“What It’s Like to Date a Horse”- New York Magazine has gone too far

So I’m looking at the latest horse news and I come across the title “What It’s Like to Date a Horse” from New York Magazine (actually posted on NYMAG.com.  I figure this is going to be one of those typical stories about a girl who’s obsessed with her horse, spends all her free time riding him, washing him, grooming, yada, yada, yada.  Well, boy was I wrong. Instead, I find myself reading about some 42 year old guy from Canada who’s intimately describing his life as a “zoophile” who’s attracted to female horses!! At this point I start looking at the URL/webpage I had in my browser to make sure I really was on NYMAG.com. Then I scrolled back up a bit to make sure it wasn’t some kind of “spoof” section in the magazine.  Nope! This was a real interview conducted by the author, Alexa Tsoulis-Reay.  Alexa puts Howard Stern to shame.  She asks some of the most detailed, graphic, and disturbing questions, that no one, other than another zoophile, would be comfortable reading about. She goes into stuff like what kind of sex acts he performs on horses (yes, he claims to have had sex with between 15 and 20 horses), what kind of positions, whether he’s monogamous with mares (the answer is yes, he has two mares currently- one is his mare “friend” and the other is “just a mare”) and all kinds of other stuff I refuse to write.

So I’m about a third of the way through the article and again, I become skeptical.  I’m thinking, a) “this guy can’t be for real  b) New York Magazine wouldn’t publish something like this.  Plus, I just couldn’t stand reading any more.   So I start moving the scroll wheel down on my mouse to skip past the rest of the non-sense (hoping to get to the end of the article where they’ll reveal that none of this is actually true) and wham!  I land right on a spot where my eye catches the last sentence of a paragraph, that reads “My wife is the one who encouraged me to go and buy some horses.” “My wife”? Really? Who’s married to this guy? That’s who they should have interviewed.  Apparently it is so folks.  I didn’t read the rest of the article in its entirety (and neither should you), but I got a good glimpse of the rest of Alexa’s bolded questions.  They didn’t get any better and this article turned out to be no joke.

The guy being interviewed is clearly disturbed and possibly mentally ill (though he claims he isn’t, of course).  So I’ll refrain from calling him a “sicko” (even though he is), but my real problem is with New York Magazine and with the author.  Maybe they’re trying to be controversial to stir up their readership or maybe they’re desperate for stories.  I don’t know.  But either way, the article is just morally wrong on many levels.  For starters, it is way too detailed and graphic given the subject matter. There was no reason to ask such detailed, intimate, and what I would deem inappropriate questions.  If Alexa felt such a need to highlight and cover this story, it could have been written so that non-zoophiles (who make up 99.9% of the population) wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable reading it.  Congratulations Alexa!  You are a hero to the “zoos” who have probably scotch taped your article to their refrigerators.  Secondly, there’s no mention that this is bad, wrong, and probably illegal behavior.  Instead, the article tries to distinguish between “depraved groups of thrill-seekers forcing sex with drugged, abused, or otherwise mistreated animals” and “zoos” who have caring, loving, relationships with their animals.  Come on!  It’s all wrong and it’s all bad.  But the BIGGEST problem with this article… now we have to rethink the whole byline tag of this website!  This article gives new meaning to “An Equestrian Site For All Horse Lovers!”  Thanks Alexa!  And thanks for sharing Mr. 42 year old Canuck!

I am including a link to the article, but I am putting a warning on this one.  If you are under the age of 18, you should not click on the link. Actually, you probably shouldn’t click on the link no matter what your age is, but here it is  “What It’s Like To Date A Horse”, by Alexa Tsoulis-Reay.