Talk:Zoophilia/Archive 14

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Unprotected

I unprotected the article, it has been protected way too long now and with the enacted temporary injunction there shouldn't be too much trouble with the article. --Conti|✉ 19:52, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Finally. Zetawoof 21:39, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Where does it belong

Dr Zen asked about animal behaviour. It made me realise an important angle is missing... there is a whole field dedicated specifically to studying and learning to interpret animal body language and behaviour "in their own world". It's called Ethology, and it should be mentioned in this article because as Dr Zen rightly says there is nowhere a mention of animal studies which would support or deny claims by zoophiles whether animals can (or do) engage sexually. As it happens that field has significant evidence relevant to this subject, its well known in that field. So a small section a few lines long is probably needed. (2 paragraphs, a for and against, if theres a divided view, but I don't recall Ethology having a "divided view"??). Any suggestions what to say and where to place it in the article? FT2 05:05, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

(Moved from above now the article's open to editing)

And also, JAQ, can you post up a version of where your reworking of the article's at, so we can get some idea? Thanks. FT2 03:01, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Changes in my revision

Since I'm making a bunch of changes, wholesale and unilaterally, and specifically without interactive debate over them, I want to explain them here first. One of the few things I agree with Ciz about is that this article had developed a general tone and preponderance of material aimed at justifying zoophilia. I'm not criticizing anyone for wanting that idea to get across, but if you feel strongly about a subject, and you like the way the article about it reads... the article probably isn't neutral enough. The same applies to me, but this topic isn't one I really have that much emotional investment in; it interests me mostly because I think articles along the "fringe" like this are important to Wikipedia's reputation of neutrality. So I hope this comes close to a NPOV, though I'm sure it's imperfect.

Overall

I made edits to just about everything, mostly for the sake of clarity, grammar, etc. and also to help establish a consistent "voice" to the text.

Terminology & Categorization

The article had inconsistent usage of terms, especially interchanging zoophilia and zoosexuality. For example, it talked about laws against "zoophilia", which is inaccurate because there are no laws against the paraphilia of being attracted to an animal; the laws are against sexual activity. Zoosexuality especially might refer in one place to a sexual orientation, and in another to a sex act. To avoid confusion, I standardized on zoophilia and bestiality, which are each the most widely recognized term for their respective phenomena. To avoid overuse of the terms, I used phrases such as attraction to animals or sex with animals as substitutes. I moved the Terminology and Categorization sections up in order to help establish terms before trying to talk about them.

The use of "partner" in reference to animals has been questioned because it assumes mutuality in the relationship. But no better alternative (at least one that doesn't assume the opposite) has come up, so I skated around it with other phrasings as best as I could.

Legal status

I removed a few anecdotal cases that while both factual and arguably interesting, didn't have much bearing on the larger basic question of legality. I reorganized the data into a bullet list by jurisdiction, which should facilitate adding more data points, and discourage putting in too much about any one country.

Mythology/Lit

This section was (to me) disappointingly brief, so I've added more examples from my own research.

Porn

I moved this section after Mythology because it flows better chronologically there. I'd also rather save the lurid for last.

Research

I'm sorry, but way too much space was devoted to quotes from research papers. The idea is to cite facts, not to provide excerpts of the papers. I think the extensive list of books etc. - which I've left as it was - is adequate for anyone interested in more in-depth reading on the subject. And frankly, the whole Research section was clearly arguing for the general conclusion that zoophiles are just as well-adjusted as anyone else (and probably even moreso). Maybe that's correct, but it was still advocacy, not consensus. It'd make a persuasive article (if it were on another site, I'd supporting including it in the "pro-zoo links" section... hint, hint) but I don't think it belongs in a Wikipedia article, where NPOV is required. Maybe with the inclusion of more critical studies, it could work as a separate "Research into Zoophilia" article, but that'd still be a stretch, IMHO. In any case there was too much to fit here, and the 32KB guideline agreed with me. In removing most of this material, I probably threw out some baby with the bathwater (so to speak); I certainly wouldn't object to selective re-introduction of some the material back into the article, in places where references to researched information are needed. The old content is there in the history database if you want to go fishing for it.

Religious perspectives

Since religion is where a lot of anti-zoo sentiment comes from, I figured this warranted a section, and I did some research to fill it out. Unfortunately I only know the general outlines of non-Biblical theologies, and couldn't find clear statements about how Sikhism, Confucianism, or Taoism view bestiality. (Hopefully these links will draw someone who does know to stop by and add the info.)

