Animal Gender

[taras]

Why do pet food ads always call dogs "he" and cats "she"?

(Incidentally, did you know the Catholic Church is referred to as 'she'? )

 

[wembley8]

Except Felix....

I suppose because dogs have traditional 'masculine' traits (rough and physical) and cats 'feminine' ones (dainty and fastidious).

I think Freud claimed that psychologically speaking cats were famle and dogs male, but you'd have to find the reference.

 

[rjmrjmrjm]

Frued claimed a lot of things.

Yes, the Mother Church of Rome is female. And had lots of little children. The biggest split happened when Arthur (Favourite son) brought two of his mates home, they were called Clavin and Luther. Mother Church didn't like these two so Arthur went off with them to form a teen-angst ridden rock band called The Protestents. They tore around Europe for a few years before setting down and having children of their own.

Notice how we (others then, because us Forteans are too well bred. ) call ugly women 'dogs'. Yet when we congratulate one of our fellows for his audacity/cunning we call him an 'old dog'.

Women, when they fight are having 'Cat fights'.

Cats: Fiercely Independet when it suits them, meticulously clean, if you stop feeding them they wander off and look for somone who will.

Dogs: Supidly Loyal, hate bathing and would gladly wallow in thier own piss if left alone, find hours of entertainment from repetitive and pointless activites and will wait by your graveside when you die.

 

[Anonymous]

Could it be from when english language had gender, like most of the other european languges?

I've been told that the moon and ships are always referred to as 'she' because of this. Not being an early english language geek I can't confirm this, bust it sounds plausible...

 

[rjmrjmrjm]

Wouldn't know about that. You'd think that if gender was once a major part of the language it would stick. I always thought they were called 'she' because she is a mother, someone who looks after you - be it on the sea or watching over you every night.

 

[Anonymous]

It appears Old English had gender. It is odd it got dropped- almost all languages have that feature. I can't think of one that doesn't.

 

[escargot]

Yup but female and male dogs and cats are referred to by gender-specific terms, eg in French we have la chatte/le chat and la chienne/le chien.

Eddie Izzard's monkey is masculine- 'Mon singe est dans l'arbre.'

I agree that it's to do with anthropomorphic masc/fem projections.
Especially in advertising- we can see a smart-looking woman but not a man doting over a cat, and the people out running around with dogs are often either family men or couples. Heterosexual, you know.

There's a nice cat food ad on just now where a solo-living artistic type bloke tries to con his smart (masculine) cat into eating inferior food. Quite subversive in advertising terms and very funny.

 

[Anome]

It appears Old English had gender. It is odd it got dropped- almost all languages have that feature. I can't think of one that doesn't.

Bahasa Indonesia (and Bahasa Malay on which it is based) doesn't even have gender specific pronouns. It distinguishes between mother/father, but I think that's about it. (Of course it has man/woman, boy/girl, male/female, etc. Just not gender in the linguistic sense.)

 

[marion]

I thought maybe the cat being girl thing was because in pre-spaying days entire male cats were wanderers, and if they stayed any length of time your house would be stenched out with tom cat pee anyway, girls were cleaner and tended to stay in the same place if it offered food and comfort for their kittens.

EDIT there also might have been archaic laws banning lower classes from owning a bitch, I think there are still such laws on Alderney, or were until recently.

 

[Anonymous]

Could it be from when english language had gender, like most of the other european languges?

I've been told that the moon and ships are always referred to as 'she' because of this. Not being an early english language geek I can't confirm this, bust it sounds plausible...

I asumed that ships where 'She' because of the gender of the bowspirit (always female whenever I've seen one) whille perhaps the gender of the moon has alot to do with Sapho who, it is claimed, was the first to link the moon with women in Ancient Greece.

Why dowe see animals as having genders? I'd asumed that it was because such a view of the world is an inherent part of jewdaio-christian culture (just look at the creation story in Genesis for an explanation.)

 

[OneWingedBird]

Incidentally, did you know the Catholic Church is referred to as 'she'?

The evangelicals refer to the church collectively as 'the bride of Christ'.

