browsing random photos of purebred cats today...

[sciatrix]

...because while I have very little interest in owning a purebred cat, I like looking at them sometimes. And purebred Maine Coons are eldritch motherfuckers, which is always fun to look at.

This is how I stumbled across this Metatron Eyes cattery, which holy shit looks like one of the nicest, most ethically put together catteries I've ever seen. Damn. If I wanted a purebred cat, this is the sort of place I'd want to buy it from and support. I mean, in practice I have a strong preference for mildly special-needs cats with extremely strong personalities, and it's just straight up easier to find that sort of thing by going through rescue, and we have such a massive feral problem worldwide that sourcing random-bred cats isn't hard. But it's nice to know that if people are going to be breeding cats, there are people out there working to do it with as much attention to quality of life in their animals as possible.

(As I was writing this, Arthur Dent stomped up, crawled into my lap, and immediately started purring himself to sleep. Aw.)

I was having an interesting Twitter conversation about the weird cultural projections that different regions of the US put on dogs this morning, including a guess that a dog from rural Georgia might have some blackmouth cur in her (quite possible!) and some regional discussion of what people expect out of dog manners, so this is quite a nice bookend for my day. I've been thinking about how dog culture in the US might change as dogs in need of homes become less and less common (as they already are in many areas), especially as spay/neuter culture penetrates the US South, and how racism and classism inform rescue culture and the way different breeds and types of dogs are often promoted. (Especially with respect to pit bulls. It is impossible to understand the cultural trajectory of pit bulls in the US without understanding the racial associations and aspects of the dogs, and it's uncomfortably interesting watching the ways that different groups try to promote the breed for adoption by, well, presenting them as middle class white person dogs too.

People get pretty weird about it.

Disclaimer because it's a loaded topic: my opinions on pit bulls are:
a) they are dogs,
b) all dogs are perfectly capable of doing horrific damage to a human, if they are so behaviorally inclined,
c) there's a lot of really dumb myths out there about pit bulls specifically,
d) pits do tend towards dog aggression no matter what you do, and "it's not the breed it's how you raise them!" is a somewhat dangerous oversimplification,
e) that said "pit bull" is an enormous and extremely heterogeneous population that contains a wide variety of temperaments, body types, energy levels, drive levels, etc etc as well as at least five breeds of dog, some of them extremely popular in the US,
f) shelter workers are notoriously awful at breed identification and everyone is awful at identifying mixes,
g) that there are a lot of really fucked up expectations in North America regarding dog behavior and opportunities for socialization, and breed based legislation is a way less effective way to minimize dog bites than public education and dangerous dog laws.

I am currently taking a long break from MeFi after I, uh, got hit pretty hard in the exclusion trauma side of things in a thread about wlw. Again. So it's nice to have DW to come back to and natter in, and the hell with everything else for a bit.

Comments

[gentlyepigrams]

Wow that is an ugly thread and I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire of angry people there.

[sciatrix]

Thank you. I'm (as per usual on this topic for me) really questioning my own assessment and perceptions, so this is helpful and steadying for me to hear.

[gentlyepigrams]

As a middle-aged woman who has never explored her identity (gender or sexuality) beyond what I was raised with/to be, I found that thread kind of scary.

I'm happily married and have no reason to explore but if I were so inclined, that is not a community I would be willing to expose my vulnerability to.

I get not wanting to be some rich kid's learning experience. I read her behavior/comments as going far beyond that. My husband used to date a bi woman before he met me and that thread reminded me a lot of things he has told me about hearing from the bi woman he dated in the 90s, when a lot of hardcore second wavers were still active in the local scene in Houston.

Wherever her heart is, FMK is effectively operating in bad faith where you're concerned. ~siderea nailed the dynamic. You should just leave her alone. Not because her comments deserve to stand unchecked--they don't--but because all you get when you lead a horse's ass to the fountain of wisdom is a big steaming load of horse puckey.

[siderea]

So, that's, what? At least the second time you've had that same run in with Metafilter user FMK? She says something which sounds exclusionary, you reply to her with something the upshot of which is "hey that felt exclusionary, do you mind" but doesn't actually expressly say that, she replies to you doubling down on the exclusionariness, and you feel extra-special excluded.

I think you don't have to stick your fork in that lightsocket any more? I think we conclude that, yep, she means to be exclusionary, and, yep, she'll reliably exclude you as hard as she can.

[sciatrix]

And at least the fifth with bile and syntax!

Thank you for this comment, by the way. It's hard for me to... let's say give up, when it feels like someone is explicitly trying to reach for inclusivity but implicitly refusing to meet me in the middle, for a whole bunch of reasons. Having someone external look at the situation and back me up is really grounding, especially when I'm floundering and not trusting my own perceptions.