Extent of occurance

I accepted FT2's rephrasing of the percentages and did some other work on presentation. The section about proportion of zoophiles engaging in bestiality consisted mostly of truisms and repetition of points made elsewhere about the difficulties of defininition, so I removed it. Lacking any hard data on that question (of which I'm aware), the introductory distinction betwen the philia and the activity should suffice in making that point.

Criticisms

This section set up some strawmen against zoophilia, and also gave more space and depth to rebuttal of criticisms than the criticisms themselves. I've left it fairly sketchy, I admit, but I have a feeling this section will get plenty of attention going forward, so I don't feel too bad about that.

Health

FT2 submitted some language for this, but I toned down some of the "this is safe" claims, especially the bit about AIDS being completely untransmissible, given the plausible hypothesis that HIV mutated from SIV. (You may not be able to give it to a dog, but I wouldn't be so sure about a chimp.)

Some commentaries on zoophilia suggest that a possible motive for zoophilia is fear of disease (I found little evidence of this as a motive BTW). But I looked it up anyway. I couldn't find any evidence that dogs could get AIDS or any aids-like illness, and if the cannot get it, then they cannot communicate it. Monkeys can perhaps, but even so monkeys are primates, the body chemistry is unusually similar to humans. Most virii are quite host specific, and the HIV virus is a very fragile one. To cite just one factor, dogs have a warmer body than primates and humans to the extent AIDS would not survive in them. Samples from pet, vetinary and AIDS websites:

"First off there is no risk of HIV from this type of activity" [1] and [2] (R. Frascino MD, AIDS foundation, commenting on oral sex from dogs, a source of body fluids)
"HIV is a very fragile virus and cannot be spread to animals. Humans are the only known animals to carry HIV. There is no risk of catching HIV or AIDS from a pet." [3]
"Could I have been infected by a cat or dog? Can I infect my cat or dog? No. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus only infects human and other primates and, therefore, cannot be spread from or to dogs, cats, or even birds, fish or reptiles." [4]

Sorry - I hadnt thought of chimps. I guess like most folks I was thinking in terms of dogs and other non-primates. I think at the least its safe to say, there is no documented case and the risk is believed non-existent by professionals. FT2 07:39, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

JAQ version

Nice work - I've cleaned some of the wording, a few sentences had historic wording that didnt read well, or were poorly worded, so I have fixed those a bit, but I've left it pretty much untouched so others can review it. Only 4 changes beyond minor grammar and format fixes:

First para of introduction - was still too wordy and the wording and flow about zoosexual and bestiality was capable of further improvement, I felt.
Sentence that stuck out like a sore thumb removed from "lifestyle", it didnt add much either, I think this was originally a "Ciz-ism".
Clumsy last sentence shortened in "religious views".
Health and safety - 1st para simplified and made more direct, 2nd paragraph had kept the original very clumsy 1st sentence which added nothing, and was still capable of improvement in flow and focus.
1. I added one sentence back in the 2nd paragraph which I felt was needed, but I severely trimmed it to remove the original POV feel, in line with the rest of JAQ's work in that direction.
2. Also added short sentence on AIDS in line with whats known, since thats one STD people do ask questions about.

The couple of sentences I feel got left out, I'll leave, until others have had a chance to review it more, then ask here for opinions.

FT2 11:21, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

"Bestiality" vs. "zoosexuality"

I've gone through the article and replaced most occurences of the former (those which are not part of the titles of books etc.) with the latter (or "zoosexual acts"). The reason is simply that the former term, no matter how much more common it is, is still POV. I hope everyone understands. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 23:50, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't understand. In fact, I don't even understand the opening paragraph anymore. Thanks to the terminology edits to far, it changes direction, reverses itself, and contradicts itself. For example, changing the phrase "to avoid confusion about the meaning of zoosexuality" to "to avoid confusion about the meaning of zoophilia" not only changed its very meaning (by changing the subject of the phrase), it completely obliterated the point: that zoosexuality has two ambiguous meanings, which were previously being confused in this article... and now will be again. Over the past couple months, considerable effort has gone into explanations that being a zoophile doesn't equate to being a dog-f*cker. This article no longer makes a clear and consistent distinction between the two, instead using zoosexuality - which sometimes refers to the sexual orientation - to refer to the sexual act. As for bestiality being POV, I don't see it as any more condemnatory than zoophilia is supportive. I'm sorry if bestiality offends some people, but there's a whole other class of people who find zoophilia and most of the information in this article offensive. Unfortunately there are no truly NPOV terms available. Furthermore, these two terms are objectively the most widely understood. In the context of an encyclopedia, I'd much rather avoid a term because of its ambiguity, than to avoid another term because some consider it offensive. I think that clarity and understanding should be higher priorities than avoiding offense or terminology-pushing. It seems to me that a compromise in the spirit of NPOV would be to accept these two biased-but-usable terms, and leave zoosexuality - whose meaning is so "neutral" that it means different things to different people - out of it. JAQ 03:42, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How about we cut out the buzzwords and use descriptive terms instead? It is pretty obvious that many use the term "bestiality" chiefly as an insult, or as an imprecise and derogatory term. It is also obvious that "zoosexuality" is being used sometimes to mean "sexual attraction to animals" (like "homosexuality" means "sexual attraction to the same sex") and sometimes to mean "sexual behavior with animals". These terms do not do very well by the "clarity and understanding" criterion.

