Tale wags dog in shaggy dog story of “gender reassignment surgery”

A shaggy dog story is a long-winded, pointless story.

Here we have an article about a not-so shaggy dog, a jack russell.

The article recounts how one pet owner paid for a veterinarian to fix her dog’s genetic sexual abnormality of pseudohermaphroditism.  As the abnormality often renders the animal sterile, the cost and trauma of the event is usually resolved by putting the dog down.  The humane owner decided to pay for the surgery.

The way in which the tale is told suggests to the reader that the animal suffers from gender dysphoria, even if there is no evidence that animals have a psyche, a morally-reflective intellectual nature.  The fact that human beings do is what makes them responsible for their pets.

The story in fact conflates the physical problem of the dog’s sex with a psychological one of gender, and it resolves the sexual problem by suggesting it was treated psychologically, even though the dog had surgery.

Naive individuals would say that it sloppy journalism; careless ones would see no harm in the confusion; but a simple veterinary fix of a genetic abnormality just so happens to sentimentalize and humanize what the political progressives want to enforce as a humane measure on the population at large.

On second thought, this story isn’t pointless.  It’s a morality tale.  And the tale wags the dog.

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