Many unthinking people will at once regard this temperament as impure when
they have been convinced that scientifically it is sexual. But this is
only because they cannot understand that sex is a clean thing and that the
physical side of it is an occasional and by no means an inevitable
incident. The cult of child-love is in fact one of the purest and noblest
of sex-expressions. But it is a difficult path, and he who treads it must
beware of many pitfalls.
Again, I quite deny that it is due to thwarted paternal instinct. I
believe it to be as natural a variety as any other of the
sex-temperaments. We have suffered too long from the superstition that sex
is a uniformity of type.
III
Then there is that strange form of sex-expression known as bestiality.
To most of us the connexion between man and beast in sex is so revolting
that there is a great danger of our prejudice running away with us.
I believe that prejudice against what seems to me so debased a vice, is
justifiable. But I am equally sure that to punish such offences by
criminal law has no shred of justification, except when the act is done in
public so as to be openly indecent. No physical or moral harm can be done
to the animal. And were it not tragic, the idea of sentencing the
offenders to penal servitude would be itself a travesty.
The practice, which is not so uncommon as many people imagine, is not so
much immoral as unnatural. I mean that this can hardly ever be a variety
of sex-temperament. Although the love of women for pet dogs is probably a
form of perverted sex-outlet, it seems impossible to discover here any
actual love going out towards animals rather than to humans. Therefore,
the act is almost always due to a desire for mere physical expression,
when this happens to have been chosen as the most convenient.
The true remedy, therefore, can only be to take the individual and educate
him. He must be shown that it is immoral for man to devolve back to the
animal level. He is superior to the beast. He must be reminded that sex
must be a result of love, and that sex-love between man and animal would
only be possible if it were moral for man to cease to reason, to go down
on all fours, and to eat and drink and live like an animal. Even the most
primitive man would not wish to do that. And if he feels any sense of
abhorrence at such a proposal, then he must learn to extend his abhorrence
to any attempt at a similar equality in sex.
IV
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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