When I bring up the subject of cats on this blog, as I so often do, it’s party because, well, I’m a bit of a fan. But it’s also because I know it confuses and irritates the misogynists who read this blog, inveterate cat-haters all (or almost all). I’ve never quite understood the depth of the animosity the guys in the manosphere seem to have towards cats.
But now one of these cat haters has provided us with a theoretical explanation for his catphobia. In a post with the suggestive title “Limp-Wristed Cat Lovers, Beautiful Dog Lovers,” the guy behind the PUA blog LaidInNYC explains why real men — and real women — hate cats and love dogs instead.
Dogs are loyal, obedient, and affectionate.
Masculine men love these qualities in our companions, and they are qualities we want in our women as well.
Cats are selfish, independent, and alpha.
Masculine men hate these qualities in our companions. This is because masculine men are the owners, not the owned.
Huh. It’s weird how these descriptions of “alpha males” often read like confessions of massive insecurity. So “masculine men” are so insecure they can’t stand being challenged even by their pets? They’re so threatened by the independence of other creatures that they can’t tolerate a pet that might sometimes wander off into another room to take a nap?
But according to Mr. LaidInNYC, it’s the cat-loving dudes who are the sissies:
95% of men who love cats are either gay or have sub fantasies*. If you like cats, you like not being in control.
Well, all except for a small-percentage of super-alpha dudes who are so manly they can tame even the mighty housecat:
There are a small percentage of straight alpha seducers that like to own cats. The reason is they love dominating an already dominant living thing. They like to stare down and dominate their cats just because they can.
Welcome to my world.
Well, ok, sometimes the cats stare me down.
But what about the women? If masculine men love dogs, shouldn’t feminine women love cats? Then why do manosphere dudes so regularly hurl abuse on women with cats?
Well, LaidInNYC has an answer for that: it turns out that truly feminine women actually prefer dogs to cats, but for a totally different reason than men.
While men love the loyalty and obedience, girls are much more likely to coo over a dogs unconditional love, furry cuddles, and “look how cute he looks when he does that thing with his paw” type stuff.
Feminine girls love their dogs but they don’t enjoy training them, letting them run in an open field and feeling pride when the dog comes right back when called, punishing them when necessary, etc. …
Most of the feminine dog lovers I know already have strong male dominance types in their life, be it a strong father, boyfriend, or husband, and they just like the dog as another source of love. … cats are superfluous when you have a man to obey.
It’s a different story indeed for “the masculine, ugly, old, short-haired, barren feminists who end up being cat ladies.”
Ugly masculine girls, on the other hand, cannot find a male to dominate them in their social life because they lack the beauty. Since being dominated by a strong independent entity who doesn’t need her is so important to a woman, she must seek out that domination. Ugly girls find this in either a career, feminism, cats, or some combination of the three.
A job, a cat, some feminism: the holy trinity of MISANDRY.
I’m not not exactly sure how any of these things “dominate” women, but since Mr. LaidInNYC doesn’t actually seem to know anything about anything, I guess I’ll let that one slide.
In the meantime, I would like to treat you all to pictures of some of the evil independent creatures that make alpha males tremble in fear:
RE: LabRat
That seems to be how that book works. Very mysterious!
Regarding dog shows, my family used to own a timid, quiet yellow lab who was an ex-show dog. Very sweet dog, though easily terrified for the first few years; I got the sense she hadn’t been treated that great.
And as far as animals go, not gonna lie, not a big fan of horses. I have a larger respect for cows.
Horses scare the shit out of me, actually…
This isn’t to say I DISLIKE horses, I met some very nice ones over the years, and I do like that we CAN ride a horse. Just as far as general temperament trends and such go, horses aren’t really my thing. Too jittery.
“95% of men who love cats are either gay or have sub fantasies*. If you like cats, you like not being in control.”
Fuck.You.
Is he psychic? How does he know any given woman considers herself attractive?
Or, more likely, does he behave like such a shit that he gets flipped off regularly?
He’d have freaked out this morning. A young woman held the door open for me, and I thanked her! Then I held the door open for a young guy and he thanked me! BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Am I the only one who wants to wait until he goes into a building and then position women by all the exits?
Mads feels the same way, but has her instant revenge. Yowls all the way to the vet (I have to walk her up there in her carrier in a shopping trolley) and takes a dump while she’s at it. Then yowls all the way back.
katz – I like your thinking.
Make sure they’re pushing strollers, too.
Seriously, in the unlikely event this happened outside his head, how many women (or men, for that matter) object to someone holding a door when they’re pushing one of those huge great things? I’ve certainly never seen such a thing and there are plenty of people struggling with strollers on the public transport system.
I would support doxxing* for this very limited purpose. 😀
Given that two of my first childhood experiences with horses involved (a) a horse I was riding mistaking a garden hose for a snake and bolting, completely out of control, until my cousin (that white knight mangina) chased us down and was able to catch the reins, and (b) a different horse going from full canter to dead stop, causing me to fly through the air, you’d think I would be afraid of horses. But hope. Horse ears are still one of my favorite things in the world, so soft and fuzzy and twitchy and communicative and totally endearing.
