Euphemisms

 

during my childhood whenever we visited our villages for any vacation or holidays ....this was a standard announcement:

"bring the chicken and cut IT up'

lets make country chicken gravy to go with soft white boiled rice......."

and as a former meat eater, i must say that it was one of my favourites.

no doubt an equivalent meat food favourite exist's in  other parts of the world.

i have a  friend who is a long standing vegetarian,who used to say that during her childhood, growing up in the villages...she  used to give names to her mother's goats .

and when called out "RAMU......"!

the goat came running to her....

'how can we kill him and eat his flesh' she asked ?

she had recognised the inherent  individuality of each animal just like our individuality.

and when called 'RAMU..!

the goat knew his name and came running.

it is impossible to cut up RAMU and eat his body parts.

but does not seem so hard to cut SOME goat and eat IT' S body parts.

is that why we say IT while referring to all animals and never  HER or HIM?

this is one of the defence mechanisms of the beleif system which burries our own empathy deep into our consciousness so that we can eat animals without compunction, which many of us were doing life long.....

my only regret is that I didn't recognize this earlier.

the same psychology works  when any government orders a culling of wild animals....( an African country had decided to cull elephants), as though they were some commodity which belong to us .

 the terms 'rogue elephant'...and ' man eaters' and 'trespasser wild animals' and so on....these names give an excuse to kill them without any twinge of conscience.

how about forest resorts?

are they not trespassing done by us on the animals' homes  ?

And who is to cull us, for constantly entering and occupying all their spaces and homes ?

FOREST RESORTS SHOULD BE BANNED.

AND ANIMALS SHOULD ALWAYS BE REFERRED TO BY THEIR RIGHTFUL GENDER AS HER or HIM .. NEVER as 'IT'..