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?
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)
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
glimse@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
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
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
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