Talking about Sex Ed

Hey there, Tarro here! Brief foreword so everyone is on the same page going into this. Just to be super clear, this article is in absolutely no way sex ed itself. For anyone looking for anything that's actually sex ed, you're going to have to look elsewhere. This is an article ABOUT sex ed, and the value of having it, as well as the complications surrounding it. I know that we're still going to get a bunch of shit from people who read the headline and don't even make it this far into the actual content, but still, I want to try my best to clear up any confusion. I promise the conversation is still cool and neat, but if you were looking for something else, you won't find it here. Sorry! 


One day while I was in high school, I was getting ready for gym class when the teacher came in and told us that we didn't need to change into our gym clothing. Instead, we'd be doing some classroom learning about health. So, my class shuffled out of the gym and into one of the rooms typically used for science. We sat down somewhat confused, and our confusion only grew as the teacher awkwardly stood at the front of the room and explained that once a week for the next month we'd be doing sexual education. Sex ed. He explained that this was part of the curriculum and that it was going to be really important for us to learn as we grew into adults. I remember this moment in time really well. It's one of those adolescent experiences that you hear about all the time in media. Right up there with your "sweet 16" and your prom. At this point in my life, I was already experimenting. I knew I was queer, and I also knew that I was a zoo. And I had a lot of questions about both. There was a part of me that was actually really excited about getting some answers. I was eager to dive into this new world that seemed so scary and intimidating. I wanted to know more about how to stay safe while also exploring myself.

That, unfortunately, was not what we got. Instead, we learned about what a condom was, what pregnancy is, and all about those evil nasty STIs that people who sleep around too much get. We didn't even get to be traumatized by watching a live birth or anything! It was sex ed as taught by a glass of milk. I remember so vividly at the end of the course having so many more questions. And I even managed to ask a couple of the more basic ones. But my teacher answered, "That's beyond the scope of this course, you'll have to ask your parents." This presented a bit of a problem, as I had a lot of specifically queer questions, and I didn't think my casually homophobic parents were going to be interested in answering them. Honestly, I wouldn't have felt very safe asking in the first place. And that's not to mention the fact that I'm also a zoosexual. They never even bothered talking about how human sexuality worked, so, to be honest, I was pretty sure the typical conversation about "the birds and the bees" wasn't going to be everything I was hoping for anyways.

Just because my teacher couldn't answer my questions didn't mean I stopped having those questions though. I couldn't ask my teacher or my parents, and my friends didn't really seem like a reliable resource either. So I did what any teenager with unrestricted access to the internet did. I googled it. And for what it's worth, it was pretty helpful! Don't get me wrong, there's lots of adult content out there that gives weird perceptions about what sex is supposed to look like. But, there's also lots of really fantastic guides made specifically to be educational. Especially for LGBT folks, who are more likely to have parents they don't feel comfortable talking to, or who might live in places where queerness is often looked on much less favorably.

Researching all of these questions about sexuality, it didn't take me long before I wanted to learn about my zoosexuality as well. And that's where I hit a bit of a roadbump. It was very easy to type in "how do two women have sex" or whatever other questions were on my mind. But when I googled "How do humans and dogs have sex," it was shockingly much less helpful. Most of the results were porn sites, frequently ones that were extremely lax on the kinds of content that they were okay with showing. And if you thought human porn was a bad way to introduce people to sex, zoo porn is exponentially worse. It was interesting, sure. There was a lot that I found myself enjoying. But it wasn't really giving me what I was looking for. It gave me the basics, but also hey why do dogs stop humping so quickly and why are all the shots from underneath and hey what the hell is that big round thing at the bottom???

More googling and I found my way to a zoo forum of questionable repute that claimed to have "guides" on it. Those were definitely more helpful, but it was hard to escape the vibes. It felt like visiting a wank booth in a porno shop in order to have someone explain what the clit was. Sure, I got my question answered, but I left feeling uncomfortably sticky. 

