On Imposing Gender and Cats
So it turns out Butterscotch, who we've been calling "she" for two years is actually a "he." Which has led to a debate in my family on whether we should refer to Butterscotch as "she" or "he."
Personally, I think we should still keep calling Butterscotch whatever we originally called her. When we anthropomorphized the cat, it was female to us, so we imposed female traits on it in our minds. In reality, cats have different gender traits than people do. A cat that's been fixed, like Butterscotch (who is a neutered male) has its own set of gender traits, but they aren't ones that we notice. Lucy is definitely a fixed female dog, but like dogs do, she exhibits some behaviors that are supposed to be male for dogs. I don't see the reason for a paradigm shift, especially if that might change our perception of the cat.
Let's compare an animal that is actually female. Abby, my sister's dog, is a spayed female. While we call her she, I don't know if she actually exhibits any dog traits that make her female. Yet, if I take her to get groomed, it's more "Who's a pretty girl?" If Abby was a neutered male, would the dog need grooming any more or less and be any less "pretty" afterward?
English is a far less gendered language than others, and there are some very interesting studies on how imposing gender on objects affects our perception of them. Take forks, for instance. In English, we don't gender objects, and so people probably would describe a fork as "masculine" or "feminine" based on the attributes of the object. In French, a fork is "la fourchette" but in Spanish is "el tenedor" and in German is the masculine "die gabel." Studies have found that whether you learn a language that genders the fork either masculine or feminine has an effect on the attributes people immediately ascribe to it (I can't find this study.)
We do gender some of our nouns. Ships are "she." The moon is "she." Which can affect our stories (or vice versa) and what we do, even in language.
So while my cat may have a biological sex, the gender I give to the cat is colored by my own perceptions. My cat's gender is actually something very different for a cat, and very different for a fixed cat. However, because I've already imposed a gender on my cat in one way, I think linguistically it would be hard to shift it to a new gender.
But who cares? It's a cat.
Personally, I think we should still keep calling Butterscotch whatever we originally called her. When we anthropomorphized the cat, it was female to us, so we imposed female traits on it in our minds. In reality, cats have different gender traits than people do. A cat that's been fixed, like Butterscotch (who is a neutered male) has its own set of gender traits, but they aren't ones that we notice. Lucy is definitely a fixed female dog, but like dogs do, she exhibits some behaviors that are supposed to be male for dogs. I don't see the reason for a paradigm shift, especially if that might change our perception of the cat.
Let's compare an animal that is actually female. Abby, my sister's dog, is a spayed female. While we call her she, I don't know if she actually exhibits any dog traits that make her female. Yet, if I take her to get groomed, it's more "Who's a pretty girl?" If Abby was a neutered male, would the dog need grooming any more or less and be any less "pretty" afterward?
English is a far less gendered language than others, and there are some very interesting studies on how imposing gender on objects affects our perception of them. Take forks, for instance. In English, we don't gender objects, and so people probably would describe a fork as "masculine" or "feminine" based on the attributes of the object. In French, a fork is "la fourchette" but in Spanish is "el tenedor" and in German is the masculine "die gabel." Studies have found that whether you learn a language that genders the fork either masculine or feminine has an effect on the attributes people immediately ascribe to it (I can't find this study.)
We do gender some of our nouns. Ships are "she." The moon is "she." Which can affect our stories (or vice versa) and what we do, even in language.
So while my cat may have a biological sex, the gender I give to the cat is colored by my own perceptions. My cat's gender is actually something very different for a cat, and very different for a fixed cat. However, because I've already imposed a gender on my cat in one way, I think linguistically it would be hard to shift it to a new gender.
But who cares? It's a cat.