A few days ago I complained about positive book reviews for a new book that partially involves explicit depictions of sexual intercourse between a chimpanzee and a woman, with the reviewers either lauding the bestiality or praising it with non damnation. I saw the acceptance of bestiality/literary porn as a disturbing symptom. Here is part of what I wrote in that post:
This is a real storm warming. Positive and pornographic depictions of bestiality are nothing to smile about or shrug off. Standing against the normalization or acceptance of bestiality is far more important than having our “sensibilities” offended. As I have written elsewhere, it is a crucial matter of defending and upholding human dignity.
And now–just as I expected–the grand dame of book review publications, the New York Times Book Review, seals the degeneration. Not only does the reviewer Christopher R. Beha–yes,of course! an editor at Harper’s–find the bestiality perfectly fine, but he looks down his intellectual elite nose at those who wouldn’t agree. From “Primal Urges:”
Hale’s daring is most obvious in his portrayal of the relationship between Bruno and Lydia, which eventually breaks the one sexual taboo even Nabokov wouldn’t touch.
Such material will prove an insurmountable barrier to certain readers, the same ones who will never pick up “Lolita.” And the depictions of interspecies love are certainly discomfiting, but not for the reasons you might imagine. Ultimately, the point of these scenes is not to shock us but to ask what fundamentally makes us human, what differences inhere between a creature like Lydia and a creature like Bruno that disqualify the latter from the full range of human affection. In a twist that sounds heavy-handed when summarized but is expertly managed, Lydia suffers an illness that leaves her helpless and aphasic, reduced to her animal self, making the differences between the two seem even more superficial, and their need for each other even more moving..
Please. We rubes understand the subversive game that is afoot among the liberal intellegentsia when they laud works that undermine traditional morality, and more specifically–as in Beha’s statement quoted above–applaud destroying the principle that being human is something unique, important, and special.
Disdaining even fictional accounts of human/animal sexual intercourse is important to both upholding standards of moral decency and a proper respect for human exceptionalism. Color me disgusted, but alas, not surprised.
February 6th, 2011 | 4:16 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, tamoor and Andrew Davis, Wesley J. Smith. Wesley J. Smith said: Now NYT Book Reviewer Lauds Explicit Depiction of Bestiality » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog http://t.co/qk7vCgx [...]
February 6th, 2011 | 6:29 pm
A helpless aphasic human being is still a human being. An extremely clever chimpanzee is still an animal. If you say you can’t tell the difference, you’re probably just looking for a reason to make other humans your slaves, murder victims, and food.
February 7th, 2011 | 12:07 am
some things are better left ignored
at the end of the day Christopher must look himself in the mirror, trying not to laugh, and remind himself he wrote a review covering bestiality – better he remain confined at the NY Times
meanwhile, in the land of the living, bacteria are evolving resistance to antibiotics and people are dying of cancer – many without health insurance
February 7th, 2011 | 12:27 am
I wonder if animals believe in slippery slopes.
February 7th, 2011 | 5:34 am
So basically, you create a fictional world in which an anthropomorphized animal can be human as well as animal, then use your own deliberately “fuzzed” boundaries to argue that anyone who argues that we should recognize a distinction between humans and animals is stupid because obviously there is no difference (using the fictionalized reference as Exhibit A).
This is what happens when you start from the premise that noting a distinction between “us” and “Other” is “immoral”: everyone and everything becomes equally human, with the problem being that now if you eat a carrot you’re a murderer (to borrow a very very humorous ad reductio from the Julia Roberts film, even though I can’t remember which one it was), and since it’s obvious that there is no way that we can grant to every carrot and cockroach the same rights we grant to our own family members, we have to redraw the boundaries we disintegrated – only now, instead of distinguishing between human, cow, and carrot, we feel free to save the living creatures that make us feel the way we like to feel (especially animals with big Bambi eyes) while dehumanizing even members of our immediate family members to the point where they don’t even exist and what happens to them is simply irrelevant to us (however gruesome).
