It’s a passé trope, that “men are dogs.” Does it still hold water … or has it become dog water? And all dog jokes aside, what does the phrase seriously mean?
As the Gen X mom of two young, Gen Alpha men-in-the-making, I personally do not want this sentiment caging up my sons’ self-perception. But as someone who came of age in the 1990s, I learned it as an inescapable truism. From movies to music, books to bar scenes, standup comedy acts to primetime TV shows, the idiom of the day was, “Men are dogs.” Rightly offensive, it was then often embraced by many males themselves, as an excuse to let moral standards slide. (Forgive me if I bypass the obvious case-in-point link to Snoop Dogg’s 1993 rap video “What’s My Name?”—entertaining as it is to watch young Snoop morph into a literal Doberman.)
The people-as-dog-breeds trend that’s splashed all over social media sometimes shows up as pro-male, anti-male, even not-limited-to-male examples. But as this style of content tracks, what we love about our pet dogs (loyalty, protection, companionship) is what we also love in our people. With changing cultural norms and modified expectations about masculinity—where sites like The Good Men Project lead the pack—it’s likely time to update our social pedigree.
But hear me out: One part of the analogy still stays. When dogs (or people) lose their main purpose in the world, they do not know what to do next with their innate desires … often until someone shows them the way.
I checked in with a dog trainer I know and respect, Chris Takacs—of Takacs Dog Training, also located in the Greater Chicagoland region where I am—to teach me about the deeper layers of these all-too-ready comparisons.
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“It was almost like men were being neutered,” Chris said at the start of our interview.
At 61 years old, Chris was beginning to feel the push in the late 2010s and early 2020s. The push was for rapid social change, that left him sometimes scratching his head in wonder: Was it too far, too fast? And if so, would men as a pack be left behind?
His fear wasn’t unfounded. Though it may get conflated in clickbait or through portals dubbed “the manosphere,” the reality is that any social progress achieved quickly can often leave a wake of conflict and chaos. And even while that may be unhelpful to society, short-term, it can also be a necessary response to systemized oppression that won’t budge any other way. (Think Civil Rights movement, the Holocaust response of World War II, or the American Civil War of the 1860s that definitively ended legal human trafficking in the U.S.)
I asked Chris how he’s witnessed men’s role in America change in the last couple of decades and what parallels he draws between that and the way dogs as pets have changed roles, too. Was I the only one between us seeing a connection?
“We’ve gotten away from a doghouse in the backyard,” he told me. “Dogs are now as much as ever a family member, in some way equivalent to children or spouses. [People] are similar to dogs,” he continued, “in that dogs, like us, feel many of the same emotions—happy, sad, love. They grieve, want to achieve predictability and confidence in their lives, food, shelter—very much like us.”
When dogs had a more obvious, separate place—the backyard doghouse, for example, with its dual role of providing special shelter plus separating the animal from its dominantly superior human owners—their job-roles were more obvious, too: bark to protect, pace to patrol, stay on submissive alert for earned affection. Natural dog behaviors haven’t changed. But how we need them to interact at, say, the dog park absolutely has.
Chris explained that, as he sees it, there are two main ways people and dogs differ:
One way, he said, is that dogs have limited intelligence. While they can certainly learn new tricks and be gradually taught new behaviors, their comprehension throughout training stays at the same level, the equivalent of a human 2-to-3-year old. That’s different, of course, from the average-intelligence adult person (male or not).
Second, Chris said that dogs understand only “right or wrong,” with no added grayscale. They cannot choose to change their built-in behavioral responses to threat. Until they are taught that their human companions will not leave their sides, they’ll leash-pull and growl at the strange new dog on the sidewalk. Humans, on the other hand, can try varied approaches to problem-solving, even overcoming our animalistic fight-or-flight tendencies through testing new pathways on our own. Like dogs, though, we do crave reassurance.
And that’s where some men are indeed breaking out of the pack, beyond even the old-fashioned alpha-dog stereotypes. In fact, Chris said the same logic he teaches dog owners to use with their pets (consistency, patience and empathy), he uses as he ‘trains’ his pet-owning people-clients.
“[A lot of people fail to see] dog training as a necessity, and not a tool to fix a problem,” he told me. “That’s the equivalent of not sending your child to school until you realize they can’t read or do math. You wouldn’t do it to your child; don’t do it to your dog.”
Even when people do inbreed training as part of their dog adoption journey, they often take an outmoded approach staked in a disciplinarian mindset. As dogs become more extensions of families, dog training moves further into the “gentle parenting” dogma. Takacs Dog Training teaches what Chris called “positive reinforcement—no fear, no pain, no shock, prong, choke, yelling.” It’s a bold, confident move in an industry that he termed “a battle” to change training perceptions:
“You’ve got a lot of trainers out there that still use … dominance theory.”
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After my conversation with Chris, I began thinking back on my own great-grandmother Lucille Parkinson’s newspaper-to-the-nose, dominance-based training methods. She swore by these, teaching them to dog breeders, dog owners and dog trainers alike at her small business boarding facility—as well as to readers of her column in the Muncie Evening Press, “Woofs and Whinnies,” that ran in the 1960s–80s. And she went further, teaching the parents in her sphere that these methods could also be translated and applied to human behavior in raising children.
