Does Language Matter?: How Carnist Euphemisms Threaten Peace

Sep 02, 2019

"All things truly wicked start from innocence."
-Ernest Hemingway

What's In a Word?

Vegan or carnist, we all implement language as a tool for communicating with and interpreting the world around us. It is undoubtedly an important aspect of the human experience. But do the specific words we use really matter? Follow along, and we’ll explore how language is really used as a tactic of emotional and societal warfare among citizens.

You Pig! (It's a Compliment. I Love Pigs!)

What does it mean to slaughter? Basically, it means to kill. But there is more to it, right? That word connotes some particular level of barbarity that we generally don’t use in a human context except for the most extreme of circumstances. Take for instance the Charles Manson murders. The killers took a sadistic pleasure in the kills, most notably murdering a pregnant Sharon Tate. This was more than just the “average” murder. Even writing words like “pig” or “piggy” on the walls (like, what’s wrong with pigs? They’re so cute and super smart!), the murders committed by that cult made an indelible impression on society as a whole. Another example is of the battles of the American Civil War, particularly Gettysburg. The sheer amount of carnage is unfathomable. These soldiers slaughtered each other, nearly entirely eradicating themselves. Battles like this are often referred to as a slaughter, a massacre.

"Like a Lamb to the Slaughter"

This is a popular phrase, alluding to our sick religious past where lambs and other animals were frequently slaughtered as a sacrifice (and still . are to celebrate the life of Jesus every Easter - sick). Because God forgives sins, cleanses your spirit, by having you forcefully drain the life of another one of his children. That totally makes sense. This is another form of the word "slaughter" with a darker connotation. It means to lead someone pure and innocent, someone who puts their faith in you or trusts you, someone you were created to protect, and betray them in the ultimate fashion: by taking their life away. There is nothing more despicable in this world. Yet somehow, we now have the scourge of “humane slaughter,” spreading like a vicious cancer upon “ethical” consumers. This is not only an accepted term, but it has become commendable, with people willing to pay top dollar for the precious flesh and blood of these innocent lambs.

Benevolent Murder

Is there any way to humanely slaughter someone? Well, if you go by the definition of humane - to show compassion or benevolence - and the definition of slaughter - to kill animals for food and to kill someone cruelly - “humane slaughter” becomes the definition of an oxymoron - to juxtapose two contradictory words. It is literally impossible to kill someone benevolently and cruelly at the same time. We have created this term, however, to ease our fragile consciences, fearing to know that the way we have chosen to live our lives is a complete disgrace to everything we hold dear, all our morals, our own lives, the earth itself. We are the most despicable, selfish creatures ever to roam this planet.

Who, Not What

You may have seen that I said someone instead of something. Are you offended by that? Did you even notice? Though I grew up referring to animals, “food” animals in particular, as things, I now refuse to ever call them that again. They are alive as much as me, and my brain is not strong enough to even imagine how it would feel to be treated, for even one second, like “food” animals are treated today. One of the most horrendous parts of human history – though, to be fair, that’s most of human history – was this absurd assumption we so proudly held that certain humans, people of our own species, could be treated as property. Once the world is vegan, never again will any sentient creature be called a “thing.”

An Anthropocentric World

If you do find this offensive and you think what I’m saying is ludicrous, that’s fair. I understand. However, you feel this way due to anthropocentrism ingrained in us since birth. This is how we cope to live with committing such crimes of nature. We have to force ourselves to see animals as lesser than ourselves, to only think of things our way. If we can’t look at the tens of billions of chickens being killed every year, we can’t do our job of killing them. So we remove them from the picture. They become nameless numbers destined to end up on our dinner plates. If we were ever to get to know our victims, we would be unable to kill them. So we rationalize that because we can do this, we are the top of the food chain; the ultimate predator. They were meant to serve us with their flesh. It is only when we step off our pedestal that we can realize that there is nothing particularly special about humans other than our ability to be crueler than every other species.

Meat is Flesh

When you open your mind, you’ll realize the lengths to which we go to disassociate the animals we kill from the food we eat. Many people recoil when someone uses the word "flesh" over "meat." Why? Meat is the rotting flesh of a dead animal, which we season and cook to remove any trace of the animal it once was. Calling it flesh makes it too real for us; we can’t handle the moral repercussions of being aware that we’re eating someone's corpse. It is so unnatural for us to do the things we do, and our sensitive minds aren’t equipped to deal with that.

Are You a Zombie?

We think we are good people, that we really do try to commit as little harm as possible, even help others when we can, and the thought of killing and ingesting another being is too grotesque for noble humans like us. That is something only monsters do. We aren’t zombies feasting on the flesh, blood, and organs of others. For if you were to say that you enjoy eating flesh – which most people do, simply saying “meat” instead – that would transform you into a zombie. In fact, zombies are caricatures of the darkest parts of humanity. They are the warped, twisted thoughts in our heads, the things in ourselves we can’t bear to face unless posed as villains in some fictional story on a screen.

Call a Spade a Spade

This reality doesn’t sink in until you’ve made an ethical conversion in your life, and you begin to notice all the euphemisms used in our society to make us not look like zombies. Meat vs. flesh. Slaughter vs. murder. Dairy vs. bovine breast milk. Eggs vs. avian menstruation. Leather vs. skin. Wool, fur, down vs. hair ripped from another body. Gelatin vs. all the bones, skin, muscles, ligaments, hooves, etc. humans cannot ingest. Calling “things” what (or who) they are (or were) stirs something within people still committing crimes upon the victims. And it’s often met with more damaging euphemisms - extremist, fanatic, terrorist - created and shot like arrows to poke holes in veganism and to hurt vegans.

The Anti-Vegan Agenda

More and more frequently, media outlets post stories using the same old jargon to generate fear and excite outrage in their followers. Here is a fake but plausible example: “Militant Vegan Extremists Invade Local Family Farm.” Let’s change that a little: “Angry Blacks Invade Local Whites-Only Bar.” Animal rights activists, like African Americans during the Civil Rights movement, are peacefully disobeying unjust laws by putting their own lives on the line, risking fines they can’t afford to pay, lawyers they can’t afford to hire and potential jail time, all for the sake of granting rights to certain members of our society.

But the media, backed by giant business tycoons and governmental pressure, can’t let these few “radicals” go with just a slap on the wrist; they have to get the rest of the “normal” society to turn on them. So they call vegans terrorists, elitists, lowlifes, hippies, and whatever else to make them seem abnormal and, more importantly, threatening. But we know the truth. We’ve seen the innocent faces pleading for our help. They prove that vegans aren’t these so-called extremists. Those adamantly rejecting nonviolence are the extreme ones. And soon they will learn the errors in their lies.

Ask the Right Questions

My initial question was if any of this matters. Maybe the more important question to ask is why it matters. All this matters because language is the basis of how we experience the world and the important interactions we have and feelings we attribute to different things. Language frames how we think, feel, and act in our society; it formed our society into what it is today. It is one of our greatest assets and weapons. When we use our words to condone the mass murder of our fellow Earthlings, we must begin to change how we speak and think. If we are to ever achieve some level of peace within ourselves and on our planet, we must first rethink how we speak of others, therefore changing how we see and treat them.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan