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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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But the article linked in the post you linked mentions that 4% of the female population had a sexual experience with an animal, with much higher rates among certain sub-populations (particularly farmers). I mean that's not exactly the 5% I mentioned off the cuff but cut me some slack. That just becomes more significant when taking into account that actual practicing zoophilia isn't even required for the overall point.

As to that data, my understanding is that the data is pretty all over the place, women fantasize about animals more often, men actually engage in the actions more frequently (but typically don't fantasize about it even if they do normally fuck animals,) and the actual rates of interest in it are pretty close.

The points about the pathetic-man-fetish are all valid though, and I'm not too attached to the overall point anyway, though I expect for anyone who does care about it, any nitpicks are unlikely to remove the emotional damage of "there are attractive women who have fucked dogs but wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot-pole."

But the article linked in the post you linked mentions that 4% of the female population had a sexual experience with an animal, with much higher rates among certain sub-populations (particularly farmers).

Unfortunately, a lot of Kinsey's data and his redefinitions -- note that the writer says sexual experience rather than anything specific -- got blurred aggressively, in no small part by Kinsey himself. His actual data for women was far more restricted, with literally only one actual adult woman in thousands who had full coitus with an animal (a dog) in the sample for Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, with paeans to a few more who might not have been included to protect them legally, and a more significant but still sub-0.05% who'd 'received' oral.

The 4% number comes from rounding up his 3.6% for his "accumulated incidence" of all sexual contact, which explicitly included women who did not report any arousal from the contact. Of those, the overwhelming majority consisted of poking at an animal's genitals, or having ever had sexual fantasies or dreams about the topic; most only reported this happening once or twice in their lives.

any nitpicks are unlikely to remove the emotional damage of "there are attractive women who have fucked dogs but wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot-pole."

That's fair.

Very interesting to know that about the Kinsey data, thank you. I never went as far as to actually look at the primary source (classic mistake!). Frankly it being defined that way makes the stats for farm areas absolute nonsense. Of course like half of people on farms have had "sexual experience" with an animal if you count something mundane like cleaning a horse's sheath!