by Jesse Bering
Singer told me that he wasn’t advocating sex with animals, but rather just raising the question of why we find it so objectionable. Ever since, however, the piece has been used against Singer by his opponents, most of whom are trying to discredit his controversial views on human euthanasia and abortion. “Look,” argue many of Singer’s critics, “how can we take anything this guy says seriously when he wants us to have sex with animals!” But most zoophiles, of course, tend to agree with Singer’s general assessment of human “speciesism” being cloaked under the tenuous justification of animal protection. After all, we are animals.
In a chapter published in Transgressive Sex: Subversion and Control in Erotic Encounters, the anthropologist Rebecca Cassidy offers a particularly sad account of how this religiously laden assumption that humans are “more than animal” manifested itself in a 1601 courtroom in Rognon, France. It was there that a sixteen-year-old girl named Claudine de Culam was being tried for bestiality with her pet dog:
Apparently uncertain as to whether such an act was anatomically possible, the judge appointed a number of female assistants in order to put the dog and the girl to the test. As the women undressed Claudine, the dog leaped upon her. On the basis of this evidence both the dog and the young woman were strangled, their bodies burned and scattered to the four winds, “that as little trace as possible might remain to remind mankind of their monstrous deeds.”
One especially provocative study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior involved the sociologists Colin Williams and Martin Weinberg attending a zoophile gathering on a farm, where a group of predominantly young men—nearly all of whom were college educated—were observed to have “genuine affection” for the animals they had sex with. Many zoophiles consider “zoosadists” anathema, and they have been sincerely striving to distance themselves from those who derive pleasure from harming animals. Yet some scholars, such as the criminologist Piers Beirne, contend that zoophiles incorrectly assume that animals are capable of consenting to having sex with them, and therefore human sexual relations with animals of any kind should be considered “interspecies sexual assault.”
In taking stock of my own position on this touchy subject, I find myself emotionally drawn to Beirne’s “zero tolerance” stance. If some unscrupulous zoophile were to lure away my beloved dog Uma with a bacon strip into the back of his van, well, hell hath no fury—even if she did come back wagging her tail. But this is mostly just the reflexive moralizer in me. Words such as pervert and unnatural have all the theoretical depth of a thimble. Rationally, Singer is right to question our visceral aversion to interspecies sex. And having had a chimpanzee in estrus forcibly back her swollen anogenital region into my midsection (“Darling,” I said, “not only are you the wrong species, but the wrong sex”) and more dogs than I care to mention mount my leg, I know that it’s not only humans who are at risk of misreading sexual interest in other species. The Arabian stallion that impaled a Seattle man with its erect penis in 2005, fatally perforating the man’s colon, makes one wonder who the victim really was.
And if zoophilia occurs in certain members of our own species, could members of other species be aroused primarily by humans? In Maurice Temerlin’s book Lucy: Growing Up Human, the author claims that once his chimpanzee “daughter” reached sexual maturity, the chimp was interested sexually only in human males. Temerlin, a psychotherapist, even bought Lucy a Playgirl magazine and found her rubbing her genitals on the full-page spread of a naked man.
In any event, philosophical questions aside, I simply find it astounding—and incredibly fascinating from an evolutionary perspective—that so many people (as much as a full 1 percent of the general population) are certifiable zoophiles. And scientific researchers appear to be slowly conceding that zoophilia may be a genuine human sexual orientation. Still, just as you probably do, I have a slew of unanswered questions that have yet to be addressed empirically. What makes some domestic species—such as horses and dogs—more common erotic targets for zoophiles than others, such as, say, cats, llamas, or pigs? (Clawed cats would be a problem.) Do zoophiles find particular members of their preferred species more “attractive” than other individuals from those species, and if so, are they seduced by standard beauty cues, such as facial symmetry in horses? What is the percentage of homosexual zoophiles (those who prefer animal partners of the same sex) over heterosexual zoophiles? Aside from the hoof marks on their foreheads, how do zoophiles differentiate between a “consenting” animal partner and one who isn’t “in the mood”? Why are men more likely to be zoophiles than women? Are zoophiles attracted only to sexually mature animals—and if not, does this make them “zoopedophiles”? What about cross-cultural differences? Is the tendency to become a zoophile heritable?
We’ll have to wait a while longer for some intrepid sexologist to dig into these and other unanswered scientific questions about zoophilia, perhaps the rarest of all the sexual paraphilias. Meanwhile, I must confess that I’m a bit jealous of you caring zoophiles out there. How nice it would be to be able to dispense with all those emotional encumbrances that come with being attracted to other members of the human species. If only I could settle down discreetly with a sassy little bitch—a consenting adult, of course—life would probably be a lot easier.
Asexuals Among Us
Gay people are often asked by the curious straight: “When did you first realize you were gay?” In my case, I remember undressing my Superman doll—and being terribly disappointed at the result—as well as being motivated to befriend the more attractive boys in third grade. But hormonally speaking, it wasn’t until I was about fourteen that I first looked in the mirror and thought, Ah, that’s what I am all right, it all makes perfect sense now.
