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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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We are now in the timeline where the journalistic integrity of the New York Times rests upon whether or not it is physically possible to train a dog to anally rape a human.

The New York Times ran an opinion article by Nicholas Kristof wherein a number of Palestinians report being raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons. There’s not much in the way of physical evidence, but that is hardly unusual in rape crimes. Israel has strenuously denied the allegations, characterizing them as blood libel. It seems to be a he-said/she-said that comes down to whether you believe the Palestinian prisoners (who often have ties to Hamas or other extremist groups, hence why they ended up in Israeli prisons) or the IDF.

Certain enterprising young pro-Israel influencers think they can to better than appeal to untrustworthiness. They puport to have found a smoking gun that proves the NYT published a complete fabrication in order to libel the State of Israel, and by extension all Jews. One of the more salacious anecdotes regards a man from Gaza who alleges that he was raped by a dog.

On one occasion, he said, he was held down, stripped naked, and as he was blindfolded and handcuffed, a dog was summoned. With encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said, the dog mounted him.

”They were using cameras to take photos, and I heard their laughs and giggles,” he said. He tried to dislodge the dog, he said, but it penetrated him.

If, in fact, such a thing were impossible, then it would prove without doubt that the paper of record recklessly printed unverified falsehoods. We are now in the “doctors arguing with the author about the medical literature” stage of the discourse. See, even though we have documented evidence that dogs can cause rectal injury to humans, in none of those reports was the initial contact involuntary on the part of the human.

I am not well acquainted with dogs, but my understanding is that it is not particularly hard to get them to hump things. I guess the people making this argument are hoping that others won’t want to think too hard about the mechanics of dog rape.

Despite calls and rumors to the contrary, The Times so far has declined to retract the article.

I love the argument that dogs have sex with humans, yes, but they can't rape humans because they have an instinctual understanding of the Oberlin model of consent.

You know I always just assumed the vast majority of dog beastiality was like receptive oral where the human smears peanut butter on their genetalia or the dog is the receptive one either vaginally or anally.

I suppose training an adolescent dog to be the one penetrating is possible but it seems extremely difficult; aren’t dog members not nearly as stiff as humans? I don’t know how much anal sex you’ve had but it’s an “out” hole and it fights back more than a bit when compared to a vagina, unless it’s been really “trained up” so to speak.

Someone up thread described this as essentially a blood libel and it seems more likely; dogs are a very specific Arab / Muslim taboo so it smells like a maximally offensive myth made specifically to inflame an already maximally uncharitable audience primed to believe basically anything.

To my mind it reminds me of the 19th century Indian revolt against the British Empire. One of the precursors was a rumor spread amongst Indians serving as auxiliaries that the rifle cartridges were stored in beef fat. And crucially for my point, they told the Muslims that they were stored in pork fat. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?

Plus, if you wanted to sexually brutalize prisoners there’s a lot easier ways to do it. We got a ton of examples of this.

Ironically this reminds me a bit of that old /pol/ bit about holocaust survivors talking about nazis freezing Jews with dry ice and putting them on mine carts so that they smash into a million pieces looney toons style. Way too baroque to be true but the ones spinning the yarn are given maximum charity due to their “victim” status.

The “Dogs raping prisoners” schtick is a double blood libel as well as it’s a pretty standard lefty canard against any unfavorable regime; I believe the same accusations were leveled against Pinochet, Franco, the Greek Military Junta, etc, etc. usually the CIA is invoked, as is tradition.

A final point; this to me is also illustrative of how certain sexual topics that are politically explosive are difficult to discuss because people are understandably reluctant to engage with the mechanics of the subject. I think for example the backlash against LGBQT ideology only could grow because increasing numbers of people were willing to frankly describe, outside of the gatekeepers eye, the physical acts being performed routinely in great detail. The rest followed.

[cw: exactly what you think from the block quote]

I suppose training an adolescent dog to be the one penetrating is possible but it seems extremely difficult; aren’t dog members not nearly as stiff as humans?

Dogs, like most non-primate mammals, have an os penis bone. When fully aroused, the combination of bone and hydraulic pressure makes the penis very firm even compared to the typical human erection, though the root of the knot is flexible. Much of the complication comes because canine sexuality has some process difference such that full erection rarely happens before penetration.

((There's a lot of very life-like furry fandom sex toys and discussions and images out there. Actual zoosexuality is rare and Frowned On, to be blunt, but the line gets fuzzy when a major vendor sells lifecast toys. I'll avoid going into more detail for the sake of anyone wanting to keep down their dinner.))

That bone also makes them extremely vulnerable, as for a whole lot of complicated biomechanical reasons both the penis membrane/skin itself and the bone is very delicate.

I'm... aware enough of certain scandals to suspect that at least some dogs could be trained to mount a specific person without a massive level of other infrastructure, but I'm skeptical it could be done at the scale, organization, and direction claimed here. And then you need the motives on top of that.

I'm... aware enough of certain scandals

Colby 2012 #NeverForget