A few weeks ago, I pulled out my Affirmators card deck (a thoughtful gift from a friend) to help with an ice breaker for a meeting. It is a deck of prompts with whimsical and on point descriptions. A colleague chose a number and the card in that place was about gentleness – I read the description to the group and invited people to share what came up when they heard the description. It was really nice to hear how people were experiencing and witnessing gentleness.

Some of the stories were sweet, including stories of family members with new teeny-tiny babies. Some of the stories were hilarious of pets who emoted with their humans or the opposite of dogs who tolerated being cuddled. Other stories were sweet but heartbreaking.

One of the stories shared was of a Black parent who was advocating for his Black son. The father needed to advocate for his son since many of the non-Black adults in the child’s life saw the child as a threat due to his size and disability. To the father he saw a gentle boy, who deserved to be seen and treated with gentleness. The father also realized the world doesn’t give him the benefit of being seen as gentle either – it was honest, heartbreaking, and true. He understood being treated with gentleness is a privilege versus a right – he hoped the world would shift to making it a right versus a privilege to earn as a Black man.

Bias and Gentleness

We all have biases, and they play into who we see and treat with gentleness. Anyone who tells me they don’t have biases or they are cured of biases because they took anti-bias trainings are met with a lot of side-eye. Biases are a part of who we are, and we can’t undo all of the biases we have. We can work to be more aware of them and work to not react so quickly to our biases.

Before the conversation I had with the team about gentleness. The quote from my colleague around gentleness shouldn’t be a privilege really made me think about who I give automatic privilege to around being gentle and how this might not be fair. It also made me think about who is forced to ‘armor up’ or purposefully fawn and not armor up to be seen as gentle. Race, skin color, economic privilege, education, etc. all play into who gets to be seen as gentle.

If I tell you, our lunch guest is my friend named Millie and she’s a neonatal nurse. What comes to mind? For me a women, who is pleasant and non-threatening, maybe soft-spoken or if not soft-spoken at least not threatening. I’m also assuming she knows how to gently handle people since she deals with tiny babies and their families all day. I would give her the benefit of being seen as gentle automatically.

Now, if I told you we were having lunch with a different friend named Maverick or Hatch and their job is a high-priced defense attorney – what comes to mind? Probably not the first image of a gentle person. Note in this example I did not use a genderized pronoun, did that change who you thought of reading the profile?

In those two examples, I didn’t say anything about race or any other physical characteristics. Now imagine if we layered in race, culture, language, disability, voice, etc. into the profiles, does this change how you envision a gentle person?

Gentleness is not a privilege

Everyone should be afforded gentleness. It is a right and not a privilege. Even people who we’ve had negative or aggressive encounters with should be afforded a gentleness at times.  We all benefit from when we’re cared for gently.

There is a lot more to unpack around this, but for now I hope you have some new thinking around gentleness and affording people the privilege of being seen as gentle.

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