Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible

Fira Bensto (pseudonym)

Submitted: 23 March 2023, accepted: 24 September 2023, published: 31 October 2023

Abstract:

As one of our most deeply entrenched social taboos, zoophilia is widely

considered to be wrong, and having sex with animals is illegal in many countries. In

this article, I would like to go against this de facto consensus and argue that zoophilia is

morally permissible. This would have major implications for how we legally and socially

deal with zoophilia.

Bensto, F. Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible. Journal of Controversial Ideas

2023, 3(2), 6; doi:10.35995/jci03020006.

We've listed only the introduction just to give you a small glimpse of the research. A PDF is available below.

Bensto, F. Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible. Journal of Controversial Ideas (PDF)

Introduction

Sex with animals is a powerful social taboo that exposes its practitioners to utmost

indignation and stigma. Zoophilia is one of the few sexual orientations (along with e.g.

necrophilia or pedophilia) that remain offlimits and have been left aside from the sexual

liberation movement in the past fifty years.1 I would like to argue that this is a mistake.

There is in fact nothing wrong with having sex with animals: it is not an inherently

problematic sexual practice.

Given the sheer outrage that the mere mention of zoophilia triggers in many people,

we might expect the case for its permissibility to be a hard sell and my claims to be modest

and tentative. This is not so: not only do I think that zoophilia is morally permissible, but I

also think that the case in its favor is rather straightforward, so that it should be the default

position within many philosophical quarters. This makes it all the more surprising that no

ambitious and explicit defense of it has been published so far.

I start in Section 1 by clarifying what is meant by zoophilia. In Section 2, I introduce

the debate over the permissibility of zoophilia. In Sections 3 and 4, I address the questions

of whether zoophilia is harmful and whether animals can consent to sex with humans. In

Section 5, I tease out some important implications.