Thread: Odd gendering of creatures Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I've just caught myself thinking in a peculiar way about inhabitants of my garden, remembered something similar in a school book, and wondered if anyone else had found similar habits of mind. That's English speakers, where gender has rather dropped out of the language.

I have a rat busily working at establishing a nest under a raised bed. I have been thinking of it as Mr Rat, male. When I found a woodmouse engaged in similar activity, very similar, identical, in fact, I thought of it as Mrs Mouse, female, nesting.

The school book, about the sort of creatures found in gardens, used male pronouns for all the creatures except one. That included ants and bees, who were praised for their work ethic. All called, in spite of reality, he and him. The one exception was the spider. All spiders were referred to as she or her. (It occurs to me that there may have been a passing female cat, but I can't check. It was definitely the contrast between the worker female ants and bees being called males, and the predatory spiders all being called females that stuck in my mind.)

There is a pattern in my mind - that which is a threat is male, that which is acceptable is female, and the same behaviour is admirable in the smaller, less disruptive animal, but a menace in the larger.

There is an opposite pattern in the school book, which had, in my opinion, no business attributing any gender to the minibeasts at all, unless accurately. The author of the book was, incidentally, male.

Does anyone here find themselves making such gender attributions without any obvious reason? I'm not very pleased with myself. I think I've caught myself out with an extreme reaction to males which is a caricature of the feminist. (As an excuse, I had been listening to the report suggesting that sexual abuse of young girls was now a norm. But the rat is innocent of that sort of thing. It, presumably, is engaged in pursuing perfectly normal and fitting rattish behaviour, whether male or female.)

[ 30. October 2014, 16:35: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
To me all dogs are male and all cats are female!

(Yet my two dogs are girls!)

[Smile]
 
Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
There is a pattern in my mind - that which is a threat is male, that which is acceptable is female...
Two of the major threats around here are black widow spiders and mosquitoes. The dangerous ones are the females. (Which is why, when I was stung by a scorpion a couple of months ago, I called it "he" -- trying to even things out.)

And mothers with young are often "more deadly than the male."
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I would assume, with mammals at any rate, that females with young are always more dangerous. I was taught early not to go in fields where there were cows with calves.

But I was thinking about falsely identifying gender. And I don't mean the Girl Guides I was with who refused to go in a field of bullocks. (In case of vocabulary glitches, teenage male cattle who won't ever be bulls. aka steers.)

With spiders, if the females are the dangerous ones, to assume female by default makes sense. But not in English gardens with orb spiders. Both make webs, I assume. (Just checked. Predatory web behaviour is shared, except when adult males go female hunting.)
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
In the movies, there are often characters which ought not to have a gender. In the recent GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, for instance, there is an alien creature who looks like a tree. Nevertheless, he is a 'he' not a 'she'. It is not clear why.
 
Posted by Patdys (# 9397) on :
 
But he clearly identifies his gender in the movie.
I am groot.
 
Posted by Bene Gesserit (# 14718) on :
 
For some reason , in our household we tend to refer to any moorhen as 'Mrs Moorhen.'
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
Cats are always female to me, and dogs always male (thought tortie cats are almost always female, and ginger cats are more often male than female - 1 in 1000 is female). Guinea pigs and rabbits tend to be male, as are donkeys. Mice, I agree, would be female. Not sure why I assume animals are male so often!
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
Most people in Britain would probably tend to think of cats and cows as female in the first instance. I can't think of any other creature that's usually thought of as female by default - except possibly ladybirds.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
My neighbor's white poodle is in love with my black dachshund and I once had a hard time convincing a little boy that the poodle was the boy and my dog a girl. I blame Walt Disney for a lot of this. The man would put long eyelashes and lipstick on anything he wanted to make female.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Cows are female, obviously. So are heifers, less obviously. Bulls, oxen and bullocks I have never heard of described as female by default. Leaving aside the occasional freemartin.

Twilight, I blame the poodle shapers. One can be told frequently that the bobbles and bare bits have a function appropriate to either sex, but it doesn't make the dog look like a dog. Damned by the owners who add furbelows to its kit.

