How do you like your pronouns?

[IRescue452]

I notice this all the time on animal planet shows like animal cops and rescue shows: people calling girl animal "he" and boy animals "she" and sometimes calling one "he" one minute and then "she" the next. It drives me bonkers. I understand if you don't know the animal and can't see the underside. People call Autumn a "he" at the dog park all the time even after I got her a pink collar and I'm constantly correcting people. It just makes me think those people truely and unconsciously think of the animals as an "it". Regardless of the fact that they love animals and are rescuing them, their implicit attitudes are still that of "its an it". Thoughts? Poll doesn't matter I just didn't know where to put this.

[pomtzu]

It really doesn't bother me if people don't acknowledge my pets by their gender. Unless they hear an actual name that would give them a clue (such as Myndi), I wouldn't want them checking her undercarriage or lifting her tail just to be gender correct. :eek: As long as I (and the rest of the family) knows that Myndi is a she and Sparky is a he, then we're the only ones that matter. :D

[Karen]

I always have corrected people, but once I introduced her as Miss Hoppy, people usually understood she was a she!

[happylabs]

My Tinky is a girl. People are always calling her a boy - LOL. I do correct people. My mom is one that always has trouble with he and she. She frequently called Casey a he instead of a she.

It is funny because if we didn't know the gender of our pets, would we really be able to tell by the way they act.

[Freedom]

I correct people ALL the time. :rolleyes: Makes me nutty, too.

Back when I was in school, we were taught all animals are "it." I never went along with that, even back then, and can remember arguing with my teacher that my dog was a SHE. (Spaying never came in to the discussion, we never got that far!)

In Latin based languages (French, Spanish, Italian) dogs are "he" and cats are "she." So depending on the person's background, that may be where the he / she comes from.

Mind you, with the Crew of 15, there ARE times I call one of the boys a "good girl," but that is totally different. Just a slip, and yeah I do correct myself!

Then there's the issue of when two of them have a spat. That is like my Mum calling her daughter (me, Sandra) and her son (Stephen) "Standra" lol! Said she was just covering ALL the bases, in case the one she THOUGHT was acting up wasn't really. :p

[Asiel]

I really don't care what people think about the gender of my dog. Sometimes she can act like a little man if she wants to get spunky . I never correct anyone but if they ask I will tell them the gender. As long as the family doesn't get her gender wrong all is good..:D

[IRescue452]

The funny thing about this is I identify myself as intersex so I'm not too worried about if somebody identifies as he or she or inter or trans, but so long as somebody has a distinct gender I don't see mixing somebody up and calling them a he when they identify as a she and I don't see how somebody could be fostering a dog for a week on one of these shows and still say she she she when the dog has male genitalia.

[Taz_Zoee]

If someone calls one of my dogs the wrong gender I don't correct them immediatley. Usually I'll say something that uses their gender to get the point across. Like if they ask "how old is he?" about Zoee, I'd say "She's 6". Most of the time people will say something using a gender then immediately ask if it's a boy or girl.
I don't know, but I tend to think Zoee is more of a pretty girly dog and most people think she is a boy. I could see people thinking Taggart is a girl though with his long flowy hair. LOL

My issue is when I tell people Taggarts name and they call him Tagger. My neighbor still calls him that after 3 years!! LOL I guess I have to emphasize the T at the end.

[dab_20]

If someone doesn't know my dogs, I don't mind. They often ask the sex if they say he or she. Ususally their guess is correct because people often assume poodles are girls and they assume Sam is a boy. Springen isn't neutered so its fairly obvious he's a boy. As long as they don't say "it", I don't care.

My dad often refers to animals as she for some reason. I always correct him. DAD, HE'S A BOY!

[mrspunkysmom]

For some reason, I grew up referring to cats as "shes" and dogs as "hes" although I did know that they came in both genders.

My cats are never and "it." My names don't leave room for gender confusion.

I usually ask the gender of a new critter that I meet before I mess up in a conversation.

[wolf_Q]

I call my dogs by the correct gender...at least most of the time ha ha I have four dogs it gets confusing sometimes. People mix them up sometimes but I don't care I don't expect people to know the gender of my dogs if they don't know my dogs...I don't correct them either unless they ask, I don't think the dogs care if strangers called them the incorrect prounoun, they are happy to get attention either way. I'm a groomer and with dogs that don't have gender specific names (or sometimes names that to me should be the opposite gender - like girl dogs named Max) I may say the wrong one because I don't know their dog yet. I've had people get really rude with me because of it which I think is silly, :rolleyes: correcting my nicely is one thing, but getting snotty with me about it is another. There's a few customers that always refer to their own dogs as the wrong gender which I think is quite strange.

[Roxyluvsme13]

It bothers me, because Lily is a very dainty, girly dog, and people are like "Oh, he's cute! What is he?" I usually say "SHE is a Pomeranian..." It's hard to tell with Lily because of all of her hair and you can't see her pink collar, but even when she had a pink leash she still got called a boy :rolleyes:.

