I was attracted to bestiality as a field of study in large part because I am fascinated by the immense power of taboos. In academia, we often teach and speak about topics that we casually call “taboo”: these are things that are edgy, disturbing, transgressive, or offensive, especially to the more conservative segments of our own societies. But if we can teach seminars on these subjects to eager undergraduates, then, by definition, they cannot be truly taboo: that is, unspeakable, unthinkable. Once forbidden things have lost at least some of their power, then we can take delight in examining them, parodying them, pretending that we have always found them absurd: but never before. A taboo is one of the most potent forms of daily magic, a means by which society casts a spell on itself.
The strength of the bestiality taboo shows itself through its dogged persistence throughout the millennia. The medievals had sound theological reasons for finding interspecies sex vile, while modern Westerners often use germ theory and legal language to explain their own revulsion for it. Many injunctions prohibiting other sexual practices now seem quaint or barbaric to us, but the taboo against bestiality holds firm. This is as true in academia as it is in society at large: the Animal Turn in scholarly thought has come not a moment too soon, but whatever the human-animal relationship may be, it had better be a platonic one.
This taboo is so strong that it extends even to the word “bestiality” itself: the only acceptable use of it in polite company would be in its original, now-obscure sense (“The nature or qualities of a beast; spec. lack of reason or intelligence; stupidity, brutishness,” Oxford English Dictionary bestiality (n. 1)). On the other hand, it is notable that one can use the word “cannibalism” quite freely, without cloaking it with metaphor, even though the consumption of human flesh would not seem to be any more acceptable than sexual congress with non-human animals. In addition, there are other sexual acts – I will not list them here – that are as socially objectionable as bestiality, yet do not seem to be as unmentionable. Interestingly, it seems to be unoffensive to speak the words that describe the acts that are the most abhorrent to all: rape, murder, genocide. Others may disagree (sometimes very strenuously) with the usage of “genocide” in particular contexts, but they will not usually impugn the speaker’s character for imagining or mentioning the total destruction of a discrete group of people. Quite the opposite, in fact: the use of “genocide” suggests a certain sort of intellectual or moral gravitas; the use of “bestiality” reveals only that the speaker is vulgar at best, potentially criminal at worst.
If this sexual act has so much power over us that we cannot even acknowledge its existence or speak of it without great moral and psychological distress – if we continue to preserve the taboo even when it means that we have to invent new reasons why it should exist – then I cannot imagine any phenomenon more worthy of investigation. If we are bewitched, then although we may not be able to lift the curse or even want to do so, we can still have some curiosity about how and why we have become afflicted, and what our affliction might mean. It is to my distinct advantage that, for whatever reason, I seem to be immune to enchantment, unable to feel the disgust that is so keenly experienced by others.
To be honest, I am not convinced that the revulsion toward bestiality is quite as strong as it seems to be, or that it has ever been that strong. I suspect that the taboo has continued to exist at least in part because humans are naturally zoophilic, and so must be dissuaded from such leanings.1 I know that nervous laughter is a startle reflex; I know that indignation is often the flip side of curiosity. Public gestures are not private thoughts. In the Middle Ages, as punishments for bestiality grew more draconian, fantasies about bestiality and animal sexuality seemed to grow more elaborate. They took an almost infinite number of forms: animal bride and bridegroom tales, lais and romances about handsome or brutish shapeshifters married to human women, folktales and animal epics, explicit encyclopedia entries, erotic marginalia. What people claimed to want was not what they actually seemed to want. Might we be similar?
Exhibit 1: The topic of bestiality is a prominent part of one of my undergraduate Honors seminars. We take most of a semester to lead into it gradually so that the students have the vocabulary and the intellectual framework to talk confidently about animal symbolism and the way that it works – and, in particular, the way that humans naturally use animals to express their own erotic impulses. Some students are a little nervous, but once they get there, they usually marvel at how, well, natural the concept is. Or, like, not such a big deal. Weird, sure, but lots of things are weird. Perhaps because they are still shapeshifting into their own final forms, they are willing to accept that the distinctions between humans and non-human animals are not as clear-cut, or as important, as they once thought. Tell us more, they say, eagerly.
Exhibit 2: I was at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds some years ago and gave a paper on bestiality. If anyone asked questions afterwards, I do not remember; the room seemed preternaturally silent to me, but maybe that is just a trick of memory. What I do remember is that, after the session was over, people came up to me to tell their stories in quiet voices – personal stories, stories of people they had known, books they had read, contemporary and historical references I needed to consult. Dog-eared pages, numbers scribbled on paper, hushed anecdotes. Interspecies sex, it seemed, was everywhere, and everyone knew something about it. Let me tell you more, people say, but only behind closed doors.
The stone that the builders rejected might be the cornerstone. The thing that we refuse to look upon might be exactly the thing that we need to see.
And why must they be dissuaded from zoophilia in the first place? It is an injunction that has ancient cultural and religious roots, of course, but that does not begin to answer the question. Ultimately, it seems to me, zoophilia is an inconvenient hindrance to human ambition. It is unwavering anthropocentricism that has allowed us to colonize the world so thoroughly, and we cannot now move from that position. Still, I am not sure that I am answering my own question.