I wrote the following post on Monday.  My entire world feels like it’s collapsed since then.  Literally.  Trust me when I say the least depressing thing that’s happened is that I’m probably going to have to go round up my grandmother’s cats and take them to be euthanized.  No kidding, that’s been the LEAST shitty thing in my life in the past few days.  I feel that bad, that lost, that dark, that scared.  But, for now, we’re moving swiftly along to talking about sex with animals.

(Best transition ever?  Yes, my friends, best transition ever…)

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As I usually do, when I logged onto the computer and saw that Kaya had posted, I had a hundred heart attacks and squealed like a third-grade school girl read calmly. This time, it was this post on the argument people were apparently having over on FetLife about bestiality and consent.

(If anyone actually reads this post of mine, you may want to read Kaya’s post first. One, because she rocks my world, and two, because it might help my post make more sense… By no means do I guarantee my post will make sense. I’m just saying it might help.)

My reactions to her post (in order of appearance):

• Man, logic is such a bitch.
• I really have to post my FetLife post one of these days. Maybe I should wait until I’m sure people actually read this blog… Hrm.
• Bestiality is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
• Huh. I don’t actually have an argument based on logic about WHY I feel that way.
• Must assault Antonio.
• *talks to Master for a bit*
• I should comment on Kaya’s post!  I love Tess!  She cares deeply what I have to say and would be thoroughly thrilled to engage in conversation with me!
• *352 words later*
• Er, scratch that. She definitely doesn’t care that much. In fact, I have the feeling that “care” MAY be a product of my imagination…

Like I said, my first reaction to the actual topic was simply “Bestiality is wrong.”  Then I started thinking about the people over on FetLife who felt the same way I do, yet were actually debating about it.  That blew my mind.  It doesn’t seem like a topic for debate. (She says without a trace of irony as she hits publish…)

I take issue with some sexual behaviors on what I call a "natural level" kind of way… Bestiality, necrophilia, incest, and pedophilia are The Big Four.

Other things I take issue with on a personal level. For example, scat play. But while my brain shouts "OH, HELL NAW!" in its best Will-Smith-in-I,Robot impression, I know others dig it and that’s cool for them. Enjoy your poop, people.

Bestiality, necrophilia, incest, and pedophilia, though? I think they’re just wrong. Wrong for me. Wrong for everyone. I make no apologies for that belief and I am not about to feel all shaky about my insistence that it’s not okay to have sex with corpses simply because someone else has crafted an argument about why it “is” okay.  It’s not okay.  The End.

I know some people disagree with me on my natural-level issues. Hell, there are entire forums dedicated to Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA, says google), and there are clearly a lot of people who have sex with animals and see no problem with it.

I do see a problem with it. But I’ve NEVER seen the need to discuss it on a systematic level, or have a logical argument about it. To me, it’s an ethical, moral, gut-level issue, not an issue of logic and policy.

I see no need to engage.

If I did engage, it would be as if I claimed I was deeply religious and yet would get on a forum and actively engage in a debate about “Can God make a stone so big he can’t lift it?” Honestly, if I were that religious, I’d realize divine powers are a BIT above the level of semantic arguments, ffs.

ANYWAY… I poked Antonio and asked him if he could read Kaya’s post. Then we talked about things, and while he agreed with me wholeheartedly about my “it’s not an issue of logic” feelings, he didn’t let me know at the start. In fact, because he likes to see me squirm, he said “So, tell me – why is it okay to eat an animal and not fuck it?”

And while I mulled, thinking he wanted logic, I was left thinking about how logic always seems to invite trouble, and invite people to think you’re saying things you aren’t saying.

Because logic is a total bitch.  So, while I don’t think I’d ever feel the need to go onto a discussion board and defend my views… It’s actually kind of fun to think about the logic-level of it.  I’ve never done it before, and it kind of amuses me.

Logic, in these cases, is basically the practice of creating “personal laws” that should then, by definition, be generalizeable. (Incidentally, why does my spell-check think “generalizeable” is not a word?  I’ve used it a billion times in research papers.  It’s a fucking word.)  Anyway, the thing is, it’s easy to formulate personal laws that work perfectly well within the construct of a singular idea, but don’t extend outward properly. And that’s when logic becomes flawed.

