Most intelligent life forms will take the sexual anatomy of another species to be disgusting.
That is an assumption nothing more. I certainly don't, and many of our ancestors haven't choosing to depict animals and humans in their full natural glory. There is no indication that any non-human animal has disgust reactions to any anatomy at all.
It's learned behavior that you're mistaking for some kind of universal biological fact. Just like some cultures will eat bugs and individuals in other cultures can't even be in the same room with one.
Moreover you forget the context:
You: While it's true that animals have sexual drives like humans do (though
generally with different triggers), they [non-human animals] lack adult human intelligence,
the adult human grasp of the full implications of sexual acts
Me: Let me stop you right there, what are the full implications of sexual acts between a human and a non-human?
You: First, it can elicit incredible feelings of disgust.
So if you're saying that the animal is disgusted by human genitals... how is it that they don't have that information?
If you're saying you are disgusted by the animal's genitals, why in the world is that pertinent information to the animal?
Before engaging in such an act, even an initially mutual one, no animal can understand what they're signing up for.
That is simply restating your prior assertion, I'm asking you if you understand what they're signing up for and if you claim you do then you should be able to explain which part the animal can't understand while simultaneously needing to understand.
And if they're mentally developed enough to have a self-image, that image can be disrupted by internalizing feelings of disgust.
I could go on about mirror tests and what not, but that would be silly. Almost as silly as assuming without evidence disgust, and then assuming without evidence that they would consent despite the disgust, and then assuming without evidence that they were traumatized by their own voluntary behavior.
This can cause psychological issues that human experts are unable to
account for, since psychology is still "primitive" in that it only lends
understanding to the human mind.
I'm totally with you on formal psychology not accounting for much. I am not with you on filling up the void of ignorance with wild speculation that conveniently always happens to justify your obvious disgust. Nor is the ignorance nearly as overwhelming as you seem to imply.
The theory of other minds is fundamental and inescapable. The solution isn't to stop interacting with other minds, it's to try your best to perfect your theory. No sane theory allows for the trauma with no evidence. With an unlimited power to presume trauma and uncommunicated states of consciousness I could conclude that secretly you actually agree with everything I say. It doesn't matter that you say the opposite, that's just an oppressive ever-present fear that makes you do that.
That would be absurd. What I know about what your thoughts must be based on your actions, such as typing complex language on a keyboard.
Second, the mismatch in size between human and animal anatomy can cause physical damage to one party.
Yes that's true, but such things are 99.9% predictable and in the 0.1% cases of mistakes there is warning in the form of pain.
From graphic accounts that I've heard, young children who were,
depending on gender, *n*lly or v*g*n*lly penetrated suffered
non-negligible tissue damage given the comparably great endowment of the
other person. And when done to babies, they died shortly afterward.
It's hard to think about the cases you refer to, but the notion that harm couldn't be predicted or that pain wasn't extremely obvious well before serious damage occurred is beyond the scope of reasonable belief. The people who caused that harm knew they would cause harm (and thus did so maliciously) or were so dangerously deluded as to warrant interminable mental health confinement. They also ignored obvious signs of pain.
In essence: it was no accident
I
imagine the same applies to a dog, or especially to anything smaller
than a dog, or even to some smaller breeds of dog.
Well since you find the genitalia of other species disgusting it is not surprising that you are ignorant of them. Dogs have large penises compared to their body mass. Bitches have organs designed by evolution to take male dogs without damage.
A normal (wolf-sized) dog is completely compatible with humans in every respect and with all genders/sexes. If anything the largeness of the male dog presents potential discomfort for humans.
Obviously there are many breeds and some are too small for some activities. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out. It bears noting that animals in zoosexual relationships do go to vets, the vets are told the animals are used for breeding, the vets check the genitals and would report any unusual damage.
There's simply no way to communicate this risk to an animal.
There are only two possibilities:
A) The animal cannot understand the risk, and thus all responsibility rests on the party that can understand to avoid harm
B) The animal can understand the "risk", in which case experience will inform them.
Relative size is not a substantial risk to the animal if you simply do some basic research and leave a healthy margin of error. If the human wants to risk damage to themselves they have every right to.
In the same way communicable diseases are enumerated, and diseases that infect both species but only through sex are exceedingly rare (I don't know of any).
Third, the mismatch in strength between human and animal parties.
That is hardly inherent. Many people mate with horses and horses can kill you in 10 seconds if they really want to.
Rape
is commonplace in the animal kingdom, and so far as I can tell, female
animals are accustomed to accept the circumstances and not resist once
the act has proceeded to a certain stage. Therefore, the mere fact that the animal doesn't seem to resist isn't proof of consent, assuming that the human initiated.
In nature as with a human, you are not entitled to assume a state of mind which is in contradiction with the evidence or to construct a complicated and unfounded structure of supposed causes when a simple explanation is available.
If intelligent autonomous female animals are observed to be highly receptive during heat (for example) the interpretation of "and in this state of mind nature has prepared them to be raped by paralyzing them" is straight insanity. The simple and obvious interpretation is that nature has prepared them to mate by making them horny as hell.
That doesn't preclude consent, it explains it.
If they were paralyzed there would be no examples of females rejecting advances. That is because of the nature of "intelligent and autonomous", it's an adaptation to learn and form new opinions. It would be useless to learn something and then have some instinct come in and prevent you from acting on what you have learned.
Female animals in this class will reject suitors, even during heat, even from the right species. Sometimes they decide based on the individual (sound familiar?). That's not a nervous override, that's autonomous will.
Even if the animal does somewhat consent, if the human party is
dramatically stronger then that can make the experience traumatic.
There's no way to account for this possibility.
Of course there is a way to account for this possibility... if the animal starts to feel uncomfortable they can vocalize, use body language, walk away/stop what they're doing.
There is no way to account for secret unprecedented trauma and there never will be. It is a flying spaghetti monster.
It was actually on DDO that I realized that is false.
It is obvious in retrospect. A 13 year old boy can be horny, and they
can do calculus (well some of them can). Informed consent arguments fail
completely.
Calculus is one measure of
proficiency, or even a proxy for measuring intelligence, sure. But there
multiple kinds of "intelligence", including emotional intelligence and
simple life experience.
That's what they call wisdom. It's not information. There is no information that needs to be communicated that a 13 year old couldn't understand fully. If emotional intelligence and life experience was information it would simply be a matter of informing but it isn't.
Informed consent is a slipper that doesn't fit the foot.
Quite simply, adolescent children might end up having sex with strangers
who, if they were adults, they wouldn't agree to have sex with. They're
not well grounded enough to avoid being manipulated into doing
something that they'll regret, since people do in fact regret having sex
with the wrong people.
People can be manipulated at any age and adolescents will do many things they regret later in life. The trauma does not arise merely out of regret or knowing better later, it also arises out of the perception that the other party knew better at the time and didn't care as well as the perception that society had a duty to protect the younger party but failed.
Consider a high-school romance complete with sex. The adolescents are no more prepared than the pedophile victim. No more wise. No more informed. Yet no trauma (or at least much less trauma).
Why? The other person was perceived to be just as clueless.
It's not the information, it's the perception of dishonesty by relevant omission.
It is the complexity of the human mind that makes it
more vulnerable and the fact that it is not fully developed that allows
an adult human to look back at the age of 13 and say "I wasn't ready to
make that decision and everyone should have known it".
I
think I understand the argument you're making here. No right to abstain
from making a decision until a future point when they're able to
exercise the highest potential of informed-ness is denied because the
animal's incapable of ever reaching said point.
More or less, I would not use words like "right" or "informed" for reason I've already explained.
And the solution is not
to deny the animal's capacity to have sex altogether, as we accept that
they do among their own kind.
Yes, if someone said (and people have said before) that no animal can consent to sex because they aren't informed and therefore that all animal sex is rape they are confessing a monumental species-level narcissism as well as engaging in conceptual frameworks entirely devoid of practical merit.
They are saying the only real sex is human sex, the only real emotion is human emotion, the only real cognition is human cognition, the only real life is human life. Instead of correctly seeing sex as something entirely familiar to both humans and non-humans by virtue of common inheritance they claim it all for themselves. They can't explain the mystical secrets of sex which animals can never understand to other humans. They waive their hands at it.
Imagine if the same 'logic' was applied to another common trait:
Animals can't taste. That's not eating when they put something in their mouth and swallow. Those dumb brutes haven't the first clue what "food" even means. It's just absorbing nutrients.... that's all.... and the disgusting humans who try to serve animals food they might like are simply deluding themselves.
Yes they can ingest things out there in the wild, we don't care about that but when a human gets involved and tries to corrupt our sacred cuisine by sharing it with creatures who can't possibly understand.... it's basically poisoning... yea that's right poisoners! Well no the animals don't die but I bet their tummy really hurts! No sign of pain? you can't prove that.
