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galen  ·  3695 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hey, let's have a discussion about eating meat

    Ever noticed how the English language uses you for people and it for animals? Human supremacy or anthropocentrism is embedded in our very language.

I'm not going to respond to the rest of your post because others in this thread have covered what I think, but this part in particular stuck out to me as equivocation. My issues:

1. The English language doesn't use anything; only its speakers do (although I'll admit this issue is somewhat pedantic; #2 is really what bothers me)

2. We don't use you for people and it for animals; those aren't the same kinds of pronouns. If anything, we use you/you (when talking to people and animals, respectively) or he/she and it (when talking about people and animals). But a lot of times, people don't even make that distinction: they talk to their animals using "you", and talk about their animals using s/he (depending on the animal's gender). Yes, I understand that's generally only true of domesticated animals (i.e. pets), but I imagine someone talking to livestock would still use you, and perhaps even s/he.

Anyway, that's my piece. Hope you understand, I (and from what I can tell, most meat-eaters in this thread) don't have any issue with you being a vegan; I just don't find your arguments particularly convincing.