibitions^[16] against such acts
and, in practice, Islamic countries have been lenient in punishing
those found to be engaging in them, provided the animal is not
harmed. The same goes for Hinduism, a religion that deifies a
number of animals, in 2003 a story came to light in which a girl in
rural India married a dog as part of a religious ritual. Many more
ancient religions which have since largely died out, such as Norse
and Ancient Egyptian theology featured frequent mentions of
human-animal copulation.

Not just dangerous, but deadly

Outside of the direct pain caused by sex between two mismatched
species, though, there are several other ways in which zoophilic
activities can have negative effects on the animal and the human.
For starters, there is the issue of the transmission of diseases
from one party to the other. While most illnesses are not
contagious cross-species, there are many that are, and some can be
quite dangerous.

Conditions that can be transferred from a human to an animal are
referred to as anthroponotic diseases and can often cause serious
harm as animals generally receive a much lower standard of care
than humans.

In the opposite direction, there are a number of diseases humans
can catch through sexual intercourse with animals, some of the more
dangerous include:

• Leptospirosis. This is carried by, amongst others, dogs, horses
  and sheep and can be transmitted through any contact with an
  animal’s sexual organs. The infection generally leads to meningitis
  and about 10% of cases are life-threatening.
• Echinococcosis. This is carried by cats and dogs and involves
  the transmission of parasitic worms from the faeces of the animal.
  The onset of this disease often has no symptoms and this phase can
  last for a year, complicating diagnosis. Eventually cysts will
  begin to grow in the liver, brain and lungs, as well as other
  organs. If left untreated, the disease can be fatal.
• Rabies. Present in the saliva of cats, dogs and
  horses, rabies ^[17]is probably the most
  severe disease a zoophile can catch. In unvaccinated humans the
  disease is almost always fatal if treatment is not undertaken
  swiftly.

There is also the threat of physical damage that can be caused
by intercourse with animals of vastly different size to a human.
One of the most famous cases is the so-called Enumclaw horse sex
case in which a 45 year-old man died after receiving anal sex from
a stallion. The horse’s large penis perforated the man’s colon and
he died several hours later, as reported in the Seattle Times.^[18] Video footage of
the intercourse was spread widely via the internet. As a result of
the publicity the trial received, the state of Washington outlawed
humans having sex with animals early the following year. This
happened in 2005, and the victim was an aerospace engineer for
Boeing.

Zoophilia falls under the category of paraphilias^[19], which are defined as
sexual preferences that are highly unusual. Besides zoophilia,
these include relatively tame fetishes such as an attraction to
older women, or the desire to have sex on camera, to extreme
outliers such as anthropophagolagnia which is the desire to rape
and then eat another human being. How people come to develop
paraphilias is a matter of debate, with both genetic and
environmental causes being posited.

Like all paraphilias, zoophilia is unlikely to simply die out
regardless of societal and legal opposition. (These conditions can
be treated, provided psychiatric help is sought.) Indeed, it is
quite likely that at some point in your life you will know someone
who has engaged in zoophilic activities, though you will almost
certainly not know it.

In South Africa, people who have sex with animals are,
regardless of the experience of the animal, breaking the law, but
in many other countries the picture isn’t so clear, and bestiality
could remain legal for years to come.