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The Science is Cisgendered: Gender-Neutral Cats Are the Civil Rights Struggle of Our Age
Don’t laugh at Washington Post editor Lauren R. Taylor. She is an earnest young woman with a passion for social justice. Which is why the Pulitzer-laden newspaper devoted precious editorial space to explain how she’s raising her cats as gender-neutral.
My new cats were freaking out. In carriers in the back seat of the car, they yowled their displeasure. I reassured them: “Don’t worry boys, we’ll be home soon.”
Whoops! I had called them boys, when in fact they were girls. An understandable mistake, as I’ve had cats for about 50 years, and all of them have been male. “I’m going to have to work on using the right pronouns,” I thought. And then another thought: “Why? They’re cats.”
We’ve all been there. Just the other day, Calvin the Wonderbeagle yanked a new loaf of Nature’s Pride Honey 7 Grain off my kitchen counter and consumed it in four bites. After I yelled, “Dude, why are you such a jackass?!” his mournful eyes told the story better than words ever could: I have yet to self-identify as a “dude” and certainly am no donkey. It’s just like a white human oppressor to define my species, take me captive, and exploit me as the unterhund to your übermensch. Now rub my belly.
I evolved a little bit that day. And, like Mx. Lauren R. Taylor, I too decided to raise my dog to be gender neutral, even though Calvin has a pee-pee instead of a woo-woo. Taylor’s insight continues:
The cats’ lives wouldn’t change, I reasoned, and it would help me learn to use plural pronouns for my friends, neighbors and colleagues who individually go by they, their and them. Even though using they, them and their as singular pronouns grates on many people because it’s grammatically incorrect, it seems to be the most popular solution to the question of how to identify people without requiring them to conform to the gender binary of female and male.
This oppressive gender binary is enforced by the male-oriented “hard” sciences (revealing name, that). They claim that “women” have two X chromosomes, while “men” have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome — the science is settled. More like the science is cisgendered.
Around the house, with just me, Essence and Trouble – named for Rare Essence and Trouble Funk, for the DC music lovers reading this – things were pretty easy. I’d make a mistake (called “misgendering”), saying something like “Where’s your brother?” (Yes, I talk to my cats.) Usually, I’d remember to fix it (“Where’s your sibling?” or “Where’s your pal?”). Just as I’d hoped, I began finding it easier to remember to use gender-neutral language for the humans in my life.
And I began to get an infinitesimal taste of what transgender and gender-nonconforming people face. I’m not talking about the outright bigotry and hatred –something I can’t know without being in their shoes — but the complete cluelessness. Friends would come over, I’d introduce the cats and their pronouns, and some would ask, “But what ARE they?” Some would randomly use “he” and “she.” Some would stumble, unable to form a sentence when talking about one of the cats.
Some claim that millennials are shallow for ignoring the oppression of rampant war, third-world poverty, and genital mutilation, but isn’t calling a female cat “her” a form of gender mutilation? The patriarchy’s rape culture is bad enough for humans; don’t inflict pronoun violence upon our feline companions.
If only the veterinary-industrial complex was ready to accept androgikittens.
Things got a little more real when Essence got sick. They were really sick. I took them to the vet and had to weigh the question: Do I explain their pronouns not only to the vet, but also the front-desk workers, the vet techs, and everyone else we interacted with?
I am eager to invite Mx. Taylor to my Memorial Day barbecue.
Before the illness was over, we saw five vets, two sets of front desk people, and countless vet techs. I chose to fall back on my cis-gender privilege (look it up) and used the singular pronoun for Essence. I understood that wouldn’t have been so easy if I were the patient — or if Essence were human.
While all of this was unfolding, friends would ask me: How is your cat? “They’re better” or “The same. The vets don’t know what’s wrong with them,” I’d say. “Wait a minute—are they both sick?” people would reply, confused.
Confusion privilege is to be expected when a part-time multi-platform editor at the Washington Post bravely deconstructs the deceptifice of misgendering feline phallocracy. But the real culprit is the proper grammar taught to us by adults who assumed toddlers want to identify as competent speakers of English.
It is confusing. We’ve had gender drilled into us as part of language since we first heard adults talking when we were infants – decades of “he” and “she.”
But at the same time it’s necessary. People are coming to understand that not all of us fit into the “girl” box or the “boy” box. Those who don’t are claiming space to be who they are. We all need to find ways to acknowledge and respect that. My way of respecting it just happens to be raising my cats gender neutral. You can choose your own.
