Zoo, the film
I watched the film a few nights ago. I had no idea what to expect, as this tragedy and the accompanying media frenzy had gone unnoticed by me in 2005. A man died in a Seattle hospital shortly after having anal intercourse with a horse. He suffered a perforated colon. The ensuing investigation revealed and dispersed an enclave of like-minded individuals who got together from all over the country for an occasional weekend of socializing at a nearby ranch, including nighttime excursions to visit the horses.
I googled the event after watching the film, and I found oodles of reviews of the film all over the internet, including the New York Times. How did I miss this?
Some years ago I stumbled onto a chat room and discovered the secret world of people having sex with dogs. This developed into something of an obsession as I dug deeper, finding photos and salacious details. The fantasy was quite a turn-on for a middle-aged single mom undergoing a prolonged celibate phase. At my worst moments, I thought about picking up a stray and giving it a try. (No, I was not about to teach my own naive and trusting dog sleazy tricks!) Driving at night, seeing the occasional stray dog in my headlights, it was immediately obvious that me actually doing such a thing was no more than a crude and stupid joke. But I did write a short-story about it. I thought it was very amusing; my agent did not agree.
Dogs seem to be the most frequent sex toys in the world of bestiality, though pigs, chickens, sheep, cattle, horses and donkeys also have their fans. I hoped the film might educate me about how on earth a person can arrange penetration by an aroused stallion without being bashed by hooves, bitten, or crushed. I should have known better. The film was sensibly queasy and evasive about the details.
It focused on pretty much everything else. Several of the men, given the opportunity by the film's directors, were willing to be heard and even seen in the film. Listening to them talk about themselves was interesting. They weren't total wackos, just people -- articulate, thoughtful, emotional, sincere, undeniably strange, and yes, a little creepy. All were men. ("Occasionally women" was briefly mentioned, just once, but none appeared in the film.)
The evasive and excessively artsy representation of the elephant in the room (i.e. what do they actually DO???) was comically romanticized. There were daytime shots of starkly empty and scrupulously clean barn and stalls, night shots of shrubbery improbably blooming in the dark as men wandered around with flashlights in the pasture, shadowy half-images of the occasional naked man with his arms around a horse's neck in the moonlight, and a gruff, chuckling voice-over about the risk of "being bred" while wandering around like that at night.
The dappled-gray Arab stallion was a beauty, frolicking in his paddock. Later one sees the same horse on his back, anesthetized, trolleyed to surgery, castrated.
I googled the event after watching the film, and I found oodles of reviews of the film all over the internet, including the New York Times. How did I miss this?
Some years ago I stumbled onto a chat room and discovered the secret world of people having sex with dogs. This developed into something of an obsession as I dug deeper, finding photos and salacious details. The fantasy was quite a turn-on for a middle-aged single mom undergoing a prolonged celibate phase. At my worst moments, I thought about picking up a stray and giving it a try. (No, I was not about to teach my own naive and trusting dog sleazy tricks!) Driving at night, seeing the occasional stray dog in my headlights, it was immediately obvious that me actually doing such a thing was no more than a crude and stupid joke. But I did write a short-story about it. I thought it was very amusing; my agent did not agree.
Dogs seem to be the most frequent sex toys in the world of bestiality, though pigs, chickens, sheep, cattle, horses and donkeys also have their fans. I hoped the film might educate me about how on earth a person can arrange penetration by an aroused stallion without being bashed by hooves, bitten, or crushed. I should have known better. The film was sensibly queasy and evasive about the details.
It focused on pretty much everything else. Several of the men, given the opportunity by the film's directors, were willing to be heard and even seen in the film. Listening to them talk about themselves was interesting. They weren't total wackos, just people -- articulate, thoughtful, emotional, sincere, undeniably strange, and yes, a little creepy. All were men. ("Occasionally women" was briefly mentioned, just once, but none appeared in the film.)
The evasive and excessively artsy representation of the elephant in the room (i.e. what do they actually DO???) was comically romanticized. There were daytime shots of starkly empty and scrupulously clean barn and stalls, night shots of shrubbery improbably blooming in the dark as men wandered around with flashlights in the pasture, shadowy half-images of the occasional naked man with his arms around a horse's neck in the moonlight, and a gruff, chuckling voice-over about the risk of "being bred" while wandering around like that at night.
The dappled-gray Arab stallion was a beauty, frolicking in his paddock. Later one sees the same horse on his back, anesthetized, trolleyed to surgery, castrated.
posted by Cranky Ol' Lady at 11:43 PM
2 Comments:
Yuk! Have no doubt you are talking about RAPE. As horny as animals might be, they cannot consent to sex with human beings.
There were recent stories about rescued dogs being trained by prisoners who raped them. We are here to protect and respect them.
There is a continuum of animal abuse through domestic abuse to sexual violence to murder. Violent criminals often have a history of abusing and raping animals. Your interest and humour about it concerns me.
Yes, that's the standard response to zoosexuality. But I think the issue (like most issues) is actually more complex. Zoosexuals range from sexual predators to genuine animal lovers in long-term loving and caring relationships with their animal partners.
I'm not speaking from experience. For me, at first, this subject served as titillating fantasy material during a long phase of (horny) involuntary celibacy. Now that I've studied it a bit more (here and there, off and on), I'm becoming interested at a deeper level, trying to understand it better.
Certainly these people are peculiar. I'd like to know more about how this sexual orientation develops over a person's lifetime, and why. I think it is wrong to paint all zoosexuals with the wide, black brush without knowing more about them.
Many have jumped on the bandwagon issue of consent as an easy out. Label arbitrarily, then quit thinking. Of course animals can express their attitudes and preferences, but not (obviously) in words. It also depends on the nature of the relationship or encounter. Where dominance, physical restraint, punishment, or pain is involved, an animal bred and raised/trained for docility and obedience would clearly not be in a position to choose freely. But I don't think this should be assumed to be always the case.
I also think that a significant difference exists depending on whether the animal partner is male or female, and if male, whether penetrated by a man or penetrating a man or woman partner. It's hard for me to see a penetrating fiesty stallion as a victim! However, his socialization to humans is problematical if he generalizes to new situations and people!
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