Same-old, same-old

464:

How can we ensure that, within the protest movement, we won’t become ‘forceful’, even violent? When we’re talking to people on this Most Important Subject, do we, as vegans, attempt to force people to agree with us? If we do, how can we justify that? Perhaps we use the animals as an excuse to be a bully, to get our rocks off and to vent our spleen?
That pushiness comes across as boring – everyone has heard it all before, same old-same old. If I have something to say I try to make it sound useful and original, as if it comes from the heart and not from the vegan text book.
Even if my polemic is justified, the bottom line is that I never want to seem ‘pushy’, not with this subject, because people still don’t attach ‘wrong’ to it. Animal use is still ‘acceptable’ to most people – they’ve never really questioned it. And more to the point, I know we all live in a democracy where (thankfully) no one is compelled to listen to anyone else or agree with them. If I start to preach I know I’m going to lose audience.
This subject of animals having rights - it seems to me utterly logical and right, and of course I want others to know that. But as soon as I make anyone feel uncomfortable by taking the moral high ground I’ve lost them. In contrast as soon as I poke fun at myself you can see the relief in people’s faces. I can’t describe my whole manner in a few words, this is just part of it. Each of us is different in style. Overall though, perhaps it’s a gentleness of approach we need. I sometimes want to scream peaceful-ness, because there’s something about this notion of ‘vegan harmlessness’ which has a nice ring to it. Maybe it can be cheeky but it never has to go anywhere near becoming offensive.
My aim would be to be ‘non-confronting’, to go in softly, gauge a person’s actual interest and perhaps their touchiness. I try to be friendly because that’s what I want from them. Yes, I do love a good fight, but a ‘good’ one. It’s in the tradition of how we are together, whether arguing or playing - most of us have grown up in relative peace, never expecting gratuitous hostility from anyone we meet and talk with. Here, advocating for animals, I like to think I’m representing a significantly important movement, but it’s not really about me-activist but about them, about liberating animals. I am as much setting standards of behaviour as I am disseminating information.
I like to think of myself as a self-appointed ambassador for the voiceless. If they could speak they wouldn’t speak with any violence, I’m sure of that. They’d want to keep the peace (knowing from experience how to deal with highly volatile and potentially dangerous humans). I would argue that even in the most heated exchanges with other people, over the question of animal rights, I should never need to lose my cool, over anything? Why would I spoil my day?
As a vegan I want to be trusted on all sorts of levels - my information, is it correct? Am I a nice person? Can I be trusted NOT to fly off the handle when issues become sensitive? Can I be not-boring? Am I interested in others’ points of view?
If I can convince people I mean them no harm I’ll do it through my tone of our voice and body language. And for those of us who’ve got a few violent tendencies we must swear three thousand promises NOT to set out to hurt. After all, if vegans call for harmlessness on one level they must respect it on all levels, surely. There’s so much hurt in the world, why add to it? It’s like a vasectomised man in an overpopulated world who doesn’t want to add more kids to it. In a nutshell, I try to never get involved in emotionally attacking anyone, especially if they’ve asked me what I think … about this issue. How rude would that be?