“Just A Joke”? Toxic Masculinity, The Manosphere And The Treatment Of Dairy Animals

Recently, a photograph appeared on social media of a newborn dairy calf with the word “c**t” spray-painted across her back. According to media reports, the farmer responsible had been unwell and frustrated because the calf was proving difficult to feed, later describing what she had done as a “silly error of judgement”.

Describing this as an error of judgement does not adequately explain what we are looking at. The decision to write a misogynistic insult across the body of a vulnerable newborn animal did not occur in a cultural vacuum. Nor is it an isolated example. Similar photographs have circulated within New Zealand farming social media over a number of years, where degrading dairy animals has been presented as ’just a joke’.

In 2018, a photograph circulated of a dairy cow with “I AM AN ARSEHOLE!!!” spray-painted across her body. SAFE reported that the post attracted more than 8,000 positive reactions. The farmer involved later became the subject of an investigation after footage emerged showing cows being repeatedly struck in the milking shed

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An earlier image showed the word “BITCH” sprayed prominently across another dairy cow. Now, in 2026, we have a newborn calf labelled “c**t” because she was reportedly difficult to feed.

These images deserve more serious consideration because they raise questions not only about animal welfare, but about the cultural attitudes surrounding animals within farming. They also reveal something about gender, power and the particular forms of humour through which violence and domination can be made ordinary.

The usual defence is that the animal cannot read, the paint does not physically hurt her, and that this is simply farm humour. Those who object are dismissed as overly sensitive. This response was evident in a video posted to the Facebook group Farming Fit, in which a man defended the spray-painting of the calf and described those objecting to it as “whinging soft c**ks”. He also framed this kind of humour as characteristically Kiwi. The message is difficult to miss: finding the incident offensive is equated with being “soft”, while laughing at the degradation of a vulnerable newborn animal becomes associated with toughness, masculinity and an apparently authentic rural New Zealand identity.

But humour is never culturally meaningless. What we find funny tells us something about the boundaries of what we consider acceptable. Humour can provide a socially acceptable way of expressing attitudes that would sound considerably uglier if stated seriously.

There is a gendered dimension here that deserves much greater attention. “Bitch” and “c**t” are deeply misogynistic words, historically used to demean women. Here they are being written literally onto the bodies of female animals whose reproductive capacities are being exploited for economic value. That the latest incident reportedly involved a “farming mum” does not make this less relevant. Misogynistic ideas are not reproduced only by men; women can also participate in cultures where femininity, vulnerability and perceived weakness are denigrated.

The response that people who object are “soft” is equally revealing. It suggests that toughness requires emotional distance, while empathy is something embarrassing or feminised. This is where aspects of farming culture warrant examination alongside toxic masculinity and the contemporary manosphere, where dominance is frequently celebrated and compassion derided as weakness. The message becomes that “real men”, “real farmers”, perhaps even “real Kiwis”, should be able to laugh.

Yet I do not think the answer is simply to divide the farming community into cruel farmers and caring ones. I am not arguing that every dairy farmer deliberately mistreats animals. That would be both simplistic and a distraction from a much more difficult question. Farmers themselves stand at the everyday interface of an industry that requires humans to control the bodies, reproduction, lactation and eventual deaths of other animals.

Many dairy farmers will tell us that they genuinely care about, and even love, their cows and calves. I do not necessarily doubt the sincerity of those feelings. What I question is whether that language of love can resolve the profound contradiction at the centre of dairying.

What does it mean to love an animal while deliberately breeding her within a system in which her reproductive body is exploited for economic value? What does care mean when her calf can be removed and the milk produced following pregnancy and birth becomes a commodity for human consumption? How do we reconcile love with a system in which animals who are surplus to production requirements can be killed precisely because their lives have insufficient economic value?

These questions move us beyond individual acts of good or bad farming and towards the institution itself. Dairy farming is inherently dependent upon the exploitation of female reproductive capacities. Contrary to a surprisingly common misunderstanding, cows do not simply “produce milk”, any more than humans do. Pregnancy, birth and lactation are prerequisites for milk production. The calf is therefore not an incidental inconvenience at the margins of the dairy system; her conception and birth are fundamental to making that system possible. Some female calves will become replacements for the milking herd; others will enter meat production; while two million calves who are not required by the industry will be killed at between 4-10 days old every year.

The individual farmer operates within this larger economic system, carrying out practices that most consumers rarely have to witness. This is why individual kindness towards animals, while preferable to individual cruelty, does not make the underlying relationship non-exploitative.

This brings us back to the newborn calf with the word sprayed across her body. She was reportedly struggling to feed. She was not deliberately making somebody's day difficult. She was a neonatal mammal trying to negotiate circumstances created entirely by humans.

Cattle are social animals with powerful maternal and suckling behaviours. A newborn calf would ordinarily seek her mother's body and udder. Within dairy production, however, this relationship is reorganised around human economic requirements. When a calf struggles to adapt to a bottle or feeder, or when a cow kicks, sidesteps or resists human access to her udder, it is easy to anthropomorphise that behaviour in a particularly pernicious way. The animal becomes stubborn, difficult, an “arsehole” or a “bitch”, as though she has made a moral decision not to cooperate.

The degrading language matters because it reveals something about the relationship of power underneath it.

The spray paint itself is therefore not the fundamental exploitation, and removing offensive words from cows and calves would certainly not resolve the ethical problems of dairying. Rather, these photographs are revealing because they momentarily strip away some of the comforting language surrounding animal agriculture. They invite us to consider what happens when an animal does not cooperate with the role humans have assigned to her, and why frustration with that resistance can so easily become ridicule and harm.

The newborn calf will never know what the word painted across her body means. But we do. That is precisely why the defence that “she can't read it” misses the point entirely. The word was never intended for the calf. It was written for humans, photographed for humans and shared with humans in the expectation that other humans would find it funny.

Some of us don't.

And perhaps refusing to laugh is a good place to start.

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