I don't have a position on the depravity of the acts here, but I do think that the romantasy smut has a large mental gap between real life zoophilia and what these women are fantasizing about. In my mind, the women are fantasizing about fantastic men, basically human men, who are given a thin veneer of nonhumanity for the sake of the "plot" or "world building". I don't think they want to jack off bulls, I think they want to jack off men who have bull-like qualities, so to speak. Doesn't mean the smut isn't frying brains, just my two cents.
I once watched a clip on a nature documentary showing the collection of bison semen. There was no dummy female, instead - after trapping the male bison in a brace- they shoved a literal dildo in his anus and gave an electric shock to make him ejaculate. My main thought was: That poor guy is going to tell his friends how he was abducted by aliens and anally probed, and they won't believe him.
"I don’t think that cows have the same sense of sexual propriety that humans do. The artificial insemination of cows on dairy farms is not a great humanitarian crisis."
I don't know if "humanitarian crisis" would be the right term, but it certainly raises ethical issues concerning the treatment of animals.
We have corpse doctors, they're called morticians. It's not "necrophilia" when a mortician checks the vaginal or anal cavity of corpses. Or rather, it's only necrophilia if the mortician has a depraved intent.
All that being said, I think that your approach to animal welfare and animal rights is the correct one. That is to say, focusing on the need to respect the inherent dignity of all living things, including those we farm to eat.
It's not that there is no good reason ever to stick your hand inside a cow. It's that the mechanized, routine act of doing it day-in-and-day-out for poverty wages is dehumanizing and corrosive to the soul.
Think Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' but with bull semen.
We do have "corpse doctors", the coroner or whoever else is doing an autopsy. The distinction you've made which I agree with is whether they find it sexually exciting or not - agree that if you get off on inseminating a bull it's gross, but a farmer for whom husbandry is just another gross part of their job is not a zoophile rapist. On the other hand an effective altruist would say you maximize utility by letting the zoophiles do the bull insemination - they're presumably happy to do it at $18 an hour whereas normal people would not, and better they work there than in a zoo or with children.
Veterinarians touch animals during the course of medical treatment, not for sexual gratification. Doctors and trainers touch athletes for the same reason. When doctors disguise their sexual activities as treatment, if they are caught, it’s a criminal offense.
I hear you, but. . . I'm not sure that cost and efficiency are the only reasons farmers use AI. The switch to AI wasn't just to boost quarterly profits by a few points. The benefits are real and significant. Agricultural output simply would not be what it is today without it.
For one thing, it's a lot safer, particularly for horses. Animal breeding isn't exactly an act of love, and it's not uncommon for one or both of the animals to be injured in some way. AI eliminates that risk. It also eliminates the need for transporting large, skittish herbivores over long distances.
Yes, AI tends to be a more reliable way of achieving conception than the old-fashioned way. It not only increases the number of new animals born, but also gives the farmer greater control over the entire process. The timing of births. Selective breeding in general.
There are also some domestic animals (turkeys come to mind) that have been bred in such a way that they're no longer capable of reproducing without AI. They just don't fit.
All of which to say that eliminating this practice would impose dramatic and serious costs in ways that eliminating other forms of alleged depravity (e.g., the smutty books!) really wouldn't.
Beyond that though, what you're arguing here amounts to characterizing the practice of animal husbandry as "depraved". Raising animals at scale is not immaculate, fluffy lambs gamboling about picturesque meadows. It's filthy, extremely biological, and far more dangerous than most realize. There's nothing dignified about it. Never has been, never will be. Spend any length of time around a cattle barn and that becomes apparent very, very quickly. The people involved in the actual raising of animals would probably be amused and/or bemused to hear their work described as "depraved". There's really nothing sexual about it for them. It's far too unpleasant and difficult for anything like that to enter into it.
Would you agree that in principle there could be an act so depraved that it would not be worth doing? Suppose that it were somehow impossible to do AI with your hands. Suppose it required you to manipulate the bull semen straw with your mouth and stick your entire head inside the cow. Would that not be worth doing?
I'm asking because I'm wondering whether your objection is really based on the cost-benefit analysis, or if you reject in principle the idea that we should avoid certain practices merely because they are depraved, even if they are slightly more efficient.
Well, first off, I'm rejecting your suggestion that the use of AI in raising animals is just "slightly more efficient". It's drastically more efficient, to the point of being an essential component of current agricultural output. You're making a far greater ask here than you're letting on, i.e., that it is immoral to eat any meat that one has not personally verified as being derived from an animal not conceived using AI. Good bloody luck with that.
