Shocking facts part three

Because animal exploitation concerns us so deeply, vegans will talk to anyone about this subject; it’s we who usually get conversations going, not the omnivore. So, if we up the ante, we must take responsibility for what happens. Our passion can easily look like bragging and what we say can seem deliberately confronting. Being with a vegan, under any circumstances, should be a happy experience, not something to dread.
Being confronted by a zealot, who only wants to tell people what they may or may not eat, is a disturbing experience. But there are practical reasons too why we shouldn’t confront omnivores - it may take time for them to realise what we’re suggesting, to get over ingrained, resistant attitudes and to compute how ‘going vegan’ would impact on one’s social life.
Communicating any subject has to start somewhere. We meet. We kid around, maybe a little intimacy just to confirm we’re still friends. Then if it feels safe we slide into more ‘serious talk’. Hopefully we each try to keep it ‘together’ for the benefit of our mutual enjoyment and mutual learning.
Isn’t that how things should be? And isn’t that surely why different humans, from different cultures, have (largely) stopped trying to tear each other’s throats out. And instead converse, to get things moving along. They workshop issues. Anyone, even the most ardent carnivore, is speakable-with. No one has to be ‘impossible’ to talk to.