Animal Rights via Non-Violence

Vegans tell people about double standards and inconsistencies in buying food made from animals (“You say you love animals but you eat them”). Telling people this isn’t easy because it doesn’t go down too well. (No surprises there!) And being unpopular brings out the worst in all of us, vegans included. Vegans don’t want to be disliked. It seems so unfair, it makes us angry and aggressive towards people who disparage our ideals. But that’s how it goes. We feel badly done by, our adversaries feel morally attacked.
What I think happens is that we vegans feel a lot of compassion for animals and less compassion for animal eaters, so we can’t help broadcasting hostility, like this:
“You eat meat? Wow! That is so uncool”. Obviously a hostile statement and most of us wouldn’t be so up front, so perhaps we’d say “it’s your choice” but say it with just as much judgement in our voice. We might not want to get a bad reaction, but who would? If we sound too weak it won’t register. So we tend to speak a little too directly, say exactly what we mean to maximise our impact and to give the impression that our view is very important to us. But we run the risk of offending. We lose friends this way.
What ever we say on this matter, it’s bound to shock, and we are either dismissed or counterattacked, depending on how we put it. So how do we say something strongly without inviting such an overreaction, and making any further discussion impossible?
If we think before we speak, we might realise the power of understatement. No fireworks, just a statement that sinks in and gets thought about but one that obviously isn’t being hammered home. The whole process of ‘changing a person’s mind’ isn’t a simple, quick or easy thing to do. It’s likely that we’re dealing with a mind made up, a powerful mind, even an informed mind. The only way in is if we don’t use any force at all. We have to work out ways of approaching this subject without cornering people. We need to establish perceptions first, to show we’re aware of them - they eat animals and don’t think it is important; we regard animals as our friends and we don’t eat our friends. That means we are worlds apart in our views, but somehow we must get close enough to exchange views without exchanging blows. How do we interact in a completely non-violent way?