Crotch-Glance Sex Check

"Gunther's a woman?"

A character is minding their own business when suddenly, they find an abandoned dog or other animal. They talk to the animal and interact with it, with the intention of possibly keeping it. They wonder what sex the animal/pet may be, so they pick them up and look at the animal/pet's genitalia, which isn't shown to the viewer. Alternatively, the viewer will find out what sex the animal/pet may be if it lifts their leg to urinate or if someone else says the sex of the animal/pet without checking (which is usually done offscreen).

This can also happen to babies when the babysitter or caretaker believes the baby is a girl and are shocked to find out they are a boy when they change his diaper.

This is, of course, Truth in Television.

See Your Tomcat Is Pregnant, which may happen when a pet, who is assumed to be male, has babies. Urine Trouble may occur when the character is holding the animal.

See also Viewer Gender Confusion.

Compare Crotch-Grab Sex Check and Outfit-Rip Sex Check.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ah! My Goddess: When Welsper reincarnates as a cat, it's through this trope that the group realizes that "he" reincarnated into a "she".
• Inubaka: In volume 16, Chizuru, who is unfamiliar with neutering, does this to Melon after he gets fixed to see if his "pee-pee" is still there.
• In the Sailor Moon episode "Mamoru and Usagi's Babysitting Mayhem", Usagi thinks Manami is a girl and is shocked when she finds out that Manami is actually a boy when she changes his diaper. Mamoru explains to her that Manami was the baby's name, but it was a boy instead of a girl.
  Usagi: This baby is supposed to be a girl, but she has a wee-wee!

Fan Works

• In the Digimon Adventure 02 fanfic The Cat Came Back, this is how Ken discovers that his new kitten is male.
• Rocketship Voyager. On first meeting the rodent-like alien called Nee'Lix, Captain Janeway guesses that "it" is actually a "he" due to the "lack of evident mammilla".

Films — Animation

• The Angry Birds Movie: At the beginning of the movie, it is implied that Red did this when he was inside of the family's egg, but how he found out the sex of the child is unknown.
• In Dinosaur, Yar does this to Aladar and later the latter's son, both peeing on him.
• In Hercules, Hercules briefly looks between Nessus's legs before addressing him as "sir". Nessus is visibly offended by this.
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: When the chimpanzees negotiate with the penguins and demand maternity leave, Skipper glances under the table and claims they are males.
• Maronas Fantastic Tale: The title character's first two owners address her as a boy dog until she shows them her sex in protest.

Films — Live-Action

• 101 Dalmatians (1996): When Roger mistakes Perdy for Pongo, he lifts her leg to check for her sex.
• Played for Laughs in all three of the A Dog's... movies:
  • In A Dog's Purpose, after Bailey reincarnates into a German Shepherd, he comments that "other things were missing" and looks at his underside to find out he's a female, much to his shock.
  • In A Dog's Way Home, when Lucas first sees Bella, he picks her up and is about to say "boy" until he takes a quick glance between her legs and says "girl" instead. His friend is the one that does this instead in the original novel.
  • In A Dogs Journey, Bailey reincarnates into a beagle and mentions that he's "missing something". He looks between his legs and says "Nope. I'm a girl this time."
• The violent drug-dealer Saeed from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night performs this on Arash's cat while trying to harass him for money. The (male) cat is not pleased, to say the least.

Literature

• In The Berenstain Bears, the book where Gracie the cat first appears has Papa Bear check her sex by looking at her "bottom".
• Equal Rites: Just after Drum Billet has passed on his staff to baby Esk, Granny Weatherwax turns back the blanket to show that the baby's a girl.
• Gabby Duran & the Unsittables: In Multiple Mayhem, Gabby and her friends babysit One, an alien baby who can multiply up to 13 copies of himself. When Gabby changes one of his clones' diaper, she tells Zee that not all of the clones are boys.
• In A Puppy For Christmas, Mjawi does this to a litter of puppies.
• In the second book of Song of the Lioness, Alanna checks the sex of the purple eyed black kitten that appears before her by lifting his tail to confirm he's a male, much to his displeasure, before naming him Faithful.
• Temeraire: Will Laurence once discreetly checks an unfamiliar dragon's attributes in order to confirm the proper mode of address. Dragons in the setting have humanlike intelligence but, fortunately for him, no nudity taboo.

Live-Action TV

• Friends:
  • In the episode "The One with the Birthing Video", Joey is depressed because of his one-way crush on Rachel, so Phoebe loans him her friend Wendy's dog to cheer him up. Joey doesn't know the dog's gender...
    Joey: You're a guy. [thinks about it and picks up the dog and looks] Well, you used to be.
  • In "The One with a Chick and a Duck", after Joey calls the chick "she", Chandler checks but says "Whatever it was went back in too quickly."
• In an episode of Gabby Duran & the Unsittables, Sky's dad brings a dog in Sky's room, not knowing Wesley was in there and that his daughter was at school, and Wesley believes that the dog is his long-lost pet, Brisket ^note  The dog got hit by a car, but Wesley believes he got abducted by aliens. .To find out if the dog is really Brisket, he makes it do tricks and orders steamed broccoli, Brisket's favorite treat. When the dog doesn't eat the broccoli, he flips it over to find out it was a female.
• Parodied in the Good Luck Charlie episode "Special Delivery". Bob refers to his new car as a "she," and PJ, confused as to how he can tell the car is a girl, drops down to look underneath the car.
• An episode of the Harry and the Hendersons TV series did this when the Hendersons grow fond of a pair of mice living in their house and ask a guy which one's the daddy and which one's the mommy.

