Jottings
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Eyebrow Time
Your Jottings team have been widely
concerned about their eyebrows during
the last month. They have been raised in
surprise so often that the condition is
threatening to become permanent.
The biggest eyebrow raiser presently is
Ingrid Newkirk who is president of a
British animal rights charity. She made
headlines recently by claiming that
referring to your dog or cat as a “pet” is
derogatory and suggests that the
creatures are merely a “commodity” or
“decoration.” treatment of women before feminism.
In those days, she adds, women were
made to seem “less of a person” by the
use of terms such as “sweetie” or
“honey.” “Animals are not pets,” she
continues (at length). “They are not your
cheap burglar alarm, or something
which allows you to go out for a walk.”
She adds that a dog is not something
that you “have,” but is, rather, “a feeling,
whole individual, with emotions and
interests.” A “pet” should not be
something which, “matches my
curtains,” she opines. saying, “flogging a dead horse” or
“killing two birds with one stone,” they
want us to say “feeding a fed horse”, or
“feeding two birds with one scone.”
The groups she leads, People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals, has long
called for owners to be renamed “human
carers” or guardians. Ms Newkirk now
says that referring to “pets” is akin to the And to raise your eyebrows even further,
the charity also wants us to avoid using
words and idioms which involve animals
because they are offending vegetarians
and vegans. For example, instead of To quote Sarah Vine writing in the Daily
Mail last month, “As butler, chef,
cleaner-upper, walker, hairdresser,
manicurist and general dogsbody to my
three ‘pets’, I can honestly say they’ve
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This is the charity, with the ironic
acronym PETA, which in 2018 wanted to
change the name of a Dorset village
from Wool (which it claims promotes
cruelty to sheep) to Vegan Wool (which
apparently doesn’t), and then had its
knuckles rapped by the Advertising
Standards Authority for its “Wool is just
as cruel as fur” campaign last year.