Vegetarian middle roaders

This great gulf of perception between animal users and vegans does have middle ground but it looks weak, compromised, convenient and somewhat hypocritical. The middle-roader gives a bit by eating free range eggs or drinking organically fed cow’s milk, but essentially they continue being indifferent towards animals. A vegetarian avoids meat but still takes care not to go too far, for fear of being too radical or too different from friends. For them leather shoes are okay, as is wearing silk and wool or eating butter and eggs – “boycott all these things and you’ll go crazy”, they say. So, it’s the middle of the roaders, as distinct from the uninformed, who know enough but who are still unwilling to act and who (from our point of view) are ethically most at risk. We urgently need to make contact with them. But this is where things get tricky for vegan educators, because to the middle roaders the biggest threat to their self esteem comes from vegan argument.
If vegans want to entice middle-ground people to disassociate from animal slavery altogether, they must act as guides rather than inquisitors, educators rather than judges. (Having said that, even the above might sound confronting and pontificating to a lacto-ovo vegetarian). Vegans need to be informers of details – about what really happens to animals down on the farm, about the practicalities of applying vegan principles to daily life. It’s our job to allow anyone who is considering becoming vegan, to take the initiative of changing themselves without being shoved from behind by us.