Animal Insults: How Our Language Encourages Slaughter (Part 3)

Nov 12, 2020

"We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are."
-Anaïs Nin

Blubber

Blubber is a specific kind of fat found in sea animals that was and is obtained from the slaughter of these animals, like whales and seals, and used as part of traditional Inuit diets, as well as turned into oil to burn for fuel. Though harvesting blubber is no longer socially acceptable in modern society, the word is still used as a derogatory term against people who are overweight or obese.

Bologna

Baloney or bologna? It doesn't really matter -- they both mean the same thing. Bologna is a flesh product, similar to sausage, and is commonly used as a sandwich filler, though the original Bologna is an Italian city. But this is also a common term to refer to something as pointless, foolish, or nonsensical.

Cheesy

You'd think with how much everyone loves cheese that they wouldn't dare to say anything bad about it, and I'm surprised the dairy industry allows anyone to insult the name of one of their most precious products (they threaten lawsuits at a mere whiff of "vegan cheese" but they let carnists mock their golden child). Cheesy is an adjective that means something is silly, stupid, or fake. I find it ironic that cheesy connotes inauthenticity when the dairy industry is always calling plant-based alternatives "fake cheese."

Dead meat

To say someone is dead meat means that they are in deep trouble, threatening that they will become "dead meat" (even though all meat is dead) because of their actions. It is a (largely benign) threat to turn a living person into nothing more than a piece of flesh.

Egghead

Egghead is a crude phrase about an intelligent person -- not only to insult their intellectualism, but also their other attributes, to connote them to be dorky, outcasts, misfits -- often used by those of more average intelligence. I suppose this was created to make us normal folk feel better by insulting the geniuses of the world, but insulting people's intelligence is quite a petty, pathetic thing to do.

Fishy

This is a word I very much dislike, mostly because I associate it with the odor of dead fish, something I wish my brain would let me forget, but also because fishes are the largest group of exploited beings on the planet, so I take insults against them more seriously than jokingly referring to a bad pun as cheesy. Fishy is generally used to describe something or someone as suspicious. Fishes, like most other cold-blooded creatures, are perceived as slimy and deceptive -- even though many people also claim that these animals are stupid and senseless things -- which is why I'd assume this insult exists.

Hambone

A hambone is a jokester or a person who acts overdramatically to a degree of facetiousness. Obviously, the word itself doesn't really make sense because ham doesn't have bones; pigs do. But we can't talk about pigs when we're trying to eat them.

Ivory tower

Ivory is something generally left off the vegan radar because it's a product that is uncommon in the western world and is, thankfully, taboo because of our awareness of elephant and rhino poaching. But we still say that privileged people sit in an ivory tower, indicating that they are elevated above the hoi polloi, likely because ivory is a symbol of power and affluence.

Meathead

A term usually reserved for jocks and men, a meathead is a dim-witted person, as in, their head is full of meat instead of a brain. (Maybe a meathead came up with this phrase because brains are technically meat.) Again, I find this colloquialism interesting because people are so defensive of eating animals, yet there are so many phrases that insult animal-based foods. I also wonder if this term is a way of diminishing animals used in agriculture by insulting products created from their flesh, indicating that the animals are also stupid because their "meat" is associated with idiocy.

Milksop

I had actually never heard this insult until I read The Shining, which leads me to believe it is somewhat outdated. In the book, it's used as a way of calling the antagonist's mother a drain on the family -- a pathetic, dreary presence in the home that led his father to drink, and a quick Google search will concur that a milksop is a weak, cowardly person. The phrase originated from a dish of bread soaked with milk, generally eaten by children and invalids; it's interesting how seemingly innocuous things garner such a connotation.

Piece of meat

This is a derisive term against a person who is viewed more like an object than a human being. In my mind, this is the most telling phrase on the list today because it really gets to the heart of the issue that I'm trying to tackle here: One person views another person as a piece of meat as a way of separating their personhood and individuality from their body, which is exactly what we do to the animals whose flesh and secretions we consume. We are projecting our feelings against nonhuman animals onto other humans by allowing them as little moral consideration as the animals we eat.

Porky

We seem to get great joy from mocking farmed animals for being fat, even though we intentionally breed and overfeed them to grow as large as possible so we can rip the flesh off their bones, and we use this kind of fat-shaming language to also deride humans. Porky is an adjective that means chubby or overweight, assumingly in reference to the heft of pot-bellied pigs.

Roadkill

What a harsh term this is to refer to the tragic death of an innocent creature in the wrong place at the wrong time. Roadkill is used in reference to these animals killed by automobiles to elicit the thought of destroying (figuratively) another person.

Soft underbelly

This phrase always makes me think of how pigs roll over when getting a belly rub, but the true meaning is far more sinister. The soft underbelly is a weak spot of another person, their Achilles heel, and is used in reference to where some animals are most susceptible to mortal injury. The soft underbelly, though not a physical body part to attack on humans, is the place to strike at an opponent to deal them -- their morale, their argument, or whatever is under attack -- a fatal blow.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan