I’m not pet owner and I don’t spend much time around animals in general. (Don’t get me wrong, I love them, It’s just I know I would be a terrible pet owner.)
How common it is for people to see, let’s say, a dog and immediately just know whether it’s “she” or “him”? If two dog owners meet in a park, would it be awkward for one of them to misgender the other’s dog?
Of course, I mean without looking at the “obvious” traits.
Are there behaviors that are typical for male/female pets outside the one directly related to mating?
I recognize that within the animal kingdom, the traits are not always clear, and I guess gender is quite more flexible than sex. I would be interested in both aspects.
What about cats or other animals?
Look at the dog from behind, the answer will be obvious.
would it be awkward for one of them to misgender the other’s dog?
Story time!
I was on my way into PetSmart to pick up my dogs from a routine vet appointment when I saw a man standing on the sidewalk right in front of where I parked. He had a dog with him of a breed I’d never seen before (probably a mix of many). This dog looked super neat with a mostly white head with a cool black stripe over one eye.
“She’s a pretty dog!”
Him, looking actually angry: “He’s a male.” (Or something like that)
I then looked up at him and noticed he was wearing a MAGA cap. I didn’t notice before because his dog was so striking.
Without skipping a beat, I replied…
“It sucks being misgendered, don’t it?”
I don’t know if he was a bigoted, anti-trans asshole but he was wearing the uniform.
The look on his face was… Dumbfounded. Honestly, I was hoping for shock and horror but it was good enough 👍
The breeds I’ve owned i can tell from shape and size. Other breeds I’d have to see what gear they are packing.
Would it be awkward for one of them to misgender the other’s dog
Personally, I don’t care. But some people take it really, really personally when you misgender their dog, and they tend to be exactly who you think they are.
Karens?
I would have guessed (older) blokes who would take someone assuming their male dogs is female as a slight.
If I look at their genitals, yeah.
I generally don’t even bother to correct people anymore, my dog doesn’t care.
It’s more obvious with some breeds than others. Female shibas tend to be slightly smaller and slimmer, for instance. But it’s rarely obvious unless a dog turns its butt to you. That said, people have never struggled to switch pronouns with a dog. It generally goes like this:
“Oh he’s so cute!”
“Thanks, she’s x years old”
“Oh she’s a girl? She’s lovely, can I pet her”
(As a trans person, I have more to say on how easily people pronoun switch for animals but that’s a different topic for another time)
(As a trans person, I have more to say on how easily people pronoun switch for animals but that’s a different topic for another time)
It is different topic, although I’d love to hear more about that as well. Eg. as a cis male with no transgender friends (well, not that I know of), I find myself
thinkingruminating about how impolite/distracting it is to misgender a trans person, provided one can just switch after being corrected and move on… How bad it is to make the (honest) mistake repeatedly? How is it compared to other kinds of faux-pas, like, messing up someone’s name? (Eg. repeatedly calling someone John when they are Joe, or forgetting someone’s occupation. These things do happen to my distractable mind that seems to love lossy data compression.)But yeah, it’s a huge, fascinating topic, but a different one from my intention in the OP. :)
Thanks for asking! Getting misgendered is different for everyone and heavily influenced by factors like age, weight, how far into transition someone is, how much they pass, etc. I’ve been trans for a long time I’m in a pretty comfortable place, but I still get misgendered on occasion.
How “bad” it is mainly depends on whether there is malice behind the misgendering. An honest mistake is excusable (until it becomes a pattern), an asshole is not. In fact, I unintentionally get misgendered the most by allies (ironically) but it’s never out of malice. I’d say overall it’s similar to your example of misnaming someone, especially since the two often go hand in hand. If it happens once or twice it’s not an issue, but if someone purposefully calls you by a different name (presumably one of the opposite gender) then there’s a problem. In some states your name and gender are protected, in other states it’s legally mandated to be a complete and utter asshole.
Regarding my original comment, it’s mainly frustration at the hypocrisy some people have who make every excuse to avoid using someone’s preferred name or pronouns, but then have no problem switching when it’s someone else’s pet.
There’s also this meme:
While I have you here: this is tough to hear but please believe us when we say the US is trying to genocide us. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has already issued its third warning , but getting people to pay attention has been a huge struggle for us. We’re literally just regular people trying to live regular lives.
Regarding my original comment, it’s mainly frustration at the hypocrisy some people have who make every excuse to avoid using someone’s preferred name or pronouns, but then have no problem switching when it’s someone else’s pet
yeah I got that message. it really shows the hypocrisy, and it makes me wanna scream.
I wonder if a far away vision of a world where the gender just slowly disappears from the language is really the best. (When i get asked about preferred pronoun, i feel i want to answer “i don’t care and no one should, let’s collectively try to really not give a f*k”.) I feel like in the ideal world all pronouns would just be gender-neutral.
But language vs. gender is yet another fascinating rabbit hole. My first language is Czech, where basically every word – even unanimous and abstract concepts like “book” have gender, and the grammar is such that effect of word “gender” spreads to other words as inflections and such. Eg. “ona spala” ~ “she slept” vs. “on spal” ~ “he slept” but “ona spal” is an obvious grammar mistake. I wonder if this makes it worse or actually better: while it makes it harder to have a gender-neutral language (the plural trick does not work: “ony spaly” ~ “they (females) slept”, “oni spali” ~ “they (males) slept” … siiigh…), I also feel it could make it less problematic in the sense that the concept of gender in language is not actually tied to identity of a person–it’s just a weird thing present in the language.
