Communicating with a gentle touch

1115: 

When advocating Animal Rights, we need to speak up as strongly as we can, but with a soft enough body language, so as not to frighten anyone off.  One hint of a sneer from me and I’m done for!

         

I want you to see in my face and hear in the tone of my voice that I definitely don’t want to win arguments, at any cost.  I just want to engage.  (Doesn’t sound too patronising does it?)  By establishing this preliminary, I won’t come across looking like an evangelist.

         

I’m not into winning converts, I simply want to come across as a nice person who anyone in the World could talk freely with, just as I’d expect anyone else to so come across. We should, all of us, feel free to say almost anything we want to, knowing we won’t cause any discomfort in the person we’re speaking with. From me, no one should get ‘threatening’ or humiliating.  I want to seem sensitive to the subject, but only because I want everyone to be sensitive to it too. Sensitive is sensitive. However, I also want to come across as confident. Confident enough to make my point and accept the consequences (whatever they might be), to make you sure that any or all differences WILL be dealt with calmly. (I daren’t use the slushy word ‘kindly’!!)

Animal Rights: I suspect, these days, this is probably the most super-sensitive of all subjects. No wonder some people associate ‘vegan’ with a certain sort of ineffable fear.

         

Animal Rights is the most difficult subject in the world - it makes people feel edgy.  When we’re talking about it, we’re not talking about the weather, but a potential dividing point, between otherwise similar people. Vegans dare to touch the taboo of “morality” on its most tender anthropocentric spot. Obviously, almost all of what ethical vegans are talking about alludes to moral code. Our society operates by way of a commonly recognised moral standard.

If we can ever define that standard (or its origin) then, just as long as it doesn’t involve any value judgements, we’ve gotten ourselves something really worth talking about!