It's a long-established Marmaduke convention that "poodle" means "female". In reality, a breed cannot be all of one sex, but in the Marmaduke World of Wackiness, common sense doesn't apply!
So imagine my surprise when I saw a male poodle in Marmaduke this morning (I don't know how Marmaduke's owner knows its sex, but apparently he does). This calls into question the slippage between biological sex and the performance of gender, because this poodle, while being referred to as "he", is performing what would be culturally interpreted in Marmaduke World as feminine. Yes, a transgender dog.
But there are a few serious questions that this edition of Marmaduke raises:
- How did a dog buy into a human construction like gender?
- Why is a Great Dane going to a "barber" when it doesn't need to?
- Does that poodle have a moustache? Does that count as genderfuck?
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