Of course, none of that applies to intentional misgendering, which is just being a huge asshole, with little to no excuse.
Edit: I missed the last–the most important—part of your post, so I was just replying casually (and nerd sniping myself on the language part).
Yeah, that’s really disgusting and alarming. I totally believe. I don’t know what to do about it but I do believe and wish nothing but failure to these hateful, cruel people.
My first language is Spanish, and I also speak French. Both are gendered heavily. I hate gendered languages but it is what it is. You can call a car “une voiture” (f) or “un char” (m). Hell, you can call a thing “une chose” (f) or “un truc” (m). I do love language studies though and find them fascinating
Unironically, good chat.
Likely quite a bit of overlap with those people that are okay with genocide happening (trans or otherwise), but at the same time are zealots about animal cruelty.
Sex isn’t gender anyway, it’s not misgendering a dog to assume its gender isn’t its sex (it’s probably misgendering to assume its gender at all and that the concept of gender applies to dogs)
It’s not as simple as that, at least for humans.
Firstly, you’re not generally going around looking at people’s genitals, and even if you were you wouldn’t be able to tell if someone’s had surgery. A lot of trans folk pass well enough that you wouldn’t be able to tell we were trans unless we told you, at which point you look crazy insisting that a guy with a full beard and pecs is a woman.
Secondly, while sex and gender are separate, the distinction is often brought up without nuance. Sex is not a simple concept, and it’s impossible to define generally in a way that doesn’t misrepresent some class of cis folk. A trans woman has neither the hormonal levels, body fat distribution, strength, brain mapping, medical risks, nor (necessarily) sexual function of a cis man. Defining it fully by some metric such as chromosomes or the ability to reproduce erases all sorts of human experiences, like intersexuality or menopause.
We assign pets genders because of our human experience, but they almost certainly lack the concept. A dog doesn’t care what you call it. Hell, a dog rarely cares what it’s fucking.
it’s probably misgendering to assume its gender at all and that the concept of gender applies to dogs
Is that true, though? How would we know? Just by Occam’s razor, I would find it safer assume it applies to all mammals, ie. why would humans specifically be different, or if there is a spectrum across species, where/how would we draw the line?
Well, you should see how it is with birds
"How is your bird, is he fine?
- Yeah, he just suddenly laid an egg so we need to check his calcium intake
- Ah, so it’s a she? Did she make more than one egg? Is she healthy?"
And if you keep on saying a non-specific “he”, you get the “you’ll need to get used to saying ‘she’ now”
The only reason people switch pronouns easily with animals is when it conforms the idea of “sex at birth = gender”, if your dog has male genitalia, and you tell people “yeah I know but it’s still a she”, people are going to look at you weird and ignore what you said. They’re just unable to see past that.
Tldr: people are stupid boomers
Usually the males are bigger and heavier, and the females are smaller and more slender. It’s relative to the breed. If you see a husky, but it’s a bit small and thin, you can safely guess it’s a girl. But if the dog is totally average and well behaved, you can’t tell.
Depending on the breed, males are often fluffier too.
The famous Lassie is actually played by a male dog due to the thicker coat
I’m only ever sure if I see the twig and/or berries. Not seeing those, doesn’t mean the dog is female, however, because they can be easy to miss on some breeds.
So, I just guess, and don’t worry at all if I’m wrong. The dog doesn’t care.
Cats are even harder to distinguish. I can’t tell the difference between a fixed male cat and a female cat, even when they’re sitting on me.
No…
Some things are standing out like dog’s bollocks.
When their are jumping their little buts out I can tell that it must be good sex.
Nope unless you see them pee. People are wrong about the sex of dogs all the time. they don’t care.
Nope unless you see them pee.
nonsense
People are wrong about the sex of dogs all the time. they don’t care
people can be wrong about what is 8+7, that doesn’t mean it is impossible to tell what the result is.
I don’t really get your comment. the dog and generally owner usually around me do not care if you call a girl dog a boy or a boy dog a girl. that is all I meant. it had nothing to do with accuracy on the don’t care part.
point of my comment is: “you are wrong. it is possible to tell sex of a dog. whether some people around you are wrong all the time is no proof one way or the other.”
One of my female dogs squats, sometimes she squats while lifting a leg, the other lifts her leg, and very rarely squats.
I kinda would like to see that.
Some males don’t even do the leg lift and still just squat.
I have a 110lbs beast of a mutt. Cujo like even, except he doesn’t try to kill me. He squats like a female dog and it makes him much less scary.
if you own a female dog you can tell the difference between the pee and poop by the arch of the back. A male dog doing a puppy pee also looks different. Its possible female dog owners can tell easier.
unless you see them pee
You mean see/not see the “pebbles”?
Or do they tend to pee differently? I know dogs typically pee by raising one leg, but sometimes they just crouch by both back legs and just release. Is this what you mean?
I vaguely recall when I was a teen we had a dog (he/him, and a mutt) and he would usually do the “this lamp post is mine now” pee but when he really needed to go he would just crouch and leave a big puddle.
Generally speaking, male dogs tend to lift a leg to pee while the females tend to squat. It’s nowhere near foolproof, of course, but you can usually say for sure that a dog is male if it’s lifting a leg. That said, I know plenty of male dogs that squat, or do the “lazy lift” where you can’t quite tell. So y’know…
if you own a female dog you can tell the difference between the pee and poop by the arch of the back. A male dog doing a puppy pee also looks different. Its possible female dog owners can tell easier.
