Spay/Neuter: it's not about you. Or is it?

I was working on my spay/neuter and community-building program the other day and ran smack-dab into an assumption I'd made -- or perhaps just an issue I hadn't thought out thoroughly.

We talk about spay/neuter as a single issue. But is it, really? Are you certain? More importantly, is it one issue as it relates to building community? That's important, because from community comes consensus.

For most of us in shelter, rescue or adoption guarantee programs (let's just call this Rescue), spay and neuter are the same issue. The differences are in the medical issues.

But outside Rescue, there's difference in initial reactions to spay and neuter and there's also a difference in the way that men and women react to them. Note -- this is anecdotal data and needs further validation.

Women tend to think about spay and neuter in the same way. If they're strongly opposed to one, they're strongly opposed to the other. If they're neutral on one, they're neutral on the other.

Not so with men. They tend to be more opposed to neuter than to spaying. How many time have you seen a guy wince when you talk about neutering his male dog?

So -- IF this is true, as politically incorrect as it might be, what does that say about our approach to building community? Seems to me that we've got some serious reframing work to do in terms of humans personalizing the issue of removing testicles. Too much identification.

Neutering -- it's not about you.

But at the same time, isn't it a failure of empathy -- or sympathy? -- that allows humans to abuse and neglect animals in other ways? And the cure for that is developing the empathy or sympathy, just the opposite in a way of what we much accomplish in regards spay/neuter.

How do we reconcile those two faces of personalization?

As my friend Jer DuFresne says: the conversation continues with you.