Animal Love

This is Sarah. If I had not read the Bergner book The Other Side of Desire before watching the documentary, Zoo, I would have had a completely subjective viewpoint on beastiality. The Other Side of Desire introduced me in dept to topics that I would otherwise have no knowledge of. I went into the viewing of Zoo with an open mind and ready to gain knowledge while at the same time be mildly disturbed.

While watching Zoo, I felt as though I kept on doing double-takes within my mind. During one moment, I would feel great sympathy for Mr. Hands and the other participants, but then would snap out of it and remember the acts they committed. Zoo also raises the question: Can a person be defined solely by one action? It is hard to focus on anything other than the fact that these men enjoy having sex with horses.

However, these men seem to carry out rather normal lives outside of their "recreation activities". The majority of them had wives and provided for their families. Is it wrong to completely disregard these people as disgusting, wrong human beings because they enjoy having sex differently than I do? I am still not sure. Although I believe that the horse owners truly cared for the horses and loved them, their actions were not justified.

The debate over whether consent between the man and the horse was necessary or even occurred proved to be very confusing. Obviously, the horse could not verbally express consent but as the saying goes "it takes two to tango." I feel as though I am playing a tug of war with this issue and one side will never win. I empathize with these men because they provide for their families, but I also resent them because of their actions.

And who is to say what is "unnatural"? I judge these people because I was taught to believe that having sexual relations with horses is unnatural. Society deems zoophilia socially unacceptable. When something has the ability to change the norms of society, laws are passed to prevent it from happening. Zoo is a perfect example of that. After the killing of "Mr. Hands", there was a law passed making zoophilia illegal in Washington.

I am still unsure about my views on whether or not the desire to have sexual relations with horses is a biological characteristic. I don't mean to be blunt but, why would one choose to have those desires? Social pressure is reason enough not to stray away from social norms. Also, zoophilia is not registering as a real word in spell check which says something about our society as well.