Last December, the Twitter account for the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) set off a full-fledged media furor. The tweet in question set out to enumerate the linguistic sins of “speciesism”—the practice of discriminating against living things based on their species affiliation. “Words matter,” the group wrote, “and as our understanding of social justice evolves, our language evolves along with it.” PETA attached a chart of common phrases (e.g. “kill two birds with one stone”) that, by the group’s lights, perpetuate such discrimination and normalize violence against animals. For good measure, PETA’s language policers provided a list of suggested replacements (“feed two birds with one scone”).



Cue the furor. The ensuing backlash was so uniform and so heavy that any onlooker might have thought that the derogation of animal rights is one of the last issues on which Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree. The Washington Post dedicated a mocking 700-word article to the uproar, suggesting that PETA was on a “wild juice chase.” Conservative culture warriors relished the chance to lay into another example of the language-correcting excesses of the left. Liberals meanwhile argued that PETA was minimizing racism, sexism, and homophobia by equating those social justice causes with the fight against speciesism. Many people—myself included—just thought the whole thing was silly. Bringing home the bagels? Okay, PETA—we’ll think about it over a bacon cheeseburger.

But as so often happens when the discussion turns to animal rights, it was impossible to dispel a vague sense of unease. Even PETA’s botched attempt to raise awareness about animal abuse—something so ingrained in our workaday world that it lurks largely unremarked in many of our most common phrases—had touched a sore spot.



As Summer Anne Burton later wrote for BuzzFeed News, people always claim to care about issues associated with animal rights: climate change, drinking water pollution, poor working conditions at factory farms. But the PETA episode shows that instead of engaging seriously with those issues, they’d “rather look away and snicker at the silly vegans.” Taking the complaints of animal-rights groups seriously would mean confronting our own participation in an agricultural system that not only kills and tortures animals on a massive scale, but also contributes to human suffering. Making fun of these groups, Burton argued, is “a way of changing the subject and of keeping away the creeping feeling that you just might be on the wrong side of history.”

Even PETA’s botched attempt to raise awareness about animal abuse had touched a sore spot.

But if recent trends on the liberal-left are any indication, the stars may be re-aligning for the forces of reform to track a different historical course. Crucial elements of the contemporary progressive agenda—protecting the environment; protecting marginalized communities; rolling back the unfettered capitalist exploitation of the planet and its inhabitants; and expanding our understanding of what constitutes a victim—all overlap with the issue of animal rights. As those particular priorities claim center stage in ambitious proposals such as the Green New Deal, the question of what to do about animals will become central. More than that—it will be unavoidable.