Question
Why are vegans so preachy?
Alternatives
Live and let live. Each to their own. What I eat is a personal choice.
Summary
People are preachy about many things, and maybe compassion for animals is one of the less objectionable things to be preachy about. How someone preaches is important, however. Regardless of how important someone feels that their particular cause is, they should be respectful in the way they advocate for it, even if only for pragmatic reasons. Like any large group of people, we will find vegans with varying social and communication skills. Some vegans may argue in an unempathetic way, but how well someone presents an argument or idea does not tell us whether their viewpoint is important or true. If someone makes a poor case when telling you that you should stand against a moral atrocity, it should not leave you free to ignore the moral atrocity. Few vegans want to preach, and maybe if people who eat animal products gave animals their due consideration and respect, they wouldn't have to.
Discussion
Vegan Stereotypes
With millions of vegans around the world, there is not a single typical vegan. Vegans reflect the diversity of humanity, with all its flaws, biases and varying levels of emotional intelligence. There are sweet vegans, sarcastic vegans, nerdy vegans, cool vegans, and grumpy vegans. Actually, many vegans can be any one of these depending on what time and day you happen to meet us. There will inevitably be some vegans who are overly hostile and judgmental, but for the majority of vegans, just like everyone else, we might just come off that way some of the time.
Before judging someone for preaching, think for a second about what they are preaching about. Imagine for a moment that what vegans are saying is true, actually is true. The basic vegan position is that animal farming, especially industrial animal farming, is irreparably cruel. That to take the life, liberty, and pursuit of their natural desires away from billions of animals, all to create luxury ingredients that humans don't really need, is ethically wrong. Surely it doesn't take too much of a stretch to look at the life of a chicken in the average factory farm and think, maybe vegans are right that this is a moral atrocity. If the industrial animal farming system is a moral atrocity, then what duty do we owe the animals in that system? To speak for them, to defend their interests, to encourage other people to boycott the system which is built on their suffering?
I would argue that vegans have a duty to preach. The caveat to this is that they have a duty to preach effectively. Shouting at people that they should change is only an ethical act if that is an effective strategy. If your tactics create barriers to change, if they make vegans the centre of the discussion rather than animals, if they stoke an instinctive, oppositional defensiveness in people, then your tactics are unethical. The important point in communication is doing it in such a way that you can be heard.
The Vegan Police
Let's focus on the small number of vegans who are hostile and judgmental much of the time. The word "militant" might often be used here. Militant people generally don't restrict themselves to being this way only to non-vegans. They consider themselves the moral arbiters of how everyone should act, especially other vegans. There is even a phrase used within the vegan movement for such people: The Vegan Police.
The Vegan Police believe they have it all figured out. They are hostile to any and all people who don't follow their dictates, and cause conflict wherever they go. They feel that expressing their personal viewpoint is more important than any other duties they owe to people or animals. Their lack of politeness, empathy and consideration sends out the opposite message to the one that is at the core of veganism: compassion for other beings. Of course, for people who crave attention, causing conflict is a surefire way to get it. In making conversations about veganism end up focusing on themselves, however, they do a disservice to the movement and the animals.
Judgmental vegans have a thought-terminating saying to justify being unkind: "All activism is good activism". Clearly this isn't true, and anyone repeating it needs to think harder. People can, by their negative personal example, discourage others from listening to the vegan message or eating fewer animal products. You may object to this, that people should only be influenced by what someone says rather than how they say it, but that would be to display a level of naivety about how most people work. People can very easily "get their backs up", especially around sensitive topics where they feel someone is criticising their ethics. How you say something is as important as what you say. No, of course, not all preaching is good preaching.
Among the many different personality types who are vegans, there will be some who exhibit dark triad qualities. The problem, though, is that people have a habit of placing other people into boxes that they assign qualities to. We call these stereotypes, and we all have them. Vegans are still relatively few in number, and if someone hasn't met many vegans and meets a difficult vegan, they might assume that this is what a vegan is. The box with the word vegan on it is associated with being judgemental or difficult, and they won't look favourably on the concept of veganism. This is unjust towards veganism. Veganism is a philosophy about our relationship with the non-human world. Compassion towards animals is a universal idea that no individual or group owns. Even the Vegan Society of the UK, which gave us both the word vegan and the most widely accepted definition of veganism, doesn't own an idea that long predated their formation.
