bring on the debate

If this were a debate, the subject might be as interesting as it is controversial. Two opposite positions. All very ordered. But in the real world outside the debating chamber, stereotypes, prejudices, half truths and misinformation abound. Before things can turn around, there are two things to get clear, activists must seem to be okay people (ie not aggressive) and the meat eaters must seem fair-minded (ie not dishonest). No progress can be made until people discussing these difficult issues know that we still "like" them and they are willing to “respect” us.
Because we are taking the initiative to draw the majority towards a minority view, initiating the debate, then ours is the responsibility to set the standards of behaviour. If we can get our non-violence across at the outset, then we establish a fair footing. We seem to be most confident when we are at peace with our position. We need to show faith in the power of logical argument so that we never feel the need to go on the defensive. And because we have such a powerful argument anyway, there’s no need for us to lose our advantage. But to get the pot boiling, we might need to be a bit cunning. We are after all coming from a minority viewpoint, so we need to find just the right opening for what we have to say. Demanding our right to speak isn’t going to do the trick. We have to let them want us to speak. Even to want to take us on. We can’t pick the fight. We can prod and kid and fool about with people’s sense of their own truth, but we can’t make them respond to us. It must come from them, this wish to talk about all the issues, including cruelty and animal slavery. However hard they try to defend animal use, however hard they try to argue that “it isn’t cruel”, their arguments ultimately fail on this one unsupportable premise – that animal use always involves violence and is therefore unethical. As soon as they engage us in discussion we don’t need to labour the point, merely mention it. Nothing much more needs to be said when they know we know they know!