[ 30. October 2014, 20:48: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :
 
I've never thought about this before, but all squirrels are male when I talk about them; or even when I address them!

Little boy, if you eat that fruit on my tree, I'm going to make a squirrely stew out of you!
 
Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
My neighbor's white poodle is in love with my black dachshund and I once had a hard time convincing a little boy that the poodle was the boy and my dog a girl. I blame Walt Disney for a lot of this. The man would put long eyelashes and lipstick on anything he wanted to make female.
My wife's dog is a standard poodle; mine is a Lab/Airedale mix that looks like a half-size Irish wolfhound. Everyone assumes hers is female and mine is male, though the truth is the opposite....
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
Back when I had a female dog, all dogs were "she." Now that I have a male dog, all dogs are "he."
 
Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :
 
I have been thinking recently (a month) that I should refer to animals by gender...after all St Francis' creatures he called Brother and Sister. I asked myself how to assign gender to the ones I don't know.
I thought just random would be ok...

Languages that have gender built-in make it easier of course
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Boogie:
quote:
To me all dogs are male and all cats are female!
Big cats too? [Devil]

I ask because nearly all my daughter's cuddly toys are female (according to her), including Tiger, her favourite bedtime toy. She gets very annoyed when people refer to Tiger as 'he', but everyone does it...

As a result I tend to think of tigers as female.
 
Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :
 
Side-blotched lizards have two sexes but five genders, which is a neat trick.

On a completely different note this is reminding me of a very old joke:

Pupil: Voila un mouche.
Teacher: Non, c'est une mouche.
Pupil: Oh, you've got good eyesight.
 
Posted by Earwig (# 12057) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
The school book, about the sort of creatures found in gardens, used male pronouns for all the creatures except one. That included ants and bees, who were praised for their work ethic. All called, in spite of reality, he and him. The one exception was the spider. All spiders were referred to as she or her. (It occurs to me that there may have been a passing female cat, but I can't check. It was definitely the contrast between the worker female ants and bees being called males, and the predatory spiders all being called females that stuck in my mind.
I suspect the spider is female because she spins, a traditionally feminine activity. One of my favourite artists, Louise Bourgeois, used the image of the spider as a mother (her own mother was a weaver) but also as sinister and protective, subverting the traditional image of gentle mothers. Pics here, don't click if you're an arachnophobe!
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Boogie:

I ask because nearly all my daughter's cuddly toys are female (according to her), including Tiger, her favourite bedtime toy. She gets very annoyed when people refer to Tiger as 'he', but everyone does it...

As a result I tend to think of tigers as female.
All my dolls were obviously female, even the one who had been snatched bald by my evil brothers, but all my stuffed things were male, the lewd sock monkey for sure. I don't think I've ever known a female Teddy Bear.

I think your little girl is right about the big cats. Lets face it, if it's on the Discovery Channel actually doing something other than lounging in the shade -- she's probably a girl.
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
... all my daughter's cuddly toys are female ...
We have quite a large collection of teddy-bears of varying proportions, and in our minds they're all male.

I can understand the "cat-female/dog-male" thing, although again, in my mind, I tend to refer to them all as "he" unless I know otherwise.
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
I said 'nearly all' - not all. A few of her toys are designated male; and now I come to think of it, those ones are teddy bears.
 
Posted by Higgs Bosun (# 16582) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Jestocost:
Side-blotched lizards have two sexes but five genders, which is a neat trick.
Years ago, while driving, I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 about the origins of sexual reproduction. One speaker cited an example of a slime mould which has 13 sexes. These are defined by which gamete's mitochondria get used in the resulting new cell. Sex 1 beats all others, Sex 2 beats all but Sex 1, Sex 3 beats all but Sexes 1 and 2, etc.