Anyone who has had bad experiences with a preachy vegan should try this social experiment: tell people you are vegan for a while. You'll quickly find that people on all sides of the topic can be preachy. You will experience the sort of repetitive conversations and reactions that vegans get all the time, indeed the exact motivations that lead to writing what you are reading right now! Things have generally improved in this regard. Most people are more considerate; a few are even interested in knowing more about veganism. Some people, however, seem to have a major prejudice against veganism, often along with other forms of socially progressive ideas. Disliking vegans is highly correlated with disliking environmentalists and feminists. That said, many social progressives also have a major blind spot when it comes to animal agriculture. In the end, for all the preachy vegans that might exist in the world, there are many more preachy non-vegans who get quite annoyed or angry about the idea of greater compassion towards non-human animals.
Many vegans have been in the situation of being out for a meal and enquiring about vegan options. Another person at your table, usually but not exclusively male, gets triggered by hearing the word vegan and starts upon a series of poorly informed questions and statements. What makes this worse is that in many social situations the hostile person is speaking for the majority around the table. Their poorly informed side of the argument will therefore get a very sympathetic hearing. Arguing against a mob, no matter how irrational and poorly informed they are, is a difficult task. The problem partly stems from the fact that humans tend to be status-seeking animals rather than truth-seeking ones; if someone says something, what matters is not how insightful or true it is, but whether the surrounding people nod their heads in agreement. It may be unfair; you may have the ethical and logical high ground in the conversation, but if you fail in the court of public opinion, you and the animals have not won.
There is another problem: when one person argues against a number of people, they have a smaller percentage of time to present the opposing opinion. We may protest that ideas should be judged by their ethics and logic alone, but we know that is not reality. Studies have shown that in meetings, the people who speak the most often sway the day, not the people who know the most. Non-conformists will always be held to higher standards than the majority, and this is just part of life. Vegans must keep their poise and bring the conversation back to the ethics of our treatment of animals and the philosophy of veganism, not on vegans themselves.
Communicating across the divide
As ethical vegans, most of us will have read the books and watched the videos. Some of us have even heard the cries from within factory farms, and smelt the stench that farmed animals are forced to live in. We know and feel the emotional angst and frustration that preachy vegans are expressing at this unnecessary human-caused suffering. But we must also recognise that non-vegans haven't had these realisations. They may know about the death in meat production, but have precious little knowledge about animal farming beyond that. They live in a different, and partly illusional, emotional and intellectual landscape. They do not think of farmed animals as individual beings with their own hopes, fears and personalities, but rather just a blurry space, lumped in with food, on the edge of their consciousness. They often assume that if what vegans were saying about the way animals are treated on farms was true, then some authority would step in and do something about it. They might reason, if it is so bad, then why isn't everyone upset about their treatment? Why indeed. People resist seeing vegans as advocates for a reduction of violence towards animals, because to acknowledge the truth of this would be to reveal their own complicity in that violence. It is important for their own psychological state to paint vegans as status-seeking people trying to feel superior. This same ad hominem trick is played against environmentalists, feminists, etc. If you cannot pick apart an argument you don't wish to acknowledge the truth of, then you demean the character of anyone making the argument.
To be fair, people have had to build up resistance to various entities trying to inhabit a piece of their mind, such as religions, politicians, marketers, influencers, salespeople, scammers and charlatans. We must also add ethical people to this, asking people to care about the rainforests, climate change, plastic pollution, air pollution, hunger in the third world, disadvantaged youths, refugees, and the list just goes on. Everyone wants your attention to their issue; some of them are preying on you, some are trying to do good in the world, but it's not always easy to tell the difference. Vegans need to recognise this reality, and consistently behave in a way that makes clear we are not just selfishly promoting our own interests. By carrying ourselves in such a way as to resonate with the compassion in others, rather than their defensiveness or sense of shame, we can most effectively advocate for the animals. This may require many of us to do some internal work, but learning to communicate in a kinder, more empathetic and ethically consistent way is work most people should do at some point in their lives, even for purposes other than vegan advocacy. It doesn't matter what is in our hearts; people can only hear us if we are able to effectively communicate what is within us via our words and demeanour.
Preaching to the converted
While we're on the subject of preaching, among people who consider themselves activists, perhaps no other cliché is more often said after a speech or discussion than "Aren't we just preaching to the converted?" This treats something like veganism as a binary state, where you are vegan and saved, or you are a heathen who needs to come into the light. Veganism may be something close to a moral baseline, but it is not the end of our journey towards a healthy, ethical or fulfilled life. People shouldn't just be converted and left to their own devices; they should be continually educated, inspired, included, energised and re-energised. The converted don't need the same message, though; I've been in a room full of vegans where someone gives some version of the talk "Why you should go vegan". That is the wrong talk for that audience; people need to consider their audience and pass on the information that will best help them further along the ethical path.
