IS GARFIELD FEMALE OR MALE?

Gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality – there is no guidebook on how to classify a cartoon, but that doesn’t mean it matters any less. A debate is still necessary for some people. Take, for example, Garfield, that lasagnascarfing feline whom many of us, at some point in our lives, have come to love. First featured in a comic strip way back in 1978, Garfield’s gender was never a discussion. Fast-forward to the socially progressive times of 2017, and it is one that, apparently, needs to be had. Podcast host and professional troll Virgil Texas began the internet war when he declared the cat “genderneutral” on Twitter and made a note of this on the Garfield Wikipedia page this week, leading to a 60-hour back-and-forth edit and re-edit session as fans debated the cartoon’s true gender.

Long-time fans have remained adamant that the cartoon is male, citing Bill Murray voicing him in the 2004 and 2006 movie adaptations. But, as one Wikipedia user noted on the page’s edit history log, “Gender is fluid. He may have been a boy in 1981, but he’s not now.”

Seeing as how Garfield cannot speak for himself, it seems fair to ask Jim Davis, the creator, for the truth. Which, fortunately, is something he commented on in 2014 to Mental Floss, saying, “Garfield is very universal. By virtue of being a cat, he’s not really male or female or any particular race or nationality, young or old.”

Sadly, Davis’s sentiments were not good enough for the internet. And the debate continued to rage. So let’s settle on what we do know: Garfield is a cat. He lives for lasagna and hates Mondays. With a youthful heart but the energy of an elderly man, his age is debatable, but his gender? Come on.

Let’s not make this a debate on self-identification because that just diminishes the actual debate on actual selfidentification. In nearly every Garfield comic, the cat has been referred to as a “he” or “him,” at times even “sir.”

You might claim it is up to you to decide how you view Garfield. But in these difficult times, when there are so few things we can rely on in the world, and remnants of our childhood continue to be bastardized, take heed: Garfield is male. But Odie, that’s a whole different can of worms.