Then, thankfully, I found something better. I was EXTREMELY lucky in the way that I was able to learn more. I found a group of well-intentioned zoos I was able to ask questions to. And while that was really fantastic, I was also very much a minor in a group chat all about sending porn to each other. It was very explicit, in a way that retrospectively I think could have been bad to my fifteen year old self. To put it bluntly, I today definitely would have banned my younger self if I was running the group. They taught me everything that I wanted to know and more, and at the time I was extremely grateful. But when thinking about the ways that people learn about the "sex" part of "zoosexuality," I don't think that what I experienced is really the best way to go about things. And although it's been a while since then, the prospects for new zoos really aren't necessarily any better. It's a different forum and a different porn site with a different name, but it has the same vibes, and a lot of the same abuse. 

At this point, I'm sure you get the point that I'm making here. It would be very helpful for new zoos to have some kind of zoo sex ed. Something that covers animal anatomy, animal autonomy, courtship behaviors, all of the kinds of things that someone new to exploring zoosexual feelings probably wants to know about, and all of the kinds of things that will make for a better experience for the animal too, including respecting when the animal is saying no. But when it comes to a resource like that, it's a much more complicated issue than just "well, just make it."

So today, I want to take a minute to talk about zoo sex ed, why it's important, why it's complicated, and what we can do about it. You might not be on the same page as me about whether or not this is even something we should do. That's totally okay! But hopefully I can explain to you why I think this matters so much.

So let's start with that. Why does sex ed matter? Certainly it's an uncomfortable topic. There are plenty of people who feel as though sex ed is something that should be done specifically by parents and specifically after adulthood has been reached. This, however, is extremely problematic in my opinion. Improper education doesn't lead to a reduction in behavior, it just leads to a lack of knowledge. And sure, you can try and just say "all sex is bad, don't do it," but preaching abstinence has been shown time and time again to not work, and instead just leads to uneducated people making mistakes, and hurting themselves or others. And, as I alluded to, parents aren't always very good teachers when it comes to this kind of thing, especially as we get into queer-er territory that they might really not know what to do about. It's a weird conversation asking your parents how you and Fido can tie the knot, and one that's rarely going to end up where you'd like it to be. 

"But we didn't have sex ed and we ended up fine!" I can hear some people from the back shouting. And that's great! Good for you! I'm glad things turned out well for you! But that's certainly not everyone's experience. As someone who grew up in a place with a teen pregnancy rate well above our national average, I'm pretty confident in saying that good results don't negate the bad ones. Just because you didn't happen to need a lifejacket when you went swimming for the first time doesn't mean that nobody else does. Maybe your parents took the time to teach you how to swim. Maybe you just had great instincts, or took things super slow. Maybe your first time going swimming was with a more experienced swimmer who was able to walk you through it. Whatever the case, it's important to recognize that other people might not have those same resources, or might just struggle more.

This is all doubly important for zoos. In terms of anatomy, mammals across the board tend to work pretty similarly. There's a rod and a hole. But, different animals have key things to factor in when it comes to their anatomy, and those differences tend to be very important to talk about when we're considering our partners' safety—and pleasure as well. And even past just the actual act of sex itself, I think there's other things we can learn too. 

For starters, what are the things to look for when it comes to making sure that our partners are sexually healthy? Assuming the worst case and something does go wrong, what are the signs that we need to be looking out for, and how can we help? What are you able to treat yourself at home, and what's going to require a vet trip to be safe? And if things do require a vet trip, then pragmatically speaking, what are we able to tell them to cast as little doubt on ourselves as possible? This isn't to say that sex with animals is dangerous, or that we should prioritize our own safety over our partner's health; more so, it's important to be able to talk about worst case scenarios so that if something awful does happen, we know how to deal with it, as opposed to freaking out and making it worse. The existence of a safety guide on a plane doesn't make the plane more dangerous, it just gives you a guide on what to do in an emergency. 