I've also heard talks that seemed to rely on you already agreeing with what they said to enjoy them, or even really hear them. If you give a talk encouraging veganism to a mixed audience, it doesn't really matter if all the vegans in the room are nodding when you are saying things that the non-vegans just can't relate to. To the unconverted, you need more basic, targeted, subtle and thoughtful ways of engaging. Vegans may cheer your preaching on from the sidelines; you might even gain a following or some groupies, but it’s probably not effective in achieving what should be your aims: helping animals. We must hold our arguments to a different, more careful standard when talking to people who don't agree with us; we must try to speak in such a way that even the people who want to disagree with your perspective can’t help but acknowledge the merits of what we say.
The psychological disconnect
Whilst discussing perspective, it’s interesting what is considered preaching and what isn't. Generally, what people agree with is the good sort of preaching and what they disagree with is the bad sort.
An example of how subjective ethics can be involved a group called The Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses, which erected a billboard showing a racehorse that had been injured during a race. The horse was lying down on its side, and although this wasn't made evident on the billboard, people could assume that the horse was awaiting being put to death. The activist group was soon notified by the landowner that the billboard had been taken down because people in the community were disturbed by the image of the injured horse. The whole purpose of the billboard was, of course, to stop this happening to horses. By taking it down, it was making it more likely that this would happen to horses.
Compare this billboard with the billboards, also featuring animals, that litter our suburbs and roadscapes, blights on our urban scenery that are considered commonplace and never questioned. These billboards feature detached parts of animals, usually pigs, cattle and chickens, who have been deliberately killed while still children, then have been dismembered and burnt. Displaying the parts of these animals is apparently fine because it is then labelled “food”, causing people to disassociate from the individual animals involved. These injunctions to consume more animal products, to promote more murder, are apparently socially acceptable. A billboard showing an animal in distress and calling for greater compassion towards them, however, draws complaints and condemnation. People are happy seeing chunks of flesh of murdered farm animals, but they don't like to see a different kind of animal lying, waiting to be murdered. Perhaps nothing could be as clear in showing the disconnect between the food on people's plates, which people see as a disembodied product, and the lives of the animals from which that food comes.
It’s not just what you see that creates your world, but also the story you tell, or choose not to tell, yourself internally about it. Is that a piece of food, or is it the burnt flesh of an intensively bred, malformed animal murdered prematurely after a terrible life? For people who eat meat, it is clearly both, but for some reason, whether it be habit, intellectual self-defence, or self-interested bias, they often only see the former. Our worldview can be so hardened and habitual to us that it can be hard to even comprehend someone if they are saying something that contradicts it. Studies show us that people find it harder to pay attention to and recall images that they find psychologically discomforting. People will subconsciously avoid disturbing elements in images, as if some subconscious or preconscious part of the brain is filtering information before it gets into their conscious attention. People also find it harder to recall images with disturbing aspects to them. A common vegan meme is to say "I can show a video of my food being made without a graphic content warning". Given that what goes on in slaughterhouses and factory farms is so disturbing to normal individuals, it makes sense that psychological mechanisms will come into play. Vegans are therefore not just trying to inform people, but trying to change their current frame of reference, often at least partly against their subconscious will. The task of advocating for animals is not just putting information out into the world about the treatment of animals; we have to help people open themselves to uncomfortable information in a way that doesn’t provoke emotional self-defence mechanisms, and that is considerate of other traumas that people might already be dealing with. None of this is easy, but it is a challenge we must accept to best help the animals.
If I were an animal bred in a factory farm or on my way to slaughter, I’d desperately hope someone would be preaching for me, but more importantly, I would want them to be most effectively helping me. Being right is not enough; shouting at the world in anger is probably counter-productive. The point is to change the world, to make ethical progress. People rarely change from one fact, phrase, sign, t-shirt, interaction or conversation, and will often be especially resistant to this if it is put to them in a hostile or confrontational manner. As much as the thought of billions of animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses burns most vegans, as urgent as the task before us is in the face of so much suffering, we have to accept that the world is unlikely to suddenly awaken to reality tomorrow. We need to put some thought into long-term, structural strategies that involve a wide range of disciplines, from psychology to philosophy, economics, nutrition, and politics. Emotions are vital in motivating us, but their power needs to be carefully harnessed within a rational framework so that we are most effective.