Thank you, Mx. Taylor for enlightening us all. The next time I bring Calvin to the vet, I will make the staff call him “them,” because language shouldn’t be a means of communication, but a minefield of grievance. I just hope the vet doesn’t double charge me for the rabies shot.
Published in General
Why is she using the vet as the place to push “gender neutrality”? Isn’t medical (vet) care an environment in which gender makes the MOST difference? It seems rather important to medical care what plumbing and other organs are in place. And I would think it helpful for the provider to have some information on that before the care provider lays hands on the patient.
James, are you kidding or are you trolling? I have a sneaking suspicion that you are serious, which is disappointing. Of course, the “Mx.” is Jon’s humor. That’s why it’s funny.
Wait until Mx. Taylor finds out that my dog is a bitch.
So, assuming that James is serious, the problem with his stance is that one must buy into a raft of progressive and dehumanizing ideology in order to entertain this nonsense.
Do not humor the mentally ill at the expense of our society except to avoid intense, individual suffering, should the situation warrant.
“Gender dysphoria” is nothing new. Treating it as something other than a sickness is, and we were not wrong. Nobody said to be cruel — but we are under zero obligation to start babbling insanity because the insane do so.
Shall we neuter or spay this cat? No matter. Might as well do it with a lawnmower for all the gender-confused have to say about it.
Her behavior needs to be identified as micro-aggression. She’s creating hopes for people to jump through or else be shunned. It’s cruelty, and it’s intended to be cruel.
Did you think it was funny? I sure did.
I guess they will force us into uni sex litter boxes. :) How friggin’ absurd. I really wasn’t made for this time and place. Someone teleport me back to a time when humanity had reason.
It could be worse.
She could also be into cross-fit. And own a BMW. And be a vegan. And an atheist.
Typically, it takes owning more than one cat for someone who self-identifies as a woman* to turn into a crazy cat lady, but Mx. Taylor has managed to do it with only one.
Kudos to her.
* Why use one word where 14 will do? I swear, how we talk about gender these days, we’ll all be speaking Tamarian in a few years.
She should name all her cats, Pat. Heh! Pat the Cat. You may pet Pat the Cat. Pat the Cat sits on the mat. Please excuse me while I go on a Dr. Seuss tangent for the rest of the morning.
I thought that most of the comments suggested that they hadn’t read the article. I got the joke, but think it as sad when people respond to trans articles by stating their non-article relevant views on trans issues as when people respond to Trump posts by being angry about something about Trump (pro or con) that isn’t in the article. I thought that that particular joke was likely a disincentive to read the article and a compelling part of the general misrepresentation of what the article was saying. Hence, for instance:
She isn’t pushing gender neutrality. She’s not disguising the gender of her male cats. She’s practicing using different pronouns for them. That’s it.
Right.
That is exactly the problem and why we’re making fun of zir.
She’s not denying her cats’ male gender. She’s just practicing pronoun use. It may be that if a loved one of yours came out as trans, you would hold fast to your principles and ostracize them, but it doesn’t require mental illness to prefer to retain familial and friendly ties. For those that want to be polite, but who find themselves slipping (which happens to most people), practicing with someone who doesn’t care, such as a pet, sounds like a good idea.
That may be your response (although, again, Taylor is just using “they” and “them”). For quite a lot of comments, there’s clearly a belief that she’s suggesting an identity. Some people think that there will be problems with the vet. Some people think that she’s forcing something on the cats. Lots of people aren’t specific about what they think is going on, but are responding with anger rather than humor.
If you’re understanding and engaging in good natured humor, good for you, but don’t pretend that that’s universal. When people respond in earnest anger or disgust to a parody story that they don’t understand to be false, neither charity nor clarity are served. Perhaps you believe that there is no cost to making conservatives feel that the world is going crazy through false stories (that Jon’s story is not intended to be taken as literally true doesn’t make much of a difference to its impact on those who read it as being an accurate depiction) or to dehumanizing people interacting with trans issues, but I think it was regrettable that so many of the people reading the post misunderstood the contents of the article.
Maybe we should just change the names of the sexes/genders from “Male”/”Female”/”whatever” to “innie” and “outie” and be done with it.
