What Do We Say Instead?
By Dana Waite Esposito
©Dana Waite Esposito
The problem of how we refer to wild, industrially enslaved, and factory farmed animals has been bothering me for a long time. It began in earnest after I experienced a moment of transcendence with one of the wild squirrels who visit my yard for clean water, seeds and unshelled nuts. I was sitting on my porch steps one day in order to better see and hear them. One was scampering toward me when she suddenly stopped and stared at me. I stared back at her, gazing into the pool of blackness of her left eye. Everything stopped for a brief moment. There was no me, no squirrel, no yard, trees, grass, steps. Nothing. Only an empty moment in which my ego was disengaged and I was fleetingly part of everything. No boundaries. There was a sense of something bigger, vaster, oceanic and universal that still defies explanation. It had never happened to me before, nor has it happened since. It was startling, but as soon as I tried to name it, it was gone, and I was back in my usual state of being—yet somehow changed.
I might have had such a moment on the cushion of my Zen meditation practice, but I did not. I had it with a squirrel, a wild being reviled by many in my community and in many suburban places around the country. My heart breaks for the ones who are hit by careless car drivers, poisoned or trapped in cruel ways by humans who are mad at them for eating their flowers or for nesting in a warm attic when there are no suitable trees left for squirrel mothers to safely birth and raise babies.
My heart breaks for so many: the factory farmed, the abandoned, the cruelly abused, the starved, the hunted for greed, the unloved. They all have one thing in common: when humans write and speak about these individuals, we refer to them as “it”, which is a very impersonal pronoun traditionally referring to objects. We have, in our greed and from our self-appointed pedestal of entitlement, come to think of these Beings as objects, things put here for our use, like cars, computers, telephones, etc. It doesn’t matter if we cause them suffering, because they can’t feel pain, we say to ourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In actuality these Beings are like us in many ways. We share the classification of mammal with many of them. We know that they are intelligent, fully sentient and well-equipped for life in the ecosystems they were born to. They have beating hearts and they breathe the same air. They raise and care for their offspring. They know family life. They grieve the loss of loved ones, and some even bury their dead or cover their corpses with plant materials. They experience the anguish of having a loved one forcibly taken from them. They feel physical pain, depression, fear, and anxiety. They show affection toward others of their kind and many even form lasting bonds with individuals of other species. Nature may have made some of them to kill other beings for food, or to die from wounds sustained in battles for mating supremacy, but only humans kill wantonly for our own uses.
So why then, should we continue to refer to these individuals as “it?” I think they deserve better from us, their so-called stewards, when we write or talk about them. The object pronoun only demeans them further and serves to reinforce our misguided superiority over them. It has become a means by which we can continue our cruelties toward them, absolve ourselves of guilt, and assuage our consciences.
Since my moment with the wild squirrel, I can no longer accept this position.
So how should we refer to them instead when we talk about them as individuals, rather than herds, flocks, or dreys? How can we let go of the “it” pronoun when we speak of any living Being? One thing that has worked for me is making a greater effort to identify their gender and call them by the personal pronouns “he,” “she,” “him,” and “her.” With some beings this can be difficult, if not impossible, especially if the animal in question is fully wild. Wild squirrels, for example, are almost always in motion, which makes identifying them as male or female by their sex attributes quite difficult.
Because I will not refer to any individual as “it,” I have made a personal decision to randomly refer to another as “she” or “he,” even when I can’t know their gender for sure. I don’t think they mind, and it puts me on a more equal footing with them. As we are equal but different, I can see them more clearly as individuals this way, and I have come to respect and even love them as fellow travelers on this amazing journey we call life.
The writer is a citizen scientist in her own backyard who is trying to do what she can on behalf of wildlife conservation and climate change in the only sphere of influence she really has. She supports the work of The Safina Center to open human hearts in loving compassion for all living Beings .