February 7th, 2011 | 8:44 am
And a human being is still an animal.
While I’m unlikely to read this book, I don’t find that a fictional account of a human-chimpanzee having sex with a woman to be part of the liberal intelligentsia’s conspiracy to dehumanize us humans.
If the liberals’ strategy to take over the planet is by books about chimp-human hybrids you probably don’t have a lot to worry about.
There are bigger and more immediate threats to humanity out there. Global warming, torture, famine and Republicans comes to mind.
Conservatives’ plan to impoverish all but the ruling elite is a bigger threat.
February 7th, 2011 | 10:39 am
Jeffrey: I believe this is one of the biggest threats to humanity out there.
The question of redefining personhood based on how people feel (“this one looks human to me – ugh; that one doesn’t) is right up there.
I mean, think about it. This “sex with a chimp” idea is exciting precisely because it promises to break down the boundaries between “us” (humans) and “them” (animals).
Why are people so eager to do this?
I think it’s a fantasy.
The implicit promise is that when we don’t recognize ourselves as being set apart from animals, we won’t be cruel to them anymore, and all suffering and harm will just go away. We won’t have to confront death or anything icky like that any more. The universe will be without limits. We can eat processed food product without ever having to know where it came from.
Except it doesn’t work that way, because it doesn’t address the fundamental problem of why exactly it is we prioritize “us” over “them”.
Exactly the opposite, in fact – the whole point of blurring the boundary is precisely so that people can avoid confronting their own denialc. Confronted with the reality of limits, of scarce resources, of ethical demands that aren’t compatible, some people would just rather get angry and speak about how the world “ought” to be. We “ought” to just all get along and not have any conflicts at all.
But people who are committed to the fantasy that we can eradicate “us” vs. “them” by just wishing real hard are the ones who don’t want to look at how the world really is are the ones who are most committed to beliefs like “euthanasia can be a viable solution to the overpopulation problem” and “[Blake, I took out one of your examples because it would open up a can of worms way beyond this post. Thanks.] and “abortion doesn’t really kill a baby, it’s only a thing”.
The rejection of what this blog refers to as “human exceptionalism” does not truly get rid of “us vs. them”. There’s no sustainable solution behind the fantasy that if we just recognized the personhood of animals and carrots, that we could somehow all just be friends and never quarrel.
What happens instead is it just changes the rules about who is defined as “us” and who is defined as “them”.
Instead of having rules based on moral categories, what we have instead is a world where the wealthy and the sheltered get to define who matters and who doesn’t. Big-eyed puppy dogs & animals they’d like to have sex with are to be classed as people, while people who make them uncomfortable or angry are not.
February 7th, 2011 | 12:03 pm
A big 10-4 Jeffery. Don’t know how to respond to the book review. Religion is responsible for most wars, killing, and hate. Bill O’Reilly said todady to Obama, “people hate him”, asking I guess just to get his reply. How does one really respond to a question like that? “Your with us or against us”.
February 7th, 2011 | 12:55 pm
Wesley I must confess that I stopped reading as soon as I read woman having sex with an amimal. I don’t want to make “IT” sound like I’m a goody goody two shoes but really none of my cells living and/or dead wanted to continue reading about “IT” if you know what I mean?
sinner vic did convince me to read the comments and he also quietly told me, myself and “Eye” through some of my gut cell feelings that “IT” might be a direct result and/or product curse of all the Abortions, Euthanasia, Torture, illegal aliens and/or what ever else have ya and maybe again, the spiritual world if “IT” does exist, is simply trying to say that today’s humans don’t deserve better than any of these so called monkeys but then again with all the advancement that same-sex has reached, “IT” might just be to make same-sex-marriages look acceptable to God and His Angels of our time.
But then again Victor, maybe “IT” is just some of Wesley’s dead cells showing off and spiritually saying to this guy in so many words, you push my book and I’ll push yours. Go Figure!
