It's Always More Complicated

Several years ago I was at a party, talking to someone about urban legends involving sex with animals (as one does, surely) and the other person in the conversation made the comment that to her it seemed odd that people would get so upset about bestiality when as a culture we don't get upset about killing and eating animals. Why should it be so awful to bugger a goat, say, if it isn't awful to kill and eat the same goat?

I allowed as how I simply didn't have an answer to that.

The arguments seem very similar to those sometimes invoked to justify paedophilia.

They are exactly the same.

I used to hang out on equestrian forums, and at some point, if you do that long enough, and are unlucky enough, you will come across zoophiles justifying themselves. To my ear, there was absolutely no distinction between the reported justifications of pedophilia and theirs - it's all about 'having loving relationships' with someone who 'gives sublimal signals that they are willing cooperators'.

And yes, the brain bleach would have been quite handy.

On the one hand, I get the impression that, well, I used to live in the country where the men are men and the sheep are nervous. It's happened before, it will happen again, and at least they're not molesting children or obsessing about adults.

On the other hand, the justifications are close enough that I feel a deep sense of unease regardless. The zoophiles were bad enough; but when the discussion suddenly turned and began to justify pedophilia - after all, exactly the same arguments were used for both - I felt extremely uneasy, not to mention violated, and that is why I cannot regard zoophilia as a mostly harmless eccentricty.

On a much more practical level, small dogs that hump everything in sight might be amusing, but a doberman-sized dog - or a stallion/gelding - that has been conditioned to think of humans as being involved in sex is decidedly dangerous.

Breeding stallions are difficult enough to handle at times without the possibility to transfering that behaviour to anyone who might encounter the horse in stable or field.

I think one major difference between killing and eating a goat and buggering it is that the person killing and eating it does not justify it by citing an emotional connection. No one claims (I hope) that they have a loving connection with the goat which makes the goat consent to being killed and eaten. The lack of consent in clearly visible.
However, once consent is argued (for things which the animal might find as painful as being killed - I am aware of the sexual assaults on horses which happen regularly), the animal is given a status of human adulthood which can be used to justify a lot of abuse.