PETA Wants You to Stop Using the Word 'Pet' Because It's Derogatory

Source - Animal rights activists are calling for people to stop using the word “pet” when referring to animals they own.

 Appearing on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, Jennifer White of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), argued that saying the term “pet” is derogatory and patronises the animal.

Instead, PETA is calling on people to use words like “companion” to refer to their animals.

“A lot of people at home who have dogs or cats will call them pets and refer to themselves as owners and this implies that the animals are a possession, like a car for example,” White said.

“When you refer to animals not as the living beings as they are but as an inanimate object, it can reflect our treatment on these animals.”

White added that animals are “their own individual beings”.

The comments come after PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk, made a similar remark when she compared calling animals “pets” to calling women “sweetie” or “honey”.

First of all, I do not approve of Piers Morgan being such a dink to Jennifer White in that interview. One because she seems earnest and is really attractive and if I was single and her age and met her at a party, I'd agree to call her Persian cat "Master" if I thought it would give me a shot with her. Second, PETA is not a word with "pet" as a root form, dummy. It's an acronym. It just happens to be the acronym of an organization that started out with the noble and reasonable goal of seeing animals treated humanely before morphing into a collection of misguided, extremist lunatics wasting their time on stupid, batshit crazy causes. 

Whoops. I shouldn't have phrased it that way. PETA doesn't want us to say things like "batshit crazy," either. From the same interview:

So to review: PETA, which was founded in 1980 to protest brain experiments being done on macaque monkeys in Silver Spring, MD, expanded to stop dog fighting, cock fighting and bullfighting, before moving onto anti-fur campaigns, is now worried about offending the animals in your house. Got it.

I thought these people had reached the limits of their nutjobbery when they were trying to get us to eat their horrible food in the shape of our delicious foods. Tofu molded into the shape of Thanksgiving Turkeys and vegetables jammed into a disc and colored brown as a hamburger "substitute." To steal a phrase from the great Ron Swanson, they want to serve me the food my food eats. 

But now they've made it their mission to control language so we're not offending the delicate sensibilities of your Springer Spaniel. To protect the emotional state of your turtle. To prevent that Beta fish in the bowl on your kid's dresser from hearing trigger words that will upset it. Because if you say "take the flower by the thorns" at your next work meeting, no one in the room will have the slightest clue what you're talking about and will probably assume you're an idiot. But bullfighting on two continents will be shutting their doors in no time. 

So fine. I'm game. Wait. That's a hunting reference, right? Let's make it, I'm in. No more use of "pet." Let's make it the new C-word. No more pet names. No more referring to a loved one that way, as in "Whatever you say, my pet." No more pet projects. No more teacher's pets. No more heavy petting, even. Because god forbid one more animal feels patronized by hurtful words while they're eating from the kitchen trash and licking their own ass. Good job, PETA. Way to stay on message.