I feel like that discussion is a really great example of the reasons that many non-lesbian wlw tend to pause and consider lesbians with mistrust, which tends to be self reinforcing and encourage more exclusionary ideas to solidify within lesbian culture. I have absolutely no idea what to do about it, and there are way too many people in that discussion who don't have the lived experience to pick up the dog whistles on that conversation to figure out what is happening and why.

I'm pulling myself out of the site right now because part of me feels like I don't have the right to be shaky and hyperfocused on the dynamic and unable to emotionally regulate if I'm not doing anything to fix this specific thing, or if I'm not advocating to be heard despite the grim experience that says it's not likely to happen here.

The cracks at the split attraction model and the characterization of that model as toxic are really making me feel unsafe, because they are signaling: ah. I'm right. You really don't respect me except insofar as I pretend to be lesbian enough for you. And if I try to talk about my actual perspectives and opinions, you will tell me I'm really not welcome, that I'm a traitor or something.

But this is mostly manifesting as biphobia, and I don't have quite the right rhetorical background to come in swinging on that front, and my "hey I'm not straight passing" tactic isn't working either... and at the end of the day, it's going to be toxic and holding an open discussion about it is not going to change anything to make the space better.

I just.

Ahaha, it's really hard giving myself room to be as upset as I am without throwing myself back on the middle of the whole thing over and over and over again.

[siderea]

Ahaha, it's really hard giving myself room to be as upset as I am without throwing myself back on the middle of the whole thing over and over and over again.

I'd noticed that you seemed to be acting compulsively, and were caught in a whirlpool you needed to be pulled out of.

part of me feels like I don't have the right to be shaky and hyperfocused on the dynamic and unable to emotionally regulate if I'm not doing anything to fix this specific thing

Well, it did not look to me like the thing you were doing to fix it was working, nor did it look to me like a thing that would ever work, so your doing it more and harder (and as above, compulsively) doesn't really seem to me to be something you should feel obligated to do.

There may be ways to engage that are more satisfying to you, in that they stand up for your perspective, say. But what you've been doing is not that. The urge you feel to do that specific thing is not getting you closer to that, and is not actually serving any morally principled felt urgency to stand up for what is right.

The cracks at the split attraction model and the characterization of that model as toxic are really making me feel unsafe, because they are signaling: ah. I'm right. You really don't respect me except insofar as I pretend to be lesbian enough for you.

There is no amount of pretending to be a lesbian what will be enough for her to respect you. :)

And if I try to talk about my actual perspectives and opinions, you will tell me I'm really not welcome, that I'm a traitor or something.

She will tell you that you're not a lesbian. Which in her head is correct because she – and she's not the only lesbian to do so – has defined "lesbian" to be something other than just a woman who is exclusively attracted to women. She's got this whole construct in her head about how being a Lesbian is completely transformative of your whole personality in a way which means anybody who doesn't share in that personality transformation isn't really a Lesbian. No matter whom they boff or snuggle.

at the end of the day, it's going to be toxic and holding an open discussion about it is not going to change anything to make the space better

Yeah, the thing that gets me is why you are trying the open discussion approach here. If some dude were being misogynist and "just asking questions" about women's compentence in science, you wouldn't try to engage in "open discussion" with him, you'd drop an umpteen page formally argued riot act on his head explaining, with foot notes, why he is full of shit. And we know this because you did.

I mean, is the problem here that because it's Metafilter, you're not in a position to flame these people as they so richly deserve?

[silversandbea]

Oh man, I read the first part of that thread but decided not to engage, and hadn't realized how bad that thread had gotten. I'm sorry you had to experience that (and I totally get the impulse to engage - especially when it doesn't seem like anyone else is going to engage, and I don't want those statements to just hang about unchallenged).

With dogs - I think a lot about this with 'working' dog breeds, and ones that don't really have the temperament for a sedentary housepet. Obviously there's individual variation, but some breeds need a lot of exercise or space to run around in - and what's the future of those breeds? I grew up in an area where a lot of the people who had dogs had them for security (and there were always rumors of the family member of a friend who was into dogfighting). So I knew people who had pits, but I also didn't grow up with the idea that dogs were friendly - when I went to college and met people who just ran up to strangers' dogs, it was the weirdest moment of culture clash. There were also a ton of strays in the area, but the difference is that people would adopt the cats if they seemed friendly enough and leave food out even if they weren't. Enough of the stray dogs were former fighting/guard dogs that were dumped that most people wouldn't trust them or want to encourage them to stick around.

