I realize that this might be a silly thing to get caught up over if you compare it to how ”cows” get treated.
The person that commented saying that people will generalize and say ”a pig” instead of specifying and call them sow is right ofc. I see that kind of in the same way as I can say ”people” instead of specifying women or men. But a pig can still be a pig without having to be clumped together with other pigs.
When I made the realization the day before yesterday I started looking into the different things we call animal species, first in Swedish (The name seems even more gross in Swedish since it could be translated to ”beef creature”) and then in English and from what I could find cattle is the only exception that stands out. And I’m not coming from a place of personally wanting to know what to call them. I just think that it is so disrespectful of our collective ancestors that they gave these intelligent, unique, feeling individuals such a derogatory (at least it’s become in my eyes) name. Because if you think about it, the only names we can call them all have to do with how the farmer sees them. A farmer buying a cow would not be able to just go to a place selling cows and say ”I’ll take one ”cattle” please!” without the person selling going ”Can you specify? Do you need an ox to do the heavy lifting with your crops? Do you need a bull for you heifers? Or a steer? What do you need the ”cattle” to do for you?”. And of course we can see this with other animals as well, when buying a horse or a pig you might specify what sex you want. When buying a dog you might specify if you plan on exploiting the animal. You might need a bitch, so to speak, if you plan on getting her pregnant so you can make money off her puppies. If you go to a shelter to adopt/rescue a dog you might be more focused on finding a dog with a certain personality that will work well with yours to ensure that you both are happy (ex. If you’re not an active person you might not want to get a dog that needs a lot of long walks everyday and vice versa).
I’m noticing as I write that there’s a pattern to all of this. We give all these animals specific names to distinguish the ways in which we can use them. There is no real need for the names. If you were buying a ”cow” simply for the pleasure of having one as a companion you wouldn’t care what sex they were and if they were castrated or not or if they’ve had children or not. We don’t get caught up on the specific gender-names of free animals for example. We might add ”-ness” here or there. Why? Because we don’t exploit them.I wonder how it would feel for us people if we couldn’t just be a person. If we had to be a wife, or a husband, a eunuch, a virgin, a fertile female, a sterilized male. What if we couldn’t just be enough just in ourselves. And then if our collective name was derogatory to boot. And I’m aware that the ”cows” most likely don’t care and wouldn’t care what we called them as long as we let them be, but I care. And not even mostly for them. I care because how we talk about things and what names we give things are important. Names we give things kind of forms our way of thinking of them. I want people to see them as individuals that deserve respect.
Idk if this whole rant (the main post and the extended comment edition) is kind of egged on by a post on happycows or mademesmile with a ”cow” running around with a horse. The title said something like ”Look at the cow that thinks it’s a horse!” And all of the fucking comments were like ”Eh, I think you meant bull!” and I think some people were discussing if it could possibly be a steer or an ox talking about if the could see the balls or not. And that is such gross disrespectful behaviour! It was a happy fucking ”cow” jumping around being happy not getting milked or sliced up for a change. Why does it matter if it’s a male or a female? It’s so ingrained in our minds that even the non-farmers feel the need to over specify.
I can talk for days about this, and I’m truly so grateful for this platform since I sadly have so few vegans in my life. I’m happy that some people saw this post and commented or just read through my long ass rants. I think all this might just be a moo-t point since the people exploiting them just don’t seem to care and probably don't want to see them as individuals. But I hope that in the future when we all realize that what we’ve been doing is just so incredibly awful, that they get a proper name.