If you want to be an effective vegan advocate, especially if you want to be a preachy vegan, you need to do the work. Read about psychology and effective behaviour change, the history of our movement and its thinkers, the arguments and justifications of the other side, the lives of farmed animals, the livestock industry’s effects on the environment, human rights and our political systems. You don’t have to know everything; indeed you should be quick to acknowledge that you don’t, but you don’t want to come off as either ill-informed or overly emotionally motivated. Like any conversation, it is important to have the facts on your side, to try to listen, seriously consider other points of view, make them feel heard and look for common ground on which to build. Keep in mind, before we judge others, that most of us haven’t always been vegan, and try to tap into how you might have felt about the conversation back in your pre-vegan days. Also, being vegan doesn't mean we don't have our own areas to ethically improve upon, so let us remember we are trying to move forward ethically, together.
Open doors
There is also the issue of preaching effectively, of using our emotional resources and time to achieve the best outcome for animals. The random people you meet on a street, who walk past a protest, even your friends and family, might not be the subset of the community most open to change. There are, however, large numbers of people beyond your immediate social interactions who are actively pondering a vegan diet, or could be easily convinced to move in that direction. The main thing these people want or need is a little hand up. Finding these people and helping them, what we call "pushing on open doors", can be a more effective and less confrontational form of activism. You can do this by things like cooking classes, vegan mentoring, introductions to plant-based diets, baketivism, and so on. I've been involved in some amazing programs we called Vegan Pledges, where groups of people were taken through a program to help them try being vegan for a month. The pledge was free for participants, and included food samples, nutrition advice, mentoring, events and group support; it was incredibly effective. You don't have to come up with all the strategies yourself; there have been so many smart activists around the world, and things they have tried, you just need to learn about and familiarise yourself with them.
When it comes to effective activism, not only don't you have to do it yourself, you probably shouldn't. If you want to make a change at a wider level, being part of an activist group, or starting one if you absolutely have to, is a way of multiplying and strengthening our individual efforts. Having a group to think about plans and campaigns with, and to implement them, means you can do more ambitious and well-thought-through things. A group benefits from having a variety of personalities, skills, knowledge, ideas and perspectives; it can also keep going when “life happens”, and people drop in and out over time. Also, people can concentrate on the things that they enjoy, and focus on the tasks the group needs that might be better for introverts, extroverts, neurodiverse, and neurotypical people, and so on. I used to help run volunteer inductions for an Animal Liberation organisation, and if there was one thing I found hard to get across to people, it was that activism was much wider than the confrontational "go vegan now" style. Organisations, especially smaller community ones, need lots of different skills, from various professional services to fundraising, marketing, committee membership, handy work, event preparation, baking and so on. Indeed, just turning up, doing what you say you will do, being nice to everyone, and being reliable is perhaps the best trait any volunteer can have in a group. If you truly have the urge to preach, that's fine, but if you just want to help animals, there are many other ways to do so.
Speaking for them
Sometimes we refer to non-human animals as the voiceless. Many people point out that animals do speak for themselves, as they instinctively cry out against the injustices and pain that are inflicted upon them as standard practices in animal agriculture. Those cries, however, will never be heard by the consumers who pay to have these animals bred, confined and slaughtered on their behalf. We have banished the slaughterhouses and factory farms well out beyond the urban and suburban environments most people live in. The animals people eat are barely real beings to the consumers who have so much power to decide their fate. We must help people to hear the voices of those animals; we have a duty to speak for them, indeed, even to preach for them in the right time and place.
To take it upon ourselves to speak for another being, though, requires a high bar of consideration. If we have to preach, we need to do it thoughtfully. We need to focus on what helps animals, not just what we personally want to do. Just preaching because it makes us feel better to "get it out", especially if we are acting in such a way that it actively discourages people from the cause we are preaching for, is not a good thing in itself. You should be angry about the way animals are treated; other people should also be angry about it, but triggering irrational forces like anger is unpredictable and likely to backfire. I have spent time with cows, pigs, chickens, goats, ducks and other animals at sanctuaries. When I think about how gentle most farmed animals are, how much they appreciate a kind voice and touch, it inspires me to try to embody the peaceful way they generally are in how I communicate on their behalf.
You may not care what other people think of you and your way of being in the world. You may even wear your prickly individualism like a badge of honour, perhaps rejecting the world before it can reject you. This may win you fans in the right social circles, but the world we are trying to change is much more vast. To be a vegan is to be part of the idea of what vegan means for the people we encounter. Like it or not, whatever identity we have, especially if we are in a minority, we will be a representative of that identity in the world. We may not choose the responsibility of defining what veganism is for other people, but it is thrust upon us every time we say we are vegan, wear a vegan shirt, or order a vegan meal. To be an effective advocate for animals, we must understand that our medium and our message are inextricably intertwined. Veganism is about compassion for all animals, humans included, so let us embody that consistently so as not to confuse that simple truth in other people’s minds. Preach, but preach effectively.