Another Look at the "Gendered" Species By Benigno V. Faral (April, 2004)

I once had a friend whose real name was Virgilio and we used to call him Billy. He whole-heartedly accepted to be named, firstly, because to him it sounded better than "Viong" or "Virgiling" and secondly, it somehow provided him a kind of connection with his pop idol, and namesake (Tukayo Kami), Billy Joel. Even the manliest of men will not mind being called Billy especially without any suspicion that the first name is Avelino, or Abelardo or Isabelo--- not until he discovers that Billy is a male goat. And his machismo has the lowly Nanny as its match, not Nanny the baby sitter but Nanny the female goat.

What one cannot seem to comprehend is why "mare' does not match with "pare" but rather with a stallion. There is something wrong a somewhere--- and I do not mean this polluted mind. He has to review his grammar specifically the noun genders because this makes not that famous address everyone prefixes to the name of Winnie Monsod of "Debate", but a female horse which has stallion as the masculine counter part. We say that when it swims, walks and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Not puttee, because a drake, the male of the species acts and looks like a duck, the female but no matter, it is still a drake.

This fowl’s cousin, the goose has surely gained tremendous recognition if we were to judge by such mouthpieces as granny goose or mother goose, which explicitly announce that a goose is a site. However, with the absence of gander recall to match, I doubt if it ever registered into kid’ collective consciousness that goose and gander are opposite. How about a grandly (Grand Daddy) gander for a consumer or pop gander for a nursery rhyme 2 by then. One has the choice to describe his feeling of coldness as either having goose pimple or gander acne depending on his skin condition.

We indiscriminately call a canine or a Dalmatian a "Dog" thinking that this four-legged animal has that term as its common name. "Dog" of course is masculine while the feminine is "bitch". That is perhaps the reason why nobody ever wants to be called son-of-a bitch, granting that the more serious implication is put aside. I am just wondering if calling him son-of-a-dog equally demeans one.