Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
It's really a bill that will protect animals, who are innocent, by the fact that
they can't consent. We have a good deal of our population wanting to protect
innocent animals from cruelty.
Our state has no
...
deterrence. Animals are stimulated to do this. This is not
something a stallion wants to be involved in.
(ibid.: 102)
Another argument, building on the lack of consent argument, was that
sex acts with animals are forms of cruelty, equivalent to inflicting physical
pain on any sentient creature. For instance, Robert Reder, regional director
of the Pacific Northwest Humane Society, argued in 2005 that 'The people
who engage in this behaviour are victimizing animals, using their power to
subject [them] . . . to this . . . harmful behaviour' (ibid.: 163). Though the
horse involved in the Pinyan-Tait case was not physically hurt, the sugges-
tion was that the other animals that might be the focus of bestial acts (e.g.
chickens or cats) could be. A third, and again related, argument was that
bestiality was akin to child abuse. To quote Roach once more: 'Like a child,
an animal cannot consent. No animal is a willing participant' (ibid.: 164).
Indeed, Roach went on to link bestiality to paedophilia: 'The studies peo-
ple have sent me', she said in 2005, 'show how abusers develop by starting
with something helpless, an animal; next is a child. These are patterns that
develop' (ibid.). In this way, Roach categorised bestiality as the thin end of
a dangerous wedge leading to the sexual exploitation of babies or toddlers.
As Brown and Rasmussen have shown, none of these arguments are very
compelling. The consent argument fails in several ways, one being that we
routinely slaughter animals for meat without their approval (so why not
use them for sexual gratification too?). The victimisation argument treats
all sexual contact with animals as emotionally or physically abusive, as if
sex was a monolithic thing. However, not only do we know that sex acts
can be beautiful and life affirming; according to our conventional concep-
tion of animals, we would also never know if they felt abused by bestialists.
Finally, there's no convincing evidence that bestialists tend to become pae-
dophiles. The logical and evidential weakness of the anti-bestiality case is
rather beside the point - we need to focus simply on its intended effects:
to outlaw bestiality and punish offenders. Roach and her supporters needed
to find reasons to justify their moral stance on, and emotional reactions to,
Pinyan's sex act, however weak these reasons were. Their aim was not simply
to discourage bestiality among its very small number of practitioners, but
more importantly RCW 16.52.205 was intended to reinforce norms about
'appropriate sexual behaviour' among the vast majority of Washingtonians.
As philosopher Peter Steeves noted in a different context,
The process of becoming an adult is a process of conforming, of learning our
concepts, our categories and our places within them
...
The body must suppress
...
'animality'. Whatever is
wild
must go.
(Steeves, 1999: 1)
