For some reason there’s a lot of that in pop culture when it comes to cows. There was that flash animation-movie about the cow uprising (cows with guns"), in which the main revolutionary cow was obviously characterized as male while also equally obviously a cow and not a bull – ??
Then there’s this one, in which the voice of the cow is sung by a male vocalist… but when the cow runs off with the farmer’s wife at the end, rightful gender is dubbed in with a bumper sticker reading ‘bull dyke’…kinda disconcerting!
Every time the ad for this cartoon comes on, supervenusfreak rolls his eyes at me because the udder. BUGS. ME! It’s a male cow, dammit! I want to see the animators try to milk a male cow! No, really…I do. If only to get revenge for them offending my senses by having male cows with udders in their cartoon.
I’m sure they knew what they were doing. Cows are funny, cows have udders. Cartoon characters have always been male (one study showed approximately 99% of cartoon characters to be male).
They certainly couldn’t have gotten away with making a movie about bulls with accurate-looking testicles and penises.
My choice would have been to have the cows be females and still be interesting characters who moved the action, but mine is just a lonely voice crying in the wilderness.
Herd dominance games. Cows have a pretty rigid hierarchy, and mounting subordinate cows is one of the ways they remind the lower-ranking cows of who the boss is.
I find the udders distracting myself, but just to play devil’s advocate here…
We’re assuming the cow is male because it’s voiced by Kevin James, acts in stereotypically “male” ways, and is probably referred to as “he” in the movie (I haven’t seen it). But those are all gender characteristics we humans associate with human males. Why are we willing to accept a cow with a human personality, but not a biologically female cow with a stereotypically human male personality? It’s not like actual cows wear dresses and refer to each other with feminine pronouns when they talk.
Cartoon cows, whether male or female, have always had udders, presumably because udders are funny-looking. Otis isn’t transgendered- he’s just following a long cartoon tradition.