However, I doubt if anyone calls a slime mould 'he' or 'she'.
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I don't think I've ever known a female Teddy Bear.
I complained about this as a child when I'd amassed an all-male tribe of teddy bears. My mother's solution was to buy me another and tell me it was female, to which I replied, "Are you sure? It looks like a boy to me." But my mother was quite convinced, and so a female teddy bear finally entered the household. She even had two little dresses knitted for her.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
My bear is, and has always been, female, going by the name of Persephone, that being the only other long Greek name beginning with P that I knew. I also had a picture on my bedroom wall of the young woman being approached by Hades, her gathered flowers dropping from her hands. Lovely stuff Child Education produced in my mother's day. (Mind you, it was a useful tool. "Along he came in his chariot and said "Little girl, would you like to come in my chariot and see some even better flowers?"" Class gasps. They know she should say no.) She had a blue knitted dress, which, when it wore out, my mother threw out. I was shocked to see her bear-naked and had to quickly crochet her a white dress - but it wasn't the same. (I was at college at the time.)
 
Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
To me all dogs are male and all cats are female!

(Yet my two dogs are girls!)

[Smile]
That was me as a child – not that I'm calling a wise person like Boogie naive!
Feeding crumbs to sparrows one day I was doing my best to see that the hens got first chance – until I spotted that a male was feeding his to a baby. That put me in my place.

GG
 
Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 
So female sparrows are hens, but males are... well males.

Do I detect a bias?
 
Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
But I was thinking about falsely identifying gender. And I don't mean the Girl Guides I was with who refused to go in a field of bullocks. (In case of vocabulary glitches, teenage male cattle who won't ever be bulls. aka steers.)
But I'm sure I've come across US ranchers referring to their herds of bovines as 'cows'.

GG
 
Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :
 
After all, they are "cow"boys. [Smile]
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
Poodles make good hunting dogs. Bird dogs, i.e., ducks. The puffy bits on the hips keep those joints warm in the water.

I call animals and people I like/love "buddy", which includes our female dog and my two daughters. Our cat, which does have a name, I call "bad kitty", with resentful love in my heart, because she is a bitch and not a buddy, because she is a cat.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
So female sparrows are hens, but males are... well males.

Do I detect a bias?
Male sparrows are cocks. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
I said 'nearly all' - not all. A few of her toys are designated male; and now I come to think of it, those ones are teddy bears.
My bad - I deleted too much of your post in my quote. [Hot and Hormonal]
 
Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :
 
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

quote:
Male sparrows are cocks. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Yes indeed, and so are male robins. As in "Who killed Cock Robin?". Maybe that's why to me all robins are male.

With some of the common garden birds the two sexes have different plumage but of those who don't, to me all great tits are male and all blue tits are female, and for some reason I don't think of starlings as gendered. I've no idea why.
 
Posted by Kitten (# 1179) on :
 
I tend to think of all magpies as being male, probably due to my mother always greeting single magpies with the words ''Hello Mr Magpie, where's your wife?'
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
And wrens are traditionally female, Jenny Wren, and seen as the mate of the robin.

I am having to relearn the names of plumbing items. Isolation valves, flotation valves and so on. Stupid. I never, ever heard stopcocks and ballcocks and male birds as anything rude.

[ 01. November 2014, 18:14: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Stumbling Pilgrim (# 7637) on :
 
When I were a lass, we had a cat (well, sort of acquired it, we looked after it while its owner was on holiday and it never went home) which was quite definitely male and was, correctly, known as 'he'. A few years later we got a dog, who was also male. From the moment the dog entered the house, the cat immediately and permanently became known as 'she', while the dog remained 'he'. I never did quite get to grips with why that was!
 
Posted by spork (# 18260) on :
 
A few months ago I went to a farm to see some calves. I presumed they were all female only to be told by the farmer the majority were male.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Dairy or beef? If dairy, poor little things were destined for schnitzel.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
<tangent>Nothing wrong with veal Penny so long as it is so-called Rose Veal - in other words allowed to get to the requisite size on normal food, rather than being force-fed milk.

Odd gendering: as a child my late Mama thought that cats were female dogs [Confused]
 
Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
So female sparrows are hens, but males are... well males.

