consent - ZOOPHILIA

How do you know if an animal is consenting? Consent is such a slippery issue for human sex. Sometimes it is simple. Someone consents to it or they do not. An easy dividing line. But there are gray areas. And it is in these muddied waters that I choose to fish.

But what if the sexual partner is an animal? I have seen videos on youtube that show a dog mounting a girl who is in bed, trying to hide herself from his thrusting hips under the blanket. Her partner films and laughs. The girl is not consenting to this act but the dog's consent seems clear. Surely there can be no question when the animal is a virile male and the human is a female or submissive male.

A man leans over. This in black and white. The footage depicts this act for only a second, but the image hovers in memory like a camera flare. The horse has mounted him, not as it would mount a mare. The horse in the image is tall enough to stand above the man. It's penis is huge and another man is there to hold the horse back, to insert his arm between the horses cock and the man's anus. Without this second man it seems obvious that the horse would call the first man injury. It is as we imagine, the power of the flanks rippling with sweat, the terrifying length of the cock, the grunting sound perhaps from the horse but some of it, pained and determined from the man. And yes, when I rewind, play, rewind, play, the rhythm and the sound of it and the image of that huge animal meat sliding in and out, all of this is arousing.

I am easily aroused.

Perhaps for others their repulsion would cause them to recoil. Certainly the idea seems painful, the thought of the semen, alien, smelling of fur and barn, would be unpleasant if it were on my skin let alone inside me. The reality would perhaps repel me. The idea arouses.

I recently visited my sister and although I am fond of dogs, the sheer number and size of her animals, the exclusion of a dividing line between animals and humans, the smell of them, the weight of them the scent of my clothing after days of being with them, the shit smeared into my shoes, the dogfood in the air, all of this I found difficult to live with. I am unused to such powerful smell of beast in my skin and hair. Although I liked her dogs, they seemed welcoming and friendly, I felt suffocated by a lack of human space. I am not a zoophile. Despite my own arousal at the sight of a horse entering a man's anus, despite this, I am certain that, in real life I would be less than happy to trade places with the man in the footage that I pore over.

If I can find myself aroused by this act that is so complicated, this ethical minefield of consent, then I can make a reader share this arousal. I can make a reader enter the barn with me, crouch in the corner and watch the act taking place. The reader and I will emerge into the light with the same uneasy questions. Is it wrong to feel sexually aroused by an animal? How do you define consent? Is it wrong to lick your dog or suckle on his penis? Is it wrong to let your stallion mount you? Is it wrong to enjoy the feeling of a mare's vagina pulsing out her orgasm around your cock? Are you giving her pleasure? Is it pleasurable? Where are the lines and have you crossed them?

Welcome to the first day of my research. A re-birth of my Furiousvaginas. A barrage of questions. So it seems we will start with Zoo.