{"id":35078,"date":"2011-04-22T10:35:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T15:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=35078"},"modified":"2013-11-11T03:35:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T08:35:27","slug":"dogs-are-blue-cats-are-pink-people-are-silly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/04\/22\/dogs-are-blue-cats-are-pink-people-are-silly\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogs are Blue; Cats are Pink; People are Silly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/jezebel.com\/#!5794888\/cats-are-for-girls-dogs-are-for-boys\" target=\"_blank\">Jezebel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Oh how I love a good example of our tendency to gender cats and dogs. \u00a0See, for example, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/02\/16\/my-cat-persondog-person-rant\/\">my cat person\/dog person rant<\/a> and our post about <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/02\/17\/the-compatibility-of-cats-and-masculinity\/\">an adoption campaign arguing that it can be manly to own a cat<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Josh Pearson sent in another colorful example from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bluebuffalo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Blue Buffalo Trading Co.<\/a>, a company that makes pet foods. \u00a0The company\u00a0subtly\u00a0genders dogs and cats with blue and pink, respectively:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/114.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35080\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/114.jpg\" width=\"572\" height=\"251\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/114.jpg 572w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/114-500x219.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 572px) 100vw, 572px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/72.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35083\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/72.jpg\" width=\"261\" height=\"311\" \/><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35082\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/64.jpg\" width=\"459\" height=\"137\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/64.jpg 765w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/64-500x149.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 459px) 100vw, 459px\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35081\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/44.jpg\" width=\"459\" height=\"137\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/44.jpg 765w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/44-500x149.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 459px) 100vw, 459px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>More, the language on the site sexes the animals themselves. They consistently refer to cats as &#8220;she&#8221; and &#8220;her&#8221; and dogs as &#8220;he&#8221; and &#8220;him.&#8221; \u00a0For example, the text reads:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/8.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-2\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35085\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/8.jpg\" width=\"354\" height=\"87\" \/><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35087\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/101.jpg\" width=\"346\" height=\"96\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I hope everyone recognizes this as bizarre. \u00a0Dogs and cats come in both hes and shes (that how there are more cats and dogs every year). \u00a0And notice that we tend to stereotype dogs as more like the stereotypical woman (dependent, passive, and happily subordinated) and cats like stereotypical men (independent, self-serving hunters), even as we masculinize dogs and feminize cats. \u00a0So there is some serious contradiction going on here. \u00a0We\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/01\/21\/pink-earplugs-for-your-beauty-sleep\/\">gender everything<\/a>though, so why not dogs and cats!<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cross-posted at Jezebel. Oh how I love a good example of our tendency to gender cats and dogs. \u00a0See, for example, my cat person\/dog person rant and our post about an adoption campaign arguing that it can be manly to own a cat. Josh Pearson sent in another colorful example from The Blue Buffalo Trading [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,373,55,293],"class_list":["post-35078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-color","tag-gender","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35078"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58917,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35078\/revisions\/58917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}