Bountiful Breakfast: Acceptance Without Understanding
To combine celebrating International Women’s Day with our first Bountiful Breakfast session of the year, we had the privilege of listening to the insightful Cynthia Fortlage.
Cynthia is a woman of many trades and accomplishments, including her role as a gender diversity specialist for individuals and their families, teams and organisations. More specifically, she seeks to engage audiences through provoking discussions and help people address gender diversity issues through her consultative Cynthia Alison Fortlage (CAF) Services.
Born in Ireland but raised in Canada, we were curious to know why she decided to return to the UK. Astonishingly, she said, “The UK, in the world stage for transgender folks, is the worst country in the G7 and G20 for a transgender person to live. And that’s why I’m here, to fight that fight.” This discrimination is evident socially, economically and administratively, making Cynthia an admirable force of change.
Acceptance Without Understanding
Cynthia shared her raison d’être with us, which she has continued to stand by. The idea of acceptance without understanding teaches us to accept one another as human beings first. Rather than needing to understand each other’s journey, we have to learn that we are all unique and have our own individual paths in life. This mentality creates a positive space that encourages dialogue. As a result, we can get to know each other, eventually allowing us to grow to accept WITH understanding.
Of course, we’re all human. We’re curious. It tends to be an innate tendency to know: ‘why’ (the question we ask to gain understanding). But what needs to be remembered is that this question can’t always be unpacked. Instead, we can just learn to simply accept.
Cynthia shared her journey of learning to utilise this message while transitioning from a man to a woman during her C-suite executive role. She has the unique perspective of comparing her high position in the business world as both genders, and shared with us the striking differences that she experienced. This included her voice being subsumed in her first board meeting out as a woman. Cynthia felt that all of her ideas and inputs were now questioned, compared to having domain and authority over her ideas and knowledge when she was a man.
This, among many other experiences, has encouraged Cynthia to project that simply accepting can steer society in a direction towards greater equality and, in turn, help to #BreakTheBias.
Some Lessons
An excellent infographic that Cynthia shared with us is The Gender Unicorn. This educates about the various forms of gender identity, gender expression, assigned sex, and sexual attraction.
However, although The Gender Unicorn acts as a valuable tool for educating, it is important to remember that it is not confined to represent all identities- relating back to the notion of acceptance without understanding. We (and the unicorn) don’t define someone’s identity, they do.
Allyship DO’s
Cynthia also helped us understand that allyship is a continuous process of using your power and ability to empathise and support those in more marginalised groups.
It’s about:
Building relationships of trust.
Consistency and accountability.
Having the confidence to stand up and speak out against discrimination and inappropriate statements.
Creating belonging within an organisation/day-to-day life (e.g. saying “hi folks/everyone” instead of “hi guys”).
Allyship DON'TS
Speaking more than we're listening… We have two ears and one mouth for a reason!
Make sure we’re being attentive to the individuals around us. Otherwise, the bias can’t be broken.
Accepting your biases.
Challenge yourself by changing how you initially perceive people. It’s not a simple switch but small steps can help you get there. (We’ve implemented steps that we can take in our design-thinking process in this blog).
Being quiet when you see injustice.
By being a bystander, you’re discouraging a change of poor behaviour. Speak up- there will be others who will support you (and who are probably building up the courage to do the same).
Additional resources:
Cynthia’s website: http://www.cynthiafortlage.com
Cynthia’s Instagram: @cafortlage or @cafservices
Stay tuned for Cynthia’s book, which is coming soon. You can follow her pages to watch for upcoming announcements!
