You guys, my dogs are so heteronormative

What is a modern woman to do when her dogs reinforce the patriarchy?

I’m taking a week off from serious. It’s a combination of a bad head cold and a weeklong school break that has me fleeing from my usual socio-political thoughts. As always, if you like what I write, share it with your friends! If you hate what I write, share it with your enemies! Trigger warning: swear words and dog sex

There are a lot of reasons I’m glad I left the US a decade ago. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t see the educational value in taking kids on field trips to gay bars and assigning them books in which high school girls suck dick. 

But there’s an even more directly personal reason I’m glad I left the leafy, genteel confines of liberal Brooklyn for the rugged, rural hills of Northern Ireland. 

My dogs are so heteronormative I would have been banned from all the best Brooklyn dog parks. I just know it. 

Let me explain.

I was always a cat person, my whole life. I guess I was always attracted to their “sophisticated personae” and “advanced theatricality,” as Camille Paglia puts it. Cats have poise. They don’t slobber. I just assumed that dogs were simpler creatures, benign and slavish. 

To my shock, though, my dogs have shown me their dark side. They fully, 100 percent, embody damaging patriarchal stereotypes when it comes to gender. 

I noticed this soon after I got my first dog, a tiny little Dachshund we named Max. At first, he was just cute and small. But after only a few weeks, I noticed a disturbing trait. If an adult human male who wasn’t my partner entered the house when I was alone, Max would go crazy. He would stand between me and said male, biting at the hem of his trousers, barking furiously. He bit the electrician. But if my partner was home and a male would come in, Max would take an entirely different tack and ostentatiously scrape and bow to the stranger. Once, a Turkish neighbour came over to discuss something with Brian, and Max literally licked the man’s shoes. 

Don’t let the tiny paws fool you into thinking this dog is harmless.

Max’s message was clear. I — a female — was his property and he would defend my honour in the absence of his boss, my boyfriend. If my boyfriend was home, he was happy to just be second in command. No matter how much I tried to explain to him that I was a proud independent woman, he did not listen. Dachshunds are notorious for their stubbornness. 

Let loose into the world, Max would immediately head over to the nearest female dog and attempt to violently seduce her. Even though he is tiny and his legs are only a few inches long, he would mount absolutely anything. Once we bumped into friends who own a female Bernese mountain dog. She was large and in charge, so I just assumed she wouldn’t roll over for the first tiny pooch to come along. But to my horror, she immediately fell for Max and his macho shtick. She went straight over on her back, massive furry paws in the air. Max, triumphant, climbed up on her and was immediately lost in her furry girth. All you could see was his tiny butt sticking up out of her long coat, fruitlessly pumping away, somewhere around her abdomen. It was awkward for us all. Except the dogs, who seemed to be enjoying themselves a lot. 

Or, he would channel some inherent male chauvinist imperialism, cocking his leg over everything to piss on it and claim it as his own. Every shrub in the park. Any bag left on the floor. In one particularly toxic display of male privilege, he arrived at the home of my aunt, took a quick sniff of her living room, and proceeded to take a huge shit right on the carpet.

When we decided to get another dog, we settled on a Border Collie. They are smart and majestic. And we had to get a female so as to avoid a protracted territorial battle that would ensue if we got a male. “Good,” I thought to myself. “She will teach him the basics of respecting women.”

God, was I wrong. Turns out, our Collie — who we mistakenly named Bo after Boudicea, the Celtic warrior queen — is as submissive as Max is domineering. She’s also way too emotionally available, constantly seeking validation. 

Bo being too emotionally available, as per usual

Bo is smarter, faster and stronger than Max and most other male dogs she meets. But does she own her superiority? No. Quite the opposite. She shrinks herself down so as not to make the male feel bad. Once, we were at the beach when my two dogs encountered another dog, a male Lab. He was big and stupid but Bo was instantly infatuated with him (as was Max, weirdly.) I had brought them to play Bo’s favourite game, which was to run as fast as the wind after her bouncy orange ball. The Lab got involved, which was fine at first, until I saw what Bo was doing. Even though she was much faster than he was, every time she was nearly at the ball SHE WOULD SLOW DOWN SO THE LAB COULD CATCH IT FIRST.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was letting this big stupid male privilege motherfucker win at her favourite game!!!! She was basically pretending to be bad at math to protect his ego, like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls! So every time, this random Lab trotted back to me with the ball in his mouth, all proud of himself. At which point, he’d drop the ball at my feet and Max would jump up on his back and start humping away, furiously. Max is gay for other Alphas. 

Which brings me to the most disturbing part of all. Max is super rapey. It doesn’t have to be a female. It doesn’t even have to be a dog. Once, I was talking on the phone and I guess he didn’t like that. So he climbed up onto my lap, grabbed my forearm with his surprisingly strong, stubby front paws and locked onto my arm and just started — WHAM! — pounding away. 

Also, he manspreads. He constantly has his balls out. He sits up straight on the couch, like a human, little back legs spread, bait and tackle dangling for all the world to see. 

If he did this on the Subway, he’d be arrested.

And even though he is brown — which is confusing, I admit — he has all the confidence of a mediocre white man. When we are going for walks on the country roads where we live, if a car comes barrelling down the road, Bo immediately goes to the grass verge and sits there until the car is safely passed, like the good girl she is. Max on the other hand, stands his ground. He cannot conceive of a world in which the car does not magically move out of his way. He’s in charge. He bears down on the road, as the car speeds towards us, while I furiously tug on his leash, dragging him to safety. I bet you any money he thinks that it’s his magic strength that saves him from the car, not my indefatigable female efforts, every time.