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.

so there's this bbc story about a seal. who has a 'smile' so many comments refer to it as 'he' fyi seals very hard to sex accurately....

Everything is assumed to be male. It is ridiculous. And insidious. Until you point it out and the person goes 'oh yeah I never thought about that'

I mean, it really matters. It's not just a figure of speech It's the way our whole social and 'science' world is constructed. Just this sheer invisibility, from women right down to the tiniest of creatures, there's this negation of the female.

Sorry I meant that men are supposed to like dogs and women cats. Hence all the clothing and paraphernalia that accompanies it!!

The ‘Where’s Mr Owl’ etc., books are good as they alternate the sex of the animal on each page!!

I read somewhere that in Victorian times or before, a lady would always talk about someone's dog as 'she' (until corrected by the dog owner if necessary), because to refer to it as 'he' would mean the lady had been looking at his - ahem - masculine attributes.😂

Why are all non-animal things assumed to be female?
"She's a magnificent ship"
"She's a powerful machine"
"She's a fast car"

We always waited for the green woman to let us cross the road, rather than the green man - it was always assumed to be a woman wearing trousers, like me!

Always loved the fact that the Jurassic World dinosaurs are all female

People do it with babies too. On Facebook usually, if it's not obviously a girl they say 'he'. That really annoys me! Why is it the default sex!?

Cars, musical instruments, boats, are always female. Probably other things I can't think of. Mother Earth, Mother Nature too.

Yeah, making assumptions about the sex of a wild animal/bird winds me up too. If someone in my family says 'Oh, look at him' about a robin or whatnot, I'm now known for always saying 'Or her!' to the extent that these days family members often say it before I do.

Another strange thing is that many people assume the cows and sheep they see in fields are male, when they're almost entirely female. It's the same with honey bees, most of a colony is female.

If there are two robins in close proximity to one another, one's definitely a female! The males are aggressively territorial and will fight to the death.

I generally assume bees are 'she'. So are wasps - at least the only ones that sting are female, horrible critters that they are!

'Mother earth' and 'father time' are an interesting comparison. One's universal. The other - in the measured, linear sense in which we know it at least - is an attempt to impose human control.

@MovinGroovinBarbie - I'd assumed ships were designated 'she' because for the most part they were built by men. But in fact, it's because the Latin for 'ship' was a feminine word. Plus they were often dedicated to the goddesses who seafarers looked to for protection.

I had to laugh when I visited the coast this weekend and found an ice cream stall named 'Mr Moo'. Should have been 'Ms Moo', bulls do not produce milk! I'll keep my counsel about who produces the bull ...

DS is 6, and since probsbly The beginning of the year he has definitely decided he only wants boys’ things. He didn’t want to watch Mulan “because it was girlish”, he re-sexed all the Jurassic World dinosaurs to male (they are all his brothers apparently), every toy he owns is his brother, doesn’t like playing with the play mobile female figures….

I have seriously no idea what is driving this - definitely not coming from me or his dad, so he must be getting it from school. Won’t be the teachers - they are all female, and they do a lot of work on inspiring female role models. They even did a topic on Amelia Earhart, and DS’s focus was on her fucking male navigator, who apparently had the harder job because she just had to fly the plane whereas poor Fred Noonan had to work out where they had to go (fucked that one up, didn’t he).

I am hoping he grows out of it, because it is fucking annoying.

@SerafinasGoose was that near Hornsea? Lovely ice cream!

I always ask "how can you tell it is a male?" When people call any fucking plant, animal, insect or toy a he.
Drives me absolutely fucking SPARE!

I sing ba ba black sheep to my daughter and it is the little girl who says thank you to the sheep for the fucking wool.

My 19 year old son calls me "bro" and he does it just to wind me up.

Loads of animals are visibly very different depending on sex, although I suppose I should really ask the ewes and cow in the field behind me how they identify despite the udders. I don’t make assumptions about the lambs either though who are probably a mixed bunch. Hares, foxes, badgers etc just get called by species, not him or her.

Have had male and female pet hamsters, rabbits, cats, dogs, Guinea pigs and horses too, so don’t do any generalisations with them, owners usually mention names pretty early which gives a clue or I ask nicely if I can’t see easily.

Maybe sailors have called ships "she" not because it was a feminine word in Latin, but for the same reason--in olden days, sailing a ship was an uncertain business, but with knowledge and experience, you could make your boat do what you wanted. Like having a human relationship. (Although one might scoff at such a concept.)

When I was little, my nan used to tell me there is an easy way to tell: anything really annoying or irritating was a he, and everything else was a she. For instance, a jar you couldn't open you should say "he won't open" and a flower that grew well, you should say "she's growing so nicely".

Definitely not factually accurate, but it made perfect sense to me as a child and I thought it was the absolute truth.

Nearish, yes! 😁

I work for a man who refers to inanimate objects as male. He'll point to 'Mr wheelbarrow' or 'Mr fork'. It's very strange and I have sometimes said 'Perhaps it's Mrs wheelbarrow' but he still uses 'Mr' and even calls the sun 'Mr sun'. He's in his 60s.

When my daughter was little and we bought her some cloth books (no words, just pictures) to read and play with, I realised that despite being a lifelong feminist, I was guilty of this . At first I would say, "Here is the donkey, he is getting out of bed and putting on his slippers," until I noticed what I was doing and made a conscious effort to say "she". Weird.