Hello there, I'm an avid debater and psychology and med student. And I'm going to attempt to define what exactly consent means, and is so you can decide what you think of it. As for Zoophilia, I am indifferent to the idea, though wary of the populaces understanding of the subject leading to harm. Such is why we have sexual education, but that is another topic.
To first define consent, we must look at if we are wishing to define the connotation of consent or the denotation of consent. Denotative, consent is simply the approval of an act to be carried out. It does not need a specific ethics requirement for the approval, as in verbal or legal documentation. Simple acknowledged approval, even gestures.
The problem we run into, is the connotative definition of what we want out of consent, and defining what exactly accounts as approval under ethics. Human consent I would define as the logical analysis and understanding of a situation, before evaluating a conclusion. This means that it does not have to be verbally heard, or even gestured, as the human mind can interpret things on a logical level. We understand that if we for example, made the wrong move and assumed we had consent we would be told.
This is the issue, as this is not the case with an animal. We wont be verbally told that the consent wasn't warranted. We could assume something such as a growl, a sign of discomfort or otherwise would be a sign of disapproval. But the real question is if we can actually understand the logical process, of an animal. In theory, we can grow to study and understand the behavior of animals, to judge their actions as consent or not. But this is simply us judging another animal which cannot properly assert itself at our level, this is the morally gray area.
The fact is that another animal cannot give "consent", at least at our level of understanding and comprehension. Will it understand that there could be pain, that there are dangers of infection? Even humans can be unaware of things in this case, or even simply ignorant to some facts and be coaxed into something due to lack of understanding.
This is simply something you would have to be morally, alright with. As, as far as I am aware no matter how much you try your animal will not be as intelligent as you are. And if even humans can make the mistake, another animal would have the even greater chance.
My advice? Be careful, try to understand the animals feelings the best of your ability. Make sure you aren't accidentally asserting yourself over the animal to where it feels forced.
Hello.
Thank you for your evaluation, and we appreciate the time and thought you've put into it. It's logical, sound and fair, but...
...it isn't a revelation. Understanding an animal's feelings and language to the best a human can is what we all do already; wouldn't you treat your girlfriend or boyfriend with the same respect? True partners are what our animals are to us, and always have been.
I'm being polite, but some other zoos here may not be. We've had issues in the past, where people who are not zoophiles or members of the community have been condescending, telling us to do what is already done. It particularly riles a few folks here, and I don't blame them for that. I know that you've spent a little time here, watching how we operate, and that's greatly appreciated.
But even so, please be wary. I know you're a psych/med student and understand that you're here to do good, but consider carefully how you could be interpreted.
Greetings, the evaluation was more for people who wanted what at least, I believe is a secure understanding. Whether they take it or not, is up to them.
Part of my evaluation was to help understand what, "the best of your ability" is. For people on the line trying to decide whether they want to do something or not. Or how much they want an animal, or human, or otherwise to understand them before they wish to proceed.
As for being wary, any person who debates a lot knows they're going to eat shit for speaking an open mind. Eating shit and the rain of downvote arrows like it's warfare... is a small sacrifice for speaking free.
Thank you for your time.
Again, I appreciate the intentions, but do you think it's wholly appropriate for you to be supplying that secure understanding? We have students of many sciences, med and philosophy among us, and as such some members of our community will find you callous, even though you're correct.
Well, remember that "the best of our ability" is not zoophile ability, but human ability as a whole. But thank you.
If you're downvoted here, it won't be because anyone disagrees with what you're saying. It will be because they feel it's inappropriate for you to say what we feel we can (and do) say perfectly well ourselves.
And thank you for yours.
I get that I'm callous a lot, my ability to phrase things with sincerity isn't the best rather than blunt attempts at logic. I'll have to work on that. But either way hopefully someone will find even at least reiterating there thoughts to be helpful in some manner.
Have a nice day, as I'm sure the ping-pong of me responding is getting tiresome! But I'll do my best to respond to anything if asked further on this post.
Ah, I'm afraid it didn't come across that way. It read more like, "Hello, I'm a smart person who wants an interesting debate. Here is a position that is clearly much more sound than any of the normal straw-men people throw around normally. Thoughts?"
Hey!
Thanks for commenting. Though, as Tundrovyy-Volk said, we're already highly concerned with our animals' emotions, body-language, etc., I appreciate that you, as an outsider, came to this conclusion. All too often what we get is people asserting that animals can't consent, and it's refreshing to see you've thought through things and haven't completely ruled out the possibility of cross-species consent.
And thank you for commenting!
Maybe in the future we will see more acceptance, as with almost any deviation with what society determines is the norm. Staying aware and concerned of any partners emotions and so forth are respectable.
Sorry for the late reply, there appears to be a storm happening.
No need to make it complicated as it's just as simple as reading an animal's body language. But anyways welcome to this subreddit.
So far, after raising and taking care of a wide spectrum of animals, from livestock to exotics, and at some point discovering that I can relate to zoophilia even if not practicing, and getting to know some of the people in the "community" I can safely say that most zoophiles are far more sensitive, careful and objective about the feelings of their animals than every veterinarian I've ever worked with.
There are a handful of asshats, bestiality fetishists who slip through the door and those are the ones who really need to be taught a lesson about consent and feelings. But for the most part, a very curious thing begins to happen when you begin to look at animals from the level of a being that could potentially be intimate and fully loving with them. When you start acknowledging that these are fully functional, living, feeling, sexual, independent, mature and equal entities, you start opening up to an unseen world of what goes on inside another creature's mind from their level, objectively and compassionately.
I don't feel that most zoophiles have much to worry about. From my experience the species that needs more help defining what consent and manipulation means is humans with each other. We are horrible about taking advantage of each other, hurting each other and abusing each other.
In my opinion people would probably treat animals and other people much better if they looked at them with the same passion and admiration and respect as the average zoophile feels.
I feel this doesn't really answer the question.
Isn't that too vague? How complete does your understanding of the situation need to be? Do you have to know how exactly both your lives will be impacted if you happen to get a disabled child that will need full time care before having sex? Is it still consent if you haven't thought about these things first?
How much does a dog really need to know about what to expect from sex and why? I'm not so sure...
That sounds like you're assuming a human does things to a passive animal. For example male dogs often show quite enthusiastically when they feel like having sex. So, are there different forms of consent among animals too and how different are they really?
Hello there, hopefully we can come to a conclusive understanding.
A. I would say that you should have understanding on how your lives should be impacted, isn't this why we have sex education? Don't we already define how much we need to know?
It would be defined as consent with misunderstanding, it could be defined as a form of manipulation. Such as taking advantage of a child who knows no better, is that consent? As for how much a dog needs to know, morals are subjective so that's for you to decide isn't it?
B. What could be considered as enthusiasm, even under these circumstances could be misinterpreted. The idea was to reiterate the fact that you shouldn't simply believe that you understand something, rather than trying to understand it better. Humans and animals have different reasons for sex you could even say, to go even deeper and define what is loving sex and what is simply pleasure seeking.
Moral concepts are concepts devised by humans, no? How much does a dog need to know? How different are they really? In reality, is a dog even concerned of these variables? It's simply a reiteration of understanding that you have a position of responsibility for your actions, at least I believe it should be treated seriously as any relationship if you want it to be accepted.
But again, that's simply my moral understanding, my moral boundaries and concepts that I as a human devised. You're free to agree, to disagree, but I consider it mostly food for thought.
As an avid debater, I'm sure you can detect a hint of confirmation bias, cherry-picking, and moving of goalposts in your analysis... or at least your description of others' opinions.
Being careful and not dominating is something which I think will resonate with everyone here. I agree "consent" is an ambiguous term, but I don't understand the assertion that logical analysis is a mandatory prerequisite for sexual activity, in any case other than satisfying human laws designed to pertain only to humans. Again maybe this is what you're saying, but I don't see if this proves anything except those laws being mis-applied.
Dogs, as one example, can clearly communicate when they'd like to be let out to relieve themselves, or when they'd like to be fed. Some have even figured out locations of food or the door outdoors, and will attempt to attract a human's attention to help them with this need.
At the very least, dogs (like most mammals) understand the need to eat - not because they understand biochemistry or think through proper long-term nutritive value of the food, but because it scratches the itch of hunger. A simple biological need (nutrition intake) creates some discomfort (hunger) which in turn motivates action (seeking and eating food).
Likewise a dog probably doesn't understand the health consequences of not urinating... there is a biological need (buildup of waste products), an "itch" created by it which mammalian brains understand (urgency), and a way to scratch that itch (relieving oneself).
Why then is it that sex is unique? Is it because animals see it uniquely? Is it objectively unique? Or is it that humans have traditionally found it gross or private or special, and therefore have attached a bunch of human baggage and laws to it, and we are now applying those (improperly) back to animals and rationalizing the obvious discontinuities that come from forcing a square peg into a triangular hole?
Put even more directly, animals frequently have sex with each other without deep levels of thought on the matter. They do not say "I would like offspring, in a few months"... they react to biological motivation. There are times when they will display "please help me with this" behavior, or else "I am not interested" behavior. When these same behaviors of sexual interest are directed at humans, why are the goalposts moved for a more stringent (and conveniently near-impossible) burden of proof?
Thanks for presenting your thoughts and challenging the status quo on the topic!
Hi, thanks for joining in :)
The cautions you give are, basically, why I have resisted temptation to act on my desires.
That said, as a software engineer with an interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, I do not believe that humans do very much "logical analysis" before reaching a conclusion. Consider, for example, the 2-4-6 game, where humans are extremely confident yet also wrong. Conversely, look at the number of examples used to train machine learning systems, which are almost nothing but logical, yet which can do surprisingly poorly even with 60,000 examples.
I am definitely aware that I know nothing worth saying about psychology, so I would like to ask: I have heard that "behaviourism" is regarded as insufficient to model minds, is this true, and why? Repeated sexual behaviour would, to a naïve non-psychologist such as myself, seem to be a behaviour that indicates ongoing consent. But I do not wish to fall foul of the Dunning–Kruger effect and mistake my optimism for rational knowledge.