Given the number of spoofs and parodies that float around the net every April Fool's day, I took the Francione press release, which Marta forwarded, and the Singer Nerve piece as potentially parodies.
After rereading them both, I couldn't satisfy myself that either of them were genuine, so I did a bit of digging. Apparently a few other LBOers thought they might be April Fools Day jokes too, so I'm including what I found out.
Emily Nussbaum, managing editor at Nerve, says,
i solicited the book review, i edited it, i spoke to him, and
it's not a parody. personally, i think it was pretty gutsy for
him to write it, considering how it was bound to attract a lot
of sn-wording and outrage -- and i do think a lot of people are
missing his central point, which is that examining this taboo is
a useful jumping off point for thinking about the fact that
people AREN'T outraged by other behavior towards animals.
(eating them, say, or experimenting on them.)
i also think people are assuming that by sex he must mean
intercourse, and/or that he's somehow advocating bestiality
instead of analyzing it (i mean, the guy is an ethicist, after
all!), which seems like a major misreading, to say the least.
I took the Singer piece to be a spoof or parody initially because of the tone of the piece, which didn't sound at all like Singer ("cunt" and "fiery little volume" and "fucking"); but then it is Nerve. I was also a bit surprised to see no consideration, however brief, of the issue of consent.
I contacted Singer and asked him about the piece, and he responded by email, saying,
Yes, I wrote it. Nerve isn't a philosophy journal, or the NY
Times - hence the different style. As for the content - well,
I thought it was worth asking some questions about our
attitudes to sexual contact with animals, as compared with our
attitudes to other things we do to them, and to other forms of
nonreproductive sex.
As the discussion here has pointed out, the Nerve piece isn't a paen to bestiality. While I think it's poorly written, both in tone and approach, and something of a weak effort from Singer, it does suggest an interesting line of inquiry about common human attitudes toward animals, as Singer suggests.
As for the Francione press release, it's perhaps the most confusing bit of all of this since it claims Singer's piece "promote[s] sex with animals" which strikes me as a very tendentious reading, at best.
I don't know if this tweaked anyone else's journalisttic funny bone, but it got mine.
Best, Kendall Clark, Monkeyfist.com -- Jazz is only what you are. -- Louis Armstrong