This is not a PC thing. We must admit responsibility for our actions and our culture.
The English language contains hundreds of idioms that mention animals: ants in your pants, bull in a china shop, clam up, fish out of water, free as a bird, the lion’s den, like a moth to a flame, playing possum, quick as a bunny, squirrel away, stir up the hornet nest, strong as an ox, and many many more.
These examples are innocuous, but many evocations of animals are not, and that’s my focus here.
Talking politics often includes unfavorable characterizations of one’s adversaries and using animals to insult humans is very common in this context, both online and IRL. But this is neither fair nor accurate, and I often find myself tacking on a comment to that effect, such as: “Describing Republicans as rats is insulting to rats” or “Calling cops pigs slanders pigs.”
People are not sheep.
Cops are not pigs.
Generals are not hawks.
They are all humans.
Original essay on Macska Moksha Press:
https://macskamoksha.com/2019/08/we-should-stop-insulting-animals-and-own-our-own-humanity