Rethinking Bestiality: Towards a Concept of Interspecies Sexual Assault

BEIRNE Piers, Rethinking Bestiality: Towards a Concept of Interspecies Sexual Assault, Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 1, No. 3, 317-340 (1997) DOI: 10.1177/1362480697001003003

University of Southern Maine, Portland, USA

This paper seeks to introduce a view of bestiality which differs radically from both the anthropocentrism enshrined in the dogma of Judaeo-Christianity and also from the pseudo-liberal tolerance fashionable today. I argue that bestiality should be understood as `interspecies sexual assault' because the situation of animals as abused victims parallels that of women and, to some extent, that of infants and children and further because (1) human-animal sexual relations almost always involve coercion; (2) such practices often cause animals pain and even death; and (3) animals are unable either to communicate consent to us in a form that we can readily understand or to speak out about their abuse. The paper offers a typology of interspecies sexual assault, including sexual fixation, commodification, adolescent sexual experimentation and aggravated cruelty.