So perhaps it is better to jettison these terms when precision is needed, and replace them with descriptive expressions. This has precedent in medical literature that has taken to referring to "men who have sex with men" rather than "gay men" in describing, e.g. AIDS and STD risk factors -- the point being that it isn't being gay that increases the risk of STDs, but rather having male/male sex.

Some possibilities to replace "bestiality" or "zoosexuality" when referring to "humans having sex with dogs, horses, tigers, dolphins, etc." would include:

"human/animal sex"
"sex with animals"
"human/nonhuman sexual intercourse" (if sexual intercourse is actually involved in the specific case)
"cross-species sex" (since humans are animals)
"sex with pets" (to distinguish from, say, sex with someone else's horse after breaking into their farm, or sex with wild animals)
"sex with (species)" (stating the specific species in question in a particular case)

Some possibilities to replace "zoosexuality" when referring to "humans having sexual feelings or desires towards animals, irrespective of whether they act on them" would include:

"sexual fantasies about animals"
"sexual desire towards animals"
"exclusive sexual desire towards animals"

Likewise, the term "zoosexual" for "a person who (desires/has) sex with animals" would need to go, unless there's going to be a clear convention (which should be based on outside sources) as to which of these two possibilities it is used to refer. --FOo 04:47, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That sounds good. FWIW (mostly directed at JAQ), I think the terms "zoophilia" and "zoosexuality" *are* both neutral and clear, but I don't mind other terms being used, as long as they, too, are neutral. "bestiality" simply isn't, because it is typically used as a word with decidedly negative connotations, and also because it does have a second meaning of brutal acts etc. "zoosexuality" is neutral, on the other hand: it doesn't contain any further connotations and just points to the facts, or at least when you want to refer to sexual acts/relationships/... with/involving animals. But yeah, further clarification can only be a good thing, especially with a controversial topic such as this. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 05:00, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have to say, my 1st reaction was to side with JAQ on this. Bestiality is a common and expected term in this article. But it is POV. However to most people, zoosexual acts and zoosexuality may also be considered a "softener" by some readers, and it's an unfamiliar one too. I am undecided whats best, so I will recuse myself from editing and from the debate which term to use, until I see a clear justification for using one, or a clear negative justification not to use the other. My initial feeling is "Bestiality" is simply a shorter, simpler, more familiar term, and other things being equal, that matters. But I'm not 100% sure.

JAQ's other points:

Zoosexuality is not a term which has multiple disputed meaning. Zoophilia is. That is the reason why, although the article is called "Zoophilia", that term needs clarification in the introduction - because the very word that titles the article has 3 separate referents. As far as I'm aware, zoosexuality has only one referent and needs no clarification.
I agree with his logic about ambiguity and familiarity over "zoosexual acts / bestiality". A lot of zoosexuals refer to their acts as bestiality, so it can't be that offensive a term. Maybe FOo has the answer. As I say, I'm recusing myself from editing, I will comment only when an idea seems to have merit here.

FT2 05:06, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

The WHO seems to believe, that "bestiality" means a "behaviour, that is excessive violent, brutal, mean, cruel and painful" (like a beast's behaviour; see http://m-w.com/). Could somebody change the redirect from Bestiality to Zoophilia? --83.129.180.156 01:01, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I was very surprised to find that the "bestiality" article redirected to "zoophilia", as I had never heard the term "zoophilia" before. I wasn't aware of negative connotations involved in the word "bestiality" (as opposed to negative opinions about the behavior). Could anyone provide any evidence of this? Is there any evidence that the term "zoophilia" has any use in widespread media, or in the psychological profession? Google News showed "bestiality" to be in much more common usage, and I think we should follow the more common and well-known use. Wikipedia shouldn't attempt to create linguistic change; it should attempt to document existing language and usage. -- Creidieki 22:37, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Non sexual zoophilia and others

