Transgenderism is in the news a lot these days. Being a cat ‘expert’ 😃😎 I considered whether neutering male cats makes them transgender as the operation removes that part of the anatomy which produces testosterone; a hormone which makes a male cat male (see below for more on this).
The question in the title makes us think about transgenderism and is therefore useful. The answer is No; the neutering operation does not make a male cat transgender by human standards because transgenderism is about how a person identifies in terms of their gender.
In my terms it is about a disconnect between how a person feels about their gender and their anatomy which reflects their biological gender.
When humans have transgender surgery they are trying to match their anatomy to the gender with which they identify. The surgery follows the mentality not the other way around.
Surgery such as removing testicles does not make a man or a male cat transgender. That is the first point.
The second point is perhaps more obvious. Transgenderism is a purely human concept. Animals don’t, it is believed, possess the mentality to think about transgenderism.
There is one type of cat that comes close to being transgender: the male tortoiseshell. A rare cat as nearly all tortoiseshell cats and calico cats (tortie-and-white) are females.
They have a slightly mixed up gender according to Dr Desmond Morris. He describes them like this:
Because the tortoiseshell male cat was neither fully male not fully female, it did not feel the need to compete in these single-sex pecking-order disputes. In all other respects it was also peculiar…It did not court or attempt to mate with females on heat, even through it appeared to be anatomically well equiped to do so.
The last sentence would indicate that male tortie cats are asexual (disinterested in sex) and not transgender. We have to exclude cats from the transgender debate as it is for humans alone. Until and if we discover more about animals. We are learning all the time that animals are more like us in many ways.
Katie Ann Holton writing on Reddit.com sums it up nicely:
Someone is transgender if their gender identity does not match the gender that was declared at their birth. We have no evidence that cats even have a sense of their own identity, much less their gender identity. Any surgeries a transgender person may or may not have are tools for treating gender dysphoria. The do not make someone transgender.
That is the last point to make: are cats self-aware? Do the know who they are? Can they observe themselves and assess themselves as humans do all the time? We think not. The current evidence points to cats not being self-aware. In which case it is a further nail in the coffin of proposing that they can be transgender.
Testosterone and cats
Neutering male cats involves the removal of their testicles, which are the primary source of testosterone production. However, it’s essential to understand the effects of neutering on testosterone levels and behavior:
Testosterone Production After Neutering: After a male cat is neutered, it takes some time for the body to adjust, and the testosterone levels start decreasing significantly. Typically, it can take up to a few weeks for the cat’s testosterone levels to decrease after neutering.
While most of the testosterone will be gone, some residual production may remain, mainly in the adrenal glands. However, this remaining amount is insignificant compared to what was produced before.
Daily Mail story
In a recent story on the Daily Mail website, a woman decided for medical reasons to have her male cat’s penis removed. And the newspaper now has the erroneous headline that the owner, a nurse, “is the proud owner of a transgender cat after it was forced to have sex change surgery to relieve urinary problems”.
Obviously, this is exactly what I have been discussing above. A change in anatomy does not create a change in mentality. It is the other way around. The Daily Mail is having some fun with the transgender topic which is probably debatable anyway because I don’t think it is a good idea to joke around the topic of transgenderism as it is too serious a matter for many people.
That said, the story I referred to makes no difference to the fundamental acceptance that domestic cats can’t be transgender because the mentality is missing unless we know more one day.
