“Now you listen to me”

It’s likely that, to our leaders and industry’s shareholders, the idea of animal rights is meaningless. For us to be appealing to their better nature would be a waste of time. For us in the Animal Rights Movement it may be better to stick with the consumer. Our job is to convince them they’ve been misinformed, that animal foods are dangerously addictive, unhealthy and expensive.
But try as we might, if people still think they have good arguments for eating animals, then we have our work cut out. Hammering on their doors won’t make them open up. Before we try to make them listen to us, we must listen to them. They need to know that we’re big enough to hear their point of view, if they have one.
The old way of dealing with non-vegans was to contradict what they said, stop them in their tracks and get them to agree. That’s been done once too often and today people are wary; everyone knows a moral argument, everyone’s familiar with the sales pitch. Usually they know what’s coming and have a prepared statement for a stock response.
Advocating, vegan style is as much learning about people as talking about animals. For us it’s valuable to listen, in order to know better who we’re dealing with, what the ingrained attitudes are and where the attitude-holder ‘is at’.
The value of observing people is in finding out from what point of view they might be arguing. Knowing that helps us know what misconceptions are held. Observing is as pro-active as demonstrating, and opening up to what is said (by non-judgmentally letting them speak) we see how they think. If we were jusr jogging along as a vegan and perhaps mixing with other vegans, it would be easy to forget how meat eaters think. Then conversations with them become interesting. They feel okay to say something, even though they may not be absolutely sure it’s true (like meat is good for you) and we feel okay to say something too If we give them space they are more likely to give us space, and then anything could happen. Between us we could even make a few original and spontaneous and even intelligent responses.
Once we have a willing listener they may find a surprise. They may become interested in the subject for its own sake … even if only to be in a better position to challenge us. But why not? We need lots of challenge.