FLESH AND TONGUE: Eating and Talking About Animals

Bioethicist philosopher Peter Singer has suggested:

" . . . habits not only of diet but also of thought and language must be challenged and altered."

Nowhere is this truer than in the expressions we use to talk about animals.

A friend once tried to defend his usage of "beating a dead horse." He insisted I was being ridiculous. "C'mon," he said, "give me a break! It's just an expression!"

I shook my head. "Then murdered animals are just food?"

Clearly exasperated, my friend sighed, "Well, if you want to know the truth, I guess I never really gave it much thought."

The transition from a destructive diet to vegetarianism (and the more healthful vegan lifestyle) is a weaning process. So is the switch to a new language free of allusions to violence and cruelty.

The idea is to gradually eliminate the more egregious offenders:

"There's more than one way to skin a cat."

"Kill two birds with one stone."

"The straw that broke the camel's back."

"Cold turkey."

"Let the cat out of the bag."

"In the doghouse."

"A bat out of hell."

"You're a dead duck."

"Your goose is cooked."

"Hog-tied."

"Like a lamb to slaughter."

"A chicken in every pot."

"Hold your horses!"

"Milk it for all it's worth."

"Shooting fish in a barrel."

All of us have used these malignant expressions without considering the underlying meaning in our diet of "harmless" colloquialisms. As with our diet of "harmless" animal flesh, it is, as expressed in Thoreau's Higher Laws, a step by step quest for:

" . . . gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals."

Cow, calf and pig are first to go on the menu, soon followed by water-dwelling and sky-borne animals. Likewise, liberated language is realized by cutting out debasing slurs, stereotypes and similes:

"Sly as a fox."

"Dumb as an ox."

"Fat and smelly as a hog."

"Madder than a junkyard dog."

"Sillier than a goose."

"Uglier than a moose."

Dairy products might be next on the verboten food list, so too by the wayside go insults and innuendo in our animalspeak.

Marjorie Spiegel, author of The Dreaded Comparison, asks:

" . . . how is it that we find ourselves in a time when comparison to a non-human animal has ceased to be a compliment and is instead hurled as an insult?"

"You disgusting pig!"

"You old nag!"

"You lecherous goat!"

"You little weasel!"

"You stinking skunk!"

"You silly ass!"

"You dirty rat!"

"You slimy snake!"

"Worse than an animal!”

Truly, how did our friends of the Earth end up deserving such opprobrium? The powerful forces of market capitalism have conquered the hearts and minds of trusting consumers who believe that "meat is necessary" and "milk does a body good."

Language is deep-fried in denial and larded in obfuscation to promote a deadly agenda of unhealthy products that sell for billions of dollars. John Robbins says:

" . . . propaganda, doublespeak, half-truths and outright lies keep us prisoner by a point of view beneath the threshold of our awareness."

It’s called “Keeping Numb by Playing Dumb” - it's always easier to swallow a sugarcoated pill than face up to the ugly truths disguised by corporate advertisers' practice of euphemistic naming.

The unpleasant awareness that you are devouring a mutilated animal must be repressed or seen as something more pleasant than it really is. Otherwise, the gourmand status bestowed on charred corpses might not sound so appealing.

Take away what Carol Adams terms the "absent referent" - the animal that used to exist - all that's left is "veal," "steak," "bacon," "sausage," "pork" and "ham."

Hey, where's the beef?

In this way, twisting words around:

Drugs become "compounds and health products."

Pain becomes "short-term discomfort."

Hormones become "growth promotants."

To castrate becomes "neuter."

Factory farming becomes "family farming."

Slaughter becomes "process/harvest/go to market."

Along with euphemisms, oxymorons masquerade and parade through the language of corporate speciesists whose livelihoods depend on animal suffering. The "whole chicken" at the market is a macabre example: a bird minus her head, feet, feathers, and internal organs is not exactly whole!

Oxymorons are effective at rendering consumers ethically neutral to the daily atrocities perpetrated by the meat and dairy industries.

Other howlers include:

"Humane slaughter."

 "Wildlife management."

"Fresh meat."

"Live boiled lobster."

"Tender cut."

"Grain-consuming units."

"Lean fat."

"Dolphin-free tuna."

 "Farm fresh eggs."

Bad taste in both food and expression are human cultural traits. Challenging the supremacy of diet and language is one thing; altering our cherished cultivation of flesh and tongue is quite another.

In becoming less speciesist and callous toward animals, we come to appreciate how similar, not different, we are. Many animals engage in the same purposeful behavior attributed to humans. But naturally, we have apotheosized the self-referential "human being" at the expense of ignoring "cetacean being," "ape being," and "avian being".

Are we not all cut from the same cloth, only into different patterns to make the quilt of life?

Will our children ever know what it means to treat animals with the love and respect they deserve and once merited from our species?

A cynical answer would be that they won't if they continue to be raised on rotten diets and filthy mouths.

Only by changing our present way of living, of thinking and talking about and relating to animals as equals on this Earth, can we hope to pass on to future generations a healthier, more all-encompassing compassionate world.

When that day comes, it will herald a return to reverence and harmony with the sacred. Recurring cycles of evolutionary consciousness will be completed. Humans, so long estranged from their roots in the Earth, will once again:

 Become a part of, not apart from, all Gaia-inspired life.