Thursday, May 26. 2011
WE MUST CATCH THAT MAN, HE REALLY IS A SHIT
EbonLupus was the ultimate dogfucking demagogue. He popped up in any internet community that would have him, spreading risque artwork and advocating for those who have sex with animals. His exploits earned him a level of infamy within furry that is hard to match, even today.
"I advocate close, even sexual, relationships between human and non-human animals, so long as they are honest, mutually enjoyed acts of love."
James "EbonLupus" Greathouse is something of an internet legend, in just about every wrong way you can count.
Blah blah wolf anuses blah blah edgy blah blah LOOK AT ME |
The internet is littered with the half-buried remains of over twelve vile years of this man's shit. From the early "Hermes" days to his modern-day relative reclusiveness, he's brought nothing but shock and disgust everywhere he goes. Until recently, his pattern has been to move from community to community- dumping propaganda, picking fights, and trying to find recruits until he eventually gets banned and moves on. He went out of his way to shove his repulsive habits in people's faces, then acted put upon when people rejected them.
He's had his fingers in a lot of pies - animal rights activism, the therian community, zoophilia, and lastly (but certainly not least) the furry community. He believes he is a reincarnated wolf. He attributes human-like mental faculties to animals, and uses this as a jumping point for the justification of bestiality. He draws reams of poorly-traced "art" depicting wolves in all sorts of ridiculous situations, sexual or otherwise. He is misanthropic, paranoid, delusional, and shameless.
EARLY HISTORY
12 years is a long time in terms of internet activity. The sheer volume of what this man has done and produced is overwhelming. There are plenty of gaps and missing pieces, but the amount of material that has been preserved is remarkable.
Greathouse was first discovered under the handle Hermes, and ran a site known as The Vivarium. Among the many writings on the site was an autobiography of sorts. Archive.org has it saved here. It is, basically, a rough account of his life up until just before he first hit the internet. It also contains graphic descriptions of his first few years of "sexual encounters" - accounts of what can only be described as rape, as seen from the point of view of a rapist so full of himself he doesn't even care. A summary:
Daimon, Greathouse's third dog. |
Greathouse was born sometime in 1963. He describes a childhood spent alone hating himself, an adolescence spent alone hating himself even more, and an early adulthood that expands that hatred to the rest of humanity. He took a blue-collar job out of high school, but after suffering a workplace injury, he would be out of work for over a decade. Shafted in a legal settlement, he eked out a living picking berries and mushrooms.
He claims to this day that he is completely unattracted to other humans, no matter the gender. He had fantasized about bestiality since puberty, but never got the opportunity to act on those desires. At age 27, the opportunity he had been waiting for arrived. He befriended a neighbor who was considering giving one of his dogs up for adoption. The dog was fixed, but that didn't stop him from adopting her. It also didn't stop him from giving in to years of repressed urges and making her his first victim.
After a scare with a vaginal infection and a nice little lie to the vet, the dog disappeared a few months later. According to him, she was accidentally rescued by a passerby who thought she was a stray. Another few months and after a false start he had another victim. This one was acquired through the shelter system and would suffer far, far greater and much, much longer than his predecessor.
The "autobiography" has no useful information after the early 1990s. It's dated roughly around 2000, and Greathouse is assumed to have been taking several odd jobs or possibly living out of his truck in a state park in this manner until the end of the 1990s, which is roughly when his first site (The Vivarium) appears. The site got some attention, but it would disappear fairly quickly around mid-2001. This is when he had his run-in with ASAIRS.
ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE
This is the only known photo of EbonLupus. |
ASAIRS was a (now defunct) animal welfare organization dedicated to the exposure, prosecution and disruption of all zoophilic activity. It's website was primitive, it's cause ridiculed, it's members few. They did what they could to make a dent in the problem, researching animal abuse cases and working with the national Humane Society to help get laws against bestiality passed in states that had none.
Some evidence of this shootout still exists on Usenet. For a fairly long period during the 90s, Greathouse (along with his then-boyfriend Howard "Eagle/Ironhoof/Chibiabos" Agnew) posted on a forum dedicated to wolf-dog hybrids. At first, they seemed like ordinary animal rights activists, but the content of their messages grew more and more alarming. They talked at length about sex with dogs, and expressed a desire to start a wolf-hybrid rescue of their own. They somehow didn't immediately get banned for this, and several forum posters pointed him out to Mike Rolland, the ASAIRS co-chair.
