I happen to have a textbook that has some citations for the incidence.

Kinsey and colleagues found 8% of men and 3% of women did it at least once, and 17% of men raised on a farm (all self reported). This was in the 50s, but more recent studies have also found that a fair number of people have done it at least once. The large majority only did it once or a few times, often as a dare, initiation, or out of curiosity. And clinical zoophilia (where it’s the primary means of arousal) is extremely rare and usually has a lot of comorbidities.

It doesn’t happen often, clearly, but the research we have suggests that it’s common enough to where you almost certainly have met someone who has done it.

but there’s a lot of fictional depictions of bestiality, a million lurid rumors and taboo tales. makes you think it’s more common & possible than it is, but there simply never were ‘donkey shows’ or bestiality executions in ancient rome.

You, uh, got like any evidence to support a negative?

uhhhh that’s just (unfortunately) very well-documented to be false. like, extremely well documented.

edit: also that’s an incomprehensible answer to the question. why would something being impossible make it wrong? I don’t think it would be morally wrong to sidestep through the 8th dimension to get to work faster

First, right off the bat, you can and I’ve seen it. With that out of the way, you’re not addressing if it is moral or not. Morality is about what it is right or wrong to do, not what is possible to do. If I could, with a sweep of my hand, either kill every poor person in the US or slaughter every millionaire, then there is a moral reason why I should perform the latter and not the former.

Your first argument is restating the concept, not presenting why it is wrong. It’s tautological. Actually it’s a little worse than tautological, it sneaks in a motive. If someone was desirable and had sex with humans, would it be okay? I don’t think you or I think that.

Your second is also not an argument.

Yes, as a vegan, my stance is we should stop breeding cows.

By the way, I’ve heard the argument “oh, it’s better for the health of the animal to do … whatever” in quite a few contexts that I think are just plain wrong. Such as, for example, farrowing crates. Apparently it’s “better” for the sow and her babies if she is stuck in a crate so small she can’t even turn around. I don’t buy that farrowing crates are good for pigs and I don’t buy that artificial insemination is good for cows either.

I will but only if the parent commenter I replied to also moves their self flagellation from here with me

what the actual fuck is wrong with you

god yall are fucking gahhhh

WHAT THE FUCK

hexbear is great but this is a very bad moment from them

This is why most bestiality laws (and animal cruelty laws, for that matter) read something like “you can’t fuck or mutilate animals, unless it’s for a farming purpose”.

Well OBVIOUSLY that doesn’t count because flails arms wildly

I would argue there is a distinction between the two because bestiality is performing these actions for sexual gratification. Your overall point I do agree with, that the way we interact with animals in factory farms is sexual violence, but it is a different sort

I think he should be dunked on, but I don’t like the idea we shouldn’t question why things we think are wrong are wrong.

White people don’t get to have opinions on that of natives, you don’t deserve it anymore. Im begging to think that veganism isn’t a normal topic here, but some constant struggle to maintain.

I have yet to see a vegan seriously propose the end of natural predation

This is what they were saying, humans eating animals is natural predation, or at least could be in a deindustrial setting, like wolves eating deer or whatever. Vegans, they were suggesting, believe in a very Eurocentric/Christian way that humans aren’t animals when our engagement with them as predators is as natural as predators eating us. As long as you minimize the industrialized suffering, that is, they were envisioning small holder communal farming and hunting as their counterexample.

a vegan seriously propose the end of natural predation

Brian Tomasik considers it, but he’s a wingnut. There is very little literature on wild animal suffering.

Yeah it does kinda seem like weaponizing indigenous experiences to defend a boutique consumer choice. I think he aspires to hunter-gathering or considers it to be the superior way for humans to live, which I think contributes to trying this approach.

He also said he would starve to death if the revolution happened and meat was abolished. I guess vegetables are really that bad to some people.

Im sorry but this also reeks of the reddit suicide help thing. This isn’t very good for arguing.

Perhaps the assumption was that you shouldn’t need a law against intercourse with animal corpses? Because holy fuck

I agree with your conclusion (beastiality obviously bad) but this doesn’t work, “wiseness” isn’t an objective measure. We can’t actually decide what isn’t or is wise with any real consistency beyond what we perceive to be wise ourselves.

I would say that Homer Simpson continuing to eat food despite inevitably being brought to the slaughter could be perfectly wise, if he does not particularly care about his own longevity. The same would be true if he knew there was no option that would lead to him escaping. There would be no reason not to take the food, then.

Assuming that there is objectively wise decisions assumes there are objectively wise goals, and this is simply not true. There are only socially accepted goals and personally ingrained goals.

What this leads us to is the ability to simply skip all this and lead us to a much simpler benchmark: don’t do things to animals that go against the goals they have already shown. Surgery is barely permissible due to their obvious instinctual desire to live, but beastiality is not at all permissible because they have no desire to do anything like that with human beings. Most other things are fine because animals show an eagerness to do them and they do not against their goals, like training for treats.

I’m going to go through your examples to show how this heuristic works.

Another example of the “best self” thing: you should put your drunk friend to bed instead of letting him drive back to the club even if he’s a shithead and will still be mad you didn’t give him his keys once he sobers up.

You already know your friend does not want to die, usually, so this is perfectly fine because what they actually want aligns with what you do. If they did want to die in a car crash and not just because they were drunk or having an episode, then it’s not your fault that they can’t properly communicate that which goes against what they usually want. And, at risk of being very macabre, it is very easy to rectify if that is the case, unlike something like sexual assault which leaves permanent trauma.

Otherwise you can just say “oh whatever this pig has poor impulse control, if he could understand he’d still probably just do [whatever I want / whatever he was already doing]” and then why bother with the thought experiment, you can just treat animals as property and ignore their agency altogether.

Most pigs presumably want to be healthy and alive. Over feeding them or killing them after doing it goes against both of those things.

I suppose you could argue that I’m just rephrasing your point, but I think it’s an important way to rephrase it, because the logic of “best self” could be used to override eg kid’s consent to HRT and tell them they can’t get it, despite them wanting to, because as a Christian you think they just lack impulse control and need to be disciplined.

I believe the example you gave of a farmer projecting their desires onto a pig is the exact issue that assuming an objective concept of “best self” leads to. It assumes that other living beings have the exact same values as you, and gives you permission to do horrible things to them to make them conform to those values. We need to be willing to listen to people’s desires that go against our idea of what’s best to avoid this. Of course, after verifying that it is indeed what they actually want and not just a fleeting impulse.

CW: suicide for this part
You could perceive this as dangerous because it means it could lead to us, for instance, letting people die who are suicidal. While I understand the concern, I do think there’s a bigger issue with how we think about suicide in general. It’s pretty fucked up that we keep people alive against their consent because we’re fond of them- and then proceed to put them into horrible conditions like grippy sock jail that make their life worse. The logical conclusion of being against sanctioned suicide is worse than being ok with it. Of course, if we are going to be allowing this, we have to put measures into place to ensure people aren’t just being taken over by a depressive episode or feel pressured into death by social forces, and have a genuine, persisting desire to die, even through their moments of happiness. We need to be willing to improve everything else before resorting to such things, because many people resort to suicide due to feeling that what they want is impossible, not because they have a desire to die and of itself.