Length 01:24:13 Date: Aug 24th, 2019

by Dr. Susan Block.

Trigger Warning: this show focuses on zoophilia, the erotic love or “fetish” that some humans have for some nonhuman animals; thus, it could be disturbing to people who are upset by such things.

Sunshine and I play with Dolly and Peter in the Bonoboville pool before the show. Photo: Selfie

I am not saying that zoophilia is just fine, nor am I encouraging anyone to try to have sex with nonhuman animals. Not at all! Many people do hurt animals when trying to have sex with them. In most cases, this is clearly animal abuse… but not always.

Starting the show amongst the dolphins. Photo: Bianca

Most “animal lovers” would never hurt a nonhuman animal, at least not deliberately, nor do anything nonconsensual. How can a nonhuman animal “consent”?

Consent is not an issue when riding a dolphin floatie. #GoBonobos Photo: Selfie

The answer to that is complicated, to say the least, and it’s one of the questions we address in this fascinating and unique show.

Reflections of a Dolphin Lover

Our guest is Malcolm J. Brenner, photographer and author of Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover. Yes, a “dolphin lover.”

He also is the subject of a video Dolphin Lover: The Real Life ‘Shape of Water.’ 

Malcolm J. Brenner tells his tale on DrSuzy.Tv. Photo: Bianca

Malcolm is a self-described zoophile, and though he’s had relationships with women, some of whom he married, the most important relationship of his life was with a dolphin named Dolly.

Why are we talking about humans having sex with dolphins and other nonhuman animals on The Dr. Susan Block Show?

Why talk about Dolphin Sex on DrSuzy.Tv? Photo: Bianca

Because it’s a fascinating aspect of sexuality that is rarely explored in public discourse, and yet it’s been going on since the beginning of humanity.

The Ancient & Nonhuman Animals

Ancient Greek mythology reveals plenty of human sex with nonhuman animals, from Leda’s copulation with Zeus in the form of a swan that produced the twins, Artemis and Apollo, to Europa’s romp with a bull (also Zeus) that gave birth to the continent of Europe, as well as King Minos of Crete.

Peter Paul Rubens’ Leda & Swan, 1601

Then there were the wild and lusty centaurs—half-human/half-horse creatures. One myth tells that they emerged from the union of Centaurus and the Magnesian mares.

Female centaurs flanking Venus (Mosaic from Roman Tunisia, 2nd century AD)

All of this fantastical mythology was based on the earthy reality that lots of people, mostly lonely farmers and shepherds, were having sex with their goats, sheep, bulls, cows and maybe a horse or two.

Illustration from a 5th century BCE Greek red-figure pottery vase showing the myth of Europa and Zeus disguised as a bull. (Tarquinia Archaeological Museum, Italy)

Call it zoophilia, if there’s love, or bestiality, if it’s *just* for pleasure.

An Ecological Imperative to Explore Human-Animal Connections

I’m sure this sounds disgusting to most people (me too!), but the fact is that we humans are animals. Monotheistic religion tries to deny that, maintaining that people were created in the image of God and meant to have dominion over all the other animals of the Earth. So does capitalism. Yes indeed, that savory smell of burgers broiling on the barbie is the smell of money.

Which brings me to another reason we’re talking about this controversial subject. Right now, as human-caused climate change threatens to destroy all of life on earth, we really need to reassess our relationship with the natural world.

Talking about the greater human-animal ecological reasons for talking about this as Sunshine responds to viewers on Facebook Live. Photo: Harry Sapien

Therefore, an exploration of human-animal connections, including sexual connections, is timely—maybe even urgently timely—though still very taboo. 

Come join us down here below the surface of the psyche. Photo: Selfie

But now that you’ve been trigger-warned, let us dive down the rabbit hole… or, more appropriately, into the deep dark sea.

Come join us down below the surface of the oceanic psyche.

