Not long ago I came across a “poll” in the sug­ges­tion forum of a pop­u­lar, invi­ta­tion only, com­mu­ni­ty for char­ac­ters, sto­ries, and worlds about the ban­ning of NSFW “fer­al” con­tent. I use the term poll light­ly despite the claims of those in sup­port of this on the forum. This “poll” only allowed for vot­ing for the ban not any option to vote against. Those who did voice an opin­ion against the ban were quick­ly vil­i­fied, com­ments were made that they should blocked or banned from the forum and the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole. Often times insults like zoophile or that any “fer­al” NSFW is the same as bes­tial­i­ty. Many in sup­port of the ban see the issue as entire­ly black or white. If it walks on four legs its an ani­mal and there­fore any con­tent that is sex­u­al with said char­ac­ter is bes­tial­i­ty peri­od. In my opin­ion its not that sim­ple espe­cial­ly when it comes to fic­tion and fantasy.

Bes­tial­i­ty, as defined by dictionary.com is sex­u­al rela­tions between a per­son and an ani­mal; sodomy. For the sake of argu­ment lets treat any­thing with a com­pa­ra­ble to human lev­el of intel­li­gence, aware­ness, and feel­ings as a per­son. Fan­ta­sy and mythol­o­gy have many fan­tas­tic races includ­ing elves, dwarves, hob­bits and on the dark­er side orcs, gob­lins, ogres, and trolls while not human, they def­i­nite­ly qual­i­fy as sapi­ent despite not being human. An ani­mal might be a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed to define, I’ll link to dictionary.com’s def­i­n­i­tion but for lets for the moment count it as any crea­ture capa­ble of vol­un­tary motion, eat­ing (acquir­ing and digest­ing food), and hav­ing a sen­so­ry and ner­vous sys­tem let­ting them respond to stim­uli. Lets also exclude any­thing sapi­ent or any­thing that qual­i­fies as a per­son as defined above. There might be some dis­agree­ment on the def­i­n­i­tions above. Some may dis­agree on the def­i­n­i­tion of what a per­son actu­al­ly is. Does it include fan­ta­sy races and cre­ations of fic­tion and mythol­o­gy? If we nar­row the def­i­n­i­tion to only include humans as peo­ple as they are cur­rent­ly the only known species that can be defined as sapi­ent by mod­ern sci­ence does that make any oth­er species an ani­mals? If not then why? Humans are in essence ani­mals as well with the major dif­fer­ence between the species and oth­er ani­mals is being sapi­ent. If a per­son is lim­it­ed to only humans then any­thing non-human engaged in any activ­i­ties with some­thing else non-human should­n’t be a prob­lem. Maybe the prob­lem is with our def­i­n­i­tion of ani­mal? As was men­tioned when exam­in­ing the term per­son a human can be clas­si­fied as an ani­mal with the excep­tion of us hav­ing exclud­ed sapi­ent beings or that we define as a per­son or peo­ple. Some may argue that an ani­mal is any­thing that does­n’t walk on two legs or walks on four legs. What about birds, mon­keys, apes, kan­ga­roos, or frogs? Are fish or snakes ani­mals? How about a cen­taurs? Are mer­maids? Are mino­taurs or harpies? What about drag­ons? My exam­ples again include species pop­u­lar in fan­ta­sy and mythol­o­gy many of them com­mon­ly hav­ing an intel­lect equal to or supe­ri­or to a human. What about anthro­po­mor­phic crea­tures? mythol­o­gy includes sev­er­al gods with heads or body parts more com­mon­ly attrib­uted to ani­mals. Fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture as well as tele­vi­sion and role­play­ing games include bipedal crea­tures resem­bling canines, felines, or lizards. These crea­tures are typ­i­cal­ly also sapi­ent. Last­ly, fan­ta­sy as well as mythol­o­gy has sev­er­al cas­es where crea­tures that resem­ble mod­ern or extinct earth ani­mals with the excep­tion of being sapi­ent and hav­ing a human lev­el, or greater intel­li­gence. Are they ani­mals? Why?

My under­stand­ing is that one of the con­cerns regard­ing bes­tial­i­ty is that it is harm­ful to ani­mals and abu­sive, because ani­mals are unable to give or with­hold con­sent. But IF con­sent can be giv­en is it real­ly an ani­mal? Does it even mat­ter at that point? Is it any dif­fer­ent than a human and elf engag­ing in inti­ma­cy? A dwarf and a gnome? A trill and a klin­gon (Star Trek).They are sim­ply anoth­er species, dif­fer­ent but that does­n’t make them animals. 

An alter­nate argu­ment that I’ve heard is that depic­tion of ani­mal gen­i­talia is just zoophillia. Again, in my opin­ion its not black or white issue. Some of the best sources for inspi­ra­tion in fic­tion is just explor­ing dif­fer­ent parts nature. Anoth­er con­sid­er­a­tion is that for some explor­ing a species besides human may allow them to bet­ter under­stand­ing of their own beliefs, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, emo­tions, val­ues, and mind. While that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly include a sex­u­al aspect it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean it should exclude it either. Fic­tion is an inven­tion. A fab­ri­ca­tion. By its very def­i­n­i­tion it is not real. Some may choose to include aspects in their cre­ations that oth­ers find dis­taste­ful. That does­n’t mean it should be banned or that oth­ers will agree with every­one else’s opin­ion. That one top­ic is banned because some­one finds it dis­taste­ful or offen­sive sim­ply leaves the door open to oth­ers doing the same for oth­er top­ics. If some­thing is fic­ti­tious and not harm­ing any­one or any­thing direct­ly it is my opin­ion that it by itself should NOT nec­es­sar­i­ly be banned. Vio­lence in video games has be pre­vi­ous­ly been blamed for vio­lence in soci­ety. It by itself is not nec­es­sar­i­ly true. Not every­one who plays a video game wants to run around and shoot peo­ple. I per­son­al­ly don’t play such games and have no desire to but I don’t think they should be banned either. Shows like Dex­ter where a ser­i­al killer vig­i­lante rids Mia­mi of oth­er oth­er mur­ders that have escaped jus­tice depicts grue­some­ly dark con­tent. It cer­tain­ly does­n’t inspire me to do the same. The indi­vid­u­als that are pre­form­ing the ille­gal activ­i­ties should be held account­able for their own actions instead of blam­ing fic­tion and fan­ta­sy. Peo­ple are respon­si­ble for their own actions. If you dis­like cer­tain con­tent block it and move along, change the chan­nel. But if you are the one look­ing for con­tent you dis­ap­prove, that has­n’t or does­n’t harm any­one, just to attack the peo­ple who have it YOU are the one that has the prob­lem and per­haps you should exam­ine that before judg­ing others.