Bestiality and the queering of the human animal

We provide an account of a bizarre sex panic from rural Washington State, USA. There, a man died after having sex with a horse and a panic ensued because there was no law against human animal sex. Quickly a law was placed on the books outlawing bestiality, but only after a series of interlocking-yet-disparate arguments enjoined the local public sphere over just why a law prohibiting sex with animals was necessary. We deconstruct those shifting arguments with respect to their imaginative geographies, and their political theories. Tracing the borders between, and hybridities of, nature culture, we show that there are broader issues at stake than just sex acts in otherwise moral, rural space. Resisting liberationist accounts of sexuality that buy into assumptions of sexuality as ones authentic self, we suggest that these borders and hybrids around nature might be one tack towards a queerer queer geography.