The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, otherwise known as PETA, wants you to stop calling your animals "pets."
They feel it's a derogatory term, claiming that is patronizes the animal.
Words have power. Are YOU using language that could be harmful to your companion animals? https://t.co/6CZYxqaOMV pic.twitter.com/kcnTwI3Mpu
— PETA (@peta) February 4, 2020
Jennifer White, a Senior Media Officer at PETA, explained on Good Morning Britain that "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. 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."
She instead suggests using more inclusive” terms like "companion" and "human carer," when referring to your animals.
PETA founder and president Ingrid Newkirk further explained the organization's stance in a statement that read:
Referring to an animal as a 'pet' or as 'it' reduces a sentient being with a personality and emotions to an inanimate object—a possession to be used in any way the 'owner' wishes. Contrary to some reports, we are not seeking to ban these words; we're simply suggesting that it would be more respectful to refer to the animals in our homes as 'animal companions' and ourselves as their 'guardians' in the same way that all social movements concerned with cultivating respect have made appeals to stop using terms that are racist or sexist or that otherwise imply that the subject is less important than the speaker.
Via Fox News