Public Speaking 3

Having done quite a few of these ‘gigs’, may I offer a few hints about public speaking on this trickiest of all subjects?
Ostensibly we might have been invited to speak, but in order to speak freely and say what we want to say fully, we need to get past the defence barriers and the offence barriers, and feel permission coming from the audience to open up the taboo areas. Talking about abattoirs and meat eating is relatively straight forward, the audience are likely to be interested in vegetarianism, but as soon as we start to talk about dairy cows, people think we are going to attack their ice creams and milk in coffee, etc. This is where I think it’s a good idea to preface what we are going to say by explaining that most people are unaware of what happens on the dairy farm; that they believe dairy is good nutritionally; that almost all people use milk products. Then it is for us to gently explain the realities behind ‘dairy misconceptions’.
We need to keep our voice even, almost neutral, if only to draw out questions and encourage discussion, and that means looking into the audience to spot anyone wanting to say something.
Speaker to audience, face to face, is potentially powerful, so body language is everything. Our tone of voice never needs to be shrill and we must maintain eye contact at all times. (so that rules out making frequent reference to notes. The thread of the talk should therefore be largely remembered).
Unlike a book, which one can put down and picked up again later, direct interaction with people who are willing to listen to us (but who might be feeling nasty reactions rising up from within) means we must show allowance and not be severe. When we’re promoting animal rights it’s best if we keep ourselves out of the way and become almost like a book, advisory, never finger-wagging or threatening. We need to show understanding of the other person’s struggle, preferably by referring to how it was for us when we were on the listening end; how our own change-over period was not that easy and how we made mistakes or took backward steps. A speaker who is vulnerable, instead of holier than thou, is more approachable. And in order to be in touch with the way things are today we should consider this: that the same change-over that we made perhaps some years before, may be harder now, because of the many competing pressures on people to change. Self-development has become an industry and animal rights is one cause amongst many causes, fighting to make its impact.
When advocating for animal rights our biggest mistake is to be seen to care less about people than the suffering of animals. It may look good on paper but in the human-relationship world it’s easy to ignore how important the human factor is, to win over our fellow humans and therefore win our best chance to change things for the animals. The customer plays a paramount part: we need many, many ‘customers’ to take seriously the principles of veganism and animal rights. We need big numbers so that enough pressure will be put on legislators to pass laws to bring an end to the abuse of animals. To pull this off veganism needs to be seen as attractive, significant, meaningful and the way of the future. Vegans must therefore have high standards of behaviour as a role model to identify with.