Anonymous:

The Fifth Elephant: Did Angua have sex with a wolf?

poorlydescribedpterrybooks:

this anonymous user asking the real questions.



korblabyss:

loudlybloggingtomyself:

blackboardmonitor: but as a werewolf, having sex with a wolf is pretty much equal to having sex with a human, surely? I mean, technically her + Carrot aren’t the same species, either? I now have a very clear mental image of the wolves sitting around like “hold up, this ginger human and Angua have a lot of chemistry… did anGUA BANG A HUMAN I AM SO DISGUSTED EVERYWOLF KNOWS THAT HUMANS HAVE COOTIES” (oh god, werewolf women wouldn’t just have to deal with slut-shaming - they’d have to deal with species-shaming as well. bloody hell.) The funny thing about this is that being species shamed as as illustration of slot shaming etc seems like something terry would have totally written.

While they are roughly similar, a werewolf having sex with a wolf has the additional complication of mental competency. A human banging an animal is not wrong because of the shape of the human’s partner, it’s wrong because animals are not mentally competent enough to consent, or, if they might be considered to be possessed of the mentally competence to consent, they are unable to communicate such consent.

If you were to take, say, a dolphin or orangutan and give it a way to clearly communicate it’s desires to a person, you might be able to say that human/dolphin or human/orangutan relations could be consensual, but human/wolf relations would be very difficult to call consensual due to the very different mental faculties of the wolf even if you gave a wolf a way to clearly communicate with humans.

It’s hard to make any other analogies which do not come off as offensive, but you could also look to an example of someone who is severely effected by dementia. An elderly person might clearly communicate that they wish to have sex, but they are not generally considered to be possessed of the mental competence to make decisions of that nature. Even if they are naked and apparently able and loudly demanding sex of an orderly, it’s not generally considered consensual in much the same way that a person who is drunk might be naked and apparently able and loudly demanding sex is not considered to actually be able to consent.





Now, in a fictional work, the writer has the ability to change things. In Discworld, canines pretty clearly have mental facility roughly similar to humans. The notable thing about Gaspode is that he can talk, not that he thinks like a person (though he does think in very person-like ways that’s generally put down as more of a consequence of his environment and lifestyle than the magic that allows him to talk). In fact, if we look at the Librarian, we can determine that magic that changes a creature does not particularly change their mental faculties. The Librarian cannot vocalize like a human, but clearly still has human mental faculties, so it’s reasonable to say that magic only gave Gaspode human speech and his humanoid mental faculties are pre-existing.

It’s been awhile since I read Fifth Elephant, but it did seem that the wolves had a mindset that was different from humans, but not necessarily less developed. Though I do recall that the witch books do seem to indicate that at least some animals had lesser mental faculties than humans. Then again, I would imagine borrowing a human would feel constricting to Granny Weatherwax so perhaps that’s not the best example to look to, especially when I’ve only read one or two of those.





The ethics of werewolf/wolf relations also rises in relation to the game Werewolf the Apocalypse. There is some implication that wolves in that game are more on par with human mental faculties, but at the same that it’s only really implied and not explicitly stated.





At the end of the day, we can really only rule on human/animal relations with any real impericism, and that must be judged as unethical due to, at least, an inability to communicate and thus an inability to consent, much like it would be very difficult to determine consent from someone with whom you do not share a language. AT LEAST. In fiction, it comes down to what the writer says, and I think that Sir Terry did intend for wolves to have sufficient mental faculties to consent, at least for werewolves, and I’m pretty sure that Angua did fuck the wolf in Fifth Elephant. But given that werewolves are a minority in Discworld, holy crap yes would they have to deal with species-shaming.