The Story of Malcolm and Dolly

Malcolm begins his story in 1971 when he, a young photographer shooting pictures for a book about dolphins, met Dolly, a performing dolphin in a kitschy tourist trap called “Floridaland.”

Dolphin wearing a hat performs tricks for food in Floridaland. Photo: Malcolm J. Brenner

This was several years after Flipper flipped through Television Land, splashing a few drops of dolphin awareness into human living rooms.

Dolphins appeared to be incredible: smart, adorable, friendly, fun to play with and sporting a perpetual grin on their snouts, seeming to laugh with irrepressible joy as they spoke.

In Floridaland, trained chimpanzees (maybe bonobos?) and tour boat captains threw bits of food to dolphins in funny hats who jumped for their lunch, as well as for the viewing pleasure of the tourists watching them.

A Floridaland chimp (a bonobo?) and a dolphin. Photo: Malcolm J. Brenner

Dolly and Malcolm didn’t have sex right away.

Malcolm and Dolly

Actually, there was quite a long courtship; they learned to trust each other, swimming together, playing catch and even handling Dolly’s jealousy of Malcolm’s human girlfriend.

A jealous Dolly hits Malcolm’s human girlfriend in the face!  Photo: Malcolm J. Brenner

Though Malcolm made the first friendly moves, he maintains that Dolly made the first amorous moves, and he resisted her advances at first. Like most young men, he desperately wanted to be “normal.” He really didn’t want to fall in love with a dolphin.

But he did.

And Dolly fell in love with Malcolm—at least, it seemed that way to him.

Like other mammals, dolphins love to be rubbed and “petted,” and when Malcolm was rubbing Dolly’s belly, she angled herself so that he could rub her vulva, including her clitoris. Yes, a female dolphin—like a bonobo or a human—has a clitoris, the purpose (porpoise?) of which is for nothing other than erotic pleasure.

Ultrasound image of a dolphin clitoris

Of course, Malcolm didn’t think he should be playing with a dolphin’s vulva in front of the gawking tourists of Floridaland.

Leaping for fish in Floridaland

Eventually, the day before Floridaland was shut down, Malcolm and Dolly had sex or, the way Malcolm puts it, they “made love.”

Malcolm recalls “making love” with Dolly. Photo: Harry Sapien

Tune in above as he describes sex with Dolly in loving detail, including penetration and his orgasm leading to her orgasm exploding into a transformative and profound interspecies experience.

PHOTOS 1 & 3: HARRY SAPIEN. PHOTOS 2 & 4: SUNSHINE MCWANE

Malcolm also explains why he feels that Dolly not only consented to sex; she initiated it. After all, a dolphin weighs about 400 pounds and can outswim any human, including Navy Seals. She wasn’t about to “let” Malcolm do anything she didn’t want to do.

PORTRAITS of MALCOLM J. BRENNER by HARRY SAPIEN

It’s a fascinating story, troubling for some, but bizarrely romantic, a Romeo and Juliet tale of a zoophile and his great love.

Telepathic Tragedy

Like Shakespeare’s tragedy, it ends sadly, with the lovers separated from each other after Floridaland is shuttered. Malcolm goes back to college, and Dolly is sent to an enclosed aquarium in Mississippi. There, she eventually commits suicide, refusing to come up for air. Dolphins are mammals and, despite living in the sea, they need to breathe air like we do, but it’s not automatic like it is for us; they need to breathe consciously, coming up to the water’s surface to let air into the blowhole on top of their head.

This captive dolphin committed suicide in a Georgia aquarium.

Maybe she killed herself because she was so depressed to be imprisoned in a dark, indoor aquarium where her sonar abilities didn’t work, that she couldn’t take it anymore.  Then again, maybe she missed Malcolm and died of a broken heart.

Malcolm recalls the pain of losing Dolly. Photo: Bianca

At that very moment, Malcolm was dreaming about her death, only to wake up and learn that it was real. He strongly feels that Dolly communicated telepathically with him then, as well as at other times during their relationship, and he’s not the only one to believe in dolphin telepathy. Some feel that this is one way that dolphins are actually “smarter” or more mentally advanced than humans.

