Prepare or Practice

Fragment from Effective Advocacy of Animal Rights
by Bruce Friedrich
www.goveg.com

Another thing that we do wrong—and this is fundamental to this entire subject—is that we often don’t prepare, and we don’t practice what it is that we want to say. We’ve all heard arguments like “What about abortion?” and “Don’t plants feel pain?” a million times, so there is no excuse for any of us to “wing it” in responding to these questions. We should be ready to give the best answer in a friendly and engaging manner.

We owe it to animals to have a thoughtful and constructive, yet simple and focused reply ready for every question. If we are nervous or uncomfortable about public speaking or potentially argumentative interactions, we should enroll in Toastmasters or a public-speaking course, and we should practice with friends until we’re comfortable having these discussions. It can also be an embarrassing but amazingly useful exercise to do video role play with this discussion. It’s funny and a bit mortifying, but you can bet that once you’re done, you’ll be able to offer the argument in any situation!