After some research, Rolland was able to positively identify Greathouse as the author of the posts. Reports were filed with the Oregon Humane Society and local law enforcement. This touched off at least one police investigation into Greathouse's activities. Tragically, in spite of everything they were unable to find any direct evidence that he was molesting his dog. The Humane Society was also powerless to take direct action, but it is assumed that they were able to keep a close eye on him and spread the word about his abuses to the rest of the shelter system.
The records from the rest of this period (from mid-2001 to the end of 2003) are rather sketchy. It is around this time that Greathouse switched to the handle we have all come to know and dread - EbonLupus. According to ASAIRS, Greathouse put up a site that publically libeled their organization and posted the names and addresses of many of his enemies. No trace of the site remains; it was pulled by it's ISP following some legal manuvering. It is at this point that Greathouse and several others tried to stir several zoophile communities into action against ASAIRS, but they weren't able to come up with anything more than more libel tactics and empty, ridiculous legal threats.
RISE TO INFAMY
With no lasting setbacks coming out of this stalemate, Greathouse's web presence underwent a massive resurgence a few years later. By 2004, Greathouse had set up at least five domains, with new ones joining them every so often. Most of these sites would be around for about two years or longer. It seems that as the various things he dribbled on about on his main site ran on and on, they were spun off into seperate domains. Here are some of the more notable ones:
ebonlupus.org -
This is the main site. It was also, naturally the first one to be established. A LOT about Greathouse and his behavior changes between the last Hermes posts and the first EbonLupus site. For starters, he's acquired a completely new (to us) set of religious beliefs that are an absolutely mindblowing mashup of Taoism, Therianism, and whatever spiritual detritus he could find and bolt together. They change constantly, and they're utter drivel. He's got a story about how he's a reincarnated wolf or something and it's just... fuck. It's hard to believe he believes any of this. It's like a gigantic, elaborate parody or practical joke, except it isn't.
In spite of their annoying preciousness and inconsistency, Greathouse's spiritual beliefs are important. They are a big part of what would later rocket him to shock site superstardom. After all, radical zoophiles are a dime a dozen, and otherkin mixing and matching their stated religious beliefs are also a dime a dozen. But if you combine the two, you've got a first-rate circus freak on your hands.
It is at this point that we learn that he was originally forced to give up living like a drifter due to the onset of diabetes. There's a blurb on his "personal" site that describes this situation, and it quite conspicuously disappears after about a month:
But then my health started to fail. I'm diabetic and it's a condition that, as it progresses, slowly tears the body apart. Intestinal disorders, stabbing pains and cramps, loss of vision, numbness in my hands and feet, loss of strength, and fading physical stamina took it's toll. Eventually even my kidneys started to fail. I could no longer support myself in the woods.
I had to move back to the city. I could never stand working with people, even though I'd been trained as a computer programmer - the cheap back-stabbing interoffice politics of the data processing department of a bank was too much for this wolf to bear. So I became a taxi driver. I had to serve customers, but it actually became interesting getting to talk with people of virtually every walk of life; drunk losers to a state congressman rode with me in my taxi and I got to woof to them one to one, like few people get a chance to do. It was okay. But I still felt like I was on the outside looking in - and looking into something I really didn't care for. I started to get depressed again.
Since this bit of info vanished so quickly, few people had much of a handle on the nature of Greathouse's health situation. He had quadruple bypass surgery in 2004, and has been in for surgery for various diabetic complications several times in recent years. Other issues were talked about as well, but since he only mentioned them on his (long dead) forums there's not much information left.
This led to some wild speculation. For example, there is a rumor, apparently popularized in furry circles, that he suffers from incontinence brought on by canine-inflicted rectal trauma. This rumor is almost certainly false. It was probably started by people who read about his diabetes-related intestinal issues and jumped to conclusions.
wolfrivals.org -
Fun fact: This picture is said to have actually been used at protests against aerial wolf hunting. Fortunately there was no hope of it actually being taken seriously: note the swastika on the tail of the Cessna(insert Sarah Palin joke here). |
Something has to be said about Greathouse's public efforts towards animal rights activism. He claims to genuinely care about the plight of the remaining wild wolf pouplation in North America, but it's hard to take anything this man says regarding "caring" for animals seriously. Either way, the site went to some effort to pass itself off as a legitimate organization opposed to the hunting of wolves.
At first he tried to keep the dogmongling side of his persona seperate, but it kept catching up with him and only served to completely underminine the message he was trying to send. It didn't help that the site looked exactly like his other sites. It also didn't help that he threw a link to his anti spay/neuter page (which, as will be covered shortly, pretty much spills the beans entirely) in the links section. And it certainly didn't help that he was soliciting direct donations through the site.
neutering.org -
This was Greathouse's contribution to what is sometimes affectionately referred to as the the "anti-speutering" movement. There is, or once was, a small group of pet owners that opposed the practice of spaying and neutering companion animals due to overblown fears over health issues. It's kind of similar to the brief hysteria that tried to link childhood vaccines to autism. In the end, whatever misplaced good intentions this group may have had were completely co-opted when the zoophiles highjacked it.
Zoophiles require intact animals for their activities, so it is in their interest to attempt to undermine the existing spay/neuter laws in existence, or, failing that, create the vague impression that there are legitimate reasons for the average joe to want to leave his pooch intact. Logic would dictate that any zoophile backing this initiative would try to mask any direct involvement. Except Greathouse doesn't. It's amazing how little self-control he has. He makes no attempt to hide who he is, what the site is for, and the real reason for his arguments. No attempt whatsoever.
Looking at the site, there's a somewhat graphic description of what speutering entails, and a run-down of the medical pros and cons. If he'd just stopped there, he'd probably be golden. But he can't stop, because the next thing he goes for is breaking Godwin's Law as quickly and loudly as he can. Comparing neutering a pet to the Nazi sterilization program is not only deeply disrespectful, it's insane. He then links mandatory spay/neuter programs to some of the crazier things PETA has said regarding the elimination of the practice of keeping pets period.
This is by no means the craziest thing on the site. Not by a far cry. No, the craziest thing on the site is a section where he suggests people jerk their dogs off to "relive the sexual stress biology imposes upon them". There's not much to add at this point, other than to say it's a common zoophile trait to anthropomorphize an animal's sexual behavior. In his mind, a dog is no different in that respect from a quadriplegic human.
In keeping with the anti-speutering canon, the alternative of vasectomy and tubal ligation is raised. He even announces intentions to start a listing of vets willing to perform the procedure. This is just a hunch, but if such vets are out there (and they probably are), they probably would want to keep a low profile.
tailhole.org -
This was the most infamous of Greathouse's sites. This is where he unloaded the crazy with both barrels; his most infamous work, the bestiality how-to guide, was posted here. So were the most explicit of the animal sex drawings, the stories, and last but absolutely not least, the rhetoric.
Greathouse considers himself to be a cut above the common zoophile. He truly believes that he is in a fulfilling long-term romantic relationship with his pets. He denounces the practices of other zoophiles, who either rent out their animals to other zoos or take pictures of their escapades. He sees these "posers", along with the commercial bestiality porn industry (what little there is of it) as the real abomination.
By the way, most or all of the "art" that Greathouse produces is believed to have been traced from nature magazine photos. |
The bestiality how-to guide is a holdover from the Hermes days and underwent some changes during this period. Oddly enough, it was kept on his (now long-defunct) forum instead of being hosted directly along with everything else. There actually are quite a few guides of this type floating around, and the quality of the "advice" that zoophiles give each other through these documents varies tremendously. A small but significant number of these guides appear to have been created just for the shock value, intended not necessarily for actual zoophiles but to be passed around places like TOTSE and other early shock/trolling venues.
Greathouse's guide made waves not just because of what it was, but because it was disturbingly elaborate. It definitely wasn't some gross-out piece created to throw in odd places for unsuspecting people to find - it was the real deal. There's definitely signs in there that he had done some research regarding potential allergic reactions and potential (physical) injury to the animal. But given that there are psychological and physical realities about bestiality that Greathouse cannot and will not come to terms with, the guide can't help but read more like a series of tips on how to minimize any lasting physical evidence of sexual contact with a dog.
The guide is only the beginning. The rhetoric is at it's thickest here. There's a gallery of (likely staged) photos of animals mating with animals of different species presented in a vain attempt to convey the idea that bestiality is perfectly natural and normal and has been around forever. There's a spiel about how hatred for those who molest animals is just another kind of religious bigotry. He is positively shrill when he goes on about how this is all an act of love no different from that between two consenting (human) adults and that it causes no harm to the animal. Here, have some of it in his own words:
People love to spout the word 'unnatural' as if it is proclaiming it a sin to be out of the ordinary. Many people are apparently very insecure with their own sexuality, nay, with their whole place in the animal kingdom. Anything that falls outside of the narrow parameters, long established, to raise them above other animals; to make their ego boom with a feeling of grand superiority, threatens their paradigm of what IS. The fact that they have contrived an entire philosophy of life, and proclaimed it religion, does not strike them as 'unnatural,' yet they must argue, and fuss, and prove themselves bigots, in order to maintain that their way is the ONLY way to live in this world. The truth is that nature is diverse and the myriad-beings find their own paths - and this is quite natural.
Reminder: this picture exists. |
All these arguments have been heard and used before. It's fairly standard propaganda for zoophile activists, and other than some otherkin crap and the misappropriated chunks of whatever other religions were trending in Loopy's head at the time it brings nothing new to the table. There's some completely worthless hedonistic bullshit piled on top as well. All to justify fucking dogs. He could have just said "feels good man", and left it at that. But that's not his style.
Last is the "art", poetry and stories. The less said about them, the better. There's not much point in digging through Greathouse's fictional works for clues when he admits to just about everything in his regular writings. There's a poem about him wanting to be eaten by a wolf, which plays nicely into his self-hating worldview, but the rest are more or less what you might expect. The stories are also more or less uninteresting given who he is and what his interests are. The drawings were either explicitly sexual (and occasionally violent), or meaningless treacle on par with something you'd see on a souvenir t-shirt. A few were found to be crude tracings from nature magazine photos.
packlands.org -
This was EbonLupus's personal forum. Although it was the site of a fair amount of activity, very little of what was posted to it was ever saved. In fact, the only current surviving record of it's existence is a feature on SomethingAwful's Weekend Web.
By 2006, most of these sites were gone. What's left now is the entirety of neutering.org, and a small forum where Greathouse posts new writings and keeps up with his small circle of friends, over at ebonlupus.org. Despite the fact that most of these sites were up for such a short time, they garnered a lot of attention. Both SomethingAwful and Portal Of Evil had features relating to EbonLupus, and the atrocity tourism movement that those sites once represented had a field day with the shocking nature of his work. Of course, they eventually lost interest, and EbonLupus's pattern would change from making shocking websites to a renewed focus on shocking behavior.
LATER ESCAPADES
By 2006, EbonLupus's new pattern had begun in earnest. Sign up on an amaetur art site, spread his drawings, writings and other propaganda around and bask in the attention, negative or not (usually negative). The disruptions he caused got him banned at DeviantArt and SheezyArt within months. Greathouse was a hard act to categorize. He resembled and attracted many fringe elements within the furry comunity, and yet was almost completely different from most furries. He disliked being described as one. It was hard for site adminstrators to tell where the problems caused by people reacting to him began and the problems he actually directly caused ended. It was no matter; in just about every case he would eventually be banned for posting vastly inappropriate content and insulting the administration at every turn.
During this period, EbonLupus' exploits attracted the attention of Encyclopedia Dramatica. Over a year or so, the site's contributors managed to compile a fairly comprehensive article about him. They didn't need to embellish much; the article mostly let Greathouse's writings and artwork speak for themselves. He retaliated by sending a bogus DMCA complaint to the site's host. (Encyclopedia Dramatica was hosted by Dreamhost at the time; Dreamhost is notorious for caving to any official-looking e-mail, legitimate or not.) As a result, ED folded shockingly quickly. Instead of deleting an image or two or filing a counter-claim, they quietly removed all traces of the article.
There was one site where EbonLupus lasted a particularly long time - FurAffinity. There, pretty much none of what he drew or wrote was strictly prohibited. He gained some friends, but caused plenty of backlash. Indeed, a good many people were banned simply for going after him; for a while it felt like the administration was using him as some kind of drama honeypot. But old habits die hard, and as was the case on the other sites, Loopy was an absolute dick to the administration every chance he got.
