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:
lowquacks – I thought of that, and it’d have the benefit that a croc who’s eaten MRAs might build up enough resistance to poison to be safe eating cane toads.
Since this is the Animals of Cuteness thread, here’s Maddie being invisible:
http://youtu.be/GYYJmSkECds
And practising her squirms:
http://youtu.be/iEeydHVpcmk
That’s just laziness. You can train a good recall without aversives; my puppy (who just passed her third SAR certification test, only one more to go before she’s out there saving lives woot) has faced positive punishment (and only rarely do I use negative punishment), and I have successfully called her off of other dogs, deer, bicycles, and dead animals that she wanted to roll in and/or eat. And keep in mind she’s an incredibly high-drive working dog, the kind that supposedly loses her mind when in prey drive, and only 10 months old right now. My cadaver dog and one of my herding dogs have similar histories; the others I got when they were older but I know I only used positive methods on them. My GSD competes in Schutzhund which requires extreme obedience, and excels at that aspect with no aversives (he’s not a top-notch SchH dog but mostly due to his lack of drive in bite work).
Don’t get me wrong, everyone has their lazinesses. My own dogs are a bit notorious for counter surfing and for jumping up on people, the former because it takes a lot more effort to train that out of them than to just put the loaf of bread on top of the fridge where they can’t reach it and the latter because I kinda like it when they jump on me. 😉 But you can absolutely have an obedient dog without using aversive training methods. I depend on it, since my dogs typically work off-leash and are required to range out far enough that I cannot see them, but I need to be able to recall them at a moment’s notice if they’re in danger. An emergency stop (I shout “down” and my dogs drop to the ground, even when in full pursuit of wildlife) and a solid recall are actually tests that my cadaver and search dogs have to pass to work, and my entire team uses only “positive” training methods (our team manual is one of Karen Pryor’s books).
Well, I’m not going to wish being croc-eaten on anyone, but anyone who feels the need to pull some manly-man act with animals to feel good about themselves would have to be incredibly stupid to try that with a crocodile.
I mean, Steve Irwin and his ilk wrestle/d crocs, but there’s a great deal of respect for the animal and its power involved there.
Er, in that first sentence I meant that my puppy has *never* faced positive punishment. I guess maybe I occasionally use a verbal cue that could be construed as an aversive (like “quite” or “unh-unh”), but that’s it.
Whether it’s laziness, or the person doesn’t really know how to train their dog, or the dog’s just hyper at being in the park with all the other dogs, I don’t know (obviously, lol) – my point was that the people I see aren’t taking sadistic pleasure in punishing their dogs for their own shortcomings.
@Kittehs
Maddie’s friend/sibling/begrudging housemate has such a similar pattern to her!
lowquacks – I wouldn’t wish being hunted and shot on a crocodile who’d eaten one of these types.
That’s Freya (mostly known as Fribs or Fribbie) and yes, they’re both tortie/tabby and white. Indifferent housemate is prolly the term for her. 😀
Mads has the cutest white bib and paws I’ve ever seen. She keeps them so clean and they’re so fluffy. Then of course there’s teh belleh.
@kittehs, no argument here! Sorry, just came off of a dog training message board where I was arguing that positive training doesn’t mean letting your dog get away with murder, so I was probably a bit oversensitive there. 😉 Sadly, in the dog world many people do believe that it’s either aversive-based training or rude dogs, and it gets tiring defending positive training/operant conditioning.
I do think that most people who have disobedient dogs just don’t know how to train them. At least when I was growing up, we had really unruly dogs and it was mostly because we tried several local trainers and all were of what we’d call in horse training the “jerk and spur” variety…I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a term for it in dog training, but it’s basically just punishing any reaction until the dog finally does what you want. We decided we were more comfortable with more-or-less out of control dogs than what felt like abuse to us.
I absolutely don’t blame average owners who have been exposed to that, or who simply don’t mind an unruly dog (but also don’t endanger it/other people).
But I’ll quit my dog training chat here, it’s a bit beyond the scope of this blog. 😉
Nothing wrong with cats themselves. But grown men who own cats…Dear god , the comedy is endless.
http://littlewhitelion.com/absolute-worst-pictures-of-men-and-cats-21060/
We use all positive methods at the shelter, too. So many of our dogs have been mistreated that the most important thing we’re teaching them is that we will never, ever hurt them!
Oh, I get where you’re coming from, AK! 🙂
Awww, the little troll boy is trotting out his insecurities again.
Isn’t it past his bedtime?
@Jonatma420
Thanks for the appreciation of the goings-on here, but while ringleader and blogger David, and I, are grown men with adorable fluffy kitty cats, most of the commenters here are actually women, with a wide range of pet choices and ages. Stay tuned for the Man Boobz Survey results for more information!
And thanks for the pictures of kitties and their happy owners!
jonatma: run along sweetie. We don’t care what you think is funny or not.
The door thing kills me. Remember Br_don’s unholy shitfit about doors and giving up bus seats? Good times.
B’s screeds of tedium were before my time, though I’ve skimmed a few (they make my eyes glaze over) – I think I vaguely remember the bus thing. Wasn’t he all indignant about the idea of giving up his bus seat to anyone not at death’s door?
Mr. AK only owned two cats when I met him. He loves dogs and cats both, but work forces him to travel too much to make owning a dog feasible (or at least, it wasn’t feasible when he was single). I frankly found it pretty sexy that he loved his cats so much. It showed a really caring, loving side of him that isn’t always obvious when you first meet him.
I mostly remember him for the filming-self-having-sex-to-avoid-false-accusations schtick, the insistence that he was a cryptographic genius, and forever bringing up his girlfriend when it was entirely irrelevant.
A rebuttal.
(Yes, it’s puppy-heavy. But there are kittens too.)
@lowquacks – Cryptographic genius? Hey, Di-g-es should get him to help with the Voynich Manuscript.
Oh and yes, the girlfriend. Wonder what happened to her, did she deflate?
@AK – I remember how overjoyed I was when I found Mr K loves kitties. He was known in his earthly time for being a dogs-birds-horses man; it was M de Richelieu who was notable for loving kitties (very anti-cat culture then, too). Mr K’s fondness for them seems to have slipped under the radar.
Still love the thought of the time he was in bed and two mastiffs jumped up on him all slurpy and kissy, though. Bed Destruction in one easy lesson.
So to join in on the fun. Here are a couple of videos of cats of mine. At least as of the time of the filming.
I am tired of the dominance and submission theories of PUAs and MRAs. They don’t understand trust, which is the fundamental basis of these relationships (even if they are short-lived).
Gah. I don’t want to rant on this.
Still, what about dominant gay people and submissive men who work in high powered jobs? *mutter mutter argle bargle*
I like their reasoning in that headline, katz. 😀
This post had me thinking that the MRM could be summed up as even worse than misogynistic. They are against love. Anything that means caring for someone else, human or not; anything that means putting someone else’s needs before your own, or indeed putting anything before your wants; anything involving tenderness, or respect, or liking, or affection, and they are against it. They’re cowards and bullies, stupid, petty people obsessed with their egos and rageboners. It really seems to me most of them hate love, or at best are full of baffled envy, because they see it and can’t feel it or inspire it. If they weren’t so contemptible they’d be pitiable.
“Stay tuned for the Man Boobz Survey results for more information!”
Stop distracting me with horse ears and fennec foxes!