Zoo Research and Data LGBT...Z?

LGBTQ...Z? on JSTOR

KATHY RUDY, LGBTQ...Z?, Hypatia, Vol. 27, No. 3, SPECIAL ISSUE: Animal Others (SUMMER 2012), pp. 601-615

www.jstor.org

Abstract:​

In this essay, I draw the discourses around bestiality/zoophilia into the realm of queer theory in order to point to a new form of animal advocacy, something that might be called, in shorthand, loving animals. My argument is quite simple: if all interdicts against bestiality depend on a firm notion of exactly what sex is (and they do), and if queer theory disrupts that firm foundation by arguing that sexuality is impossible to define beforehand and pervades many different kinds of relations (and it does), then viewing bestiality in the frame of queer theory can give us another way to conceptualize the limitations of human exceptionalism. By focusing on transformative connections between humans and animals, a new form of animal advocacy emerges through the revolutionary power of love.

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