I know we are not monkeys and are closer related to apes.

I know monkey has been used as a racial slur.

It just sounds better than ape.

That said, I think if used holistically towards the entire species, and I do myself included, Monkey ticks all the right boxes because it immediately cuts down our species' unearned God complex about being somehow above just another animal mutation cohabitating on this world. We aren't, we're just the shittiest conceivable roommates.

We crow about our vocal chords. We crow about our opposable thumbs. But really, our species should just go down as monkeys/apes with a runaway ego mutation, nothing more. That's hitting us where it hurts, our inflated sense of specialness and self-importance, literally the only remarkable trait about us.