People Just Fuck Everything
but in an animal dimension
Selected quotes from the Vice News articles, “4 Men Gang-Raped, Killed and Ate a Protected Monitor Lizard” (April, 18 2022) and “4 Men Gang Raped a Protected Monitor Lizard. Experts Explain Why.” (April 28, 2022) presented with minimal comment. Emphases mine.
Forest officials in India are investigating four men who gang-raped, killed, cooked and ate a monitor lizard in one of India’s most protected forest reserves.
It was the only monitor lizard in the park.
The incident took place on March 29th at the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. The forest’s camera traps caught the accused men trespassing the reserve’s Chandoli National Park. Forest officials arrested the men between April 1st and 5th, and found photos and videos on their phones of them gang-raping a monitor lizard, and then killing and eating it.
“I have never seen a crime like this before,” division forest officer Vishal Mali told VICE World News. “The men are in their 20s and 30s, and they appear to have done it for fun. There was no religious or black magic agenda.”
(would have been a lot cooler if there was…)
A report by wildlife advocacy groups recorded 82 cases of sexual abuse against animals in India between 2010 and 2020. This was out of a total of 500,000 cases of animal-related crimes that include torture and killings.
Most recent cases of sexual abuse against animals include a man raping and killing a pregnant goat in southern India, and a 60-year-old man raping a female stray dog last year.
“Not only is this cruel, but there is a risk of zoonotic diseases from this kind of case. There are concerns of men carrying STDs and other infections from their act,” Mali said.
News of the grisly fate of the monitor lizard went viral. The accused were charged under India’s wildlife protection law but granted bail two weeks later. Now, Mali and his team are taking legal help to also charge them under a law that criminalises bestiality. Violating the wildlife protection law can lead to seven years in prison; violating the law on bestiality can have one imprisoned for life.
Mali said the monitor lizard case might set a precedent in India. “The punishments for crimes like this are not well thought-out because this has never happened before,” he said. “Unfortunately, those hooligans ate the monitor lizard and we don’t have much evidence apart from the video we seized on their phones.”
(curse those depraved hooligans and their perverted shenanigans!)
Although an unpopular topic, bestiality does exist. American author Joanna Bourke, who explored “modern bestiality” in the U.S. and UK in her book Loving Animals, told VICE World News that what the men did to the monitor lizard was sexual violence. “It was an act of power, of entitlement as humans who can do whatever they like to non-human bodies. It was pure violence and aggression,” she said.
BEASTIALITY DOES EXIST
She added that the men taking photos and videos of the act was, in fact, typical of sexual violence. “These were trophy photographs. They were performing this kind of violent masculinity in a very carnivalesque manner,” she said. “They did to a non-human what ordinary men do to women, but in an animal dimension.”
BUT IN AN ANIMAL DIMENSION
Reddy, the Indian sexologist, said he has also encountered cases of zoophilia, defined as human attraction to animals that doesn’t necessarily translate to sexual acts. “I’ve seen nearly 30 cases of zoophilia and bestiality cases in my life,” he said. Some came to him to address erectile dysfunction, then ended up revealing a history of sexual intercourse with cows or buffaloes, which they couldn’t tell their partners. Others, he added, were brought to him by their families out of fear the person’s sexual act could get them arrested.
Bestiality is a popular search term in porn too. VICE World News found dozens of bestiality-related porn websites, some even specifically featuring sex with monitor lizards.
“The human mind wants to see unusual things, and derive some sort of mental gratification,” said Reddy. “The porn industry relies a lot on this kind of curiosity.”
(you are god damn right it does)
Bestiality is legal in some European countries like Hungary, Romania, Belarus, and Russia, as well as four states in the U.S. It is however illegal in Pennsylvania where, in 2018, three men were arrested for running a bestiality “orgy” farm. They’re still behind bars on over 1,400 counts of bestiality.
Reddy said that the incident brings up the larger problem of repressed sexuality in India, “The day we make the society comfortable talking about sexual matters, we will know more about issues like bestiality, and know how exactly to address it.”
One day I will produce a sprawling, stupendous tome about what those men did to that lizard that will make Edwards Gibbons’ six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire look like a mere pamphlet, but for now I will limit myself to one further comment: very bullish on India’s long-term future, that country fucks.
Favorite comment so far (from R.G. Miga, check out his excellent substack):
This is one area where a materialist analysis clearly falls short of a satisfactory explanation. undoubtedly, there is some perverse psychology at work here. but reducing it down to a psychological misfire is begging the question. they did it just for fun? okay—why was it fun? do these men have some identifiable psychosis, or were they otherwise cognitively functional people who came up with a wild (ha) idea about how they were going to spend an evening together? this took some amount of planning and premeditation—the Ocean's Eleven of depravity. so what made four men say to one another—continually, at every single decision point throughout the entire journey—”yup, this is it, this is the big score. not only do i want to carnally entangle myself with that scaly fella on the other side of the fence—i want to share the experience with three of my homies, who i will presumably have to look in the eye both during and after this encounter. gentlemen, hear me now: there is nothing good on Netflix. this is the only way forward.”
i’m being glib; at the same time, this is pretty compelling evidence for good old-fashioned demonic possession. supposedly, that doesn't exist. but i defy anyone to come up with a more parsimonious explanation for whatever the hell this is.
Further reading
People Just Do Nothing (tv show)
Another Vice News article: “A Man Allegedly Sexually Assaulted a Dying Beaver and Let’s Just Burn This World Down”
r/NoahGetTheBoat (“Have you ever seen some horrible acts from humanity and wished for a second flood to end humanity?”)
“Pedophile Problems” (me)
this is one area where a materialist analysis clearly falls short of a satisfactory explanation. undoubtedly, there is some perverse psychology at work here. but reducing it down to a psychological misfire is begging the question. they did it just for fun? okay—why was it fun? do these men have some identifiable psychosis, or were they otherwise cognitively functional people who came up with a wild (ha) idea about how they were going to spend an evening together? this took some amount of planning and premeditation—the Ocean's Eleven of depravity. so what made four men say to one another—continually, at every single decision point throughout the entire journey—"yup, this is it, this is the big score. not only do i want to carnally entangle myself with that scaly fella on the other side of the fence—i want to share the experience with three of my homies, who i will presumably have to look in the eye both during and after this encounter. gentlemen, hear me now: there is nothing good on Netflix. this is the only way forward."
i'm being glib; at the same time, this is pretty compelling evidence for good old-fashioned demonic possession. supposedly, that doesn't exist. but i defy anyone to come up with a more parsimonious explanation for whatever the hell this is.
Given that monitor lizards can be rather combative, this act requires either great courage (in the wrong place), serious desperation (I almost would feel sorry for the guys) or a large monetary reward for doing something batshit crazy (the only sensible explanation). I don't think Monitor lizard AIDS would be a problem though, too different metabolism for the virus to cope with I think.
As an aside, I really like the design of the spines on your copy of "Decline and Fall".