- 2016 Eeny Teeny Maya Moe. – “This is a great thing for you: you went from sitting on the sidelines to getting in the game! Sometimes, when you least expect it, you realise that someone loved you. That means someone can love you again. That’ll make you smile.”
- 1304 Eat, Pray, Queef. -“You really think women care that much about queefing? Is that really what you think this has all been about? This has been about women having a little bit of fun for once, at your expense. For just this one time, we could be the immature ones to make you feel uncomfortable. But no – you just couldn’t let us have that one, little thing, could you? Because even though things are getting better for women, you still think of us as lesser people sometimes, and we always have to prove ourselves twice as hard. Congratulations, guys. For getting your way. Again.”
Tag - gender
That’s a very interesting question. I Googled around but couldn’t find any answers, so I turned to the OED.
cow, n.
3. a. The female of certain other large animals, e.g. elephant, rhinoceros, whale, seal, etc., the male of which is called a bull. See BULL n.1 2.
b. attrib. In sense of ‘female’, ‘she-’.
4. transf.
a. A timid, faint-hearted person, a coward. Obs. Cf. COW-BABY, -HEARTED, COWISH a. 2.
b. Applied to a coarse or degraded woman. Also, loosely, any woman, used esp. as a coarse form of address.
c. An objectionable person or thing, a distasteful situation, etc. Austral. and N.Z. slang.
ox, n.
1. a. A large cloven-hoofed, often horned ruminant mammal, Bos taurus (family Bovidae), derived from the extinct Eurasian aurochs and long domesticated for its milk, meat, and hide; a cow, a bull; (in pl.) cattle. Freq. spec.: a castrated adult male of this animal, esp. as used as a draught animal; a bullock.
b. As a proverbial type of strength, brawn, fortitude, obstinacy, etc. Chiefly similative, esp. in as strong as an ox.
My best guess is that the word ‘cow’ is perceived to have more negative connotations/associations as compared to the word ‘ox’, which has more positive connotations e.g. the word ‘cow’ usually brings to mind docile, brainless creatures while the word ‘ox’ brings to mind strong, brawny creatures.
More importantly, I think the real deal here has to do with gender. An ox is usually thought of as masculine creature, whereas a cow usually refers to the female of the species e.g. female elephant, whale, etc.
If you look at the 12 zodiac animals, they’re all male – as opposed to having a tigress, mare, chicken, bitch and sow, we have their male equivalents there.
So I guess it’s really about how the world has been shaped for us, or how the world continues to be shaped – through masculine lenses, through masculine eyes. I’m not particularly in favour of this, so I’ll stick to calling this new year the Year of the Cow.
Thanks for pointing this out and I hope my interpretation helps.