Dear Mary of Four Years Ago, on the Day You Became Vegan, You have a lot of non-vegans on your friends list, all the information you share in your status updates, the images, news stories, and special reports, are all pieces of information that will impact their future food, product, and entertainment choices. Unfortunately, like a lot of vegans, your earliest vegan mentors are often going to be casual online acquaintances, and they might not be as experienced in effective vegan outreach as they are in hosting lets bash the murderers comment threads, yet this is, unfortunately, the atmosphere in which most of us learn to be vegan, and how well learn to do vegan outreach. Find a new crowd. Learn new ways of relating to the people who are not yet vegan, because theyre the group of people who has the greatest potential to significantly reduce animal suffering. If theyre not ready to embrace veganism full-on, meet them where theyre ready to meet you. You cant rush their veganism. Like you, they have their own puzzles to piece together. But that doesnt mean that you cant help them along with your informative and non-judgmental vegan outreach. Resist the urge to express your anger and frustration. Undercover footage of factory egg farming says everything there is to say. Rather than posting a knee-jerk header like, This is how your eggs are produced--enjoy YOUR omelette, consider instead comments that encourage people to actually watch the video, or posting no comment at all. Mean-spirited and judgmental statements only allow non-vegans to use the prejudices you have against them as a reason to dismiss your posts altogether. Remember that just yesterday you ate animal products, even though you feel you need to distance yourself, as far as possible, from that previous behavior. While you may try really hard to forget that just yesterday you bought animal products at the store, non-vegan friends and family-members arent likely to forget it. Your sudden amnesia is likely going to be really confusing for them, and dumping all the problems of the world onto their shoulders alone, as though you were never a participant in the system, isnt going to make it easier for them to relate to you or to veganism. And lastly, vegetarians are not the enemy. Non-vegans are not the enemy. Animal enterprise is the enemy. Dont forget it. And if youre going to be part of the machine that takes it down, youre going to need to enlist the help of non-vegans to do it. Find common ground. No one likes to think that the choices they make harm animals, so every time you reach someone whos non-vegan, you help them identify the ways in which they can opt out of causing animals to suffer. The end result? Fewer animals suffer, and more animals are saved than your own veganism could have saved on its own. Your Friend, Slightly Wiser (But Still Learning) Mary of 10/20/2013
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:33:05 +0000
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