The Tone Argument In Veganism

Please help edit this into something more coherent! Choose “Edit Page” (on the right there) and go for it. Past versions get kept automatically, so don’t be afraid to change things. In order to encourage editing, I haven’t kept our names with our specific comments. Trick, let me know if that was bad and I’ll put them back in.

—-

Links to discussions of the Tone Argument in feminism: http://thalestral.livejournal.com/216562.html

—-

We need to discuss how the Tone Argument gets used against vegans.

…

nods It’s difficult for me as I had it drummed into my head for years that politeness was the be all and end all. I can certainly see how the frustration of vegans on behalf of the non-human animals who are exploited and voiceless has similarities to the frustration of POC, women and other oppressed sections of human society, but it still burns me to see vegans being rude to a) each other, b) interested parties, c) non-interested parties, d) passers by.

I can’t quite get past the feeling that those who are explicitly rude are running the risk of pushing people away from the movement and/or spreading the word of mouth that we are a crazy movement, and that because vegans are the voice of non-human animals, rather than the voice of ourselves, that we have more of a responsibility to keep things civil.

Note of course, that those I tend to think of as being outright rude are the minority, albeit the minority that tends to shout loudest in online communities. So while for me at the moment, I can see how the Tone Argument applies, I’m loathe to give it its full power when against those who are deliberately antagonistic.

…

I think we just need to work on the details of this. I agree that being rude is bad. But there’s a difference between being rude and strident … although I’m not sure exactly what the difference is … but then it will vary a lot between cultures anyway so there might not be much to say about it in general.

If you’re strident but not rude, and people see that as being “a crazy vegan”, that’s exactly where I think the Tone Argument applies.

…

I definitely think it does have parallels with vegan/AR discussions when it is used as derailment. I guess it is probably more obvious too when it is not derailment in these discussions.

I’m not sure that it can be exactly the same as in other discussions as the issue of privilege is harder to pin down. Again, with us being representatives rather than those needing the understanding.

—-

Sarah says:“It’s your fear that’s guiding your words and making you not strident”