Charles Mudede

Charles Tonderai Mudede (born February 8, 1969) is a Zimbabwean writer, filmmaker, and leftwing cultural critic.

"The Animal in You" (2006)
"The Animal in You", The Stranger (February 23, 2006)


 * Some laws come directly from God. There is a thunderbolt, the smoke clears, and there they are, the Commandments on a stone tablet. Most laws, however, do not have their origin in God but in man, which is the case with the law that will soon ban bestiality in the State of Washington.


 * The state wanted to punish this man for horse fucking but because there was no law against it at the time the horse fucking occurred, the state could only charge him with a crime as boring as drunken driving, serving booze to minors, a failed attempt to turn a trick.


 * There are two possible reasons for this surprising omission from Washington State's legal code: Either the State of Washington overlooked bestiality (which is not a bad thing to overlook considering there are much bigger problems to worry about—wars, poverty, earthquakes, health care... These issues are pressing; horse fucking is not), or, the reason for the law's absence—the one I believe is much more likely—is that no one wanted to contemplate horse fucking, much less talk about it. The formation of any law requires a lot of thought and even more talking. To pass a measure against bestiality means you have to picture it, write about it, and describe it in great detail.


 * […] [R]eading the law that was drafted by Senator Roach is very much like reading hardcore porn. Here is the last paragraph of the bill: "'Sexual contact' means any contact, however slight, between the sex organ or anus of a person and the sex organ, mouth, or anus of any animal, or any intrusion, however slight, of any part of the body of the person into the sex organ or anus of an animal, for the purpose of sexual gratification or arousal of the person. Evidence of emission of semen is not required to prove sexual contact."

"The Strange, Sad Story of the Man Named Mr. Hands Who Died from Having Sex with a Horse" (2015)
"The Strange, Sad Story of the Man Named Mr. Hands Who Died from Having Sex with a Horse"'', Interview in Vice (July 16, 2015)


 * Once the law changed, and bestiality was made illegal in Washington, everyone sort of said, "It's over and it will never happen again. And if it does happen again, we'll know what to do." No one has been arrested for bestiality in Washington since, to my knowledge.


 * Everyone in Enumclaw is very close to horses. It's a quiet, rural suburb with a view of the mountains. Everyone is a horse person, and as you know, the town included all types of horse worship. It was a place where you could fuck horses, and no one could tell.


 * If [Kenneth] Pinyan didn't die, those guys he hung out with would still be fucking horses today and no one would have suspected anything. It was a paradise for a horse fucker. I'm sure they were so angry because they must have thought, We had it so good!


 * It disrupted them— [Kenneth Pinyan’s zoophile friends] lost a lot by his death. If you have a moral problem with horse fucking, you might not find this to be a cool way to look at things, but I think the truth is that they lost a lot: stability, a weekend vacation getaway place, something to look forward to. They lost a community.


 * [Kenneth Pinyan and his fellow zoophiles] had preferences! They would figure out which horse was too strong, which had the biggest cock, which was the quickest fuck. It was like going to a horse auction.


 * Dan Savage and I would talk about if it was a fetish for animals, or a fetish for massive cocks. […] To me, it's clearer today that these guys had this worship of cock that may have had nothing to do with horses. […] The horse that killed Mr. Hands was nicknamed "Big Dick," right? It wasn't called "Nice Horse," or "Beautiful."


 * There's already enough trouble about people deciding if we should keep doing tests on chimps, but to talk about if we should be allowed to fuck them, too?