Why are wild animals and other things always assumed to be male

[Ageingweightlifter]

On every fb post, or suchlike: when there's a cute little wild critter, be it a bird, a small furry animal, a seal, etc.. It's ALWAYS assumed to be male even when the sex (I'm assuming animals aren't bothered by the nuances of gendered self-identification) isn't apparent. It annoys me so much. It's as if the whole female biological pantheon of variation just doesn't exist...

Look at the language: 'cute little fella' 'bad boy' (once used by Jamie Oliver to describe a cooked prawn ffs!) 'little chap' etc etc.

Once you see it you can't unsee it.

...Drives me crazy.

Same with dogs are seen as male and cats female. I was trying to find some cat socks (long story), in a male sock size. None at all. Loads with dogs on. Found the same with baby clothes too.

Sounds weird….but depends on the animal for me 🤷🏻‍♀️😬
For example: in my head, cats (domestic, and big cats) seem distinctly feminine to me, so I’ll almost always refer to them as “she”. Same with elephants. Don’t know why!

It's the default male. We do it with occupations too. Google translate is known for having been programmed to always to default to the male option when they could be male or female.
Toys fuck me off. We have boxes of Lego and Playmobil. DS (who has ASD and is very particular about things). Once lined up all of the figures from the boxes into boys and girls. There were approximately 300 male and 23 females. All bought from sets.
My first post on MN was that I found it annoying tha cbeebies had a ratio of about 1:3 of female to male characters, including animals and things like in the night garden when it was easy to have both sexes equally represented. I was told I was looking for things to moan about and it doesn't matter. Someone also pointed out that it was because when things were 50/50 people aren't used to it and view it as a girl programme and then of course boys won't watch it. No one told DS2 that when he loved Dora the annoying explorer for a very long year 😁.

Are they? Not sure we do here.

That's weird about the socks! So it's creeped in everywhere. Cat socks are for females only?

When I challenge people about it, especially with the furry critters, I get 'don't be so uptight, it just looks like a he....' :(

I deliberately use both he and she when talking to my DC about animals, for this exact reason.

My DS also loved Dora the Explorer @Simianwalk!

I think that might depend on what dogs and cats a person has known in their own life. We had a male cat when I was a child and I didn't really know any other cats, so for me cats are mostly seen as male. I have known male dogs in my family when I was a child so for a while I saw dogs as male. However through my whole adulthood I have only known female dogs in my family and friends, so I see dogs as female.

That said, it does seem like people who don't personally know cats or dogs do tend to see dogs as male and cats as female.

I noticed this when I had kids. DD was bought a book in which every animal is male. I switched it to all female in all her books (which was fine til she learned to read!) Did it with DS too and explained why when he asked. Really annoys me.

" oh look at him, so cute" this really annoys me too. In fact I'm so annoyed by everyone assuming that all animals are 'he's' that I'm going to deliberately refer to all animals as ' she's' to my little boy and girl from now on...

Yes, all those pictures of animals with their young, suckling litters, showing them how to hunt, etc, all male.

I've been trained out of this by DD.
Every single one (bar a couple) of her cuddly toys (over 100 of them) were female.

It's because there's a cultural rule that says "male" is the default/norm, and "female" is a divergence/variation/extension of being male.

Where you get cartoon animals or creatures, the male is the basic model, and the female has some "addition" like long eyelashes or a bow in her hair or swell in her chest where a human female would have breasts, to say "pssst! this one's a girl!"

You get the same effect when people talk about humans e.g. "I met a scientist today", "Oh right, what kind of scientist was he?", but more nuanced in terms of gender expectations (e.g. people are more likely to call a scientist "he", but a nurse "she").

To add to the list of animals that I think we default to female - chickens and cows, because of eggs and milk. It sounds funny to an adult when a toddler follows the "default to male" rule when they refer to a toy cow as "he", but that just shows how quickly the rule is absorbed by them!

English actually has a third grammatical gender 'it'. Habitually only used for inanimate things, but I can't see animals objecting if we used 'it' for an animal of unknown sex

Of course, in languages with two grammatical genders for everything, you use the appropriate pronoun. The word for 'cat' is grammatically masculine in French (chat) and feminine in Welsh (cath) so it's 'il' or 'hi'. Unless you're sure it's a female French cat or a male Welsh cat, and it's relevant to the sentence, when you use a different word and pronoun.

I always use it. The animals don't mind at all.

I'm not really referring to language which will take centuries to shift no doubt.More about the assumptive processes which mean that most animals are masculinised automatically....

Such as "Who's a pretty boy, then?" for parrots or "He's such a good boy!" for dogs.

I agree with you OP. I always try to make the effort to assume femaleness for sexambiguous animals!

Re the cat and dog thing a PP mentioned. I remember a library book DD took out about ten years ago about a cat and a dog. The dog was female and the cat male. It felt weird and against all expectations because people get so used to it being the other way around.

I think a lot of it has to do with the way it's been ingrained that kids stories and tv need predominantly male characters, as otherwise boys won't be interested.

When I was young I couldn't understand why all cats were 'she'. I later found out that people generally didn't want tomcats and when a cat had a litter homes were generally only found for the females and the males were disposed of. I also didn't cotton on to why cows and ewes were everywhere but bulls and rams were very rarely encountered. I was quite a slow child in retrospect.

I think with little kids, the "boys won't watch girls' shows" is changing. "Girl's shows" used to be awful, with no thought to plot and character, but now shows like my little pony have appeal outside of cutesy characters.

The 'boys won't watch girls' shows' thing is nonsense. Have people ever asked boys or just assumed girls' shows aren't good enough? My daughter loves gymnastics and so watches My Perfect Landing (I think that's what it's called) - and my son is quite happy to watch with her, and even without her. And what I like about it is the boys (in the show) play a supporting role to the girls, when usually it's the other way round.

It used to be presumed to be true, and it drove a lot of programming etc. I think it was a self fulfilling thing - eg, it meant that programs with female leads weren't funded.

This annoys me to, the idea of the default as male is just so ingrained in us.

I also remember when my kids were young reading them the book Dear Zoo where every animal (or virtually every one) is male. And so I changed it to around 50/50 male and female. Which was all very well until my husband read them the book and they got confused as it was different!

It’s a really interesting thing to try and change in yourself though - to try and use a ‘default female’. At a museum recently there was a (completely androgynous) spacesuit and so I said to my daughter something like “imagine wearing that all day, she’d have felt really hot” and it felt really jarring.

Bluey and Bingo are both girls and yet commonly referred to as “he”. Useless creators failed to show they were girls by say, making their eyes pink like the girl one in Paw Patrol. CBeebies does annoy me… Xuli versus three boy Go Jetters, two girl squirrels to three boys on Duggee, etc. But I will give them something that Xuli, Nori and Betty, Lily from Peter Rabbit, Bitz from Bitz and Bob… all pretty cool characters at least.

Interestingly on the animal thing… I have a male dog and 99% of the people that stop us ask me what “her” name is. Even when I say “his name is…” they continue to say “her”. He doesn’t wear a pink bow, just for reference.

Same with farmyard animals like cowsx Female cows are drawn with big eyelashes to identify them forgetting or possibly not realising they are all female!