[sciatrix]

So my experience with high-energy breeds of dog is actually that it's not the room they need, it's the time and mental stimulation. (There are exceptions, but generally dogs tire out and settle down if you work them hard mentally just as humans do. And going out and experiencing stimuli outside is pretty tiring! City dogs who don't have a lot of space but spend a lot of time walking get a much more densely stimulating environment than suburban yard dogs who have room and no real reason to use it.)

I think the future of these breeds of dogs will depend heavily on whether there are enough humans who like them and who have some free time to spend with such a dog. The closer to a forty-hour work week we stay, the more I think the future of most dogs is perfectly fine. There are only a few exceptions--mostly the more behaviorally extreme flock guard/estate guard breeds, like the Fila Brasiliero and the Caucasian Ovcharka, and mostly with them I think population density makes it very unsafe to have large, independent, territorially aggressive dogs. But those dogs aren't the same as pit bulls; the Filas are the descendents of the Cuban bloodhounds and Spanish mastiffs that were used heavily in the US to hunt escaped slaves, and the Ovcharkas are flock guard breeds with very high levels of aggression and defensiveness. By contrast, flock guard breeds of dogs who are less extreme in their levels of aggression, like Great Pyrenees and Anatolian Shepherds, are doing just fine. Both are actually very popular pets in my neck of the woods, because there are a lot of intact dogs who are kept on farms and the pups who don't go on to take guard jobs often wind up in pet homes. With a little socialization and training, they make great pets.

I don't think that people should keep dogs "for security," in part because... well, bluntly, a dog who lives his whole life in a tiny yard (or worse, on a chain) isn't going to do jack to someone trying to break into a house. That house isn't part of the dog's territory, the place where the dog lives is the dog's territory. Anyway, a dog is much more helpful for home protection as a watchdog rather than a guard dog--a little yappy dog who will bark when something goes off is not something a burglar wants to risk, and that's actually a bigger deterrent than the threat of a bite. But you want a dog who knows what normal looks like, and a yard dog... won't.

(Tribble is actually the first dog I've ever had who I am 100% sure would try to bite if someone tried to hurt me, and I'm not really thrilled about it: I want my dogs to think that protecting me from other humans is not their problem.)

We actually also have a lot of stray dogs in our neighborhood--I think a lot of people dump them out here?--and they're also often pit or mastiff types. My spouse and I are pretty good judges of canine body language and usually will try to catch them with a slip lead and drop them off at our local shelter, which tries very hard to adopt out all its dogs, and the ones we can get a hold of are generally friendly enough.

[silversandbea]

Oh yeah, it's less that it was a good idea to keep guard dogs (I don't think it is, and training dogs to be vicious is one of those things that will reliably make me upset and angry just thinking about it) and more that it was just the predominant context where I grew up - most people didn't have dogs for friendly reasons.

There were some exceptions - my next door neighbor ended up rescuing a siberian husky that ended up being lent out as a running buddy for a few generations of high school cross-country athletes, but for the most part people had dogs to instill fear, and the common reaction to all dogs was at least a healthy sense of caution.

(editing to mention that the next paragraph and attached news article can be upsetting, per the training animals to be vicious and resulting consequences - don't feel like you need to engage or read if you don't want to)

In retrospect, I still can't blame folks in that area for being wary of the neighborhood strays - there was a case while I was in high school where some joggers were mauled by some of the stray dogs in said nearby dumping ground, and one of joggers died. It's an incredibly rare occurrence, and happened because they were being trained to be aggressive, but I also remember refusing to go through the woods alone to avoid getting harassed by the dogs before the incident. I'm not half as wary of stray dogs where I am now, but I also know a lot more folks around me that just have dogs as pets.

[writerkit]

...welp, that was a scary thread. Things like that are why I've never tried to join MetaFilter even though it's occasionally interesting. I see that discussion as being very similar to some of my ultra-left college acquaintances, the ones who think that anyone who disagrees with them on any point no matter how small or how nuanced is just as bad as the Republicans. You're never going to convince people like that; they're too bound up in needing to be the Most Oppressed to engage in good faith-- it's like they think if they acknowledge that they're capable of hurting people it invalidates their own pain. I spent a while seeking approval of people like that and then a while longer bashing my head against their walls, and now... I'm not sure there *is* an answer, except keep forming our own spaces where all of us who fall into "other" can hide out, because they're always so determined that they are Right and True and therefore anyone who disagrees is The Enemy. It's a very black-and-white worldview and those of us on the outside are all nuance.

[kaberett]

Hopefully will brain more later, but quickly: these people are explicitly telling you they're not interested in listening to you or communicating in good faith. It's probably worth believing them and approaching accordingly.

(I appreciated what you had to say.)