All I can say to that sinner vic in Wesley’s defence is “You don’t know Wesley!” :)
God Bless Peace
February 7th, 2011 | 1:38 pm
wow sorry for posting essentially the same thing twice, I thought the first post didn’t go through.
February 7th, 2011 | 1:59 pm
Beha gives the whole game away right here:
“Lydia suffers an illness that leaves her helpless and aphasic, reduced to her animal self,”
In this account, disability and inability to speak by definition reduce a human being to her merely animal aspects. Beha is apparently just relating what happens in the book, but his ability to glibly characterize the plot this way implies that he thinks the connection is sound: disability and inability to communicate = no longer significantly human.
I wonder what the disability advocacy people would think about this approach?
February 7th, 2011 | 3:38 pm
Tacky it may be, but trying to expand one book to a liberal conspiracy is pretty silly. If there is a campaign to legitimize bestiality it’s been going on for a while:
1997: http://www.amazon.com/Woman-Ape-Peter-Hoeg/dp/0140268448/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3
(That got some positive reviews too, but not many as I recall.)
Then of course you can go back to King Kong for an ape crush on a woman.
And of course classic mythology is full of human/animal hybrids resulting from human/animal intercourse. Unless Wes wants to argue that this liberal intelligentsia conspiracy dates back to ancient Greece. Not moving too fast then, is it?
February 7th, 2011 | 4:37 pm
pentamom: “I wonder what the disability advocacy people would think about this approach?”
As the sibling of a disabled person, I do not think very frickin’ highly of this at all. This kind of argument has been used by animal rights advocates to equate disabled humans with animals, and because we afford disabled humans limited rights, thus we must offer them to animals as well. Horsehockey. Disabled humans are still humans, and that’s it.
February 7th, 2011 | 5:17 pm
Jeffrey:
You stick to the proposition that Republicans are evil. Hang on to it as fast as you can. For if Republicans are not evil, then nothing is, and the world is devoid of moral absolutes. And that (the “Republicans are evil” bit) is evidence for the existence of God.
February 7th, 2011 | 5:44 pm
Well let’s see: in mythology there was Zeus (as a swan) with Leta, Zeus (as a bull) with Europa, Zeus (as a shower of gold) with Danae — not to mention innumerable accounts women who were impregnated by mythological spirits both holy and unholy. Just as I can’t believe that thousands of years of mythology have corrupted humanity beyond redemption, I can’t believe that some literary work in which a fictional character has sex with a fictional chimpanzee is part of a liberal conspiracy to bring about the downfall of western civilization. Loosen up, folks; some of you are beginning to sound like Dan Quayle back in his Murphy Brown days.
February 7th, 2011 | 6:17 pm
Markus: “You stick to the proposition that Republicans are evil. Hang on to it as fast as you can. For if Republicans are not evil, then nothing is, and the world is devoid of moral absolutes. And that (the “Republicans are evil” bit) is evidence for the existence of God.”
And Markus, you and Glenn Beck et al can put “liberals” in place of “Republicans” and make just as much sense.
February 7th, 2011 | 6:32 pm
Markus,
Evil? I’ve never claimed Republicans are evil. They are no more evil than a shark eating a sea lion. The ‘new’ Republicans just selfishly put their needs above all others. That’s natural, if somewhat feral.
And since you brought it up:
There is no evidence of moral absolutes.
There is no evidence for the existence of God.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 8th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Let’s not debate the existence of God. That’s up to Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens.
February 7th, 2011 | 7:23 pm
“praising it with non damnation.”
You post doesn’t condemn the treatment of Christians who are killed by oppressive governments all over the world so, using your logic, I assume you support it.
