#SaveBenjy

Sexuality, Queer Animals, and Ireland

Author(s)

  • Eimear Mc Loughlin University of Exeter Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9984

Abstract

This paper explores the #SaveBenjy Crowdfunder campaign to save a Charolais bull in the Republic of Ireland who expressed sexual interest only in weanling bulls and not the heifers he was expected to impregnate. The prominence and popularity of #SaveBenjy is anything but coincidental. In May 2015, the referendum on gay marriage sought to legalize same-sex marriage. Consequently, #SaveBenjy provides a timely lens through which to view Irish attitudes towards sexuality, while also raising important questions around nonhuman subjectivity and personhood. #SaveBenjy blurs the boundaries between nature and culture and thus, demands a new paradigm within which the nonhuman animal can be appreciated as being inherently and simultaneously natural and cultural.

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Author Biography

  • Eimear Mc Loughlin, University of Exeter

    Eimear Mc Loughlin is studying Anthrozoology at Master’s level at the University of Exeter. A graduate of University College Cork, Eimear has worked as a veterinary nurse and is currently teaching on an Animal Care Course in St. John’s Central College, Cork. As a distance learner, her post-graduate research explores the conflicting attitudes towards animals as food and animals as livestock. Her research has led her to engage in fieldwork investigating the slaughterhouse. 

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Published

2015-10-05

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2015)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

“#SaveBenjy: Sexuality, Queer Animals, and Ireland”. 2015. Humanimalia 7 (1): 109-22. https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9984.