It wasn't until mid-2009 that EbonLupus was finally banned. With the banning came a new policy from the FA administration, which stated that anyone openly discussing animal molestation would be banned from the site. (To date, it has been spottily enforced to say the least but that's another article.)
After the FA banning, EbonLupus has been fairly quiet. He mostly posts on his own forum, and is also on a couple of other non-animal-related forums where he makes an almost convincing attempt to act civil. He's not gone, but he's out of the spotlight for now.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS & ANALYSIS
Greathouse is currently unemployed and living on disability. He does seem to come into money from time to time (someone appears to have bailed him out of a fairly expensive vet bill recently, for example), but exactly where that money comes from is unknown. His family is just about gone; the money more than likely came from one of his friends.
His personal relationships are (so far) limited to other zoophile-therians who are as radical as he is. It is believed that he shacked up with fellow zoophile Howard Agnew for a brief spell during the late 90s/early 2000s, but it appears that that ended badly. He has a fairly tight-knit circle of friends within furry, though they don't attract much attention. He was once fairly popular among the various zoophile communities, but this popularity declined over the years as he got along with them less and less.
The aftermath of the fight. |
From the 90s up until the mid-late 2000s, Greathouse had only one (male) dog, by the name of Daimon. The story of how he was acquired is spelled out in the autobiography. He later acquired three others, either before or shortly after Daimon passed on. Greathouse is banned from the shelter system, so it is assumed that these animals either came from a breeder or a close friend. Two of these dogs, Argenta and Ebony (both female), got in a fight a few years ago. He posted about the aftermath on his FA journal. Several critical commenters speculated that since he was likely molesting both of them, their instincts were completely out of whack and they were competing with each other for the dominant alpha-female position. The journal disappeared before he could really respond, though the picture and the text of the entry were saved.
After a fairly expensive visit to the vet to clear up her injuries, Argenta was given away. (This seems to contradict some of Loopy's rhetoric about his relationships with his pets, but he's done it before.) Her eventual fate is completely unknown.
So we know that he still owns animals. We do not know for 100% certain if he is still molesting them or what, given that his health situation is in slow decline. The only instance of sexual contact with an animal that he has admitted to was in his autobiography, and it was roughly 20 years ago. There's a 5-year statute of limitations on animal cruelty in Oregon; he was either smart enough to figure this out from the onset or very quickly learned how to shut up.
He's smart enough to not get caught, but all that means is that his IQ is a non-zero real number. In terms of pulling it off and not getting caught, raping a dog is not exactly as complicated as a multimillion-dollar bank heist. The only zoophiles that tend to get caught are either stunningly dumb, tremendously crazy or just plain unlucky.
Gann, Greathouse's newest dog. |
Greathouse may sound like a shrill, edgy retard at times (all times). He is fairly nuts. But he's not stupid, and he's had plenty of lucky (for him, not his dogs) breaks. He takes the very obvious and simple precaution of never photographing him and his dogs together under any circumstances. There are plenty of photographs of his dogs; new ones are posted every so often. But there is only one(unconfirmed) photograph of him.
There is zero photographic proof that he molests his dogs, and that is only a sliver of what it takes to get a conviction. That very obvious picture he paints of himself could be turned around as a crazy fantasy in court fairly quickly without any hard physical evidence to back it up. This isn't to say that people haven't tried, but as of now bringing a case against him in court would take an unprecedented breakthrough that is probably not going to happen at this late stage in the game.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As the years dragged on, EbonLupus and his antics were met first with outrage, then disgust, then outright ridicule, and finally indifference. In the continuing controversy over animal sexual abuse, he was at most a sideshow. It's not completely clear what his end goal was in all of this - he certainly made no progress in making his "lifestyle" look more acceptable. In fact, he made it look less acceptable, if anything. Maybe that's why he finally "retired".
Barring a sudden and catastrophic decline in his health, nothing about the EbonLupus situation is going to change. He might come out of retirement, or he might not. He might be still using his pets for sex, or he might not. There's no way to tell because there's no really compelling reason to believe his word on anything.
Either way, he probably shouldn't be allowed anywhere near another dog for the rest of his life. As a nation, as a planet, as a civilization, I think we can all agree on that much.
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