February 7th, 2011 | 7:51 pm
padraig:
This is probably off-topic, but I’ll try to sneak past Wesley’s filter:
1. If God does not exist, then objective moral truths don’t exist.
2. Objective moral truths do exist.
3. Therefore God exists.
Now, if Republicans are really evil, then there must be some objective good (say, being a Democrat) and an objective moral truth, which gives evidence for the 2nd point. I won’t defend this argument more closely than this, because it would go too far off-topic.
PS. Liberals just as evil as conservatives are.
February 7th, 2011 | 8:48 pm
Markus: “1. If God does not exist, then objective moral truths don’t exist.
2. Objective moral truths do exist.
3. Therefore God exists.”
Well, you start with a false syllogism and go on to an unsupported assumption, and finish with a non-sequitur. Good thing you don’t want to defend that argument, you’d waste a lot of time.
“Now, if Republicans are really evil”
I didn’t say they were, nor do I believe it. I was just pointing how claiming all liberals are “evil” makes no more or less sense than saying all Republicans, or conservatives as you later misquoted, are evil. I was agreeing with you, and you went into a knee jerk argument anyway.
Good thing I’m not your logical philosophy professor or I’d be shipping you off to the business school. ;)
February 7th, 2011 | 11:42 pm
Blake:
I think you’re on to something. If the desired goal is to treat people and animals the same, we could treat animals in the way we presently treat people. Or, we could start treating people the way we presently treat animals. I’ve always thought the latter would be more likely.
Right now most people treat different animals differently according to categories that are very arbitrary. I grew up with cats, so eating cat meat is repugnant to me. But I have no problem eating beef, which would repel a devout Hindu. Because they’re both animals, I don’t feel the need for consistency in my behavior towards them. It’s fine for me to like cats and be indifferent towards cattle purely on a whim.
I think there are more than a few people who would like to treat the human race the same way. With no moral duty towards non-”persons”, it’s perfectly acceptable to save some and cut others up for parts, as the whim takes us.
February 8th, 2011 | 9:03 am
Hi Wesley, et al.,
Here’s my response to this post, if anyone’s interested.
http://www.christopherbeha.com/
Best,
Chris Beha
P.S. I should note that I’m not the editor of Harper’s Magazine, but _an_ editor, and a fairly junior one at that. The editor, i.e., the editor-in-chief, is Ellen Rosenbush.
February 8th, 2011 | 12:14 pm
[...] Reads Now NYT Book Reviewer Lauds Explicit Depiction of Bestiality » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Bl… (author unknown)What They Mean by 'Civility' – WSJ.com (author unknown)The end of the [...]
February 8th, 2011 | 12:30 pm
Hi all,
I posted a comment linking to my response to Wesley’s post. The comment was removed by the moderator. Here is it again.
http://www.christopherbeha.com
Best,
Chris Beha
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 8th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Chris Beha: Thanks for stopping by.
In reply to your blog retort: Actually, I read another review, and linked the review here in an earlier post, that quoted parts of the first tryst. It was very explicit, particularly in describing the physicality of female arousal and what it makes the chimp experience and want to do in his own excited state. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines pornography–which is not the same thing as legal obscenity: “Pornography is any material (either pictures or words) that is sexually explicit. ” That makes the section I did read porn. Second, it was between a chimp and a human woman. That makes it bestiality. Third, it was contained in a work that aspires to literature, and which reviewers claim to so be. That makes it, as I wrote, “bestiality/literary porn.”
Unlike you, I permit replies on my blog. And I don’t scrub comments critical of me. The comments here are monitored. I was on a plane and couldn’t approve until I landed and could turn on my BlackBerry. Also, sorry I gave you a promotion.
That you can’t see, in your sophistication, how wrong it is to positively portray, and for reviewers of our most important reviews, to support the inclusion of bestiality, doesn’t mean it isn’t very wrong–regardless of the literary merit of the rest of the book.