Malcolm Abused in an Orgone Box

Why did a nice, educated young man like Malcolm fall in love with a dolphin? Probably for a tapestry of reasons.

Wrapping myself in my “magic” Goddess Phoenix whip to open my mind to what it means to be a “dolphin lover ” Photo: Bianca

However, one cause was a traumatic childhood experience at the hands of a respected doctor, the famed Dr. Albert Duvall, a student of Dr. Wilhelm Reich. I happen to be a fan of the late Dr. Wilhelm Reich, his message of sexual liberation and the importance of orgasm, but not of everything he said or did.

Bianca’s photo here makes it look like Malcolm is being tortured in a strange prison, and that’s just how he felt when he was being tortured by Dr. Duvall as a toddler in the Orgone Box.

I never understood the science behind one of Reich’s weird inventions: the Orgone Box. As it turns out, Malcolm had a few horrific experiences, which he describes in his book, Growing Up in the Orgone Box, at the hands of Dr. Albert Duvall, who molested and abused him when he was five-to-seven-years-old.

This traumatic sexual abuse by a trusted family physician might have led to his mistrust of people and fetish for zoophilia.

In fact, it was shortly after the abuse began that little Malcolm felt his first erotic stirrings for the title character in the 1959 movie, The Shaggy Dog, about a boy who turns into an English sheepdog.

Betsy (with Ana in a sexy doggy-style position) listens intently to the dog stories, hoping that food is involved. Photo: Sunshine McWane

Years later, he even tried “doing it” with the family canine, but she wasn’t interested, so he gave up.

Malcolm didn’t consummate his zoophiliac desires until his fateful love affair with Dolly.

Dolly the Dolphin. Photo: Malcolm J. Brenner

In his film, Malcolm muses about one day people accepting zoophilia in the same way that people now accept interracial sex, even though it used to be highly stigmatized and illegal. I empathize with Malcolm’s viewpoint regarding most of his story, but not that part.

Interracial sex may have been taboo in the past—and continues to be so for some people—but it still is and always has been sex between human beings. Not to make pun of it (well, maybe a little), but zoophilia is a different kettle of fish.

Somebody say fish? Betsy wants some! Photo: Unscene Abe

Margaret Lovett & Peter the Dolphin

Malcolm isn’t the only human to engage in sex with a dolphin.  Who knows how many of those mythological “mermaids” were really dolphins?

And then there “mermaids doing it with dolphins” fantasies.

Playing Mermaid with My Dolphin Floatie. Photo: Selfie

Furthermore, back in the 1960s, a few years before the courtship of Malcolm and Dolly, an adventurous young woman named Margaret Lovatt joined the team of a NASA-funded project involving the study of communication with dolphins supervised by anthropologist Gregory Bateson and neuropsychologist Dr. John C. Lilly, best-known for his LSD experiments. Lovatt essentially lived with a dolphin named Peter who fell in love—and lust—with her.

Margaret Lovatt and Peter at the Dolphin House

Lovatt was trying to teach dolphins to talk. Meanwhile, Peter was extremely aroused and since Lovatt felt his arousal interfered with his lessons, she “relieved,” aka masturbated, him occasionally. Lovatt herself says she was “not sexually aroused” by these interactions. However, she did think the activity was sensual and helped her to get to know Peter the Dolphin, whom she was studying in intimate detail. Eventually, the experiments ended, before they were finished, and Peter was shipped to another, less comfortable aquarium without Margaret. Soon, like Dolly, he committed suicide by refusing to come up to the water’s surface to breathe.

I am “not sexually aroused” by my dolphin floatie… or am I? Photo: Selfie

After a BBC documentary a few years ago, the headlines erupted: “Woman reveals sex with dolphin.” “The woman who lived in sin with a dolphin.” “The dolphin who loved me.” “This Woman Jerked Off A Dolphin — And Liked It!” “Scientist Says Relationship With Dolphin Was ‘Sensuous.'” “Woman waxes poetic about giving precious, sensual hand-jobs to a dolphin.” “‘I had a sexual relationship with a dolphin.'” Despite the quotes, she never actually said that.

Riding Dolly like a Dolphin Cowgirl. No real dolphins harmed in this silly fantasy roleplay. Photo: Selfie

I think about the innocence and torment of Margaret and Peter, as well as Malcolm and Dolly, as I attempt to ride my floatie dolphins, named Dolly and Peter, of course, in the Bonoboville pool, daytime “foreplay” for the show.

Dr. Lilly may have taken LSD with his dolphins, but I just take a couple of edibles.

Stroking Floatie Peter’s Fin. Photo: Selfie

My floatie dolphins don’t have penises, of course (they’re kiddie toys!), but as I play with their “fins,” I can’t help but think about Margaret and Peter… and Malcolm and Dolly.

Should dolphin floaties come with a trigger warning? Discuss. Photo: Bianca

Maybe these dolphin floaties should come with a trigger warning!

Animal Masturbation for Research vs. Breeding

Other researchers besides Margaret Lovatt have documented masturbating other animals—monkeys, dogs, rats and more—and then, of course, there are all the undocumented wankings. These zoological experiments were controversial back in the 1960s and 70s when they were done, and are pretty much out of the question now, at least officially.  In fact, most people are aghast to hear they were performed.

Licking a dolphin cookie (baked by Sunshine!) is not licking a dolphin. Photo: Bianca

Yet these human hands-on nonhuman animal techniques have a far more common, everyday application: the breeding of nonhuman animals. How else do you think semen samples are collected? How do you think nonhuman animal vaginas are penetrated for semen insertion? Manual stimulation is the most common way, and usually, this is done by force. These cases don’t make headlines… but allowing a dolphin to hump your foot until he ejaculates does.

Anthropomorphic Fun: Sunshine “feeds” Dolly some champagne. Photo: Author

This appears to be because the breeding handjobs are for procreation of more animals, who generally wind up butchered and eaten by humans. On the other hand, so to speak, the researchers are exploring recreational sexual pleasure in nonhuman animals. Nobody gets butchered or eaten, and apparently, a lot of the animals love it, but most humans don’t want to know about it, or hear about any other human being involved in it.

Humans are so funny—and hypocritical—about sexual pleasure as opposed to… everything else.

Capt’n Max published works by “Pig Girl” in Love and Finger Magazine in the 1970s. Photo: Selfie

Capt’n Max recalls a beautiful Danish woman named Bodil Joensen, aka “Pig Girl,” who used to combine breeding farm animals with porn. She was a bestiality celebrity of sorts in the early 1970s (around the time of Malcolm and Dolly’s love affair), but she died a destitute alcoholic at the age of 40. Poor Pig Girl.

Riding the Unicorn Floatie with naked FemDoms and friends in Goddess Phoenix’s pool (much bigger than the Bonoboville pool). Photo: Max

Actually, if you have animal sex fantasies, I highly recommend riding the floatie dolphins (or unicorns or whatever creature of your choice), as opposed to the real ones. Unless you’re a furry enjoying consensual adult sex with another furry. That works too.

Dolphin Sex

How about just plain dolphin sex—no humans involved?

Dolphin foreplay

When my show assistant, Sunshine McWane, first discovered Malcolm, she was actually seeking a guest expert on dolphin sex. She never did find that dolphin sexpert, at least not an erotic oceanographer or marine biologist who studied the mating habits of dolphins; hopefully, we’ll get one to come on the show some Saturday night. In the meantime, Sunshine did find Malcolm, whose story is more jaw-dropping than anything a university-associated marine biologist could tell us… without losing her tenure.

Sunshine shows off her dolphin manicure as she holds Dolly and the baby while I ride Peter. Photo: Selfie

Even the most Puritanical oceanographers would have to concede that dolphins—like bonobos and humans—are notoriously sexual. Unlike most mammals (but like bonobos and humans), dolphins have sex all year round, even when they’re not in heat. Like bonobos, sex has many purposes (more porpoises?).

Dolphin Sex

Dolphin sex is not just procreation, but also for recreation, communication and relation-ships. Like bonobos, dolphins are nonmonogamous and bisexual. Yes, some dolphins are gay, and that’s ok!

Male bottlenose dolphins having sex. Notice the erection. Is that sea spray or ejaculate?

Unlike bonobos, dolphins don’t appear to make “peace through pleasure,” that is, to use sex to diffuse violent tension. Dolphins can be violent (so can bonobos), and have been known to commit infanticide (bonobos don’t, though gorillas do). Sadly, they do this for sexual reasons.  That is, for several months after a dolphin female gives birth, she isn’t interested in sex. So horny, aggressive males will sometimes kill her baby or babies, so she’ll be more available to do it again. One reason that bonobos avoid infanticide is that almost every female has sex with almost every male, so paternity is almost completely unknown and bonobo males don’t take the chance of killing their own children. As I’ve often said, human violence, especially against women, got rolling when guys figured out who’s your daddy.

Deep Sea Embrace

What about dolphin genitalia? Dolphin females have complicated spiral vaginas, the folds of which can aid or inhibit male insemination, depending on how the female angles herself—giving her a form of biological birth control—as well as those super sensitive, pleasure-loving clitorises.  Males have almost perpetually erect penises, and they often mate with their mothers when young (even bonobos don’t do that!).

More Anthropomorphic Theater: Sunshine scolds Dolly for forgetting her birth control and having a baby while I hold Peter, the Dad. Photo: Selfie

And dolphins sometimes want to have sex with humans—without the humans’ consent! A randy male dolphin nicknamed “Zahar,” who had been kicked out of his dolphin pod, sexually harassed so many people on a French beach (and you know they like to go nude on those French beaches), that they prohibited swimming there.

Real Dolphin Abuse and Mass Murder

Kinky dolphin sex, breeding and research aside, the real dolphin abuse and mass-murder is being committed by humans and especially corporations that pollute our oceans with oil, chemicals and plastic.

Dead dolphin washes ashore in Cornwall surrounded by plastic.

Almost 300 dolphins have died in Gulf of Mexico waters due to the BP oil spill and/or chemicals in the water, pollutants and other environmental catastrophes—since February.

Record numbers of mutilated dolphins are washing up on the French coast, victims of fishermen who are trying to catch other fish, but mutilate the dolphins in their nets even though they eventually free them.

Meanwhile, our plastic pollution has turned the entire ocean into a garbage bin, a sea of plastic and oil spills, all of which is deadly to dolphins and all other sea creatures.   

Some dolphins are trying to tell us something about sea life.

Some clever dolphins even appear to be trying to tell humans to stop dropping our toxic plastic in their oceans.

Burning Amazon

Speaking of pollution…

 “I heard Amazon was burning. I was momentarily excited until I realized it was the wrong one.” I could have said that, but it was Counterpunch editor Joshua Frank.  Too bad it isn’t Jeff Bezos’ monstrosity, and I’m not talking about his pecker.  

August 24, 2019, Porto Velho, Brazil: Aerial scene shows fires in parts of Jamari Forest Reserve, near Porto Velho, Rondonia. Image: © Dario Oliveira/ZUMA Wire)

Unfortunately, tragically and catastrophically, it’s the original Amazon, the rainforest, one of the great lungs of the earth, the other being the Congo rainforest where the bonobos are. Both great rainforests, the “lungs of the earth,” are being decimated by human encroachment. But right now, the Amazon in Brazil, our lung here in the Americas, is on fire. The raging flames torching the Amazon are not a natural phenomenon. They constitute a crime scene, and the victims include indigenous peoples and all of life on Earth. The “Brazilian Trump,” President Jair Bolsonaro, has ramped up the assault on rainforest, including its human and nonhuman inhabitants, for the profit of multinational corporations. In recent days attacks have been stepped up by militarized police forces who will use any force necessary to “evict” indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, using violence, intimidation and the burning of villages, farms and the rainforest itself.

