Editing Social Scientific Analysis of Human-Animal Sexual Interactions (section)

===5. Conclusions===
The social sciences have considered sexuality a peripheral field of research, a fact that becomes particularly evident in the study of zoophilia. Analysis of so-called ‘deviant’ sexualities has been taken on by biomedical sciences, psychiatric sciences, and legal disciplines, in a complementary way. This fact, together with the moral prejudices of the researchers themselves, explains the silences maintained in the social sciences in general and in anthropology in particular. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the first research to tackle such issues peripherally approaches zoophilia as an anecdotal or exceptional behaviour. However, the limited social research conducted so far that has tackled zoophilia has revealed something determined to remain hidden: that these kinds of human-animal relations have been found throughout history and around the world, and that, under certain circumstances and in certain contexts, especially in the case of sexual relations involving men, they have been practised with a certain degree of social acceptance. However, even these investigations remain silent around issues such as zoophilia among women. This absence of research analysing sexual interactions between women and other species stands in contrast with the prominence of women in artistic representations and in the pornography industry, aimed fundamentally at a male audience. Although it seems clear that sexual relations between males and non-human animals are often part of their learning of hegemonic masculinity [79], the androcentric vision of these studies gives us very few clues regarding the significance of feminine zoophilia.

The few studies available, which deal fundamentally with the Mediterranean and Latin America, call into question the univocal nature of human-animal sexual relations and highlight that the same practices can encompass multiple meanings. Zoophilia is not an individual behaviour in the majority of cases investigated, nor does it lack social guidelines, since it has its own rules, defining which animals are or are not appropriate for such practices, the ages at which sexual relations can be had with animals, and which practices are appropriate and inappropriate. It all seems to indicate a clear link between the cultural construction of masculinities and zoophilia. This leads us to question zoophilia as an exception to normative models of sexuality, with which it is often very closely linked, in terms of restrictions to women and in the reproduction of heteronormativity (men must only engage in sexual relations with female animals). This normativity of zoophilia casts doubt on certain commonplaces. Accessibility and proximity to animals might explain why it has been easier to document these practices in the rural world, but this does not explain why certain animals, dogs for example, living in proximity with us are not always considered appropriate for sexual engagement. Overfamiliarity with certain species might indeed contribute to this taboo.

Currently, sexuality with animals is considered especially perverse, not only because it is deemed to degrade the human being, but also because it infringes the rights of animals. Consent becomes the key issue when questioning such practices, although it is true that the development of the online world has increased the visibility of this reality in the urban world as well, allowing groups to connect around a practice that it seen as an element of their identity. Hence, new fields of research and new moral debates are opening up to which the social sciences could make a significant contribution, although to do this we must be able to overcome prejudices that prevent us from tackling a field still colonised, almost exclusively, by medical discourse.