Asklemmy

While klling an animal for food is sure destructive for the animal, it is constructive for the humanity. It allows us to get all those proteins "for free" instead of producing them ourselves from plants like herbivores do and invest the saved energy in our intelligence to create beautiful and complex things. Whereas copulating with an animal is pure destruction. It harms the living being and leads to no babies and no emotional bond strengthening (contrary to human sex).

Eating animal is still a contradiction, because destruction is there. So I think this problem does need to be somehow overcome. But at least it's outweighed by its positive effects, unlike zoophilia.

In a perfect utopian society I would hope we wouldn't be doing either.

From what I've been told by rape victims, I'd much rather be murdered.

It's simple, actually.

The number of people who like to eat animals is larger than the number people who like to, that.

It's about squick.

Think about how they call sex with animals "bestiality". It's not "oh it's because it hurts the animals!", it's because "ew, gross, you're stooping to the level of an ANIMAL!".

I don't think it's about consent, either. If you were somehow able to communicate well enough to actually get consent (which, to be clear, is pretty iffy what with the whole language barrier and such), people would still be squicked.

(also I'm pretty sure "zoophilia" is more about being into animals rather than actual sex with them, which is the whole "bestiality" thing. You can be into someone/a group of people without wanting to rape them.)

It's probably because most of society fundamentally doesn't see other animals as people, and therefore killing them is totally fine ("what? they're not people!"), but having sex with them is Evil and Bad ("why would you want to have sex with them? they're not even a person!").

Yeah it makes no sense.

But zoophilia is not about consent at all!

Scientists use dummy ostriches to collect sperm. Ostriches approach and... use the dummies, by their own volition.

If there was a human in there, it wouldn't be very different from the perspective of the real ostrich. So it'd be technically possible to consensually bottom an ostrich.

But why the fuck would you do it?

This is what people actually despise about bestiality. It's a gut feeling, before any rationalisation

Edit: you could very much argue that the ostrich dummy method is still non-consensual as it involves some form of trickery. But, regardless, I think it's telling that people would treat it differently depending on whether there was a human in it or not, even though from the animal's perspective there is no difference.

I agree that it is incoherent. I guess the reasons are complex, but a little peek at these may show us that we have historical attachments for animal consumption. And, then, our moral reasoning was not to end it but to make it as painless as possible (and that's the idea in many places); while you cannot make rape painless, and we don't have a historical reason to defend it either.

The animal isn’t aware of being dead.

Society condemns one and accepts the other

One is torture.

The other is a means of survival.

It's acceptable to kill for survival.

It's not acceptable to torture and hurt for sexual gratification that can be gained solo with no one else involved.