Do I detect a bias?
Male sparrows are cocks. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Tangent alert
Friend reading Swallows and Amazons to her grandchildren caused great embarrassment to her grandson when she got to the boy's name: Dick. "We're not allowed [at school] to say that word"

GG
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Given that one of the female characters is called Titty....
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I had a child ask me at the swimming lesson why people called boys Dick. So I explained that it had been a perfectly normal short form of Richard, and that if we stopped using all the words that some people decided to use for rude things we wouldn't be able to say very much. There used to be a reading scheme with the main character called Dick. I gather that some Enid Blyton characters have been renamed, a couple called Dick and Fanny, I gather.

I think it's a shame. It's perfectly possible to keep separate parts of the brain for normal speech and being rude, according to context.

Though I don't understand why the mealy mouthed plumbers (and electricians) are still perfectly happy to describe male and female parts of connections. Seems a bit ruder than the collected faucet words.
 
Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :
 
Years ago I read a novel in which the three main male characters were Dick, Rod, and Peter. I had read quite a bit of the book before it hit me.
[Hot and Hormonal]
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Cows are female, obviously. So are heifers, less obviously. Bulls, oxen and bullocks I have never heard of described as female by default. Leaving aside the occasional freemartin.

Twilight, I blame the poodle shapers. One can be told frequently that the bobbles and bare bits have a function appropriate to either sex, but it doesn't make the dog look like a dog. Damned by the owners who add furbelows to its kit.
Poodles were bred as water dogs, and the bobbles help keep joints warm in the water. It's why poodles don't shed - their fur has the same function as duck feathers.
 
Posted by luvanddaisies (# 5761) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Jestocost:
Side-blotched lizards have two sexes but five genders, which is a neat trick.
Years ago, while driving, I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 about the origins of sexual reproduction. One speaker cited an example of a slime mould which has 13 sexes. These are defined by which gamete's mitochondria get used in the resulting new cell. Sex 1 beats all others, Sex 2 beats all but Sex 1, Sex 3 beats all but Sexes 1 and 2, etc.

However, I doubt if anyone calls a slime mould 'he' or 'she'.
Radio 4 and Ship of Fools have this in common - random interesting little factoids that pop out of nowhere. Multi-gendered lizards and top-trumps gender slime mould.
Off to Google more about those...
 
Posted by The Machine Elf (# 1622) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
And wrens are traditionally female, Jenny Wren, and seen as the mate of the robin.
'Robin redbreast' was the traditional name, but unlike 'Jenny wren', 'Mavis thrush', 'Tom tit', 'Isaac swallow', the given name stuck rather than the name for the kind of bird. The 'Jack' in 'Jack daw' also stuck but it didn't lose the 'daw' part.


TME
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Magpie?
 
Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Given that one of the female characters is called Titty....
And her brother is Roger the Cabin Boy, for crying out loud.

A vast gulf of trans-Atlantic incomprehension opened up when I was eating out with some Americans. One of them asked the waiter what was available for dessert. "Well, sir, I have spotted dick ..."
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
A programme on Dave (TV channel, demographic male), involving an auctioneer from the US selling off the contents of storage containers, now working over here, used that very point in its trailer. "Can I say "spotted dick"?" he said, clearly in on the joke.

Having grown up with it, the jump from assuming that it always and only referred to a steamed suet pudding with dried fruit in it (traditionally long and made in a cloth rolled round it, like my Dad's Mum did it and Mum never did, to his disappointment) to realising not only that it could be interpreted in another way, and, even worse, probably derived from that other interpretation (despite many attempts to derive it from contractions of "pudding") was very discombobulating.

[ 05. November 2014, 11:42: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Given that one of the female characters is called Titty....
Which is why , I suspect, the books were never promoted much (if they were even published) in the US. But really, what are you going to call a girl who was christened Letitia?
 
Posted by MSHB (# 9228) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
But really, what are you going to call a girl who was christened Letitia?
Letty. (e.g. sister of main female character in "Howl's Moving Castle", though not sure if it was short for Letitia in her case).

[ 13. November 2014, 10:52: Message edited by: MSHB ]
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I have a friend who insists on calling my dog 'he', it doesn't matter how often I tell her that she's female.
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
And babies can sometimes be "it".
 


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