There’s something undeniably frustrating about a snooty woman and a poodle replying “Oh, she is a she,” to the question ‘what’s his name’? Of course, this is mostly due to the fact that humans don’t place a huge emphasis on the gender identity of dogs, and from what we humans can observe, neither do they! Many rightfully express discontent with the pronoun ‘it’ when used to describe their dog, but the only apparent physical difference between the sexes of dogs is their genitalia (I think. I’m not a dog expert, but that’s the only obvious way I can differentiate them). Seeing as dogs don’t have much of a concept of gender, it makes sense that humans categorize them by their genitals, but there’s a problem in doing so: my adorable, spitfire shih-tzu had their balls surgically removed before they hit the age of 3 months.

Humans, the only living beings to really give a damn about how lifeforms are categorized, have recently found beautifully neutral, fair, and androgynous pronouns to add to the spectrum of gender: they/them/their. Someone argued that this, when applied to dogs, may devalue the science behind behavioral and physiological studies of dogs, which is true. For instance, without sexual differentiation, we would not have collected nearly as much crucial scientific information about the species, whether it is in the form of unknown sex-specific glands or simply answering the question “will my dog go into heat and moan while humping the leg of the couch for hours on end?”

So frankly, if you are reading this as a sort of dog expert where a dog’s sex (as opposed to gender) matters, this article doesn’t totally pertain to you. Instead, I would like to question the other possible applications to assigning a gender to another form of life, just for the sake of categorization. I have pondered this for some time now, to no avail.

Humans seem to be one of the only species to notice gender identity and allow it to have real-world consequences, like the wage gap, bathroom situation, or even representations of power. It’s no secret that men are more likely to be taken seriously, especially when considering the fact that we still haven’t had a female president and gender norms and expectations are clearer than ever. As human beings living in the 21st century, however, I am happy to say that we are at least addressing these issues. But anyways, back to dogs...

Imposing a binary gender structure exactly like ours based on the genitalia of dogs is like imposing a vegan diet on dogs because we can choose to be vegan. You can’t do that. To break the masculine cisgender spell that encompasses our society, we should familiarize ourselves with androgynous pronouns and un-taboo the taboo of gender, and to work up to humans, we should start by eliminating the gender spectrum of dogs—they don’t care, they don’t need it, they probably don’t know it exists, and it’s futile.