Why Zoosexuality Having A Voice Matters
I want us all to imagine something, together.
Let's say you're 22, and you're born and raised in the United States. You grew up on your parents' insurance policy, but after some unexpected job troubles they went through a few years ago, it's been about 3 years since you've seen a doctor. You don't really even know what visiting a doctor is supposed to be like of your own volition that was always just set up for you before as a kid, and now it's been a few years
But, recently, a job that you had started as a "seasonal employee" has announced to you and a few of your coworkers that you've all actually been kept long enough that you count as full time employees now, and you'll be able to pick out benefits if you'd like to, including healthcare coverage.
When you go on the company's website to look at your new benefits, there are five options for healthcare policies. All of them have multi-page descriptions that use dense walls of jargon that's really meaningless to you, aside from the fact that all of them say dollar amounts that give you apprehension. But, after asking a friend, they tell you that one of these policies is for sure the best, and you pick out what they recommend.
You are able to see a doctor now! ...Or, seemingly? You've gotten a letter in the mail with a health insurance card that has your name on it.
After asking a friend again, you get a number from them to call, to set up a doctor's visit re-establish medical care.
You speak with a nurse on the other end of the phone for about an hour, figuring out which doctors in the nearby counties will have any availability in the upcoming months, which hospitals would be a viable distance from you, spending a good amount of time on hold, and, in the end, you have an appointment set for two weeks from today, to see a doctor.
You wait two weeks. When you walk into the hospital, you kind of glance around, lost, and someone behind a desk waves you over. They ask for your name and date of birth, and then tell you the amount you owe for this visit (you use the card reader to pay them $35), and then they tell you that if you'll have a seat in the waiting room, it'll be about 15-20 minutes.
You take a seat, look at your phone for a long time. One thing on your phone that you keep coming back to, is little note for yourself of the things you're going to want to ask about. Sometimes your ankles are kind of red and weird-looking, you're not sure if it's a big deal or normal, but for like fully a year now you have been meaning to get it looked at just to ask. Sometimes you get really tired in the middle of the day, your diet isn't perfect by any means, and you've had it in the back of your mind that you might have undiagnosed diabetes, but, again, you have no idea, since you've never been tested for it. A few times in the last couple years, you've had sex: once with a man, once with a woman, and... yeah, once with your aunt's Bernese Mountain Dog. And you've never been tested since then for anything, and you remember all of the STIs you learned about from health class, so, you'd like to find out if you're good. If nothing else just to know you're not passing anything on to others, if and when you have another partner again in the future.
A nurse calls your name.
You stand up, and go get measured. Your height, your weight, your blood pressure, and a lot of personal questions. It kinda feels like your entire life is on trial, suddenly. You are being assessed, and every detail of yourself is being written down and saved for a bunch of other strangers to look at and make judgements about. A nurse asks if you have sex, and you say, a few times, not anything much lately. The nurse moves on to asking about smoking. You halfway want to circle back, and clarify to the nurse that there's more they should know as far as the sex thing, but, the topic has passed, and you figure, the doctor will be better to talk about that topic with anyways.
The nurse eventually leaves, and you wait in your patient room for a bit.
When the doctor comes, you say your hello's to one another, and the doctor looks over all of the information the nurses just got from you. You and the doctor discuss everything, he has a few recommendations along the way for ways to improve your health around the edges, a little more exercise, things like that.
He asks, sooner than you expected, "Is there anything else you want to discuss?"
The things you wanted to ask about all kind of blur together in your mind, you're not sure if you actually want to ask about the weird red ankles now or if that's a waste of time, or if it would be weird to ask that and then ask about the deeper stuff... your throat locks up a bit as you think about how to bring up the sex stuff. You aren't sure if you can even bring yourself to say it right now, with such a vague, not-sex-specific prompt from him, "anything else" you want to talk about. It seems impolite.
But, this is what you're here for, and he is a doctor. Skipping for now, you say, "I meant to bring this up with the nurse but the topic kind of moved on, but, in my sexual history, my last sexual partner was a dog. A Bernese Mountain Dog. Is there anything I should be aware of as far as that goes?"
The doctor's face scrunches up in disgust and confusion. He asks, "You're not talking about bestiality, are you?"
You wobble your head, in a way that means, yeaaahhh that is what I was talking about.
He points his pen at you, and says, "Never again. Ever."
Thoughts racing at where to go from here, you ask, "So are there tests we should do about that?" You want to understand his reason for having such an immediate, strong reaction--if your health might be compromised from what you did, you'd like to know.
Not answering your question, and not writing anything down, he asks, "Is there anything ELSE you wanted to discuss?"
You shake your head.
You leave the hospital feeling like you wasted money and a lot of time and effort, just to not get answers on any of the things you were actually hoping to get resolution on.
...Alternatively, let's say it went this way:
The doctor asks if there's anything else, and you tell him about the fling with the Bernese Mountain Dog. He smiles, cocks his head at you a little, and says, "Big breed." You laugh a little, and say, "Yeah. Huge tongues." He asks how long ago this was, what touched what, he asks whether you have any specific itches or rashes or things of that nature that you're worried might be from that, and ultimately he says, "If nothing has presented itself by now, I wouldn't worry about it." He tells you things to look out for in the future that would have been issues that would make him concerned if you did have them, but that these things aren't especially common. He asks if there's anything else. You don't really have anything else as far as the possibly-being-a-zoophile thing. You mention being bi and your experiences with that, and he notes down an extra couple of tests to throw onto the blood labs that you should get done while you're already getting some blood drawn, just in case, just to see and make sure. You mention the ankle thing, and the worry about diabetes.
You leave the hospital feeling like the copay and all of the effort was worth it: you know the state of your health much better than when you walked in, and you feel well equipped and well supported in living a good, healthy life going forward.
It doesn't have to be a doctor: it could be a hundred other people you might interact with. It could be a lawyer who is going to be representing you in court, or who is helping you to get your will in order, and needs to really understand and appreciate the things that matter to you. It could be a coworker who wants to talk about what each of you did over the weekend and whether you're seeing anyone, what your type is. It could be an aunt whose house you're staying at for a night during a long road trip, and she might either talk down to your dog as a stupid lesser being, or talk respectfully to your dog as a member of the family. It could be your friends, your neighbors, your , a judge, a cop, a paramedic, the list goes on forever.
Sometimes, in these interpersonal relationships, it really does matter that people have an understanding of zoophilia: a knowledge of what zoophilia entails, and a respect for what kinds of things might be front-of-mind to zoophiles they're talking to.
Because we are real. We're not someone else's strawman, we're not a fringe hypothetical, and as such, we should not be unspeakable, and we should not be unhelpable.
And that begins with zoophilia having a voice. Nobody can hear us if we do not speak.
I am glad for projects like this, that are helping more and more people, zoo and non-zoo, see that zoos are out here, and that there are quite a lot of things that are on our minds. There are things that matter to us. There are things that we want. There are things that we have to share. Every zoo opinion piece, every piece of zoo artwork, every zoo accessory worn, every coming out, every zoo podcast episode, every zoo social media post, helps to make us louder and the world richer.
Thank you.
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