*No, not really. In case there are any trolls lurking hoping to quote mine.
This may be a bit of an odd thing to pick out, given that this guy literally said that he wants to own women, but what is it with redpill people and short hair? I thought they were all about evolution and biotruth. Does lady hair start growing much faster than man hair once puberty hits, or does it just become as hard as steel and impossible to cut?
I’ve heard this several times, and I’m genuinely interested in the mental contortionisms required to justify it. Anyone ever hear someone ‘splain this?
LBT- it may not have been that she was poorly treated so much as she was never really socialized. Some of the larger conformation kennels keep a large proportion of their dogs in runs; they’re very well trained for ring behavior, getting along with other dogs, and what they need to show and travel, but have never necessarily been inside, say, a living room.
Possibly needless to say, I disagree with this approach for a number of reasons…
cloudiah, I see your horse ears and raise you foal ears.
Lookit the little fuzzies!!!
Long hair on women has been A Thing in Western culture at least for centuries. A particularly unpleasant character in the 1630s, William Prynne, wrote a toxic little effort about how women with short hair and actresses were whores, and that God gave women long hair to modestly cover themselves. (He seems to have missed out on the invention of clothing.) He also thought men with long hair were Evil Sodomites or something, which made it a trifle ironic when he was convicted of sedition, or some such, and had his ears cropped. He had to grow his hair long to cover the scars.
FUZZY FOAL EARS. That’s it, you just killed me with cuteness. I am now a zombie.
I love horses – went through the horsey stage as a kid, growing up reading the Silver Brumby series – but I’m a little nervous on the rare occasions I meet them. They are so big and I’m not experienced in reading their body language or making mine work for them. Plus I imagine they’d pick up on any nervousness and that’d make matters worse.
But those ears! The cuteness!!
Y’know, I never thought of it that way but you’re 100% correct. And I say this as a professional dog trainer with some proven dogs under her belt (SAR dogs, cadaver dogs, detection dogs, as well as titled dogs in IPO/Schutzhund, herding and agility). It always makes me so angry when people pretend you need to abuse a dog to get it to obey you; operant conditioning (which is reward-based rather than aversive-based like much of classical conditioning) is scientifically proven to be far more effective. And also, DOGS AREN’T WOLVES AND EVEN THOSE STUDIES OF WOLVES ARE FLAWED BECAUSE THEY WERE BASED ON MIXED GROUPS OF ADULTS IN CAPTIVITY RATHER THAN THE FAMILY UNITS THAT WOLVES IN THE WILD ORGANIZE THEMSELVES INTO. Er, sorry, I’ve just had that argument about why dogs “need” to be dominated a few too many times.
@Dvarg, re: the point about women dominating (haha) in the dog world: Absolutely. I think it’s especially funny because I’m on 3 SAR teams (one technical rescue, one comms/support and one K9 team) and the tech rescue team and the comms team are both 80% male. This has held true over almost all the SAR teams I’ve known (which is a lot). You know the exception? Dog teams. They’re usually fairly gender balanced or largely female (the one I’m on is about 90% female; we have one male handler and the rest are in support roles ATM, although for full disclosure we have three prospective dog/handler teams where the handler is male…but most prospective members of any gender drop out before the 12-month probationary period is up due to the extreme time commitment that K9 SAR requires and that most people of any gender aren’t really capable of or because their dog washes out of the training, so we don’t count them yet). My Schutzhund club is also almost exclusively female; we have two men involved, but neither is very active.
As a professional dog trainer, most of the everyday clients I see are also women. If it’s a married/committed hetero couple, the woman still tends to take a more active role in training the dog. In my profession, for whatever reason, if I were to generalize based on gender I’d say that cis men place far less value on obedience than cis women do. Of course I’m not an idiot so I actually don’t think it is anything inherent to the gender.
As a feminine lady who loves dogs and is happily married to an alpha male (by all their standards that I can determine, anyway…I personally just find him to be kind and loving and funny), I just can’t help but laugh.
LBT: Oh. My. Gawd. The haunted vagina stuff is terrible!
However. “You have to get out of here. Your vagina is haunted.” had me rolling. I’m going to work that into a conversation sometime soon.
Zombie cloudiah needs HORSE EARS!!!
White horse ears!
Brown horse ears!
Tan horse ears!
Horse ears at sundown!
This guy has never met my mother’s cats. Or her poodles.
Then again, said cats are partially raised by poodles who were in part raised by cats.
Those brown horse ears!
VELVET FUZZ
Zombie cloudiah, do you like donkey ears?
AK, this is the study I believe you’re talking about.
Donkey ears are also adorable, particularly because the ratio of ears to animal is so favorable to the ears. (Donkeys are about 75% ears, it is scientific fact!)
Ear cuteness!
more donkey ears
How about a Grevy’s zebra foal?
Or there’s always corgis.
… now don’t eat this one, WordPress you bastaaaard!
Animal about 90% ears.