[saghm]

By "gender specificity", do you mean the word itself, or the people targeted by the insult? Using the word "gato" to describe a woman would be nonsensical, and I don't think that a word predominantly being used to insult only one gender (such as "bastard") makes it any less of an insult.

[auganov]

Just the fact that it's conjugated. And the female gendering of a word often having a diminutive effect in languages too. All in all it does seem fair (and suprising to me) given how similar the female form is, google says French has the same thing too. But yea, ideally you'd want the standard form being negative. Or both the male and female being negative.

As a side note - I've particularly become interested in the negativity of "dog" after trying to trace the origin of the proverb "The Dogs Bark but the Caravan Moves On", which is pretty common in my language (not common in English). Was surprised to find out it originated in Arabic and found it's way to many other languages.