Video Games

• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: Implied when you get a pet unisaur. Unlike the other xenofauna, which are gender indeterminate, you're able to get the unisaur to stand still long enough for you to confirm that it's female.

Webcomics

• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures has freshman Daniel Ti'fiona touring the Succubus and Incubus Academy with the peculiar Mink as his guide. At one point, Daniel asks if Mink is a boy or a girl. Perplexed at this, Mink pulls on the waistband to check in strip #1240. Of course, cubi are pleomorphic and can mimic genders at will with practice.
• Cindy the fox from Faux Pas substitutes for Randy from Green Mountain Studio Animals for a luxury car commercial in strip #357. The producer tells the cosmetician Essie that "Randy" is a male fox, and she needs to work her makeup magic to transform "him" into a vixen. Essie needs only a cursory look at Cindy to report "This is a girl fox." Pleased at this development, the producer tells Essie to take a bonus out of petty cash. Cindy looks at Essie as if to ask, "Are all humans this clueless?"
• Housepets!: Averted by Jessica. When she first meets Marion, she begins using female pronouns for him. When he corrects her, she glances between his legs briefly (He's nude, but Animals Lack Attributes as far as the viewer can see) before letting the issue go and correcting herself.
• The Order of the Stick: When Vaarsuvius, an elf of Ambiguous Gender, is turned into a lizard, Belkar takes the opportunity to lift their tail and peek.
  Belkar: You know, if I knew more about reptilian reproductive anatomy, I'm sure this would answer a lot of questions.
  Vaarsuvius: My vengeance shall be prolonged, diminutive cretin.
• Sleepless Domain has the woman who runs the cat cafe where Heartful Punch brings an orphan kitten check the kitten's sex this way after explaining that calicos are almost always female. The alt text from the author (who fosters kittens in real life) mentions that it's an imprecise art.
• In the "Adventures in Babysitting" arc of The Wotch, a magical accident causes Lily and Jenny to transform from kids into teenagers, Miranda West to become an infant, and Anne, Jason, and Robin to become gender-bent little kids. The group goes to Milo's shop for help, and he reveals that when it comes to Wotches, both past and present, they can't be male because that's a "locked form". Which he interprets as "Male = No Magic". But a few strips later, when Miranda's diaper needs changing, one peek inside makes the caretakers realize the gender lock bit meant Wotches literally can't be turned male.

Western Animation

• In the Adventure Time episode "The Chamber of Frozen Blades", the Ice King's penguin, Gunter, lays an egg. At the end of the episode, when Finn and Jake learn that Gunter has laid an egg, Jake exclaims "Gunter's a WOMAN?!" The Ice King responds by turning the penguin upside down to examine its genitals.
• American Dad!: In "Pulling Double Booty", Steve and Roger get jobs at a poultry plant, inspecting chicks to determine their sexes; Steve can tell easily, while Roger struggles at his job.
  Roger: No wiener, no wedge. Just feathers and chicken skin.
• Danny Phantom: In "One of a Kind", Danny tries to protect an endangered purpleback gorilla at the zoo. Near the end, Danny gets a good look at "Samson" and (to his horror) realizes it's actually a "Delilah".
• The Fairly OddParents!: Subverted near the end of "Fairly Odd Baby" when Wanda changes her new baby's diaper to see what its gender is. She gets some liquid squirted in her face, and Timmy notes that it's a boy...because it squirted Wanda with a water gun, and "boys love water squirters"!
• In Famous Fred, Fred's owner initially thinks he's a female, but she looks at his crotch and says, "No, let's name him Fred."
• Hey Arnold!: In "The Journal", Miles and Stella receive a pig as a gift from The Green-Eyed People. Stella mistakes the pig as a female and wants to call it "Isabel", but her husband changes the name to "Abner" when he sees its crotch after he opens the blanket the pig was wrapped in.
• In The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Miss Understanding", Private looks between his own legs when Alice says that one of them is female.
• The Simpsons had their third baby, and Homer was pleased to have a new boy ("and what a boy!"). Dr. Hibbert then mentioned that was the umbilical cord.
• What's with Andy?: Parodied. The ending of "Daddy" involves Andy and Lori babysitting some twin babies. Andy is changing the baby boy's diaper and doesn't remember if he has the boy or the girl. The baby promptly urinates and he quickly finds out, though he should've known since Lori was taking care of the baby girl.

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