February 8th, 2011 | 12:46 pm
the father content not to confront the taboo in art dooms the son to commit it
February 8th, 2011 | 2:12 pm
Also, I feel duty-bound to make clear that I’m not *the* editor of Harper’s Magazine, but *an* editor at the magazine, and a relatively junior one at that. The editor-in-chief is Ellen Rosenbush.
February 8th, 2011 | 4:16 pm
Hi Wesley,
Sorry for the suggestion that you had scrubbed my comments. And sorry to all for duplicating them under this misapprehension.
CRB
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 8th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Chris: Absolvo.
February 9th, 2011 | 12:25 am
Disdain it all you like. :) But from a harm-minimisation perspective, books like Lolita and virtual bestiality must remain legal.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 9th, 2011 at 10:27 am
HCM: Agreed, unless it reaches the level of legal obscenity, which I think graphic images or movies showing the deed would. But we shouldn’t just shrug.
February 9th, 2011 | 12:00 pm
Mr. Beha, Here is my response to your response to Wesley. I am sorry it is lengthy; I have no blog myself!
I am glad that you responded, and included a link here.
I think that in your response you do another of the sort of thing that people Wesley might call “the liberal intelligentsia” do: You insult his intelligence in order to prove that you aren’t a member of the intelligentsia. It doesn’t really help your argument. Not that you are making a true argument at that point. Just concluding your list of reasons why Wesley isn’t “qualified” to take on your review.
I do see a definite glimmer of an argument there at the end when you invoke Graham Greene. Excellent reference for other people who, like you, are “steeped in the traditions of Catholic intellectualism.” Yet while Greene makes a great counterpoint to Wesley, you are eliding–or ignoring– crucial differences between the Greene’s work and Welsey’s.
For one thing, Greene is appraising Lolita primarily as a work of literature. Wesley is not approaching the work with that purpose. He is pointing out the work *by pointing out your review* and highlighting the language you use in it, and some of the (apparent, based on your review) language and assumptions in the book, all in order to further illustrate the issues his blog is taking on daily. Those issues have, in part, to do with the philosophical and biological definitions of humanity, and the implications of shifting or changing them outright.
To compare Greene and Smith a bit further, consider Greene’s broader concerns– the ontological, and the spiritually significant– with those I decribe above as Wesley’s. Wesley is dealing more with language, and how it shapes definitions, which shape our conception of the Other, and the treatment thereof. (This is loosely and somewhat simplistically put, and Wesley correct me if I am misstating.) Greene , on the other hand, was concerned with how the art form of could raise our minds to consider what is true about ourselves.
See? Similar endeavors but substantively NOT the same. Greene’s aesthetic (love for threads of virtue followed amidst a tapestry of sin and brokenness and the pictures of how human being fall into sinfulness despite their attempts at doing good) alone can explain a lot about his praise for Lolita. (I am a big fan of Greene, by the way. Not all Catholics are.)
Which brings me to the fact that the novel you reviewed might or might not be anything close, in terms of art, to Nabokov. I thoroughly believe in reading things before you critique them, and also think Wesley probably gave this book more attention than is warranted currently, but I understand his urgency.
Because it *is* *most* *certainly* *true* that there are crowds of otherwise intelligent and well-educated people, including those with a “catholic intellectual” background, who are enamored of ideas *just because* they push boundaries that as yet still remain undestroyed. Also, those who have failed to think through the implications of treating, as your review appears to, the human person as “animal” only, once it has lost some of its more commonly desired features, like speech or movement.
Those people, to my mind fall into the same category as the astrophysicist who denies the Holocaust, or my lovely friend from college who is now tenured at Cornell who told me she “didn’t know anyone conservative”….:Stuck in their own warm, cocooned world, looking down on the Lesser-educated, the ones with The Wrong Politics, and pretending that, just because thy are smart and well-educated they have no further need for challenging themselves to re-examine stereotypes and pre-conceived notions.
I hope that you will read some more of Wesley J. Smith’s work and consider perhaps whether your cursory glance at the blog qualifies you to write your own version of a review of him!
And also, if you don’t think much else of my (sorry–very long) response to your response, at least consider the way that your words in the review convey an attitude toward the disabled that implies they are “less than human.” I would appreciate your comment on that point, at the very least.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 9th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
holyterror: Well said. That is indeed part of what I am doing.
I find this book in the same category as Larry’s Kidney, which celebrated buying an organ in China. It too received high praise in the NYT as a comedy romp. This, even though someone was almost surely murdered to obtain “Larry’s” kidney. In other words, it normalizes things that should not be normalized.
February 9th, 2011 | 3:22 pm
Wes: “I find this book in the same category as Larry’s Kidney, which celebrated buying an organ in China.”
I have to contest that point, Wes. Hale’s book is fiction, even science fiction. The proper category for “Larry’s Kidney” is NON-fiction. Books describing actual life experiences are taken more seriously than something as far-fetched as a first-person narrative from a chimpanzee.
Next you’ll be telling us we should boycott Star Trek because Kirk boinks alien chicks.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 9th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
I get the distinction, padraig, but I am not writing about the books as much as I am about the reaction among the literary and societal elites to the books. The reviews of both books normalize, and in this sense, validate the issues under discussion. I find that very worrisome.
As to the alien girls, they were all moral beings like humans, not animals like chimps. In other words, Kirk did not “know” tribbles.
February 9th, 2011 | 5:00 pm
Wesley,
The “Encyclopedia of Philosophy” (and I assume you’re referring to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) does not simply define “pornography” as “any material (either pictures or words) that is sexually explicit”. It in fact describes this as a simple first definition which, though commonly used by conservatives, is “not quite right” because it would render many entirely acceptable documents, such as anatomy textbooks, pornographic.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 9th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
Raven the C: We can get post modernistic in which nothing is capable of definition. And that has become a real problem in society and law.
Your comment brought to my mind one of our Supreme Court Justices, who so memorably put it about obscenity, that he couldn’t define it but he recognized it when he saw it. In any event, the pornography in the book quote from the book I read was hardly a dispassionate anatomy textbook. So, the excerpt I read was clearly pornographic, not clinical, if we can make that distinction.
February 9th, 2011 | 5:56 pm
I think Raven is right, and I’d go even a step further. The word “pornography” derives from the Greek: “writings about prostitutes.” Inherent in pornography is sexual titillation, thus mere descriptions of sexual functions or acts are not per se pornographic.
On the other hand, whether a particular piece of pornographic material rises to the level of obscenity is a legal judgment; while not all pornography is obscene, all obscenity is pornographic. I happen to agree with Justice Potter Stewart’s assessment of obscenity — that it defies definition, but you know it when you see it — although that hardly seems a rational basis for prosecuting its purveyors.
February 9th, 2011 | 7:38 pm
Wesley, no one’s getting “postmodernistic” here. I just pointed out that your definition is inadequate.
Sometimes sexually explicit descriptions are necessary in medicine, literature, the Law and even daily conversation. If these descriptions are not intended to arouse sexual desire, it hardly makes sense to label them “pornographic”.
When it comes to your initial post, I think Mr Beha couldn’t have put it better:
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 9th, 2011 at 7:54 pm
It wasn’t my definition. But we could add, you spent two minutes, quibbling over my post, to add to the list. But the book author’s years–and remember I have written 12 books, so I know what that takes–and the reviewer’s hours–I have also been subjected to reviews good and bad–does not invalidate my pointing out the degenerate nature of what was written originally and praised by Beha, with regard to the bestiality. Just because it took less time, does not make it very valid.
But, by your and Beha’s, definition, all blogs that comment on these matters should just close down shop and leave it to the NYT Book Reviewers. Not a chance.
February 11th, 2011 | 3:13 pm
[...] the accusations of Wesley J. Smith, I do not consider myself a pornographer (per se). But it’s not like the word [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact