Peter Singer
Peter Singer (in full, Peter Albert David Singer) AC (born 6 July 1946), is an Australian moral philosopher and Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He most famously wrote the book Animal Liberation (1975), and in 2005, The Sydney Morning Herald placed him among Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals.[1]
Among MAPs, AAMs, pro-paraphile activists and their allies, Peter Singer is known for expressing skeptical views around the alleged harmfulness of some forms of human / non-human sexual contact, especially when contact is initiated by the non-human animal and does no demonstrable physical harm to the animal's body. He famously expressed this stance in a review of the book Dearest Pet: On Bestiality by Midas Dekkers, in an infamous piece titled "Heavy Petting" (2001).[2] The piece has been used as a catalyst for philosophy academics to debate bestiality, with some strongly criticizing,[3] and some conceding parts of Singer's arguments.[4] Later discussions in scholarship have tended to be more neutral,[5][6] and even supportive.[7] Singer is also known for co-founding of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. Controversial Ideas has published the The Pedophile as a Human Being: An Autoethnography for the Recognition of a Marginalized Sexual Orientation[8] - an autoethnography of an individual with largely hebephilic desires - and later Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible (Bensto, 2023),[9] the latter of which received massive media attention / exposure with at least 1 million people having seen Singer's twitter post about the article.
References
- ↑ Visontay, Michael (12 March 2005). "Australia's top 100 public intellectuals". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- ↑ Peter Singer, Heavy Petting. (Nerve, 2001).
- ↑ Piers Beirne. (2001). Peter Singer's "Heavy Petting" and the Politics of Animal Sexual Assault. Critical Criminology 10, pp. 43–55. (Sci-hub link).
- ↑ E.g. Neil Levy. (Fall 2003). What (if Anything) Is Wrong with Bestiality? in Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 444–456. (Sci-hub link).
- ↑ See especially: Joanna Bourke, Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love (University of Chicago Press, 2020).
- ↑ Bassano, G. (2018). Bestialitatis and the New Ethics on “Human” Animals. Int J Semiot Law 31, 659–675.
- ↑ Bensto, F. (2023). Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible. Journal of Controversial Ideas, 3(2), 5.
- ↑ Vaerwaeter, B. (pseudonym) The Pedophile as a Human Being: An Autoethnography for the Recognition of a Marginalized Sexual Orientation. Journal of Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 3; doi:10.35995/jci02010003.
- ↑ Op. cit. above.