More Language Navel Gazing
Kathy over at Wisconsin Watchdog recently wrote about five words she'd like to see dropped from the animal welfare vocabulary and I strongly agree with her list... but there's one word that gets tossed around a lot in dog world and it always just makes me a little queasy.
I'm aware of the original, literal meaning of bitch as well as how and why it became a profane insult in our modern lexicon. Maybe it's that I didn't grow up with dogs, maybe it's that I've never been involved with breeding dogs, or maybe I'm just that much of a puritan, but it's not a term I use and it makes me slightly uncomfortable to hear it used. I wonder if others, particularly people without a deep involvement in the animal world, feel the same way?
Or maybe I'm just overreacting.
I'm aware of the original, literal meaning of bitch as well as how and why it became a profane insult in our modern lexicon. Maybe it's that I didn't grow up with dogs, maybe it's that I've never been involved with breeding dogs, or maybe I'm just that much of a puritan, but it's not a term I use and it makes me slightly uncomfortable to hear it used. I wonder if others, particularly people without a deep involvement in the animal world, feel the same way?
Or maybe I'm just overreacting.
posted by -J. at 10:48 PM
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3 Comments:
I showed dogs both as a hobby and professionally for many years. The words bitch and dog (to denote genders) are used commonly and accurately and frequently in that world. I cut my teeth on them, as it were.
I now make an effort to arrow back over the word bitch and retype in "female" (same with dog/male) simply because I realize John Q Public (and John Q Sibley) don't use the words commonly.
It always sounds a little funny to me. Overheard while in the (otherwise silent) waiting room at Cornell University Hospital for Animals: a client saying in a rather loud, somewhat whiny voice, to a veterinarian, "But the bitch is in season now!" Didn't hear the rest of the conversation, but it did ever so slightly liven up an otherwise dull wait.
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