& Sometimes Female Mammals Have Dicks.

I was googling spay and neuter of dogs because I recently got a new puppy (more on that traumatic experience later). Obviously at only a few months old, she isn’t fixed yet. Given that humans barely understand the ramifications of snatching out reproductive parts in women–or women’s health for that matter, I wanted to be a responsible pet mom and understand exactly what I was taking away from my female puppy and what that could mean for her later on in her bitchhood.

I was not prepared to find out the things I learned in a span of 20 to 30 minutes curiously clicking links related to mammalian sexuality. Turns out not only does my female pup have a urethra, vulva, vagina, uterus, cervix, ovaries, oviducts, and mammary glands–she has a clitoris! Now maybe this isn’t surprising to you, but I kinda just though female dogs only humped to express dominance…In reality, female dogs can experience pleasure from humping just like male dogs. (And just like humans, only female dogs will be judged for having normal wants & desires!) Consequently, the presence of a clitoris only leads me to believe that my dog might like being intact. Then again, I have no idea of what gets removed or snipped during a spay. As barbaric as female humans are treated, I have reasonable concerns.

What I discovered is that a spay in the US is both a ovariectomy and hysterectomy–the removal of both ovaries and uterus, or ovariohysterectomy. Worth noting is that a female dog can be sterilized by just removing the ovaries alone. Of course, in typical fashion, the US stands alone in the practice of invasively removing all of the reproductive system. It has to be clear that I have a preference for an ovariectomy. It cost less, the animal heals faster, and anesthesia is shorter. If I have the option, I will be making sure my veterinarian is aware of my desire to leave my pup’s uterus where it belongs. So once I concluded my research on my options for spaying my pup, here’s when shit got weird.

Not only do dogs have clitorises, all mammals do! Strangely enough, one of the mammals with the biggest clit is the hyena. Hyenas are funny because they are socially organized in a matriarchal fashion: the females are larger than the males and they are exposed to a significant amount of testosterone while they develop in the womb. The result is a beefy female hyena with a large clitoris. So large in fact, that it resembles a penis. The travesty here isn’t that the hyena has an intersex appearance, but rather the fact that a female hyena must give birth through her peni-I mean clitoris. Yup.

And we thought childbirth was hard on black women! Most first time hyena mothers die during child birth as their clitoris is split open for the delivery of the pups. Ouch! I know I should stop here but I can’t help myself. This knowledge leads me to believe that male humans probably could deliver a child with a little help from science. Of course nobody wants to see this happen but I can’t help but wonder, wouldn’t it be nice if men could experience the joys of pregnancy/child birth?