I start by spanking our Presidunce Drumpf voodoo doll’s balls with the baby dophin, but it’s too flimsy (and weird), so Sunshine grabs me a Forbes.  Photo: Harry Sapien

For this and so much more, I spank our tRump voodoo doll’s balls, first with a mini-dolphin balloon, but that’s too flimsy, so I move onto the Forbes that Stormy Daniels spanked him with before they had mediocre sex.

I spank him for dubbing himself “the Chosen One,” trying to buy Greenland, calling American Jews who vote for Democrats “disloyal,” for keeping kids in concentration camps, for signing SESTA/FOSTA, for giving us Post-Trump Sex Disorder, but most of all, for weakening the Endangered Species Act, for polluting everything by selling it off to climate-change-denying crony capitalists, for mass-murdering the dolphins and, eventually, all of life as we know it.

The Forbes packs more of the wallop he deserves. Photo: Bianca

 I spank Drumpf for his sins, as well as those of David Koch, now dead—but the multi-billion-dollar Koch Industries juggernaut of anti-sex, life-destroying evil will go on and on without him. Unless we stop it—with The Bonobo Way.

Fight the power of hate with love. Follow the Bonobo Way of Peace through Pleasure. Photo: Harry Sapien

Are Malcolm’s so-called sins greater than these guys’? Far from it. In fact, I think Malcolm is a nice, albeit kind of sad, guy who would never deliberately hurt any creature, human or not.

Another awesome, unusual episode of the Greatest Sexuality Show on Earth! Photo: Harry Sapien

Moreover, we can all learn something from listening to his story, something about love, lust, trust and sorrow, and something about what it means to be a human animal sharing our Mother the Earth with our brother and sister animals.

Post-Show Animal House

At the end of the show, Bonoboville’s nonhuman animal-in-residence, Betsy the Dog, gets in the act.

Betsy joins the dolphin scene. Photo: Bianca

Betsy won’t “perform” for just anybody at anytime… unless they have food.

Betsy roleplays a dolphin leaping for food. Photo: Bianca

But she is very photogenic when she turns on the charm.

Betsy Collared in Flowers hanging with the Ladies and Floaties. Photo: Unscene Abe

We all love Betsy, but no, none of us have had sex with her (to my knowledge)!

PHOTO 1: SUNSHINE MCWANE. PHOTO 2 & 4: HARRY SAPIEN.  PHOTO 3 & 5: SELFIES

There are many ways to express love.

Open your mind, your heart and your legs… and chance are that love will flow in. Photo: Selfie

Sex is just one of the best. For one thing, when it’s for recreation, not reproduction, it does very little to pollute the Earth. Though be sure to dispose of those latex condoms and plastic sex toys responsibly now!

PHOTO 1: HARRY SAPIEN.  PHOTOS 2-5: SELFIES

Of course, sex isn’t always appropriate or desirable… not at all! Then again, maybe it would be more plentiful—even helping out the incels—if we were a little less uptight about it.

Getting things into ship-shape for the Captain. Photo: Selfie

In any case, all animals—human and nonhuman—love and deserve to be loved, touched and petted.

I’m in the Captain’s Hat, but Max is the Captain of My Heart. Photo: Selfie

After playing with Betsy, Dolly and Peter (oooh, that sounds a lot naughtier than it was), the Captain of My Ship and I sail off to our sea of sheets and pillows, swimming in and out of each other’s arms, squealing like dolphins, bonobos, or just two human animals, in love.

© August 24, 2019. Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sex therapist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and horny housewife, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For speaking engagements, call 213-291-9497.