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Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

Every zoo that reads this blog must watch Victim (1961) because there is so much deja vu in that film that it is kind of creepy. If you don't get it right away, then just interact for a little while longer with the zooey community. The stuff to look at is not the overt points of the plot, but instead, look at the characterization of the gay men in that film. I have met these people.


Thank you,
Sigma
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

This just in: it's not a crime to exist.

All zoos on deck.


Love,
Sigma
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I am getting tardy with these again, because I have had my nose stuck in books. I am catching up on Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, and I am enjoying it immensely.

I never would have been a zooey activist, actually. I was contented with being a bookworm, and in a world where everyone seemed to have either one sexual curiosity about themselves or another, my sexual feelings toward animals were looking to be, by comparison, prosaic and fungible. I seldom gave any thought to the matter.

Ursula K. Le Guin was heavily influenced by Taoism in her writing, by the way. Balance plays a large role in Taoist philosophy, especially western interpretations of Taoism. If one pursues stillness, one should not be still when the world is restless, or one is tossed violently. Taoism is primarily focused on stillness and on inducing the world to stillness. To a Taoist of the western school of thought, even the pursuit of justice is based on a desire to bring the world back to stillness. I do not pretend to know anything at all about traditional Chinese Taoism.

Perhaps a time will come when my choice of action is more than merely keeping this simple blog going.


Thank you for following it, though,
Sigma
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I am a zoophile, and what this means is that I can feel romantic and sexual feelings toward more than one species of tetrapod. According to current popular thought, this makes me one of the most hideously evil individuals that could possibly exist.

Ironically, I am also a transgender woman, once apparently an "effeminate gay man." The young men that once battered me violently in the street for this reason believed that I was one of the most hideously evil individuals that could possibly exist.

Those young men were not evil, either. Most of them had baby brothers, and like many little boys, they most likely did many behaviors that children can engage in without understanding the social context in which those actions are understood. Most of the time, they were neither gay nor transgender, but they were children being children. Their elder brothers, who knew nothing about either children or sexuality, believed that their baby brothers had been "broken," somehow, by someone like me, and furthermore, I was the only such person that lived nearby. Those young men wanted to stand up for their baby brothers, so those young men decided that they would come and prove to me that I did not really have a right to go around corrupting and confusing their innocent baby brothers. If not for their ignorance, they would have just been good brothers.

Therefore, I am writing this blog in order to alleviate the ignorance of whomever reads it, with respect to those people that are called zoophiles.

However, I am not an expert on zoophiles. I am not even an expert on myself. I can only write this blog, which is usually about the books that I have been reading. Sometimes, I write some philosophy, which I think is at least occasionally good philosophy. I do not know anything about other zoophiles, though. I am not in their heads, so I don't know what they think. I am not in their bedrooms, and I do not know what they do there.

Nevertheless, I understand hate well. You could not possibly hate if you were evil. Hate is evil, but a person that hates is not.

People that hate always believe that the object of their hate is a person that does not have a heart. Nazis believed that Jews were calculating how they could swindle innocent German boys into giving up their family fortunes until the moment they entered the gas chambers. Klansmen believed that every black man that they murdered hardly ever thought about anything at all besides sneaking into clean, white neighborhoods in order to ogle and ravish helpless, young white women, and every black woman was a tawdry jezebel that existed only to tempt good, Christian white boys into dishonoring their bodies. There has hardly ever been a vitriolic homophobe that did not, in some sense or another, believe that there was a gay man lurking behind every bush, waiting on an opportunity to satisfy his unnatural desires with impressionable boys. Seldom has there ever been a transphobe that was less than absolutely certain that transgender women were interested in almost nothing in the world except putting on large, ostentatious wigs and going into women's restrooms commit whatever heinous act occurred to them. Every time, people that hate do not see themselves as wicked. Every time, they believe that the object of their hate has impossibly monstrous and impure motives.

Every time, the motives for hate are pure. That is the tragic irony.

