Conversation and debate

Conversing is what we do all the time. We enjoy chatting to one another. Conversations are useful for working out what we think and how others are thinking … and indeed how they feel about us. But if we’re too intent on talking about one favourite subject, it might be football, it might be animal rights, we might become a bore. Especially if we show no interest in what others want to talk about. When we’re coming from a minority view, and a moral one at that, no one is going to be happy if we grab all the airspace. It’ll be noticed and disapproved of.
For example, as soon as we start criticising the eating of meat or condoning animal cruelty, if the cap fits, they’ll want us to stop. (And let’s face it, the cap fits anyone who isn’t vegan). They’ll almost certainly give out some sort of warning. If we don’t stop at their warning it’s likely there could be a flare-up. So, the light hearted chat between two people, albeit with opposing ideas, albeit a very serious subject, soon becomes a fight, and in a very short space of time a distinctly different atmosphere can emerge.
To avoid this happening we have to ask ourselves some honest questions. This conversation - did I come with an agenda? Was I trying to manoeuvre things in order to make a speech? Did I have any thought as to how what I was inevitably going to say might feel to others, if I confronted them on this level? Did I think about the effect my voice could have on them, if an assertive tone entered my voice, and could that seem like an attack? Did I expect them to listen to me? Did I jump in too heavily on something they said which they wouldn’t have said if they’d thought about it? Honest and difficult questions, and there’s another aspect to this. However good my arguments may be, can I afford to be too cocky or too embarrassing when other people might want nothing better than to burst my bubble? Do I really want a fight? Am I moral bullying? And even if I am not a bully, even if I’m as nice as pie, this subject (ethics, animals, animal food, farms, slaughtering) is not a lightweight subject. It’s about a whole way of life. And if people feel generally okay about their life, they’re not going to give way easily. It’s not likely they’ll casually pick up this "good idea" and run with it, just because we’ve bludgeoned them with it.
All I’m saying here is that if we go in hard on people, we can expect some rough-house fighting in return. And in terms of feelings getting damaged, can we in the Animal Rights Movement afford to damage people’s perception of the Movement or even of us as ‘animal advocates’. We do represent an essentially non-violent principle, as it applies to animals, as it applies also to people. Any emotional confrontation misrepresents and compromises the animal rights movement and what it stands for, and slows down what it eventually must succeed in doing?