Some thoughts about unconscious bias from a therapist’s perspective, with a handy resource list at the end of the article
In my recent article for Beyond the Binary, I wrote:
Many counsellors have a warm and fluffy idea in their hearts that they can just turn [empathy, congruence, and “unconditional positive regard”] on, pluck them out of the air and offer them to clients. But people in a majority or socially supported position, no matter how well meaning, are often so protected in their assumptions about the world that they don’t even know they are making assumptions.
How can you offer a non-judgemental approach if you are making assumptions you don’t even know about? Isn’t an assumption the basis of a judgement?
I will give an example. A non-binary person walks into a counselling room. The counsellor looks at them, and before they speak, the counsellor has already probably made the judgement we all are trained from birth to make about people – do I label them male or female? Do I call them he or she? Behind that assumption are a whole bunch of other assumptions that go with the labels – even the most feminist of us cannot fully escape the enormous web of ideas and stories that go with assigning a gender to a person. . . .
I have been trained from birth to judge them. . .
read more over on my professional website
A Feminist Challenging Transphobia 