I've been looking critically at the first few sections of the article: terminology, lifestyle and non-sexual. Non-sexual is mostly "terminology" or a different aspect of "lifestyle", and is short. So I'm wondering about moving the "non sexual" text to the start of "lifestyle" (possibly renaming to "Zoophilia"), or add to "terminology". Don't edit yet, I just figured I'd see what people think? FT2 16:26, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

Explanation of Tony Sidaway's revert of Zetawoof's edit

Hi, I reverted this edit because I question the reason given for removing a recently added site: "we're not linking to a site with banners like those".

As you probably know, we have no way of controlling what kind of advertising banners a website will run, and indeed we have no way of knowing what kind of ads any external site may run in the future. Those banners shown seem to be in keeping with the fact that it's a zoophilia site, so I don't think a reader would think them out of place.

It may be that the site in question is not very good, or fails to pass the sniff test for other reasons. That's fine. I won't revert further, I just want to query the reason given for deletion in this case. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:56, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, understood. Most of the other external sites that we've linked from this article have minimal explicit advertising; if nothing else, bold links at the top of the page to "LIVE DOG FUCKING SHOWS" seems a little bit over-the-top to me. (And yes, I understand that the specific content of the banners isn't something we can control.) I also have a feeling that the linked site is an unauthorized mirror of the content. I've changed the link to another site which carries the same content, but without the in-your-face banner.

While we're on the subject of links, it seems a bit odd to me that we're linking to two sites (zoophilia.net and zoophile.net) which appear to be owned by the same group ("Jones Holding, Ltd.", according to whois), one of which partially mirrors an old version of this article on the front page. Most of the articles linked from those pages appear to have been copied, with and without attribution, from other sources. Thoughts? I'm in favor of replacing them with alternatives, wherever possible.

Also, I removed the link to Humane Concepts, as the domain appears to have lapsed, or something. Zetawoof 10:03, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your excellent work. I do agree that where content appears to have been significantly plagiarized we should link to the original, and where content is available without banner advertising this should be prefered to sites containing equivalent content with banners. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:35, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Link to AnimalDB

I'm not going to revert this one right off the bat, but I'm leery of linking to this site (Art: AnimalDB.com). I'd like some opinions: does this belong here?

(Relevant information: the site is an index of pornography involving animals. The site does not make the files available for download, but 'does' sell some of them.) --Zetawoof 04:03, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In the absence of any other opinions, I'm gonna pull this link. It definitely isn't art, and, if a reader really wants to find pornography, I'm sure they can find it for themselves. --Zetawoof 22:45, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

AnimalDB

Zetawoof,

I would like to reopen discussion of the link to AnimalDB.com; your rationale and concerns are valid, and they present an excellent starting point for discussion.

In regard to the claim that the contents of the site are not art, I would like to point-out that vintage gay/lesbian pulp fiction and films are now considered to be culturally significant and worthy of analysis. When an alternative lifestyle is forced into the shadows, pornography is often one of the few media accepted to convey a group's sociosexual ethos.

Although there is a lot of video fodder and "low art" on record at this site, can we make a judgment about its cultural or artistic value? If there is a Wikipedia precendent here then I would be open to invoking it, but my personal contention is that such an artistic judgment would be out of order. Further, I have located numerous historically-significant works on this site (film and print) that seem to be poorly documented elsewhere online.

As for the site appearing to be for-profit, I'm certainly sensitive to the problems of Google bombing and similar abuses. I suppose we must consider whether the value of the content outweighs the potential for ulterior motive. Ringbang 05:15, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The quick test is look at other sites. Do they list as external links, sites whose front page is "anal sex, oral sex, video labels, video clip database"...? I don't think so. Some older stuff is often a good cultural example and develops a certain validity, but thiis appears to be all modern and basically a porn site, and calling it "the largest erotica database" doesnt change that. Delete. FT2 17:25, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Bestality legal in The Netherlands?

The article says that bestality is legal in The Netherlands. I doubt that (I'm Dutch). Last year there was a case about a man raping a horse that didn't belong to him. The owner of the horse sued him but the judge couldn't prosecute him because there was nothing written in the law about bestality. This caused some public outrage which led to a law that forbids sex with animals. I'm not sure though, so could somebody explain/correct this? --"Dutchy" (User:213.10.115.193) 0:50, May 6, 2005 (GMT)