But second, I'm also rejecting your suggestion that the practice of AI in raising animals is "depraved". It just isn't. Or, at least, not in the way it's currently practiced by the majority of people actually involved in the practice. That people are capable of finding depravity anywhere is a problem with human nature, independent of the moral nature of any given activity.
Suffice it to say that if a person finds the practice of AI to be somehow sexually gratifying, or indeed having any kind of sexual valence at all, they shouldn't be engaging in it. But I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of actual agricultural workers don't fall into either of those categories. That you may find the practice to be distasteful is neither here nor there. You don't get to elevate your own personal squeamishness into universal moral categories.
And I'm saying that it isn't. Your objections to the latter are to specific human sexual practices. What I'm saying is that animal AI is not a human sexual practice and thus doesn't fall into the same category. You're just squeamish.
We're denying bulls their natural birth right, just like me... In all serious though, stud bulls played such an important part to herding cultures, that the famed tale of the "Great Cattle Raid of Cooley" from the "Ulster Cycles" mythos is framed around a Queen trying to steal a prized breeding bull. Feels like an insult to a species who gives us so much.
As to the harm it does to people, people have had to deal with the grosser side of animals since we've been keeping them. Castrating animals and tending to puss filled infected hooves has been the norm since animal husbandry. I don't know how much artificial insemination effects people more than say killing and butchering the creatures.
Im really happy you came out on the side of anti-cow rape both theoretically and practically, this genre of essays tends to always defend the outrageous lol
Had to do a double take when this came up in my feed to see that this wasn't a Bentham's Bulldog article
Me too. People pay to support this guy??
Bentham’s bull-man, surely? 😛
His would be ‘is cow rape that bad?’
Lmao same
Simon Laird is just a slightly more right wing benthams bulldog.
I don't have a position on the depravity of the acts here, but I do think that the romantasy smut has a large mental gap between real life zoophilia and what these women are fantasizing about. In my mind, the women are fantasizing about fantastic men, basically human men, who are given a thin veneer of nonhumanity for the sake of the "plot" or "world building". I don't think they want to jack off bulls, I think they want to jack off men who have bull-like qualities, so to speak. Doesn't mean the smut isn't frying brains, just my two cents.
I once watched a clip on a nature documentary showing the collection of bison semen. There was no dummy female, instead - after trapping the male bison in a brace- they shoved a literal dildo in his anus and gave an electric shock to make him ejaculate. My main thought was: That poor guy is going to tell his friends how he was abducted by aliens and anally probed, and they won't believe him.
😂😂😂
"I don’t think that cows have the same sense of sexual propriety that humans do. The artificial insemination of cows on dairy farms is not a great humanitarian crisis."
I don't know if "humanitarian crisis" would be the right term, but it certainly raises ethical issues concerning the treatment of animals.
"It’s hard to see how shoving one’s hands in an animal’s vagina and anus is not also depraved, albeit to a lesser degree."
Unless one is a farm veterinarian?
How is that an excuse? If someone called themselves a "corpse doctor" would that make necrophilia ok?
So let the breach-birth calf and cow die?
It would only be justified if there were a very good reason. A breach-birth might be a good reason.
We have corpse doctors, they're called morticians. It's not "necrophilia" when a mortician checks the vaginal or anal cavity of corpses. Or rather, it's only necrophilia if the mortician has a depraved intent.
All that being said, I think that your approach to animal welfare and animal rights is the correct one. That is to say, focusing on the need to respect the inherent dignity of all living things, including those we farm to eat.
I think you guys are missing the point.
It's not that there is no good reason ever to stick your hand inside a cow. It's that the mechanized, routine act of doing it day-in-and-day-out for poverty wages is dehumanizing and corrosive to the soul.
Think Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' but with bull semen.
We do have "corpse doctors", the coroner or whoever else is doing an autopsy. The distinction you've made which I agree with is whether they find it sexually exciting or not - agree that if you get off on inseminating a bull it's gross, but a farmer for whom husbandry is just another gross part of their job is not a zoophile rapist. On the other hand an effective altruist would say you maximize utility by letting the zoophiles do the bull insemination - they're presumably happy to do it at $18 an hour whereas normal people would not, and better they work there than in a zoo or with children.
Veterinarians touch animals during the course of medical treatment, not for sexual gratification. Doctors and trainers touch athletes for the same reason. When doctors disguise their sexual activities as treatment, if they are caught, it’s a criminal offense.
I hear you, but. . . I'm not sure that cost and efficiency are the only reasons farmers use AI. The switch to AI wasn't just to boost quarterly profits by a few points. The benefits are real and significant. Agricultural output simply would not be what it is today without it.
