The tools of academia can, on occasion, be used for fun things.

By Artemis T. Douglas


This article is the first in The Needle’s culture series titled “Academia Slaying.” The goal of this series is to discuss recent academic literature and bring it into both perspective and conversation.

You can think of articles in this series as an amalgam of culture coverage, media review, and nerdy conversation. It won’t quite be news, but it’ll be interesting and (we hope) worth your time to read!


Last month, on Sep. 11, the academic journal Australian Feminist Studies published a paper about ‘puppygirls’ as a subject and as a teacher.

The article is titled “What Puppygirls Know? The (in)Human Pedagogy of a Trans Feminine Style.” In it, the paper’s author discusses the ‘puppygirl culture’.

The author, Jay Szpilka, argues “for the possibility of reading the puppygirl style as a critical practice: one that hints at ways of being trans that don't rely on the ciscentric understanding of ‘the human’ as their point of reference.”

In other words, puppygirls are a potential way of being- a type of existence that is deliberately not-quite-human and definitely-not-cis. At least, that’s Szpilka’s opening argument.

The conversational, light-hearted, yet still academic writing style employed by Szpilka was a delight to read.

The figures, that is the evidence the author uses throughout the article, were equal parts illuminating and unashamed- largely online memes and social posts about puppygirls.

“Trans lesbians – and trans lesbian desire – has been thoroughly invisibilised in both the historical record, as well as mainstream narratives of what lives are possible for those of us who transition towards womanhood.
This invisibility is especially striking when it comes to trans feminine participation in kink, and kink-adjacent lesbian cultures. The fundamental analytic cleaving of sex from gender, and the need to combat the close association between transness and sexual perversion, have made the figure of a kinky trans lesbian borderline unintelligible – and the concept of particularly trans kinky lesbian styles impossible to articulate, despite their long history.
The flowering of puppygirl style is direct evidence against the erasure of kinky trans lesbianism: an errant blooming of erotically suffused other ways of being trans, facilitated by grassroots internet communities and media.”

The article continues on, with the author setting the stage by illuminating “three key themes of what, however tentatively, may be called the puppygirl pedagogy: interpersonal affirmation, joyful dehumanisation, and refusal of respectability.”

In the first, there is a discussion of consent, kink, and much more- but what really strikes is this excerpt.

“These are the shaded realms of puppygirlhood, whose desire does not align with the requirements of cis humanity. In other words, a puppygirl, in puppygirl media, is not represented as a subject of the orthodox understanding of affirmative consent.”

Continuing, this next excerpt really illuminates more of Szpilka’s argument for the theme of interpersonal affirmation,

“Again, this needs to be taken in the context of the puppygirl’s transness: most trans women know that their perception of themselves, that their own ideas of their self, are not always trustworthy. In a society built on foundational trans-antagonism, and suffused with narratives of trans femininity as inherently fraudulent and unloveable, it [is] simply hard for a trans woman to feel secure enough to be the source of her own affirmation. This is why external, community-based relationships are so vital for sustaining trans life.”

Under the joyful dehumanization theme, Szpilka argues that “to be affirmed as a puppygirl is also to be denied the full measure of one’s humanity.”

This is not oppressive dehumanization as a precursor to mass crimes, as you may be familiar with the term.

Szpilka argues that the loss of humanity involved in being a puppygirl- and affirmed as such- “mirrors the experience” of trans women, as we know we face downward spirals in social and economic status based on our acts to change sex, to transition.

That mirror, however, contains joy- or at least the possibility of it. According to Szpilka’s argument, “For all of its intoxicating, illicit pleasure of being discovered and shown as wanton, needy, and vulnerable, the puppygirl dehumanisation carries another promise.”

That promise? “Unlearning humanity, with all of its noxious baggage of compulsory cisness and sanism.”

As for the final theme, refusal of respectability, it is living in the space between what is enforced upon us as trans women and our own desires for escape.

As Szpilka put it,

“At the same time, puppygirl also know that ‘becoming puppy’ is both a liveable position, and one that can never be fully realised.
There is no way to fully step out of the world of being human, as long as one is required to be one for survival and basic recognition. For all the jokes about it, there is no mythical dog pound on the other side of normativity, where all puppygirls can live in joyous (in)human harmony.
This is what all the jokes about dumb mutts with master degrees suggest: many of us have to play at humanity, even as that humanity neither suits us, nor nourishes us. In this sense, puppygirl culture does not really promise a revolutionary solution to the challenges of trans life. It does not propose a way out of our present binds, though it does possibly make them more liveable in the present.”

Recognizing the bias, or the contradictions that creates the bias in puppygirl media, Szpilka argues that “The puppygirl culture’s unthinking celebration of youthfulness, and its implicit whiteness is almost certainly the result of puppygirl media being primarily circulated among the trans women who make up today's trans feminine internet.”

She continues, “This is a community of primarily white, downwardly mobile or precariously employed (often in spite of their high education) women of the millennial and zoomer generations.”

And she argues that this limitation exists, but not that it is good or evil. Instead, it remains unresolved.

“Puppygirl culture, on its own, is incapable of escaping the conditions of its emergence, no more than any other product of trans cultures developing within the historical context of dominance and exclusion that inheres in the very idea of a ‘trans person’, who needs to be recognizable as a person to count as a trans one.”

From my own perspective as an academic-in-training with multiple studies turned into articles out for peer review, what this ‘academic article on puppygirls’ does is give a nuanced and joyful, yet critical, account of puppygirls as culture, as subject, and, importantly, as teacher.

The article’s title cleverly reflects this. The title itself demands we ask and consider “What do puppygirls know?”

The title and the research article alike further positions both puppygirl and puppygirl knowledge as simultaneously teacher and as the act of teaching itself.

Pedagogy, according to Merriam-Webster is “the art, science, or profession of teaching.”

The prevalence of highly technically qualified, well-educated or well-skilled transfems as an existence in parallel with but not contrary to puppygirlhood, was discussed in the article.

“What does the girl in the kennel say? Well, that she is a quantitative analyst"

The article really sells the idea of puppygirls as a cultural practice that can teach us something, something about denying respectability and assimilation.

“Puppygirl media refuse to celebrate such trajectories. Even if a puppygirl is a ‘well-respected expert in her field’, her desire is oriented away from the status and recognition that should be her due.”
“A puppygirl is resolutely backwards: her position is that of rejection of pride and respectability that ought to be celebrated as an achievement of mainstream LGBTQ+ advocacy. She is not out and proud to be trans and successful; she wants to live in a kennel and be told to bark by her girlfriend – even if she is eminently capable of being ‘more’.”

What this article taught me wasn’t merely about puppygirls- I already had some idea about their existence through, let’s call it… cultural osmosis.

No, what this article did was teach me that the tools of academia can be used for joyful things. Not just for reinforcing or changing the system, but also for the joy of, for example, “Barking and Ripping Things up and Just Freaking it.”

💡
💉Take Your Shot 💉

You can read the full scholarly paper discussed in this piece at the journal’s website- linked here. The DOI is 10.1080/08164649.2025.2556256.

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