It's also very important for zoos to learn how to properly communicate sexual interest with their partners. If you've already known you were a zoo for years and years, chances are you already understand animal consent behaivors to at least some degree. But there's a good chance a minor probably doesn't. Not to the same level anyway. What are the things to look out for, both red flags as well as green lights? I honestly don't think animal sexuality is any more complicated than human sexuality. If anything, I'd say humans are more complicated what with the billion different kinks people have. I've certainly never had a canine partner ask if he can strangle me a little bit during the act. But, we're also humans living in a human centric society. We have the ability to ask ourselves questions, and see our sexuality in the mainstream. We don't have that experience with animals. 

Here's where it all gets complicated though. What does zoo sex ed actually look like? There's not even a consensus on what human sex ed should be. When it comes to zoos, it's just as complicated, if not more. As zoos, we tend to get accused of being "groomers" enough already. How do we create something like this without pushing that narrative? I like to think that most people who have read this far would agree something like this would be valuable, but how do you make it in a way that everyone is happy with? How much detail should it go into? How graphic should it be? What should the tone be, should it be discouraging or encouraging? What level of visual aids should it have? Pictures, videos, or just diagrams? Even down to very basic questions, like who should be the ones to write something like this? There are so many questions. How do you prove that you're an expert? With a species like dogs, sure, it's probably easy enough among us pretty common zoos to suss out whether someone actually knows what they're talking about with dogs. But what if you're looking to get down with a dolphin, or an emu, or a species outside the typical zoo scope? How are you going to vet that the person writing about that is actually giving out a proper education when a guide is the first of its kind, and you may have never even met the animal in real life, much less gotten busy with them?

How do you deal with it if people have questions? This seems simple, but I think it really gets tricky fast. No matter how good your guide is, some people are going to want help with their specific scenario. How do you allow for that? Do you even allow for that? The person who creates this whole sex ed operation is already going to be run through the ringer as far as outsider public scrutiny goes. No matter how they handle this, it's going to raise some skeptical eyebrows. Do they allow private chats for questions? Just leave their Telegram handle or something? It feels kind of necessary, but also automatically suspicious, to have these conversations happening behind closed doors. It certainly seems like the kind of situation where bad things can happen. But at the same time, having some kind of more open group chat feels very dangerous as far as predators go. A group full of likely younger-skewing people looking to learn more about sex could be a very attractive space for the wrong kinds of people. You could also just not have any system in place to answer questions. You get what you get, the information is all on the page, figure it out from there. That could legitimately be a good way to go about things, so long as your resources are good enough. But at the same time, that makes the challenge of making the guides so much harder. If you need to put in enough information to cover every single possible scenario, how are you going to keep it interesting enough for people to actually read? Regardless of how you tackle this problem, it's going to have problems of its own.

Let's switch for a second to the actual format of this, whatever it is. Do you just have an easy-to-subscribe-to Telegram group? At that point, you have two options. Either make the group public, but really get specific about what you can and can't post, or  make it private and have some kind of application process, adding a huge barrier to entry for curious people. You could have a website, but that isn't easy either. First, you need to know how to create and run a website, which is a challenge for a lot of people. Then you need to find a host, something that we can personally attest to as being complicated. And that's doubly so when the content being hosted could be seen as explicit. Triply so with all the heat a project like that would get for just existing. Maybe there's a third perfect solution. Some kind of app or program that you can host potentially explicit content on with no fear of repercussion. But are people actually using it? Maybe there is an app somewhere that you can download to your phone directly because it's not on the app store that's perfect for what this would need to be, but at that point how many people are you turning away just by how complex it is to actually access?

