Critical Criminology 10: 43–55, 2001. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 43 PETER SINGER’S “HEAVY PETTING” AND THE POLITICS OF ANIMAL SEXUAL ASSAULT * PIERS BEIRNE University of Southern Maine Accepted 10 July 2001 Abstract. This essay confronts Peter Singer’s (2001a) controversial suggestion that human- animal sexual relations should be tolerated if they do not involve cruelty, a pseudo-liberal position contradicted by the author’s recent testimony in favor of a Bill to criminalise bestiality. Against Singer, this article argues that human-animal sex is a harm that is wrong for the same reasons as is inter-human assault – because it involves coercion, produces pain and suffering, and violates the rights of another being. Positively, however, Singer’s text opens up for a much overdue discussion some difficult questions about the politics of animal sexual assault. To most people, bestiality is a disturbing sexual practice that invites hurried dismissal rather than sustained intellectual inquiry or scholarly reflection. In academic discourse, the topic tends only to surface in lectures on the evolu- tion of criminal law given by professors who, with embarrassed chuckles, refer to the declining volume of bestiality prosecutions since the early nine- teenth century to instantiate the secularised tolerance and the supposed ration- ality of western law. Though fictional and quasi-autobiographical accounts of bestiality occasionally appear in serious works of literature (e.g., Tester 1991; Hoeg 1996), it is remarkable that both moral philosophy and the social sciences have almost completely neglected to study this enduring social prac- tice that has traditionally been viewed with moral, judicial, and aesthetic outrage. Even though many states have re-criminalised bestiality over the last decade, criminologists have not considered the issues surrounding the normalisation of bestiality as a form of sexual diversity. The question is whether it is a logical addition to the justifiable extension of social accept- ance and legal rights to gays, lesbians, and other sexual orientations; or it is, instead, a piece of misplaced anthropocentrism whose plea for tolerance will simply lead to an increase in the myriad ways in which humans, lawfully and with widespread social acceptance, exploit and harm our fellow creatures. I * I am grateful to Susan Corrente, Ken Shapiro, Sydney Thomas, Paul Leighton, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.