the literature¶
A few years ago, I finally got pissed off enough by this that I decided to dig deep into the literature. It's so debunked as to be laughable. The only studies that show any behavioral differences across "breeds" (which is an arbitrary distinction), were fundamentally flawed. https://t.co/dpsktJl33S They do not control for upbringing, meaning they are categorizing by "breed" dogs which are already being socialized differently. If you raise one pitbull as a coddled housepet and another pitbull as a fighter, the behavioral outcomes are obviously going to be different. The same is true if you raise a collie as a housepet and compare it to a fighting pitbull. The key is understanding which one is more likely to have been socialized that way. If you group them as "pitbulls," you erase the material impact of the social perception of breeds. Another common flaw comes in the form of studies which survey owners about their own dogs' behaviors. Again, the results are skewed by stereotypes: does your collie bark at the mail carrier because she's "protective" or does your pitbull do it because he's "aggressive"? Although humans have been domesticating dogs for tens of thousands of years to create broad morphological categories (big dogs, fast dogs, docile dogs, etc.), the entire concept of "dog breeding" is a modern invention. Kennel clubs emerged as a hobby among the 19th century elite. These white, bourgeois idle hobbyists became obsessed with creating the "ideal dogs," influenced by the Hot New Trend™️ of Darwinian evolution.
They were also often involved in another sort of club: eugenics societies. With the emergence of "scientific proof" that breeding = fitness, these wealthy, self-styled Champions of Reason had the capital to throw furthering their supremacist ideology. They implemented policies like forced sterilization and medical experimentation on "lower races." None of this should be taken to imply that supremacy, or even scientific justification was "new." Simply that, around this time, a turning point was reached in the ideological development of fascism, similar to the qualitative leap in socialist thought around the time of Marx. The practical and cultural craft of bourgeois hegemony truly matured in the age of evolution. Its reach penetrated so deeply into the tenets of liberalism that it's hard to even conceptualize it. You are swimming in the waters of eugenics and don't even have the word for "wet." Institutionally, every system you are exposed to under the liberal regime has these concepts folded into the very structure, like rebar reinforcing concrete. Education, medicine, law enforcement, housing, immigration, and so on. All completely wrapped up in the fascist project. Everything, down to your most basic assumptions about the way the world works -- like dog breeds -- is a part of this culturecraft. The material relations that preceded this ideological development have been continuously and deliberately updated because of it.
All of it must go.