There was something to the idea: Her strict, no-nonsense rules were kind and firm. She wasn’t heavy-handed—with dogs or children—but she had consistent and realistic expectations. I personally always felt safe with Grandma ‘Cille. But neither she nor I was reared and bred in a touchy-feely time. Emotional intelligence of the day, for humans and animals, ran something like, “Keep your emotions under control.” It was black-and-white thinking with only two choices: Control your emotions or they’ll run you. In homes and in classrooms, the pedagogy also ran: “Spare the rod; spoil the child.”
As a trainer of people, I also come in late to the game, like Chris, working backward to resolve communication conflicts for teams—often when unhealthy patterns have been handed down for generations in family-run small businesses. I help employ empathy, just like Chris does, though in my case, it’s teaching people to see things from each other’s perspectives.
And from my own non-dog (and non-male) vantage, I also see many societies around the globe doing the same thing: burying the old, outdated ways of relating like a bone in the backyard; unearthing instead new and healthier ways to connect. Where Chris now meets dog-owners who want a friendly pet to play with the baby, pose for family pictures and follow along at their feet throughout the day, he says most people he works with don’t understand why dogs won’t automatically do that—without adding any of the “bad dog” behavior. It’s akin to asking toddlers not to throw tantrums without also modeling how to “use our words.” Part of his work is to translate dog behavior (and purpose) in an overtly civilized world.
It makes me wonder: Are we asking men to jump into a new perspective without getting them comfortable with the outcome?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this is true of all men the way Chris’s observations are true for all dogs, even regardless of breed. For years as colleagues, Chris and I have compared notes on the inborn, sympathetic nervous system response that all animals—including the human animal—have, fight-or-flight. It’s a brain signal to real or perceived danger. A dog that barks all day may feel stressed and confused at being alone for hours indoors. A child who intentionally creates a mess or other chaos at home may be stressed about looming environmental changes out of their control, like a new school or new sibling. And an adult male who ‘barks’ out insults about groups of people online may be stressed about his changing role in the real world, that also feels impossible to control, explain or even understand.
And where dog trainers like Chris are moving that industry into empathetic motivation methods that emphasize bonding over control—alongside the parenting and teaching methods that embrace emotional intelligence over paddling or spanking—society as a whole is doing this in less structured, systemized ways. Rather than building new pathways to human connection, we see headlines and news feeds pointing more readily to efforts that tear down the old structures, dismantling outdated regimes.
It’s no longer a dog-eat-dog world … unless you still see it as such. So, where does that leave us, as humans trying to connect in our shared human playgrounds?
What’s actually dying out today is not a value on masculinity, but rather the idea that bigger, stronger people have the right to dominate and control those who are smaller in physical stature or less empowered in social status. And that also makes some men angry.
But some of the best masculine humans are using their words, not to bark or snarl, but to quietly name and even to model the change they are starting to see and be in the world. Here are three not hyper-masculine—but holistically masculine—voices I wish to reward with well-deserved praise as they display their own above-average intelligence, and embrace emotional intelligence while still staying masculine:
J.D. Murgalo – A musician, writer and podcast host, J.D. also happens to be a former teacher. He’s using his voice to share words of wisdom—like this Substack bio clearly illustrates—and to listen to others share theirs. One of his programs is even titled, “Dads Cry Too.”
William Spivey – As a columnist at the Good Men Project and on Medium, William writes well-researched think-pieces on social justice for disenfranchised groups, like the modern-day Black perspective, the history of enslaved people and even the U.S.’s fraught history of fugitive wife laws.
Charlie Glickman – Charlie is also adding his voice to a column at the Good Men Project, where he shares (among other things) his unique personal perspective of breaking out of what he dubs the “Act Like a Man Box.”
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Out of my own curiosity about a decade ago, I quizzed my then-little boys on how to “finish the toxic parenting sentence” as part of a then-popular social media trend (that has yet to back down in numbers). I was show-dog proud of their responses. (“Do you want something to cry about? I’ll give you ….” “Hugs!” one answered; “Space!” said the other, both answers being the two main choices I typically gave to help them process and calm down from their big feelings.)
More recently, I re-tested my own theory and asked them to complete these toxic phrases about masculinity:
“Nice guys finish ______________ (last).”
“A good man is ______________ (hard to find).”
“Where have all the good men ______________ (gone)?”
“Every woman wants a ______________ (bad) boy.”
“Boys don’t ______________ (cry).”
Already, as adolescents, they’ve heard most of these (and could figure out where the others were going, overall). I asked them to explain what they mean to me—and to tell me if they were true. What I found interesting:
They parsed the idea as social construct and the lived experience of their reality as two separate things. (“‘Boys don’t cry’ is totally not true, Mom; it’s just society’s social roles.”) … Sadly, however, they still felt the pressure to perform. (“Females can be more free with their emotions in society,” they both explained in turn, using nearly identical words.) I see them practice holding in their emotions even at home, instead of using it as a safe space to be their fullest selves as I’d hoped they would even as they age. Only time will tell if they come back to safe emotional expression.
Is it any wonder we still describe some men as, “His bark is worse than his bite”? Look, I’m not asking all alpha males to turn into Golden Retrievers. But maybe we could all learn a thing or two from those strong, silent breed-types like Boxers or Bullmastiffs. I’ll stay on watchdog alert for positive role models to point out to my young men—even as they grow… and as we grow as a global world.
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