Today a woman died. But this is not what the Yucca is here to report. Rather, the Yucca noticed the way in which the BBC presents the news. The title is: “Woman and dog killed in collision”.
The dog is given pretty much equal status as the woman (apart from the fact that the two are not ordered alphabetically): normally, the title would have said something like “Woman killed in collision” and then they would have mentioned, in the article, that the woman had been killed while walking her dog. And that yes, by the way, for the animal lovers out there, the dog had died too. In a similar way in which they could have reported that a woman had been run over while listening to her iPod. And that, yes, for the iGeeks out there, the iPod was fucked beyond repair. Animals as objects, the usual.
But this time the BBC has chosen to put the dog up there with the woman. My feminist self suggests me that, had it been a man rather than a woman, the title would have probably not mentioned the dog… but that’s another story: women as animals, animals as objects, women as objects. The usual.
This is probably just a bored Sunday evening editor taking the liberty of a lifetime. But thanks anyway: the Yucca takes notice of another of those puny subterranean shifts that will, one day, amount to emancipation.