If hate were merely a product of human wickedness, then we would be more easily rid of it.


Thank you as always,
Sigma
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

Here is a history segment that I had the honor of recording this week for the Zooier Than Thou podcast.

Anybody that did any amount of research, on the history of sexology, would eventually run across the name, Magnus Hirschfeld, who opened up the world’s first institute for the study of human sexuality, in Germany, in the year 1919. The seeds for this idea, though, go back a lot farther. As a matter of fact, Magnus Hirschfeld ascribes his inspiration, for the project, to an experience 26 years earlier in his life.

When Magnus Hirschfeld traveled to the United States, he had recently received his degree to become a practicing physician. Just like many young men from affluent families, who had just finished their educations, it was expected that Magnus Hirschfeld would spend a while living abroad, which he did: 1893 was an exciting year to be in the United States, particularly in the city of Chicago, Illinois. The World's Columbian Exposition--where thousands of itinerant laborers, intellectuals, and ancient families, from all over the world, came together in one place—was officially opened to the public on First of May, 1893.

Although the event was exciting and memorable, in its own right, what Magnus Hirschfeld remembered the most, about his experience in Chicago, was making the important observation that gay life, in the city of Chicago, was not at all unlike gay life, in the city of Berlin. As a young and virile gay man, at one of the most exciting fairs in history, one may imagine that Magnus Hirschfeld’s observations may have been based on direct experience, rather than as a detached observer, but in spite of all likelihood, this has not been kept in the historical record. Regardless, Magnus Hirschfeld thereby came to believe that a person's sexuality was a part of their nature, and this would come to have a definitive impact on his career.

To tell the full account, of the adventures of Magnus Hirschfeld, as he created the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee--which led to a petition that was signed by Albert Einstein, Herman Hesse, and other luminaries, to overturn the anti-sodomy law that was known as Paragraph 175--and the creation of his research institute, would all constitute a very long story, and this chapter of Hirschfeld’s life would really be a subject unto itself. Nevertheless, it can be said that Magnus Hirschfeld did engage in a substantial amount of heroics during his time in Germany, during the late Weimar Republic and during the rise of Nazi Germany, and he nearly paid with his life, once, in an incident in which he was battered by a folkish mob and pronounced dead at the scene, though he survived.

Some of Magnus Hirschfeld's most important work, though, happened after he fled Germany, in 1930, and took his tour of the world, which included his tour of the United States. Magnus Hirschfeld, during his time in the United States, took a so-called "straight turn." This did not mean that Magnus Hirschfeld, himself, "turned straight," but what this really means is that Magnus Hirschfeld developed a more expansive idea of how to study the subject of human sexuality.

Importantly, this led to a general scientific interest in human sexuality, not from a forensic point-of-view or from a standpoint of treating sexuality as a disease but from a standpoint of understanding and helping the person.

At the time, western sexual mores were profoundly dysfunctional. For example, some people still believed that women could only engage in sexuality either as an act of martyrdom or as a sort of fall from morality, which is not true from the standpoint of somebody that lives in the comfort of a 21st Century middle-class home, but at the time, in the western world, the idea that well-bred, middle-class, bourgeois women could actually have fun, in the bedroom, was still an emerging idea and, to many people, it was still an exciting and fresh idea. This created an emerging need for expert counseling.

Therefore, Magnus Hirschfeld became a major catalyst of a scientific movement that has helped revolutionize how the western world thinks about the act of sex, and this movement has spawned a large number of notable organizations.

Hirschfeld’s impact is felt, to this day. Only 17 years after Magnus Hirschfeld's 1930 departure from Germany and his subsequent travels in the United States, the Kinsey Institute would be opened, and the Kinsey Reports would be released in 1948 and 1953. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT)--members of which tend to be uncommonly compassionate toward zoophiles--would be founded, by Patricia Schiller, in 1967. The International Academy of Sex Research--a member of which is currently leading a study on zoophilia--was founded in 1973. The now-defunct Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, of which Dr. Hani Miletski is an alumna, was founded in 1976. These organizations harbor some of the staunchest friends of the zooey community, and they continue to help us all grow in our understanding and appreciation of human sexuality.

This was a lot of fun to write and to record.


With much gratitude,
Sigma
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I have generally lost interest in genre fiction, but I am entertaining myself with Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, currently, because dragons. In spite of Anne McCaffrey's shortcomings as an author, I also believe that it was ingenious that she turned one of literature's great villains into a sort of angelic heroic figure.

I think that Ruth, the dragon from The White Dragon, was truly revolutionary because Ruth, rather than being clearly subhuman the way that one would expect out of a non-human character, actually showed clearly superhuman character, throughout the book. He was actually intensely logical, extremely moral, and startlingly wise. Weirdly, he seemed to fit the "wise, old man" literary archetype, and his attractiveness to the smaller fire-lizards (parrot-size dragons) caused him to come across as a little bit like a literary descendant of St. Francis of Assisi. In the sense of moral wisdom, Ruth was portrayed as clearly beyond human, even though he was primitive and aminalistic and child-like in other ways.

Tolkein's dragons were absolutely the opposite of Ruth: they were portrayed as sometimes being highly intelligent, even as being knowledgeable beyond living humans in the case of Smaug, but Smaug was also morally stunted and quite frankly evil. No matter how intelligent Smaug was, he was clearly not intended to be a good person, and when he was killed, there was no indication that this action was anything besides profoundly justified.

I think that McCaffrey's message was clear: society has spent centuries treating the wrong people as villains, and their sources of moral guidance have really led them astray. Appropriating dragons to serve as heroes was an unequivocal call for social change. In that respect, I believe that McCaffrey was successful, and I cannot bring myself to believe that McCaffrey's shortcomings really outweigh the good I believe that she ultimately did.

On the other hand, McCaffrey is not really zooey, no matter how much I would like to believe she could be. Her dragons, even though they talk, are invariably at the beck-and-call of humans, and even even goes as far as to portray Ruth as a uniquely asexual dragon, further entrenching the sense that he is really a non-human reiteration of St. Francis of Assisi. Ruth was her most mature non-human character, and he may have had the most maturity of any character in the book. Even so, her most mature non-human character was effectively a submissive monk.

I am tempted to write a fanfiction, in which Ruth proves that he is really just very gay. Male characters written by female authors sometimes come across to me as gay men. This is not always true, and I do not mean to imply that women are always incapable of creating realistic straight men; I also believe that straight men sometimes do well with heterosexual female characters. However, Ruth comes across to me as flaming gay. He has been a good boy: I think he deserves a boyfriend. If Anne McCaffrey would disagree, then I would like to have a long conversation with her. I really see my beliefs as more progressive.

I embrace sex-positivity. I think that the idea that Ruth would have been less of a moral paragon if he had actually been a gay male, rather than truly asexual, still bears a remnant of the extreme sex-negativity of the medieval Christians, which I see as being at the heart of why Europe struggled so desperately during the Middle Ages. I believe that cultural sex-negativity ultimately gives a social and evolutionary advantage to sociopaths. I think that sex-positivity really gives good people an edge.

I also believe in family-positivity. I am pro-choice, too, but just because I want a choice as to whether or not I must have a family doesn't mean that having a family wouldn't be kind of awesome. Transgender uterus implants might be more than a generation down the road, but if I can ever get a functioning uterus in me, then I intend to have a baker's dozen before I croak. I support reproductive liberty, but we can only defend that liberty by encouraging people that share that belief to also think that large families are kind of cool. I am pro-choice, but for me, the choice I would make, in actual practice, is, "OH, HELL, YES!"

I think that the central argument, of us zoophiles, is that sex is good. Sex should not be treated like it's second to murder. I think that any damage that is ever caused by the act of sex ultimately stems from the toxic, medieval idea that getting fucked is the most dirty, degrading thing that can ever be done to a person, besides killing them. This is bullshit. Sex is a mutually pleasurable and very special act. While I would agree that it constitutes desecration to use it in any other way, I can only see it as desecration for the same reason that it constitutes desecration to sully any special experience or occasion. Making sex anything but wonderful is like slapping a bell-ringer on Christmas Eve. We have a responsibility to engage in sex with a sense of respect and courtesy only because sex is such a special experience. We should care how we do it BECAUSE it is good, but in the end, it is good.

We zoophiles therefore have a responsibility to defend the idea of ZETA principles. If we are going to argue that zoo is good, then we ought to make sure that every zooey experience we have is fantastic for both ourselves and our animals. It is not reasonable for us to argue that zoo is good unless we are obsessed with making sure that it is always good and always wonderful for both ourselves and our animals. We should endeavor to make zoo the most special expression of loving kindness toward animals. We should endeavor to set the pace, in our culture, for representing sex-positivity at its best.

Zoophiles should not just endeavor to be accepted, but we should endeavor to be leaders. We should one-up them all.


May the revolution live forever!
Sigma
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I finally finished The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littel. That was actually days ago, but it’s been a busy week. It was a difficult read, but to be honest, it was for a local book club. This book was particularly hard for me to read, though, because I am not just a zoophile, but I am also a transgender woman that grew up as part of a conservative evangelical family in the 1990’s. While the Holocaust constitutes an order of magnitude more serious of a crime, I have seen hate. I have seen how hate spreads. Hate is evil in a way that makes me want to push the world into the sun. Any book about the Holocaust is disturbing to me, and it is therefore all the more imperative that I read it.

As I said before, Jonathan Littel may have shortcomings as an author, but his audacity raises him to a level of excellence. He triggers a lot of “Is he really going there? He’s going all the WAY there,” sorts of moments. I find that his storytelling reveals that he also has numerous handicaps, but in my opinion, he successfully leans on his strengths.

World War II was an audacious war. It was like nothing that we had done before. It is true that the Mongolian Empire wiped out entire cultures in a manner that would make Himmler blush, and what incoming British and French settlers did to the Native Americans was actually worse. What was really remarkable about World War II was not what we did, but what was remarkable about it was how little we could hide from the truth of what it was. Our ability to transmit unfiltered information had become so great that it was harder for us to spin lies and half-truths about it.

However, the most useful discussion in the book, by Littel, was the underlying “folkish” subculture that lay behind the Nazi government. The folkish subculture held the belief that the human race was made up of distinct “folk,” which were ethnic groups they believed to be associated with certain geographic areas. The idea was that there were certain things that people “had to do” because they were a certain “folk,” and that to do otherwise was “against their nature,” which was their primary explanation for why people were unhappy. The folkish movement also wanted to revive Germanic paganism, and some of them saw “the two churches” as an extension of “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

In fact, I really wish that Littel had provided more insights on folkish ideology. I ultimately had to so some research of my own on it. The folkish ideology turns out to have been a widespread subculture that took root during the late 19th Century and grew during the early 21st Century, and one of its central themes was based on treating the human race as if they could be divided up into distinct ethnic groups that inherently belong to specific geographic areas. Folkish ideology was saturated in romanticism and therefore romantic nationalism.

Long story short, the folkish movement successfully created a subculture in which extreme traditionalism, and the rejection of modernity, was billed as “cool,” and the subculture caught fire in the imaginations of German youth that grew up in the wake of World War II. For an example of how right-wingers are still trying to use these kinds of techniques to manipulate young people, I bid you observe attempts by right-wing politicians to revive the “mullet” hairstyle to try to give themselves a greasy “punk rocker” kind of look. Through intensive propaganda, far-right politicians were, over the course of a single generation, able to inflame their people into a state of ultra-nationalist populism.

The proponents of the folkish ideology were simply wrong at a very deep level, and I can illustrate the reasons why by using the furry fandom as an analogy. The furry fandom is not really any one thing. For instance, there was one specific cohort of furries that once lingered at the outskirts of sci-fi conventions and filking meet-ups. However, there are also many furries that are just hardcore, die-hard Disney fans. Some furries only like anthros. Some furries only like “ferals.” Some furries are specific group of non-spiritual therians. To some furries, their character is an alter-ego. To other furries, their character is a representation of themselves. To some furries, their character is a purely fictitious construct that they tell stories about but which they do not really see as autobiographical.. Some furries are only in it for the porn. Some furries are only in it for the literature. The furry fandom is really a polyglot, and it has always been a polyglot.

To attempt to explain what happened to SOME people in Germany, suppose that a sub-subculture, within the fandom, had this grand idea that they were going to “get to the root of what it truly is to be a furry,” and they developed this rigid, systematic definition of what “being a true furry” was really all about. Let’s say they marched around telling other people that they were “not doing furry properly,” and eventually, they started spreading propaganda about how “alien influences” were “deteriorating the body of the fandom,” framing these influences as a diseases or parasites. Imagine that they were charismatic enough that they could stir people into a state of anger about how these “diseases” and “parasites” had weakened their wonderful furry fandom, and the furry fandom came to be dominated by a “fearless leader” that was going to be the “salvation of furry.”

Any historically conversant German would probably tell me that I am oversimplifying, but I believe that I am close enough to understanding the subject that I can use it for teaching a moral lesson about the dangers of entitive essentialism.

There are two types of essentialism.

One type of essentialism is naturalistic essentialism, and naturalistic essentialism is not always bad. For instance, I am transgender, and it benefits me if most people understand that this is naturally a part of me. My gender is not a “social construct.” My gender is a part of me that I cannot really be separated from. In other cases, naturalistic essentialism actually can be harmful, such as in the case of nationality: nationality is not naturally a part of anybody, and it is usually possible for most people to fully integrate, eventually, into a new country. In most cases where the assumption of naturalness is harmful, the problem is that that assumption is just objectively wrong. In the case of my gender, it’s actually true: I really am stuck with it.

Entitive essentialism is really more dangerous. Entitive essentialism is the assumption that, if someone has a certain identity, then that person must always represent the stereotypes that go with that identity. For instance, it would constitute entitive essentialism if someone assumed, incorrectly, that I was certain to “freak out” if someone ever misgendered me. It does not really make me angry if somebody misgenders me. I just think they have bad grammar. Another slight that I make against entitive essentialism is that I have never “dressed as a woman.” I think that trousers look sexy, and functional pockets are the cat’s pyjamas. I like my shirts to be made out of cotton, and I prefer crew-neck t-shirts because my shoulders burn easily. You do not know that some transgender people are like me until you have met me. Once you have met me, then you know.

In order to avoid entitive essentialism, what I suggest is getting to know actual members of groups that you are curious about. The more of them that you get to know, the more you understand that they are really diverse, and they can really overlap and intersect with other groups. You merely do not and cannot know that until you have gotten to know them.

After all, if you pass judgment over somebody that you do not really know, then you are not really judging anybody at all, except the demons within yourself.


Graciously,
Sigma
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and confused others (yes, I am still dating titles to the most recent Saturday),



I have decided to start publishing at furry venues again.

I have come more and more to believe that it is usually unhealthy for zoophiles to linger at zoo-only venues. They feed off of each others' paranoia, and in some cases, I have observed them forming a distorted and ridiculous idea of what kinds of people non-zoos are.

If you are a non-zoo, I know that most non-zoos are decent people, but I have trouble getting other zoophiles to believe that. Many of them have been victims of cyber-bullying or even violent persecution or the derailment of their careers, and because of those experiences, they tend to feed off of each others' paranoia and misanthropy. They tend to form an impression that non-zoophiles are mentally unbalanced, dangerous zealots. Some of them seem to have come to actively hate non-zoophiles, and I think that minority separatism is just as harmful as any other form of hate. Most of my friends that know I am a zoo are non-zoos, and the only reason why I even talk to other zoophiles is for the sake of taking part in zooey activism. Outside of fighting back against hate, I am more interested in great literature and classic roleplay.