For one thing, it's a lot safer, particularly for horses. Animal breeding isn't exactly an act of love, and it's not uncommon for one or both of the animals to be injured in some way. AI eliminates that risk. It also eliminates the need for transporting large, skittish herbivores over long distances.
Yes, AI tends to be a more reliable way of achieving conception than the old-fashioned way. It not only increases the number of new animals born, but also gives the farmer greater control over the entire process. The timing of births. Selective breeding in general.
There are also some domestic animals (turkeys come to mind) that have been bred in such a way that they're no longer capable of reproducing without AI. They just don't fit.
All of which to say that eliminating this practice would impose dramatic and serious costs in ways that eliminating other forms of alleged depravity (e.g., the smutty books!) really wouldn't.
Beyond that though, what you're arguing here amounts to characterizing the practice of animal husbandry as "depraved". Raising animals at scale is not immaculate, fluffy lambs gamboling about picturesque meadows. It's filthy, extremely biological, and far more dangerous than most realize. There's nothing dignified about it. Never has been, never will be. Spend any length of time around a cattle barn and that becomes apparent very, very quickly. The people involved in the actual raising of animals would probably be amused and/or bemused to hear their work described as "depraved". There's really nothing sexual about it for them. It's far too unpleasant and difficult for anything like that to enter into it.
Would you agree that in principle there could be an act so depraved that it would not be worth doing? Suppose that it were somehow impossible to do AI with your hands. Suppose it required you to manipulate the bull semen straw with your mouth and stick your entire head inside the cow. Would that not be worth doing?
It would command a very high wage.
Labour supply and response to work conditions is heterogeneous, there’s people who would love that job
I don't see any need for hypotheticals here.
I'm asking because I'm wondering whether your objection is really based on the cost-benefit analysis, or if you reject in principle the idea that we should avoid certain practices merely because they are depraved, even if they are slightly more efficient.
Well, first off, I'm rejecting your suggestion that the use of AI in raising animals is just "slightly more efficient". It's drastically more efficient, to the point of being an essential component of current agricultural output. You're making a far greater ask here than you're letting on, i.e., that it is immoral to eat any meat that one has not personally verified as being derived from an animal not conceived using AI. Good bloody luck with that.
But second, I'm also rejecting your suggestion that the practice of AI in raising animals is "depraved". It just isn't. Or, at least, not in the way it's currently practiced by the majority of people actually involved in the practice. That people are capable of finding depravity anywhere is a problem with human nature, independent of the moral nature of any given activity.
Suffice it to say that if a person finds the practice of AI to be somehow sexually gratifying, or indeed having any kind of sexual valence at all, they shouldn't be engaging in it. But I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of actual agricultural workers don't fall into either of those categories. That you may find the practice to be distasteful is neither here nor there. You don't get to elevate your own personal squeamishness into universal moral categories.
This is where we disagree. I'm not saying that AI technicians find it sexually gratifying. I'm saying that the act is depraved regardless of intent.
My objection to necrophilia, homosexuality, beastiality and coprophagia isn't just squeamishness - it is moral in nature!
And I'm saying that it isn't. Your objections to the latter are to specific human sexual practices. What I'm saying is that animal AI is not a human sexual practice and thus doesn't fall into the same category. You're just squeamish.
Wait until you find out how pig semen is collected 😆
I always assumed it was extracted with a syringe somehow. Can't believe they actually do this!
We're denying bulls their natural birth right, just like me... In all serious though, stud bulls played such an important part to herding cultures, that the famed tale of the "Great Cattle Raid of Cooley" from the "Ulster Cycles" mythos is framed around a Queen trying to steal a prized breeding bull. Feels like an insult to a species who gives us so much.
As to the harm it does to people, people have had to deal with the grosser side of animals since we've been keeping them. Castrating animals and tending to puss filled infected hooves has been the norm since animal husbandry. I don't know how much artificial insemination effects people more than say killing and butchering the creatures.
Im really happy you came out on the side of anti-cow rape both theoretically and practically, this genre of essays tends to always defend the outrageous lol
I thought I was gonna read some BB bullshit
Was pleasantly surprised
Does this issue need an essay?
Given the large number of thoughtful dissenting comments, it seems the answer is yes.
I think there’s a good case to be made in general against dehumanizing work. Interesting piece.
And I thought Randall from Clerks was taking things a bit out there when he contemplated the life of the lowly blue-collar gizz-mopper.
This one's a brave one. Thank you for writing this. Sincerely, a vegan Trump voter
This reminds me that Rebecca Loos (woman who had an affair with David Beckham) once masturbated a pig on British TV. https://archive.ph/F1oel