I haven't had any experience with Brennan and people having gender confusion issues yet, but his hair is short, his collar is green, and you can see what's on his stomach, so hopefully people won't get too confused :p

[rosethecopycat]

I always had male cats until Bella. She is such a feminine soul. :love::love::love:

No one educated should confuse her, as she is a multicolored Tortie Siamese.
I just giggle when someone calls her a boy. :p

[Miss Z]

I have a divided opinion on this and so didn't vote, heh. I think if I have a personal relationship with the animal, i.e. my own, or a friend's, then it's strictly gender specific. And it would get on my nerves if someone continually referred to Mercy as a 'he'.

However, from my personal veterinary perspective, I would say it's fairly commonplace to refer to an animal as 'it', even if the gender is known. Probably more so in the farming and equine world, but also when discussing pets with other members of staff. I believe for courtesy's sake I always refer back to he/she when in the presence of the owner, as again, I know it would drive me batty were the roles reversed. I generally refer to the correct gender and 'it' pretty interchangeably at other times.

That's just my experience of shadowing vets in practice, at least, and it sort of seems the done thing. It most certainly isn't derogatory.

[Barbara]

Here in Germany we have the additional problem that all cats are "she" as the generic word for cat, "Katze" is feminine. And the generic word for dog "Hund" is masculine.
Orion as a matter of fact has an identity crisis because everyone calls him "she"- he is a cat on one side and a very girlish looking on on the other side. But he insists that he is a boy and behaves like one ;)

[sana]

I don't need to correct :p One Down looks like a boy and is one too! I call an animal it when I don't know its gender, but I call it a she or he when I know what it is. I don't like guessing genders and making a fool out of me, so, I just ask. :D

[Alysser]

I'm a little guilty of calling dogs and he or she, especially at work. For the LONGEST time, about a month...one of our fosters was called her by me, I thought HE was a girl. HIS name was Brownie, I mean, come on, that's a girly name!! :rolleyes:

I do correct people when they call Mikey a girl, I mean how did you not know by his name??:confused:

[cali]

I prefere people correct me, I hate getting it wrong and you cant rely on names and collar/leash colours, I know tons of male dogs with purple or pink collars and leashes and names like "Shelby" ..and those are the owners that get mad when I call their dog "she" lol. names really are not a clue, I know plenty of dogs named: Buddy, Rider/Ryder, Red, Blue, Harley, Sky, Hershey, Sam, Charlie, Seven etc.. of BOTH genders. in fact the majority of Sam's, Charlie's, and Harley's I know are FEMALE, the rest are split about half/half. I am always so afraid to get the gender wrong that I avoid using he/she altogether I will say instead used the dogs name and skip over pronounes entirly, which is not that easy and sounds awkward lol

thats said when people get mine wronge I DO correct them, Happy is often a "he"..she is a girl darn it lol, most of the others dont really get mixed up by other people.

[Laura's Babies]

My great grandson asked me yesterday why all my kitties are "girls"..... I told him that was not by choice, I didn't pick "girls only", it just ended up that way. (I picked the kitty or they picked me and only once on the way home did I check to see if I had a boy or a girl)

[Suki Wingy]

I'm a groomer and I was just noticing this week how utterly offended people seem to be when you misgender their dog and I think it's pretty funny.

I'm pretty sure dogs don't have personal gender expressions, and there's no way to ask them which pronouns they prefer even if they did. We see a very large volume of dog kids, and if we don't know the dog, especially if mom is holding them, how is there any way for us to magically know the sex of the dog?

Besides, determining some things as feminine and others as masculine is completely a social, human construct, dogs don't recognize pink flowery collars as feminine. And at any rate, I tend to dress Niño in pink and purple collars and leads and have been known to paint his nails, and I have dyed him pink before.

And we have a lot of clients with gender neutral names and female dogs with masculine sounding names. Like Bob the tiny female poodle, for instance. And then there's Eliza who lifts her leg to pee on all the trees she passes.

So really it's just humans making a fuss over something dogs don't care about at all.

[Edwina's Secretary]

So really it's just humans making a fuss over something dogs don't care about at all.

Thank you for saying what I have been thinking! I enjoy telling people how cute/pretty/handsome/adorable their dog is. I try to do it in gender neutral terms. But if I have to do a genitalia check before I can compliment you on your dog... well....

[Suki Wingy]

I call them all pretty. I will say, "Oh, what a pretty boy you are!"

[Scalisti]

I prefer he or she when the gender is known. If not, a guess is fine. One pet peeve (no pun intended) of mine is when someone knows the gender of their pet, and insist on calling him/her an it.

[jenluckenbach]

Since I often make the mistake myself, I try not to correct people. With me, you can tell me the cat is MR MEOW and 5 minutes later I will call him SHE. it's Simply a dyslexic thing. If you say right I will instinctively turn left. I have even read words that are not in a sentence to make it mean the opposite. (EX/ if I read a written letter that said "He did want to go to the party" I might read it as "He did NOT want to go to the party") And not even notice until rereading.
So, I do it, and other people do it, and I try not to judge or correct them. It is not a personal insult and most likely totally unintentional.