I think there's a vibe out there in many cultures (including American) that being vegetarian/vegan or certain kinds of sympathy towards animals is unmanly and just kind of lame. This is probably more true in the right-wing demographic. I'm guessing this has been discussed in the animal welfare movement somewhere, so I won't attempt to delve into the issue further in this post.* Instead, I merely want to favorably acknowledge some commentary by comedian Bill Burr about boiling lobsters alive.
Bill Burr is a super-famous comedian and one of the most prominent cultural icons of masculinity in the U.S (perhaps in some respects the most prominent). Although I would say he is a party-neutral comedian, his comedic themes have included anti-wokeness and challenges to certain aspects of feminism, and probably has a huge following among working-class right-wing men.
Here is his commentary on boiling lobsters alive (6 min), excerpted from his podcast.
*Edit: Actually I will go into it for a minute. If anyone wants to see a great example of how to deal with this sort of thing in a different context, take a look at how Ford dealt with the issue of environmentalism/green-politics being considered soft, lefty, snowflake stuff when they wanted to advertise the fuel economy on their F150 pickup truck: "you won't be put in a chokehold everytime you fill up".
Relatedly, it seems good to take efforts to present animal welfare in a less polarizing light, perhaps by avoiding lumping it with other cultural stances of the parts of the political spectrum that it's most associated with.[1]
I've noted previously how polarization also happens on the international level. My basic model of the current situation is that (1) advocacy/actions perceived to be extreme happens in the Anglo-American world -> (2) a lot of people in, say, China find out about it and find such advocacy/actions distressing and associate it with being "Western" , and then start resisting practices from the West (on the other hand, other people might find such advocacy/actions appealing - but this, in some cases, also seems to come with polarization, which gives more reason for opponents to resist it).
I think many positions considered progressive from perspectives outside of the Anglo-American world are important to advance, but there also seems to be an increased difficulty of doing so because of a perception (which may or may not be accurate) of how it changes a society in ways non-Anglo-American people fear. One solution might be that activists, from the Anglo-American world and elsewhere, should focus on issues closer to the center that are also particularly effective to work on.
Disclaimer: I find myself leaning conservative with social issues, while leaning progressive with economic issues - using American politics as a baseline - although I also feel as if I should change my stances accordingly as EA-relevant macrostrategic insights are uncovered.
This fits in to Bryan Caplan's simple theory of politics, on which the defining feature of the right wing is simply opposing the left.