He, she, his, her…my dad will use each one to refer to the same dog at different times. He’s done this with every dog any of us have ever had. We’ve given up correcting him.
So maybe pronouns literally ARE too much for some people lol
Comment on Can people tell sex of a dog just by looking at the dog?
Witchfire@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s more obvious with some breeds than others, and if a dog turns their butt to you it becomes pretty obvious. 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)
glimse@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
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)
Witchfire@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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.
Secondly, while sex and gender are separate, the distinction is often brought up without nuance. Sex is not a simple concept. A trans woman has neither the hormonal levels, body fat distribution, strength, brain mapping, nor (necessarily) sexual function of a cis man. It also erases all sorts of intersex conditions. It’s impossible to define sex in a way that doesn’t misrepresent some class of cis folk.
We assign pets genders because of our human experience, but they almost certainly lack the concept of gender. A dog doesn’t care what you call it. Hell, a dog rarely cares what it’s fucking.
netvor@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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?
Solumbran@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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 = 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.
Tldr: people are stupid boomers
-
netvor@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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. :)
Witchfire@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s 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, one of the most common ways I personally get misgendered is by allies who use they/them when talking about me in an attempt to be supportive, rather than my actual pronouns (she/her), but it’s minor in the grand scheme of things.
Regarding the original post, it’s mainly showing the hypocrisy in people who make every excuse to avoid using someone’s preferred pronouns, but then have no problem switching pronouns when it’s someone else’s pet.
There’s also this meme: Meme
netvor@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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.
Witchfire@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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)
Ashtear@piefed.social 5 weeks ago
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.