Speaking of which, how do you get people to actually care about accessing good sex ed? How do you advertise something like this? Even sites as lax as Twitter would be liable to take something like that down. You couldn't post it in safe for work spaces, but if you only post it in 18+ spaces you're kind of missing the point. How do you actually tell people something like this exists? And, even if you do, how do you get them to want to engage with it? Between just looking at porn and having to read some kind of educational guide, how do you make it interesting enough for people to pay attention? The hope would be that if you're someone thinking about taking the next step with the animal in your life, that you would stop and think, "Hey, there's that great sex ed resource I should check out first." But for that to work, it needs to already be in the social consciousness and be seen as a valuable resource. That's somewhat easier if that person is a community insider, but how do we get this kind of information into the hands of someone who isn't incredibly deep in the community already? Someone who might be new to all of this, or alternatively, someone who's been getting off to zoo porn for a while on sketchy sites and who's never even come across the zoo community itself?

Can I get real with you all here for a second? This might be a controversial take in an already controversial article, but I want to mention it because I think it's tied into something that I think is going to be very important moving forward with our cause. 

As the "ethical zoos," we care about an animal's consent, and we want to make the animals in our lives happy. We wish that all of these "bestialists," these "fetishists," cared as much about animals as we do.

I believe that a lot of these fetishists could have just as easily ended up a lot more like us, actually, if instead of feeding their brain with sleazy beast porn sites that were the first thing that came up on Google, they had instead first found more constructive, empathetic, educational content. Stuff that would have shown them an animal-first perspective. Stuff that they may have even been skimming through to get to the sexy animal pics, but in order to do even that, they still had to see that people have morals and values here that are treated as a default standard of behavior.

And that's why education is so important. It's not just about teaching people how to not hurt themselves or others. It's about setting the standards that we expect from people in this community in regards to the way that we express our sexuality with our partners. Creeps will be creeps, and there are a lot of different factors that effect whether someone "acts good" or "acts bad," but if people's first experience with zoos is from the perspective of education, both physically and communicatively, I think it cuts down on the number of people who grow up in bad spaces by an extreme degree.

So, what does the perfect sex ed for zoos look like? Well, I can only give my opinion, but to me it would look something like this. 

First of all, it's an easy to access public website with a clinical but catchy name. It shouldn't sound like a porn site, but it should easily get the point across as to what it is. It should be extremely simple and easy to use, with very clean UI. There should be a few sections accessible from the home page. First, a "New here? Click this button!" that takes you to an FAQ. Within that FAQ it should answer a few key questions. First of all, any of the basic anti stuff. Consent, diseases, all the typical objections. It should also clearly state the mission statement of the website, explaining that it's an educational platform and nothing else. It exists to promote safety and comfort for all parties. 

Then, back on the main page, there should be a list of species, starting with the most common. Dogs, horses, etc. Then, getting into more niche animals. Each animal should have the same format when it comes to the way that the information is presented. 

The first page should be basics about the animal, just a non-sexual overview. How big are they, what are some common breeds, what's it like living with them, what do they eat, what kind of exercise they need, etc. All the kinds of things that someone should know if they're interested in bringing an animal into their lives. We start with that because we don't want to get people immediately riled up with the sex without being very clear about everything else. We want to make it VERY clear that bringing an animal into your life should never be about sex first. 

From there, a second page should go over communication. How do these animals express themselves, and how do you express yourself to them? Once again, we're staying away from anything sexual here. It's all just the basics on how they use body language to communicate. Different animals use body language in different ways and it's very important to understand what they're saying. 

Page three gets into anatomy. What do the genitals of this animal actually look like? What are the differences compared to humans? What are the similarities? Where do they like to be touched, where do they not? This should be accompanied by pictures of the animals in question, but no actual human contact. Helpful arrows can be used to point to things, but at this point we do not want any actual sexual contact in the guide. 

Page four gets into sexuality and brings humans into the mix. What should you expect from the animal in question as far as sex goes? What are the common ways that zoos express sexuality with them? For some animals this might be easy. For others where contact is more complicated, this might require more of a guide. This section should go over not just penis vagina sex, but also all the other ways that you can engage sexually, and what things need to be considered there as well. What are things you need to consider in the act to make sure you both have a good time and stay safe? In this section, you can have pictures if necessary, but the goal should be to not display any actual bestiality. While I do think it's important to see what things look like, at the same time I think there's a line there, that if crossed makes this whole thing extra complicated. If pictures are needed with human involvment, ideally they would be drawn, not real life. 

And finally, page five is a more specific Q&A for anything else that didn't fit into another section. This should be used to fill in any information that is unlikely to come up anywhere else, as well as try to pre-answer any questions that people might have. Here's where you can really get into the details and make sure that you're being as thorough as possible, since to get to this point everyone will have gone through the majority of the information already, and so they don't necessarily need to be engaged. 

For all of this, the tone should be positive and non-judgemental. It shouldn't be trying to push people away, but instead approach the topic with a healthy perspective. It also shouldn't be too pushy. It's like a lazy river of information. You can float along it at your leisure, but you should never feel like it's hard to get off, and you should never feel like it's tough to get into.

On the site as well, there should be a "contact us" page for follow-up questions. That said, it should be a submission form with only an email slot for replies. On the back end of the site, the people running it should be able to reply to these questions, but from a no-reply email address. The person asking the question shouldn't be able to continue engaging in the interaction after they've received their answer, basically. Question, answer, and that's it. While this might be restrictive in some cases, I think this is the best possible way to try and safeguard against any abuse. There should also be helpful links to other projects. ZooTT, the magazine, and a few social communities. Places where if someone wants to actually get into the community and learn more about the activism side of things, or just meet some other zoos, they can. This is really important. We want to make sure there's a natural pipeline from people who are interested in just sex, to more commmunity resources. Not just to promote those other projects, but also for further education. There are some AMAZING ZooTT episodes on all sorts of really important zoo topics that aren't in the realm of sexuality, and helping people find their way to those resources would be a great next step.

As far as how the site is actually run, I think it needs to be a semi-anonymous group of at least three people all with equal control. The "Semi" part there should be in terms of receiving feedback. There should be a presence on social media and/or a Telegram bot or something where people can give their thoughts on the information on the site and how it's being run. Being open to feedback is going to be really important in making sure that it's something relatively agreed on by the community. The anonymity is important mostly just because holy fuck the amount of hate this concept would get is mindblowing, and having a figurehead to direct that hate at would be overwhelming even for the most stoic of zoos. The fact that it's a group running things is to ensure accountability and make sure that the site is being run in alignment with the stated intentions. That said, the goal would be for it to be fairly hands off once everything is up and running. 

For advertising, it would have to be a lot of word of mouth. Other zoo projects could definitely help spread the word to some degree, but platform limitations can make that complicated. The really ideal situation is good search engine optimization, where if someone is googling around for advice on this topic, this site would be one of the first results. That way, people can find it without needing to actually get into the community if they're someone brand new to all of this. 

(Alissa would also like to add that she thinks this website idea could achieve 90% of its goals if it were made as a PDF instead of as a website, and then as a PDF it would also be more shareable (both overtly and covertly) and be effectively immune to deplatforming and be immune to weird corrupt figureheads since it just gets made and then it's out there. The PDF would contain all of the same educational text contents as the website idea would, and would have a table of contents and an index to be able to find things, and would have lots of very educational drawings of ferals, and would have a reputation as "that cool and educational PDF you need to get your paws on if you want to learn about bestiality." Basically a sex ed textbook, but zooier and more cool 🐎)

Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter. If you made it this far and you enjoyed the article please let me know, as I am no doubt currently getting roasted over it. I've talked a few times about needing a few key things to really get to the next level of growth in the zoo community, and I think this is absolutely one of them. It's hard to even state how much good I think this kind of project could do. But, I'm not the person to do it. I don't have the skills or the time at this point. Maybe if you're reading this, you might be the one to make something like this happen. I hope that one day we can create a great zoo sex ed resource, whether that looks like my blueprint or not, because at the end of the day our goal is to better the lives of both zoos and animals, and I can think of very few other ways to do both this effectively. 

Sexual education is important. 

Thanks for reading.