Sexual Regulation and the Law, A Canadian Perspective by Jochelson Richard;

Author:Jochelson, Richard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Demeter Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Rethinking Bestial Regulation

Richard Jochelson, Alicia Dueck-Read, and James Gacek

Introduction

Bestiality. Today, the word itself generally conjures up silence, nervous giggles, and sentiments of disgust or incredulity. In Renaissance law textbooks, bestiality was “the offense the very naming of which is a crime” (Adams, “Woman-Battering” 68). Indeed, for the most part, in a relative sense, bestiality is a scarcely studied or talked about phenomenon (Beirne 113). Unsurprisingly, its emergence within the law has been shrouded in silence and conflated in legal discourse with a wide variety of other “sexual acts against nature” under the label of sodomy (Delaney 260). What has resulted from this historical progression are criminal laws on bestiality that are broadly worded, rooted in a moral prerogative, and intimately implicated with the creation of human subjectivity.

In this chapter, we seek to place modern understandings of bestiality law in Canada in context. Doing so requires that we first understand bestiality and its definitions, its occurrences in society, and the degree to which it is a social problem. Second, we delve into the historical antecedents of bestiality law, its historic link with same-sex prohibitions, and the way this played out historically in Canada and throughout the twentieth century. Then we consider the modern legal landscape governing bestiality in Canada and look at some case examples, some legislative possibilities, and some broad commonalities in the modern jurisprudence. Following a critique of the modern applications of the law, we conclude the chapter by considering critical perspectives that provide alternate lenses in conceptualizing bestiality as a social problem and that may untether bestiality from its Judaeo- Christian and Victorian roots.

Understanding Bestiality and its Occurrence

Bestiality is most commonly used to refer to sexual activity between a person and an animal (Stern and Smith-Blackmore 1058) and may also be used to capture sexual activity in which one party is portrayed as an animal (Boggs, Animalia 48). Narrow definitions of bestiality contrast the practice with that of zoophilia; some scholars argue that bestiality refers to the use of animals as sex objects, whereas zoophilia refers to sexual relationships with animals carried out within the context of consent and mutual emotional attachment (Stern and Smith-Blackmore 1058; Rudy 606). Those who label all sexual encounters with animals as inherently abusive prefer the term animal sexual abuse over either bestiality or zoophilia (Stern and Smith-Blackmore 1057; Beirne) and compare its impact on the animal as similar to that of child sexual abuse (Stern and Smith-Blackmore 1058-1059) or human sexual assault (Beirne).1

Initially, zoophilia was considered a mental disorder under the DSM III but was later removed and relegated under the DSM-5 to the category of “other specified paraphilic disorder,” as it is not considered a clinically significant problem by itself. This category recognizes situations in which a person’s preferred sexual object of desire is animals and in which this causes significant distress and impairment in other important areas of function (Aggrawal 258; Lesandric et al. 27–28; Beirne 121). Proponents of zoophilia argue that there is nothing inherently wrong about sex

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