No attraction or paraphilia can be morally wrong. Not even zoophilia.
[plain text: no attraction can be morally wrong. Not even zoophilia. end plain text]
Scrolled a bit through the antizoo tag and I really feel like I need to talk about it.
trigger/content warning: paraphilia, paraphiles, zoophilia, mentions of bestiality(animal rape), paramisia(hatred and oppresion towards paraphiles), swears, and probably some more.
i feel like this is an important discussion, but feel free to ignore this post if it is triggering (or uncomfortable) for you.
rest of the post inside a cut. the post is also long.
let's start for the begining: there's a difference between zoophilia and bestiality.
★ zoophilia: involuntary attraction to nonhuman, theriform animals. no one chooses to be a zoophile, no one can just "stop being" a zoophile.
★bestiality: sexual contact (which is ALWAYS sexual abuse) with an animal. it is completely voluntary, damaging and harmful.
Not all zoophiles are bestialists, obviously, but not all bestialists are zoophiles either. The great majority of abusers don't abuse because they're "attracted" to the victim, they abuse because they are horrible people/beings. an animal cannot go to a police station and tell the police officers that it was raped, so (sadly) it is easy to take advantage of them. (not like the police officers would have done anything if it could, though).
Please stop treating them as synonyms. they are not.
the second point is that being "against zoophilia" is ableist as fuck.
There's something called paraphilic disorders. A paraphilic disorder is when a paraphile's thoughts and, or attraction is causing them distress harm, like to harmfully act on their urges (the harm can be towards others or towards themself). They often appear because of trauma and are really hard to live with.
the great majority of beings that struggle with a paraphilic disorder don't want to cause any kind of harm towards others. They need help to recover and avoid harming others and themselves.
There is also people who aren't exactly paraphiles but which the paraphilia hate affects too. like people with zOCD, a condition that causes people to have zoophilia(or bestiality) related intrusive thoughts. It can overlap with zoophilia but not all beings with zOCD are zoophiles and not all zoophiles have zOCD.
to end with this point, non-disordered paraphiles don't control their attraction, and their ATTRACTION should not be hated upon, since it is NOT harming anyone. HOWEVER, if a paraphile starts partaking in, supporting or enabling harm done to animals, children, dead people, and such, that is an ACTION that can (and should) be discouraged and hated upon.
third point: contact stances.
a contact stance is personal, and is used to describe wether or not the object of attraction can consent to engage in sexual and or romantic ways.
★pro-contact: one that is pro-contact believes the object of attraction CAN consent.
★complex-contact: one that is complex-contact believes that the object of attraction CAN consent under certain circumstances.
★contact-neutral: one that is contact-neutral does not care about whether the object of attraction can consent (there is more definitions to this one I think).
★anti-contact: one that is anti-contact believes the object of attraction CANNOT consent.
I am anti-contact for zoophilia, pedophilia, necrophilia and other non-consenting paras. most zoophiles are anti-contact are anti-contact for their own paraphilia.
a lot of people/beings who are "anti-zoophile" are actually anti-contact for zoophilia (which is a good thing, being against abuse is cool).
fourth point: the "anti-zoophile" movement does more harm than good
there are quite a few beings/people who, even knowing the difference between zoophilia and bestiality, knowing about paraphilic disorders, knowing that attraction is involuntary and knowing what contact stances are, still think zoophilia is inherently wrong and that zoophiles are bad for being zoophiles.
wich is not true.
I don't know about you all, but I basically define something morally wrong like this :
"a voluntary action, that is meant or known by the individual who makes the action to cause harm to other people/beings." (feel free to ask me to elaborate in comments).
zoophilia is not wrong because it is not:
★ an action
★ voluntary
★ harming anyone (unless it's a paraphilic disorder)
obviously it is completely reasonable to be grossed out by the fact that there people being attracted to theriform animals, (I feel grossed out by stuff too, it is not morally wrong either) specially because most beings haven't completely separated it from animal rape in their subconscious, but it being "gross" doesn't make it morally wrong.
as I was saying, making zoophilia seem like a morally wrong thing will lead zoophiles to:
★ seek support: this is a good thing, right? not always. They can stumble upon pro-contact groups, also rad-queer groups (which are really pro-para, though not all of them are pro-contact). a zoophile meeting others that support them while they are having a hard time accepting and loving themselves will lead them to engage more with those kind of people, even if it is harmful people.
★ harm (or even kill) themselves: being hated upon, receiving death threats, and everyone publicly saying everyone like you should be killed in horrible ways all the time is NOT good for your mental health. this applies to zoophiles too. if you hate yourself so much and everyone around you does so, self harm and suicide are really likely.
★harm others: as I said, seeking support in pro-contact spaces will normalize bestiality and make someone adopt the (incorrect) idea of theriform animals being able to consent. this is really dangerous because it will result in someone raping an animal.
not to mention, all of these affect those with zOCD, which aren't technically zoophiles too.
Fifth point: recovery is not what you think it is
There is a lot of anti-zoos that are "pro-recovery", which would actually be a good thing if what they meant was recovery.
recovery does NOT mean "therapy to stop being a zoo". If one has attraction to animals, no matter how much therapy one gets, it will not "go away".
Recovery DOES mean help for people with paraphilic disorders to find a safe outlet to their urges, stop or reduce intrusive thoughts, help build self esteem and don't let their attraction be harmful to them or others around them, among other things. this is the goal of recovery.
this is a draft, I will edit this later with spell corrections, more organization, sources and also more aesthetics (I know this is serious, I still like aesthetics)