Wrong. She *is* pushing the nonsense. Reasonable people will resist it, and partisans must rehearse their speech, reform their grammar, prune their very verb declensions to fit today’s shifting truth. This is literally Orwellian, a pursuit of language to control thought.
You are grievously wrong, and wa-a-ay outside the bounds of what is acceptable as part of any sort of conservatism. Decry the shame of those not reading the article all you like, but those of us who clearly see Iran’s intention without having to go for negotiations can also clearly see what this woman is about — we have seen it before — without wasting time reading some social engineering screed in the Washington Post.
Far too generous to call this mere insanity.
James, will you also refer to my dog as Lord Satan just in case you should come into contact some say?
We do not misunderstand. Where do you think you are — Quora? Vox? Slate?
To be equally patronizing (bear with me, I’m not so good at this), I just think it’s a shame that James and other conservaphobes cannot read the subtext of articles found online — that they cannot place elements of discourse in the context and setting in which they exist, and insist instead upon a mechanistic, plodding parsing of the text to arrive at nothing more than a compiled versio of programming instructions, ready to be regurgitated without comprehension by a glassy-eyed, indifferent machine, utterly disinterested in what it is or how it got there.
See? Told you I’m no good at this. If you want to clobber me for this remark, re-read James’ condescending patronization and put it in the context of an ostensibly conservative outlet. One of us doesn’t know where to type.
I believe the traditional singular pronoun for something that is neither masculine nor feminine is “it” and not “they.”
There’s a lot of anger going on here over sweet little kitties.
Regardless of how you address them, cats are the best.
They certainly is.
Sex, contrary to what the left says, is binary. Two cells fertilize to form one cell with a double set of chromosomes. The two chromosome sets mix. At some point later, the two chromosome sets split, forming new cells with single sets of chromosomes, different from the original cells, and the cycle continues. This is pretty close to universal for sex in animals, plants, fungi, and most protists. If the chromosomes didn’t stick to that 2 to 1 to 2 pattern, the chromosome number would be unstable and inviable. Thus, it’s not some strange accident or prejudice that causes species to have only two mating types. Two mating types is the simplest way to solve the problem of combining different genomes.
I get this a lot with my two. “This bag is mine…”
Oh yes, and heaven help you if you bring out a bag or suitcase in order to pack for a trip. I have many pictures of Marcello “helping” me pack.
If I deeply loved you, and for whatever reason you found it vitally important that I referred to your dog that way, I don’t think it would be particularly difficult for me to refer to it as Satan.
Are you claiming that the people who thought that there would be difficulty with vets on the basis that she was denying that her cats had sexual organs were not misunderstanding? I don’t think you’re misunderstanding; your line about using a lawnmower to spay/ neuter them wasn’t because the piece was unclear, but a generalized expression of hostility. Most of those people who raise issues in the comment thread that are either denied or not implicated by the article, though, appear to have been doing so in good faith misunderstandings of the content of the piece.
I’m not sure I follow. Do you think that I fail to see Iran’s intention regarding nuclear weapons? I was under the impression that we agreed on that issue.
Perhaps you were able to divine the content of the piece without reading it; I wasn’t. So far as I’m aware, it’s a novel piece of advice, and it seems like quite a useful one. I agree that if one is determined to treat transgendered people as if they had not transitioned, it’s not going to be helpful. No article providing guidance on a task one isn’t going to contemplate is. There are many millions of people for whom the article might be of practical value, though. If all you see is “this is a pro-trans article” and none of the detail, then I guess it makes sense to respond with a boiler plate message opposing it. For what it’s worth, I agree that gender neutral terms are regrettable, but I suspect that we’ll get to a more general agreement on that more quickly if we consider the details and engage on the topic rather than simply expressing outrage and hyperbole (I’m pretty sure you knew that I was with you on Iran, and that the two issues don’t line up at all closely; one of the strongest pro-Iran camps, the Buchanan/ Putin alt-right, is one of the most anti-trans, for instance).
I always take it to mean, “Please don’t leave me…!” Really, how do you deny anything to this face? SHE is my little doll babe. Or any of a number of decidedly feminine nicknames. It’s not surprising that she may not actually know her real name…
And in other news, Lauren Taylor sounds like an utter loon. Talk about first world problems…
Besides the fact that I can’t breathe around them, they’re pretty good.
Careful here, one of our editors is an Internationally Based Crazy Cat Lady, but I think she owes up to it.