Straight talking

1347: 

Some of us vegans rely so heavily on speaking with great emotion that we forget how we sound.  This subject ignites passion in us but it ignites warning signals with others, like being about to be drowned.  Straight talking is essential, but we must leave space for opposite opinions to be aired.  And then listen to them as openly as we expect others to listen to ours.

We’re most of us amateur communicators - we aren’t trained to see ourselves as others see us.  We speak from the heart and don’t adjust what we say according to people’s limits of acceptability.  Hopefully, people might show that they genuinely admire the stand we make.  And perhaps they half want to take our side.  But mostly, they want useful information from us, and definitely don’t want to be lectured.

         

If we outline our arguments, we should at the very least supplement them with handy tips on the vegan diet. We need to tell people how to fix a tasty meal, how to find alternative ingredients and cruelty-free products. Then we can explain why we have gone out of our way, and gone this far away from traditional food regimes. And then we can tell them about what's happening to animals on farms.

We have to be careful with details and verifiable facts, to get them right. For example, if we say that all animal products are unhealthy and cruel we need references to back up these statements.  We can’t get away with making associations between animal-based products and certain illnesses, like saying “Meat causes cancer”, unless we can back this up with sound references.  And it’s the same when speaking about animal cruelty, where we need to provide details.  We should have at hand all the important details concerning the sow stall, the battery cage, the biology behind milk, and what happens at abattoirs.

Animal Rights is always going to provoke a strong reaction - we’re telling people why we are outraged, implying that they should be too. We’re telling them that their trusted foods are not to be trusted. We’re commenting on morals and health issues, and no one likes listening to straight-talk from vegans, when it reflects their own compliance with their poor nutrition and animal torture.  All this we can talk about freely, but we need to keep subjectivity and opinion low key, and be able to fill in all the gaps with objective information.