For instance… In Kaya’s post, one of the things she’s saying (I think) is that people who do most anything to/with an animal can’t use the concept of consent as an argument against bestiality, because they do things to animals without their consent all the time. From feeding (or not feeding) them, picking their housing and walking them as pets, to eating them as food, to testing them as laboratory subjects. All without consent. So no one who has any connection to that stuff can really say “But, not sex because the animal can’t consent!” since they do a host of other things without consent. So, boom, consent is a non-argument.

And it seems like a decent logical argument at first…

But a flaw there (as I see it) is that not all forms of consent are the same. And if that “they-can’t-use-consent” logic-train is to be boarded, then… Maybe not the next station, but a ways down the track, you’ll have people getting off^*** and saying pedophilia is just as inarguable as bestiality for anyone who disciplines, chooses food, shelter, schooling, medication etc. for a child without their consent.  (And, just to cover my bases, the argument of “But everyone can agree these things you do without consent for a child are GOOD for the child so it’s different when it’s something bad!” doesn’t work here, because there are plenty of legally A-okay practices that many would feel are downright disgusting.  Feeding Ritalin to a young child, for example.)

It’s like saying if you breed a particular kind of dog (even though the government allows people to breed animals) if the animal didn’t give consent and you do it anyway, you can no longer argue against people having sex with animals on a consent level… So then, in turn, you could say if you give a child Ritalin (even though it’s doctor’s orders) if the child doesn’t give consent and you do it anyway, you can no longer argue against people having sex with children on a consent level.

See? Logic is a bitch, innit?

This is why I see no need for logic or discussion here.  It’s not about that, not for me.

Logic in this instance, is just getting in the way, muddling things up.  It leaves you trying to say that consent for one thing is equal to consent for another, and it’s just not. It’s perfectly okay to think that consent is not a universal term. It’s fine for me to say “A child/animal cannot legally consent to sex, and thus sex with a child/animal is wrong,” all while I’m forcing my child/animal into the bath tub to take a bath while they whine and cry and flail and try to hurt me because, omg, they don’t want to do it and they do not give consent.

No, I can’t get consent for either thing. But I’m not asking for the same kind of consent, nor does my position in the world or lives of the creatures demand I receive consent for certain situations, but it does for others. 

And, in some cases, such as sex?  We define consent as simply NOT being able to be given.  If a kid says he or she “wants” to perform a sexual activity on an adult?  Sorry, doesn’t matter, it’s still not okay.  A child CANNOT give consent so even if they “willingly” engage in the activity?  It’s WRONG.  Period.  (And I think that may be what people mean when they say “But an animal cannot give consent.”  Not that an animal can’t appear to, but, as with children, that we cannot accept that as true consent, ever ever ever, and the activity will still be deplorable.)  It makes sense to me too.  Animals could appear to “want” something, and to try to get things, you could even train them to engage in sexual activities with humans, and I still believe those animals do not have the capacity to give full, legal, and morally-bound consent.  I just don’t.  Others might, I don’t.

So I believe anyone can think it’s okay to not get consent for bath time, and think it’s not okay to have sex with a child/animal. The two things, the two consents, are NOT mutually exclusive to me.  Consent can still be an argument against sex even if you don’t seek it in other areas. Sweeping logic will try, and may even appear, to eliminate that but I think that’s flawed.

(Consent isn’t, as it happens, really my big issue with human-animal sex. But still, I don’t think it’s incapable of being anyone else’s issue, even if they enjoy eating animals.)

Hrm…

I suppose I could try to be logical about my natural issues with The Big Four, and spout a lot of stuff about survival of the species, dominant species, the natural order of things… Talk about how we’re human. How, whether it’s to eat for nourishment, to test products on to make sure things are safe for humans first, for protection, for status, for labor, etc., the USE of animals without their consent aids humankind and it gets the thumbs up from a biological point of view. But how things like beating animals or having sex with them could actually be classified as anti-survival for various reasons… How healthy humans breed the need to hone and foster survival skills, and to squash the anti-survival behaviors. How it’s not logical, it’s human nature. Survival of the fittest, survival goals, etc. etc. etc.

But, then, lord knows people would be taking my words, generalizing my “personal laws,” grabbing some logic and smearing it around, and would decide I’d have been the jerk tossing babies off the cliffs in Sparta. Why? Because logic, very clearly, is a bitch. 

Big Love to Kaya, for always making me think.

***Upon rereading I realized that’s officially The Worst Pun in The History of Ever. Incidentally, I refuse to take it out.