What about Trance-Breakers to Respond to the Non-Vegan’s Insistance That It’s a Diet?

As vegans, we’re always looking for more impactful ways to communicate.

So here’s something to consider.

Typical Scenario

A common response to discovering you or someone else is vegan, is for a non-vegan to respond in a way that focuses on food.  What a vegan eats or doesn’t, who a non-vegan eats or doesn’t eat (although they’re yet to discover their food is a ‘who’ not an ‘it”) is the focus of the response.

Despite repeated attempts by the vegan to say, “It’s not a diet!” It’s not about me and my sensibilities. It’s about the consequences of our choices that means I’ve adopted a vegan lifestyle.  Not eating animals is an outcome of my underlying philosophical position of doing all I can to not use or exploit animals; It’s not a dietary choice!”

Try as we might, in the workplace, the restaurant, the cafe or a celebration, non-vegans usually focus on the diet and us moving them to discussing the ethics is met with frosty silences or sighs.

So what do we do?

This is where I like to use Trance-Breakers.

What’s a trance-breaker?

A trance-breaker is a response or suggestion that the other person isn’t expecting and results in a variety of responses, e.g. bewilderment, surprise, confusion and, we hope, the question, “What do you mean?”

The best way to grasp a trance-breaker is for me to suggest one, so here we go.

Example response

Non-Vegan:
Oh so you are vegan.
What do you eat?
I could never choose that. I love XYZ too much!

Vegan:
How strange. I just told you I was vegan and you talk about you and I eat.

Non-Vegan:
What do you mean? You said you were vegan and I am just saying I couldn’t eat what you do?

Vegan:
So what’s that got to do with me telling you I am vegan?

Non Vegan:
I don’t understand. Are you vegan or aren’t you?

Enter the trance-breaker

Vegan:

Oh I see, I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing here.

Reader Note
At this stage I recommend you ask the person for their definition and, as it will relate to food, clarify your philosophical position.  In the interest of demonstrating ‘trance-breaking’ I will skip this bit of the exchange, but it’s valuable to get someone to define what they understand by ‘veganism’ before you clarify what it is and what it isn’t.

Vegan:

“Well, let me give you an analogy to clarify why I was surprised when you asked about food when I said I was vegan.  

 You talking about food as if that is the reason I am vegan is a bit like a person becoming a conscientious objector because they don’t believe in war and someone, upon hearing about it, asks if they’re not joining up because they don’t like the colour of the uniforms!”

So that’s the trance-breaker, a powerful way to get through to someone without the exchange being had with you sighing, having, for the millionth time having to clarify that it’s not about diet, what we eat is just a consequence of one’s philosophical position.

Question

What examples do you have of using trance-breakers to encourage, bewilder, surprise and engender that much-desired question, ‘What do you mean?’

I’d also like to know whether you think ‘trance’breaking’ is a valuable way to share the message of veganism and contributing to animals no longer being used in any way by humans.