Transcript

RH:

Hey big boy, hey little lady….
———

Waaait a second… am I gender-norming my cats?

Do… do cats even have gender?

———
I mean, is it possible for non-people to have gender identity? Are animals inherently non-gendered?
———

Is it wrong for me to force gender on you, Hippo? Am I socializing gender onto you that you wouldn’t otherwise hold?

———
Oh…oh no - my internal representation of Oskar is rough-and-tumble and playful, while Hippo is sweet and cuddly?

I’m not only arbitrarily gendering my cats… I’m gender-stereotyping them!

———
What kind of cat could you have been if not for your gender normative upbringing at my hands?

——
MZ:

I heard all of that, you know.

RH:

I’m a terrible cat parent.
——

MZ:
I think you might be projecting.

RH:

YOU’RE PROJECTING

Bad Parent

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Robot Hugs
New comic! French Translation via Mouton I have actually gone down this gender-brain-hole thing a few times about to what degree I'm projecting gender onto my animals and whether that matters, and it usually turns into a 'the gender stereotypes are coming from inside the house' thing, which, yeah, is a little project-y. I do find it interesting that if you interact with an animal and get its... presumed gender wrong from how the owner is gendering it, the first thing they do is correct you. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just sort of maybe indicative of what kind of importance we put on gender as a primary identity thing? Like, the animal doesn't care. But we do. Because we're weird. My neighbour does take the position that their greyhound doesn't care and you can pretty much call it what you want, which seems fairly progressive to me. I broke the site this week trying to make some technical improvements but now I've unbroken it.