After glorifying armpit-hair-dying women and transgendered teens, what taboo will the media try to break next? Bestiality, if Vice has any say in the matter. "I mean, what's so wrong about desiring a reindeer?" writer Mish Way snarked, in her article "Animal Urges: Woman and Bestiality" Aug. 7.
Way admitted she was initially confounded at the idea of women having sex with animals. “Why would anyone want to have sex with anything other than a human being?” she asked. (To which the only sane response is “Why would anyone want to write about people who want to have sex with anything other than a human being?”). “Most people think it's biologically gross and morally wrong. That is where I stood when I started this research,” she stated. Way equated the taboo to being tantamount to pedophilia.
“But,” she admitted, the deeper she delved into the history of bestiality and internet forums celebrating the practice, the more she began to understand: “My thoughts changed. I'm not for it, but their arguments started to seem...if not valid, at least understandable,” she reasoned.
“I chased every connection in the porn world I had, following leads that left me dead-ended in the same place: Any female performer who had done bestiality porn was dead, had mysteriously fallen off the map, or was working in Brazil and unresponsive to my requests for contact, “ Way explained.
Way instead sought out answers by speaking to a sex therapist who rationalized the behavior and questioning women in bestiality internet forums.
Way cited sex therapist Dr. Miletski, who explained that bestiality has always been a part of human history, from the time of Babylon. Well that makes it normal right?
After Denmark legalized bestiality in 1969, this opened up a whole new genre in porn, led by Bodil Joensen, whom Way deemed, “the queen of bestiality pornography.” Joensen had sex with animals in over 40 different films in the late 1960’s and early 70’s, Way said. Joensen helped keep the practice booming in the days before the internet, by writing a “bestiality advice column” that helped “other curious zoo females” to “intimate sex with animals safely.”
“Safe sex” just got a whole new meaning.
Though Way hinted at Joensen’s abusive, anti-social upbringing that may have led her to seek out intimacy with animals, Way doesn’t get any definitive statements from health experts who deem the practice a mental disorder that is ethically wrong.
Way speculated that the reason why these women fell “in love” with their pets is because “it’s never emotionally exhausting.” She surmised, “Your relationship to a dog can’t deteriorate over money problems or jealous or sexual disinterest. “People can reject you,” she wrote, “[but] an animal can’t disappoint you the way a human being can.” Bestiality might mean never having to say you’re sorry--or much of anything else, really.
That’s as far into psychoanalysis as Way would go. In fact she ended the article by letting a woman from a bestiality internet forum defend the practice as separate from a mental illness. "Deviance may be a strong word, because it's wrong to some, but the deviance behind it is the turn on," the woman wrote to Way.
“There are many reasons people have sex with animals and not all stem from mental dysfunction ... says the girl who f***s dogs, haha," the woman said.
If history is any indicator, the media's curiosity of this taboo will only continue to grow. Which will eventually lead to promotion and blacklisting anyone who doesn't accept this behavior. Because love is love, right?
