Animal rights group PETA demands ban on ‘disrespectful’ sporting terms such as ‘bullseye’
By Victoria Allen, Science Editor of the Daily Mail
16:32 27 Mar 2023, updated 16:34 27 Mar 2023
- Campaign group PETA has a list of animal sports terms to be banned
- These include “Worm Burner”, “Hot Dog”, “Bullseye” and “Dead Bird”.
Golfers may only see the word “worm burner” as a slightly eccentric sporting term for a shot that rolls across the ground.
But for serious animal rights activists, it’s cruel terminology that needs to be banned.
Badminton players should also never call an out-of-game shuttle shot a “dead bird,” they say, and in tennis the “hot dog” shot made famous by Nick Kyrgios and Roger Federer, where the ball hits between the player’s legs , should be referred to as “vegan hot dog” instead.
Even the bullseye in darts should be renamed lest anyone think it is a pejorative reference to a real bull’s eye.
The campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has a list of sports terms that they now want to revise to avoid disrespect towards animals.
Ahead of last weekend’s boat race, PETA also wrote to British Rowing, demanding an end to the obscure ‘catch a crab’ oar term, used for an erroneous stroke where the oar is under water for too long.
British Rowing chairman Mark Davies shared the letter on Twitter, sparking much debate.
Toby Young of the Free Speech Union said: “This is a perfect example of activist hyperbole.
“By attempting to ban harmless words and phrases that have been used on golf courses and at cricket matches on the village green for decades, PETA is making a fool of itself.
“Certainly no one, not even the most die-hard animal rights activist, could seriously want tennis players to call a shot the ‘vegan hot dog.'”
Lee Monks of the Plain English Campaign said: “This really is the pinnacle of silly, frivolous bead-hugging.
“The charm – unless we’re immune to it – of distinctive sporting terms is their humor.
“The notion that there could be any inherent cruelty in terms like ‘worm burner’ or ‘dead bird’ is ridiculous.
“How many worms and birds are likely to take offense?
“Sporting jokes like ‘feather bed’ and ‘catch a crab’ are also completely harmless.
“The choice of alternatives is quite embarrassing.”
There are many animal terms in sport, and some are overtly violent, like the “rabbit punch” in boxing.
It’s illegal to rabbit punch someone, which is a sharp, dangerous blow to the neck, and activists want the term, which comes from a rabbit-hunting technique, to be banned as well.
However, they are also dissatisfied with far more harmless terms, such as cricket’s ‘feather bed’, which is a slow, soft pitch with a predictable bounce.
Because duck and goose feathers help support the foie gras industry and, in some cases, can be painstakingly plucked from live birds, PETA is suggesting cricketers drop the term feather bed and replace it with “mattress topper.”
PETA’s Elisa Allen said: “Words matter and sports terms that normalize violence or satirize animal misery, even unconsciously, should be given a modern makeover.
“Choosing more inclusive and respectful language in relation to our fellow human beings, sentient beings, is the really sporting thing.”
She said: “Athletes, commentators and fans would certainly smile rather than flinch if rowers ‘free a lobster’ rather than ‘catch a crab’ as trapped crabs often experience pain from having their legs damaged or from workers pulling them be torn off from fishing nets.
“And since throwing a ‘rabbit punch’ is already banned in boxing and other martial arts, why not also repeal the phrase – derived from the barbaric way hunters kill rabbits by attempting to sever their spinal cords.”
PETA says animal words in sports are examples of “speciesism,” which they liken to racism and sexism.
Among their suggested replacements, the rather odd term “germ incinerator” refers to a golf ball that burns germs off the ground, instead of worms.
Frank Furedi, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Kent, said: “This is PETA’s linguistic engineering, which wants to strip us of all our metaphors and make people feel guilty about things they have no reason to feel guilty about.
“I don’t think there are many fools who object to the use of the word bullseye, but PETA is determined to control language to make their extreme position credible.”