Vegans: Toughening up and softening up

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In these ‘early days’, of the growth of animal-rights consciousness, vegans need to become hard working, and to adhere to their plant-based food regime whilst helping to build a new product market. We need strength of character. We need to be committed and press for change in others.

            But pressure! It can work both ways. When people want to know what we’re on about, we can tell them, but not by using any unsolicited pressure. If we tell others to give up animal-eating, there’s usually a negative reaction.

“You want us to be like you? It’s a free world. I can eat what I like and no one’s going to stop me”.

The main question facing vegans is how we talk about animal issues without seeming like nut-case evangelists. We need to solve this question, of how to ‘talk-animals’ to people who initially don’t want to know. And we need to learn how to interest the media, who also don’t want to know.

To a vegan, this subject is so ‘on our minds’ all the time that it’s difficult to resist the temptation of ‘talking vegan’ to non-vegan friends, in the hope of converting them, but generally people won’t be pushed into anything quicker than feels comfortable. Pressure! It does do damage to how people relate to us, and it’s worth keeping our friends because they are our most precious resource; so by being pushy with them it’s likely we could already be on the road to becoming an ex-friend.

            Friends keep us going when we are down so it seems a good idea to show our friends and indeed everyone we speak to that we will love them at all costs. My advice would be to answer questions, but resist the temptation to try to convert. Unless they ask, say little. Reserve the oration for those times we might be invited to speak in public. And of course, there’s always the people’s forum, the Internet!