Some of the apocryphal versions of Genesis have YHWH creating the first human as a hermaphrodite (it's usually shown as being like the Origin of Love people in Hedwig and the Angry Inch), then he splits it into Adam and Lillith.

 

[Bullseye]

EDIT there also might have been archaic laws banning lower classes from owning a bitch,

Well I'm married so.......................yep thats the one on that peg there...............

 

[Anonymous]

I asumed that ships where 'She' because of the gender of the bowspirit (always female whenever I've seen one) whille perhaps the gender of the moon has alot to do with Sapho who, it is claimed, was the first to link the moon with women in Ancient Greece.

I think I know the Sappho poem alluded to -- at least, I know a Sappho poem that says in part "You outshine the women of Lydia just as, after the sun has set, the rosy-fingered moon outshines all the stars" -- but the moon was already feminine and the sun masculine in Greek before then. (I don't know just how far back the idea that the moon is female and the sun male goes, partly because I don't have a decent understanding of the family tree of languages [as it were]. It's that way in Greek and Latin, and so, I guess, in some common ancestor of theirs; but in the Germanic languages the moon is male and the sun female, so something must have changed since Proto-Indo-European.)

Why dowe see animals as having genders? I'd asumed that it was because such a view of the world is an inherent part of jewdaio-christian culture (just look at the creation story in Genesis for an explanation.) [/quote]

I think dividing the world by gender is more likely to have gotten into the Judeo-Christian worldview from language than vice-versa, but then I'm more philologist than theologian. (shrug)

 

[Anonymous]

I think dividing the world by gender is more likely to have gotten into the Judeo-Christian worldview from language than vice-versa, but then I'm more philologist than theologian. (shrug)

Alas my knowlage of rout languages beyond Sanscript is iffy to say the least (and my knowlage of sanscript is iffy too.)

I mensioned the poem because it was claimed - I think by Aristotal - to be the first time the metaphor was used and therefore would have quite

And on being a philologist: you can get a cream for that

 

[bathory3]

Bahasa Indonesia (and Bahasa Malay on which it is based) doesn't even have gender specific pronouns. It distinguishes between mother/father, but I think that's about it. (Of course it has man/woman, boy/girl, male/female, etc. Just not gender in the linguistic sense.)

Same thing with many (all?) Finno-Ugrian languages. In Finnish literary language "hän" (he+she) is used when talking about humans and "se" (it) of everything else. However in spoken language we use "se" for everything.

In a nutshell: he+she+it = se

If I remember correctly Arabic doesn't have gender specific pronouns either, but I'm quite sure Arabic distinguishes between humans and inanimate objects unlike Finnish.

 

[eyepod]

I've recently acquired a hermaphrodite rabbit.

We refer to it as Him, because the previous owners thought it was a boy when they got it, and gave it a boy's name. It was only when they took 'him' to the vet that they found out that he wasn't actually a He. Or a She. But in fact both at the same time.

He's lovely

 

[undergroundbob]

Could it be from when english language had gender, like most of the other european languges?

I've been told that the moon and ships are always referred to as 'she' because of this. Not being an early english language geek I can't confirm this, bust it sounds plausible...

The most plausible explanation I've heard for boats being referred to as 'she' is that they were made mainly from female oak (not sure why, perhaps superstition, perhaps female oaks grow taller/stronger/quicker than males). This is also why sailors traditionally thought it unlucky to let women on their boats - in case they made the female boat jealous!

Bob

 

[ENTIANONMULTI]

Dog is a male anyway, as Bitch is a female dog, so that may be why the assumption of masculinity comes in, As for cats i could be wrong but isn't a male a cat a Tom, may explain the male female split with Cats and Dogs

 

[raven186]

I'm agreeing with Entia non multi here

Girl dog = Bitch
Boy dog = Dog

Male cat = Tom and I have a feeling that female cats may be called 'She' or 'Queen' (but possibly only if unspayed?)
Hence one of *my* mother's favourite sayings:

I've been talking to someone else and referred to my mother in some way

Me: blah blah blah, and then she said...
Mum: "Who's she? The cat's mother?"

To which I will often reply "No mine"
Oh the hilarity...

But to get back to the point (no really) - I think girl cats are actually called She-cats