I am currently on The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littel. It is a story of World War II written from the perspective of a Nazi SS officer, technically a "jurist" that had the job of watching the proceedings at death camps and concentration camps and then writing reports back to his leaders. It's a grim but edifying work of literature. The protagonist is a closeted bisexual man, though that actually plays only a small role in the story. The book is really one of the most grisly things that I have ever read, though. For people that have never read Holocaust literature before, this stuff could give you nightmares. Littel takes no prisoners, and he just keeps going. He does have shortcomings as an author, but I believe that his boldness and shamelessness makes up for them.

Besides my ongoing interest in reading such edifying nightmare fuel, I am also in the process of organizing a D&D group to play a few mini-quests. I am deliberately trying to pull together a mixed zooey and non-zooey group, and the most likely DM is a trusted friend of mine that goes way back with me. I am hopeful of getting skilled enough at the game to DM myself in the future. While I am only experienced with pleasant and aimless freeform roleplay, I think that it is time that I did something a little bit more exciting and invigorating. Beating up a few fictitious kobolds for fun sounds more and more like medicine.

Prior to the wave of anti-zoophile hate that reached its crescendo in 2018, those were the kinds of things that I preferred to think about, and to tell you the truth, I am convinced that those are the sorts of things that will still matter to me forty years from now. In the end, great literature and classic roleplay are really the things that I care about. Those are the things that have always had the most meaning to me. Those are my heart song, and that heart song will outlast waves of hate and ignorance, which by then will be a faded ember that serves as a part of our culture's immunity against evil.

That is also the reason why I will only linger in zoophile-themed chats for the sake of taking part in activism. If you are a zoophile, then my opinion is that the only reason why you should want to know other zoophiles is to help fight back against hate, and I don't just mean hate against zoophiles: I also mean fighting back against separatist sentiments among your fellow zoophiles. Help restore mutual trust between zoophiles and non-zoophiles. Help your fellow zoophiles recognize that the psychopaths that rage and bombast against us do not really represent how normal non-zoophiles think or act. Don't let them use "normie" with a negative connotation. Separatists are just as bad for us as those zealots that preach hate against us.

In totally unrelated news, I am officially a transgender woman. I am starting the spironolactone this week. Once I have started the estrogen, I am going to double down on my physical fitness efforts, and I might even start using weights. Do not forget that estrogen is a steroid, and as a steroid, it actually does enhance muscle strength through the action of myosin, which subtly improves the quality of muscle fibers. Within the next three months, I hope to look like a regular cheetah. I really find it easy to get into shape, but I have been stymied in the past because of its unpleasant effect on my gender dysphoria. The greatest thing about running, though, is that running gives me a chance to listen to my audiobooks without the risk of getting interrupted by my husband! Wacky face!



Your now returning zooey pen-pal,

Sigma
I have just been very excited about weeks to come, and I have been so distracted. For a change, I am not going to put in a late update and continue the next week. I'm just going to write something more thorough the day after tomorrow.
Dear zoos, zooey allies, and interested others,

I just can't, this week. I have an appointment, on Tuesday, to see someone over my gender dysphoria. I have managed it very well with herbs and by roleplaying a lot online, up to this point, but I have finally reached a point of stability and regularity in my life. I feel like I can support myself through this difficult transition. I really strongly want to get this show on the road.

Ironically, a part of what drove me to do something was that I also want to eventually talk about the fact that I am a zoo. I am really painfully introverted in person, and it is very hard for me to find opportunities to talk to people that do not already know me online. I want to start coming out more generally.

As soon as LGBT friendly nightclubs in my area are open again, I am going to start going out one day a week, every week, and I intend to be open about being a zoophile. I have become a lot more brave, at this point in my life, thanks to the courageous members of the zooey community that have been my inspirations.


Thank you,
Sigma
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