Pets with benefits: We need to talk: Zoophilia

Just what does the + stand for in LGBTQ+?

London Review of Books: Trans Narratives.

I had been a decades long subscriber to the London Review of Books. I did not unsubscribe when they published this piece:

I disagreed with much of the thrust of the article and the casual use of “Terf” ; widely regarded as a slur and the new c**t. Rose also repeated the notion that Puberty Blockers are reversible (they are not); the, now discredited, statistics about suicide and the irresponsible mantra “I want a happy daughter not a dead son”.

I covered this research here. 👇 The article would leave the reader assuming nearly a 1000 “trans” people had attempted suicide. In fact there were 27, trans-identified people, of which 13, self-reported, suicide attempts

Pace report.

I also disagreed with this and felt it was a very naive stance. 👇 Men claiming the identity of “woman” are a new colonising class of man, with the added benefit they get to call women “privileged” whilst they force us to give up our spaces and our language. That’s not rejecting masculinity it is demonstrating male entitlement in almost its purest form.

Despite this there were some useful perspectives and she exposed a diversity of opinion, in the “trans” community, on the idea they had literally changed sex and on whether anyone male should invade female spaces.

I did not unsubscribe.

The right to sex: Amia Srinivasan

This article was also published in the LRB

These few choice quotes should give you a flavour of the piece. She opens with the story of the Incel, Elliott Rogers who murdered some of his fellow students, enraged at his, to him, unjust exclusion from the dating preferences of “hot, white, blondes”. She is of the “choice feminism” school and has no appreciation that ex-prostituted women have spoken about how embracing the idea that “sex work is work” was an essential belief system to be able to survive.

She also fails to see the implication, of this quote, that there a class of women who are available for prostitution as an escape from “menial” occupations. (But not for an elite academic, eh, Amia?)

Here she equates “transphobes” with racists. 😳

She excels herself when she attends to Lesbians right to exclude males from their same sex dating pools and the way she skirts over the disgusting, rape adjacent “Cotton Ceiling” rhetoric.

She did enlighten me about the coming, pardon the pun, socialist utopia as envisaged by Charles Fourier.

Reader I still did not unsubscribe.

Pronouns: Amia Srinisvan, again

She begins my relating the time Judith Butler accidentally misgendered her. Oh, the horror, and the name drop. Then she recounts her own original sin, repentance, penance and hopefully absolution.

We are now exhorted to #BeKind (i.e. compliant) because of the great harm we would be causing. Transperbole?

Yet again, she assumes anyone who objects is a Conservative or would be happy with racist language. The idea that refusing to use incorrect sex pronouns when, almost by definition, the person would not be there makes one conservative is ludicrous, however inferring that we are the same people who would call anyone black “it” is beyond ridiculous.

As a final note Srinisvan asks us to consider how we would feel if we were given names we did not feel reflected our reality.

I give you Cisgender, Bleeders, Cervix-Havers, Menstruators, Gestators,

I could go on.

Reader, I still did not unsubscribe.

Now we come to “pets with benefits”.

Srinivasan reflects on walking her own dog and if life could get any better than this?

The oldest transgression.

The answer is sex with animals which, she argues, has been depicted since palaeolithic times. (Depiction does not mean it is evidence that it occurred).

As it transpires the LRB covered the issue in 1994. So, what if your neighbour is getting it on with Fluffy!

Amia quotes literary examples, of bestiality, from Yeats, Edward Albee and Woody Allen (not the finest example on sexual transgressions).

She proceeds to make a distinction between bestiality and zoophilia which itS proponents claim is a sexual orientation and akin to homosexuality or “trans” people.

Unsurprisingly there is one group prepared to recognise zoophiles. 👇

Srinivasan questions why there is this particular squeamishness about sex with animals and then finds a surprising ally from within the Animal Liberation Front.

We may be guilty of speciesism

This is her conclusion.

The book Srinisivan is reviewing is by Joanna Bourke. It is, she states, inspired by feminism and queer theory.

What Yorkshire feminist can forget how we fought for the right to vote and the right to fuck our ferrets!

Reader, I unsubscribed.

Moral Panic? Slippery Slope?

Before the usual suspects accuse women of being consumed by a moral panic; in Germany, a group of zoophiles were emboldened to have a Zoophile march. At the link you can hear a man talking about his relationship with his German Shepherd; which is much easier than with a human being.

Zoophile Pride Germany

And here is an article in Hypatia, erstwhile feminist journal, published by Cambridge University Press.

This is where we are. Lesbians are morally questionable for being, er, Lesbians, the working class can escape their lower caste status by joining the “amorous nobility” and zoophiles aspire to joint the + in LGBT + .

Tell me we are at the bottom of the slippery slope!