How long until the taboo on Bestiality is broken?

An Editorial on Bestiality.

--By Daniel Grant Wilks--

About as long as speciesism and denial of humans being in the animal kingdom or being animals and therefor zoosexual by nature because of your attraction to a human animal.

Zoosexuality is a sexual orientation in which humans are sexually attracted to animals. Although people have been having sex with animals for centuries, it has largely been condemned, ignored, and marginalized by society. The reason for this negative attitude towards sexuality is due to ignorance and bigotry, which has led to zoosexuality being stigmatized by society and made a taboo subject. But what exactly does it mean for something to be “taboo”?

Taboo is a word which means “[being] proscribed by society as improper or unacceptable”; it is also defined as “exclusion from use or practice, to ignore or ridicule”. Compare this with the definition of “controversial”, which is “subject to controversy; debatable”. Taboo subjects and controversial subjects often overlap.

Because of this, some subjects in society are publicly debatable, controversial, and easy to bring up (such as abortion or health care reform) – nobody is ashamed of bring up their point-of-view. However, taboo subjects (such as bestiality, nudity, and subjects which have to do with sex and death) are considered unacceptable by society, stigmatized, and ignored as thoroughly as possible. They are irrationally censored. I refer to this as “social erasure”; the collective artificial amnesia created by a society to attempt to eradicate a way of thinking. This has been common throughout history; for example, blacks prior to key moments (such as the Civil Rights movement) were often ignored.

Another group of people that have suffered from “social erasure” are gays. In the 1950s, for example, being gay wasn’t even debated; it was “brushed under the table”, ignored, stigmatized and considered taboo. However, through the 1960s and onwards, gay rights eventually became more mainstream and began to become OK to talk about; in the year 2000, there were zero U.S. states that allowed gay marriage; there are now 7 (and DC) — and that number is growing. The social attitude towards the taboo of homosexuality has changed over the years; in a sense, it has gone from being “taboo” to not being a big deal.

However the same cannot be said for zoosexuality; it is a group which have not made the progress that gay rights has made; it has remained in the darkness, locked up by society; this is largely due to the fact that our culture is based on certain moral values derived from Christianity and other religious sources.

Whenever the “hidden” subject of zoosexuality is brought up by someone, no matter how articulate and rational the argument may be, the chances are high that the resulting reaction will involve social stigma, disgust, or a non-rational knee-jerk response. Why are certain things considered taboo? And why is zoosexuality so taboo? Surely, one could not pick a more taboo subject. It is so taboo that it could almost be considered analogous to homosexuality in the 1950s. In my 15 years (and counting) of education, I have only heard the subject mentioned once or twice, and in those cases, it was only mentioned briefly and negatively. I have never seen a television show about it. It is apparently even too taboo for National Geographic’s “Taboo” series to show.