might seem irrational but sometimes these things are instinctive.

TBH although the word doesn’t make me feel that uneasy, I consider a slug to be a unpleasant creature, not much better than a filth fly. Even though my own garden merely contains various low maintenance shrubbery and some trees which are relatively slug proof. I expect my friends on the community farm though have few good words to say about slugs as they are eating away at their food supply!

Slugs can’t harm us directly (unless you eat them as you can get ill) but they destroy a lot of fruit and vegetables that we could eat. weren’t you at one point working outdoors/with the environment? these sorts of dislikes/fears are passed on, perhaps you had a co-worker or teacher who had lost a crop or a nice plant to slugs and passed on the dislike.

My mum is way more scared of snakes than me or my sister, as she grew up in a country where 163 species of snake are venomous (as opposed to merely 1 in the UK).

with regard to the wider “political correctness” issues, these days when it is clearly genuine banter and not real hate words don’t bother me but I can understand why TG is a bit uneasy

its only comparatively recently that minority groups have been safe enough that we can have this banter without genuinely being malicious. Even so, this is only because its genuinely a well run friendly community here, I see far worse every day on mainstream internet sites, genuine hate directed at those people disagree with to the point I am actually glad for feds etc watching over us all and stopping people killing each other on a whim, or at least ensuring they are nicked if they do so – this at least normally keeps people who have something to lose from going to prison in line.

My uncles and parents (and to a lesser extent myself though things really and suddenly improved in my lifetime) grew up in times when being a different skin colour or sexuality could earn you a kicking or even get you killed, and sketchy prejudiced policing meant murderers only got caught after they’d killed two or three people, some comparatively recently after “political correctness” (hence why so many are still in prison today).

currently and thankfully its no longer like that in the UK but we are going through harsh political and economic times and things can slide back (we were lucky for instance that the London bombings didn’t totally wipe out years of multiculturalism, but doing that would have been letting the bombers win…)

and from what I remember of the Chilterns it is built on mud and clay and thus slugs are numerous. This is similar to Mid Suffolk (or Mud Suffolk) where I work, but that is a less developed area and fast traffic is diverted a few miles away rather than (A roads straight through town) so the creatures what eat slugs have more of a safe haven…