It wasn’t that much of a mystery. After all, lust isn’t exactly a subtle thing. Back then, I derived as much pleasure from making out with my “girlfriend” as I might have from scraping the plaque from my dog’s teeth. In contrast, barely touching legs with a boy I had a crush on sparked an electric, ineffable ecstasy. In the locker room after high school gym class, I forced myself to picture naked girls in my head (particularly my girlfriend) as a sort of cognitive cold shower, a preemptive strike against an otherwise embarrassing physical response. I could go on, but you get the idea: whether or not we like, hide, or accept what we are, our true identities—gay, straight, bisexual—consciously dawn on each of us at some point in our lives, usually by adolescence. We all have a natural “orientation” toward sexual contact with others, and for the most part we’re just hopeless pawns, ineffectual onlookers, to our bodies’ desires.
At least, that’s what most people tend to think. But some scientists believe that there may be another sexual orientation in our species, one characterized by the absence of desire and no sexual interest in males or females, only a complete and lifelong lacuna of sexual attraction toward any human being (or nonhuman being). Such people are regarded as asexuals. Unlike bisexuals, who are attracted to both males and females, asexuals are equally indifferent to and uninterested in having sex with either gender. So imagine being a teenager waiting for your sexual identity to express itself, waiting patiently for some intoxicating spurt of lasciviousness to render you as dumbly carnal as your peers, and it just doesn’t happen. These individuals aren’t simply celibate, which is a lifestyle choice. Rather, sex to them is just so … boring.
In one study from 2007, a group of self-described adult asexuals was asked how they came to be aware they were different. One woman responded:
I would say I’ve never had a dream or a fantasy, a sexual fantasy, for example, about being with another woman. So I can pretty much say that I have no lesbian sort of tendencies whatsoever. You would think that by my age I would have some fantasy or dream or something, wouldn’t you?… But I’ve never had a dream or a sexual fantasy about having sex with a man, either. That I can ever, ever remember.
In another study, an eighteen-year-old woman put it this way:
I just don�
��t feel sexual attraction to people. I love the human form and can regard individuals as works of art and find people aesthetically pleasing, but I don’t ever want to come into sexual contact with even the most beautiful of people.
According to the psychologist Anthony Bogaert, there may be more genuine asexuals out there than we realize. In 2004, Bogaert analyzed survey data from more than 18,000 British residents and found that the number of people (185, or about 1 percent) in this population who described themselves as “never having a sexual attraction to anyone” was just slightly lower than those who identified as being attracted to the same sex (3 percent). Since this discovery, a handful of academic researchers have been trying to determine whether asexuality is a true biological phenomenon or, alternatively, a slippery social label that for various reasons some people may prefer to adopt and embrace.
Sexual desire may wax and wane over the course of a life or—as many people on antidepressants have experienced—become virtually nonexistent because of medications or disease. There are also chromosomal abnormalities, such as Turner’s syndrome, often associated with an absence of sexual desire. Traumatic events in childhood, such as sexual abuse, can factor into an aversion to sex too. But if it exists as a distinct orientation, true asexuality would be due neither to genetic anomaly nor to environmental assault. And indeed, although little is known about its etiology (Bogaert believes it may be traced to prenatal alterations of the hypothalamus), most asexuals are normal, healthy, hormonally balanced, and sexually mature adults. For still uncertain reasons, they’ve just simply always found sex to be one big, bland yawn. Asexuality would therefore be like other sexual orientations in the sense that it is not “acquired” or “situational” but rather an essential part of one’s biological makeup. Just as a straight man or a lesbian can’t wake up one day and decide to become attracted to men, neither could a person—in principle, anyway—“become” asexual. Sexual dysfunctions such as hypoactive sexual desire disorder can also be ruled out if a “preference” toward a gender does not awaken in response to clinical intervention such as hormonal treatment. As Bogaert notes, even those with object fetishes or paraphilias usually display a gender-based attraction, such as men who have a thing for women’s shoes or necrophiliacs who have sex with dead women’s (but not men’s) bodies.
But the story of asexuality is very complicated. For example, as discussion on the AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) website forums demonstrate, there is tremendous variation in the sexual inclinations of those who consider themselves asexual. Some masturbate; some don’t. Some are interested in nonsexual, romantic relationships (including cuddling and kissing but no genital contact), while others aren’t. Some consider themselves to be “hetero-asexual” (having a nonsexual aesthetic or romantic preference for those of the opposite sex), while others see themselves as “homo-” or “bi-asexuals.” There’s even a matchmaking website for sexless love called Asexual Pals. Yet many asexuals are also perfectly willing to have sex if it satisfies their sexual partners; it’s not awkward or painful for them, but rather, like making toast or emptying the trash, they just don’t personally derive any pleasure from the act. As the researchers Nicole Prause and Cynthia Graham found in their interviews with self-identified asexuals, “They were not particularly sexually fearful … they had a lower excitatory drive.” Others insist on being in completely sexless relationships, ideally with other asexuals. Thus, while many asexuals are virgins, others are ironically even more experienced than your traditionally sexual friends. Some want children through artificial means such as in vitro fertilization; others are willing to have them the old-fashioned way or don’t want children at all.
Thus, on the one hand, there seems to be a sociological issue of people of a marginalized sexual identity gathering steam and beginning to form an identifiable community (and in the process attracting significant media attention, including coverage on The Montel Williams Show and The View and a feature story in New Scientist). On the other hand, there remains—to me—the more intriguing biological issue of asexual essentialism; that is to say, is it really possible to develop “normally” without ever experiencing sexual desire, even a niggling little blip on the arousability radar, toward any other human being on the face of the earth? I have little doubt that there are self-identified asexuals who would fail to meet this essentialist criterion, but if even a sliver of the asexual community has truly never experienced arousal, then this would pose fascinating questions for our understanding of human sexuality and evolutionary processes.
Scientists have just scratched the surface in studying human asexuality. You can count the number of studies on the subject on one hand. So questions remain. Does asexuality, like homosexuality, have heritable components? Certainly that’s plausible. After all, historically, at least female asexuals, who wouldn’t need to orgasm to conceive, would have probably had offspring with their male sexual partners, thus ensuring continuity of the genetic bases of asexuality. (Although Bogaert’s original findings suggested that asexuality was somewhat more common among women, more recent research by Prause and Graham found no such gender difference in their college-aged sample of self-reported asexuals.) If some asexuals masturbate in the absence of sexual fantasy or porn, then what exactly is it that’s getting them physically aroused? (And how does one achieve orgasm—as some asexuals apparently do—without experiencing pleasure?) Also, if you’re on board theoretically with evolutionary psychology, almost all of human cognition and social behavior somehow boils down to sexual competition. So what would the evolutionary psychologist make of asexuality? If sex is nature’s feel-good ruse to get our genes out there, is there actually a natural category of people that is immune to evolution’s greatest gag?
I have to say the only good way to solve the riddle is also a bit unsavory. But unless psychological scientists ever gather a group of willing, self-identified asexuals and, systematically and under controlled conditions, expose them to an array of erotic stimuli while measuring their physical arousal (penile erection or vaginal lubrication), the truth of the matter will lie forever hidden away in the asexuals’ pants.
Foot Play: Podophilia for Prudes
We’ve discussed pedophilia already, but let’s talk about podophilia, the love of feet and often, by extension, shoes. Actually, there’s a fair share of podophiliac pedophiles, so it’s worth pointing out that the two are not mutually exclusive. But in any event, at the risk of veering off already into a fetish of an entirely different sort (acrotomophilia, which is the love of amputees or, more specifically, a lusting after their severed limbs), let me begin by saying that I’ve always found feet—those elongated, malodorous, beknuckled terrestrial hands—somehow awfully off-putting. Not that I’d prefer them snipped off my partners, but you know what I mean.
In fact, my own distaste for feet makes podophilia all the more intriguing to me because, among other things, it goes to show how receptive to learning our carnal taste buds may in fact be in contributing to what later becomes delectable. Perhaps my genitals only lacked a mysterious encounter with other people’s feet during a critical period of my sexual development. Many people who derive their primary sexual satisfaction from “foot play” can trace their fondness for feet to specific episodes either in their childhoods or during their early adolescence.
One of the most important and detailed historical treatments of the subject of foot (and shoe) fetishism is that by the British sexologist Havelock Ellis in 1927. “In a small but not inconsiderable minority of persons,” writes Ellis, “the foot or boot becomes the most attractive part of a woman, and in some morbid cases the woman herself is regarded as a comparatively unimportant appendage.” Ellis describes the case of the eighteenth-century French novelist Rétif de la Bretonne, whose irreverent literary works were filled with references to his own fancies. (In fact, the eponymous retifism is an arcane term for foot fetishism.) In Rétif’s very frank autobiography, Monsieur Nicolas, the then-sixty-year-old writer rem
inisces about being smitten with a girl’s feet as early as age four. Rétif’s theory about the origins of his foot fetish was that since feminine freshness and purity were so prized in his day, those ladies who managed to keep that part of their body which met directly with the dirt so delicate and unspoiled were the most attractive of all.
“This taste for the beauty of the feet,” reflects Rétif of his upbringing in the Burgundy region of France, “was so powerful in me that it unfailingly aroused desire … When I entered a house and saw the boots arranged in a row, as is the custom, I would tremble with pleasure; I blushed and lowered my eyes as if in the presence of the girls themselves.” What was especially arousing to Rétif, Ellis explains, was his knowledge that these objects had absorbed the essence of the feet he so desired. “He would kiss with rage and transport whatever had come in close contact with the woman he adored.” In fact, he wished desperately to be buried with the “green slippers with rose heels and borders” of an older woman whose feet he’d become infatuated with as a teenage boy.