Throw a logical argument in my face, not a paint can
It's a jungle out there. And the anti-fur lobbyists swinging through the trees with their battle cry of "fur is dead" are triggering my fight-or-flight response.
Not because I waft about in mink and am afraid there's a two-litre can of emulsion with my name on it under an animal-lover's jacket. But because some anti-fur demonstrators are behaving like zealots, and they're hogging the high moral ground up there in the treetops.
I'm always tense around anyone operating at that altitude -- they're so judgmental. The trouble with being judged is it's only a matter of time before all of us are found wanting, in one department or another.
This week, the people with more finely tuned principles than the rest of us targeted fur-wearers, as the model Sophie Dahl discovered to her cost during a visit to Dublin. But next week the finger-wagging could be extended to anyone wearing leather; the week after that, wool.
Then, they might turn their attention to fake fur. "Okay, so it's not real, comrades, but it looks too convincing."
Before long we're into meat-eating territory, with chicken off the menu and a slab of tofu in its place. And don't even think about lighting up a cigar afterwards.
Anybody with a Russian visa stamped in their passport is probably on a list of undesirables already -- quick, incinerate that Cossack hat you bought in a street market in Moscow.
It's a question of choice and other people -- those who let us know they operate to a morally superior code of ethics are making our choices for us.
I'm not defending fur-trapping. Slit throats and electric-shock deaths, for animals make me cringe.
I own no fur. I did once have a wobble over a white rabbit-skin jacket in Brown Thomas, but my companion confiscated my credit card and walked me about in the fresh air until sanity prevailed.
There's no harm in anti-fur lobbyists giving us all the facts to make an informed decision. But it's the strategy of their storm trooper wing which bothers me.
They're effective, you could argue: fear of attracting their unwelcome attentions is one reason why women stroke a fox fur or beaver skin, but leave it behind them in the shop. However, the fur commandos' shock and awe tactics deserve to turn public opinion against them.
Everyone has the right to protest, to march with placards, to believe passionately in their convictions. But throwing a raccoon into 'Vogue' editor Anna Wintour's soup in a restaurant? That's extreme. Staging mock funerals with fur-filled caskets? That's sensationalist, bizarre and just a little bit twee.
The figures are telling enough. It takes 50 pelts to make a mink coat. How luxurious do you feel now swaddled in mink?
My motivation for putting that rabbit skin jacket back on its hanger -- a shade reluctantly, I can't deny it -- was because I didn't want to wear creatures that were killed so I could feel beautiful. I wouldn't feel particularly attractive whenever it occurred to me. Tell a woman that and, nine times out of 10, she'll put the fur coat back voluntarily. Jeer at her in the street and you're forcing your viewpoint on her by blackmail.
Moral persuasion is valid, moral bullying is not.
But the problem with a number of anti-fur activists is they are crusaders. Crusaders have always been with us, but in the past they conveniently took themselves off to the Holy Land and most got slaughtered for their trouble. Nowadays, crusaders stay at home, all the better to ambush those of us they deem to be backsliders who don't measure up to their ideals. These people are self-righteous and stern. And, they play rough.
Jostling Sophie Dahl as she walked through Dublin was kid-glove treatment compared to what happened to Anna Wintour. They probably think they let Sophie off with a caution.
But, certain tactics are counter-productive and I'm not sure harassing someone in the public eye -- who behaves with dignity in the face of provocation -- helped their cause particularly. It just reminded me how unpleasant fanatics can be, wrapped in the flag of their ethically sound principles.
Was this even the right battlefield? Some might call it a soft option. If they felt annoyed to the point of outrage by a woman who wore a mink coat to a party and declined their demands for an apology afterwards, they should go somewhere they can really work up a head of steam. Picket fur shops and vivisection research units, protest at fox hunts and coursing events -- don't single out somebody who wasn't even wearing fur at the time.
I suspect people are starting to wear fur again because they're weary of shrill lectures from sanctimonious activists who have made it clear they'll heckle us in public if we don't roll over and agree with them.
Not everyone sees the rights of the four-legged as being on an equal footing with those of the two-legged. But, I suspect even animal lovers recoil from such oppressive tactics.
The paw-mangling imagery of traps makes fur a socially unacceptable indulgence for most of us. But intimidation of dissenters, instead of persuasion, does the movement no favours. Instead of stalking the odd high-profile target, strategists should work out an adequate response to the fur industry's assertion that fur is a natural fabric whose production requires no fossil fuels and creates no pollution -- unlike acrylic fibres.
Facts make more effective weapons than paint cans.
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