Ep 48 Hierarchies, power & privilege

Today I want to talk about hierarchies. How they show up in any space where there is difference.

Today is also an exercise in challenging the cultural values that tell me I have to have things all figured out before talking about them. In lieu of answers or expert status around this I'm instead offering up some thoughts and questions for reflecting around and starting a conversation that I think it's important to have.

Let's dive in.

Links, resources & mentions

Sonya Renee Taylor in conversation with Brene Brown

Sonya Renee Taylor’s website

It’s all about relating Ep 42 The dietitian values podcast

Relating, boundaries and values with James-Olivia Chu Hillman Ep 39 the dietitian values podcast

Who benefits from professionalism Ep 6 the dietitian values podcast

Episode Transcript

Laura Jean 0:17

Hello, hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Dietitian Values podcast. Thanks for joining me. Today I want to talk about hierarchies. And I listened to a podcast episode a couple years ago now it was in 2020, of course when so many things went down, with Sonya Renee Taylor talking to Brene Brown, and they were talking about many things. And one of the pieces that really stood out to me was around a conversation or part of their conversation around hierarchies. Around how we have these and Sonya Renee Taylor was talking specifically around how we create these hierarchies within our culture, within our systems. And if you work in the non diet space, or in the wieght inclusive space, you're probably familiar with this in relationship to bodies, you know, certain bodies are seen as more desirable, hold more power, more influence more, you know, insert whatever it might be here, or given more privileges, even if we want to think about it from that point of view. And so what they were talking about, and I think this was really interesting, what I found when I was listening to this is that something that I've always kind of carried around in my mind, around around bodies, and around, you know, qualities of our humanity, really, whether it's the colour of our skin, whether it's ableness of our bodies, whether it's the, you know, the diversity our neurodiversity, and not that we hold neurodiversity, but like neurodiversity as in the spectrum of difference. so anyway where there's difference there's usually, within our culture, and I'm talking to mostly colonised cultures here. I'm in Australia, and I know many people listening are in the US, Canada, and other places, in places where that is the case. And that's not necessarily the case in all cultures, but in the western dominated colonial dominant cultures what we often have is when there's difference it creates a differential. A differential is created to categorise and to sort in a hierarchy. And what, the penny I suppose that really dropped in that space for me when I was listening and also reflecting back afterwards is within dietetics. Within the health system, we have the same thing, the same thing the hierarchy, and within ourselves as professionals but also within you know, a hierarchy even if you think, like a mini ladder hierarchy, of the dietitian, health professional and the human we're working with traditionally called client or patient. So you know, there's a mini hierarchy there. within, you know, within health systems or within health professions, you know, this hierarchy around whether people have the type of education they have, whether it's a diploma or a bachelor or masters or a PhD, there's hierarchy created. So basically whenever there's a point of difference within our systems or cultures because of the characteristics of supremacy culture, which is supremacy, whether it's around colour of our skin, white supremacy, whether it's around like I said, ablebodied, education level, all those things, it creates this hierarchy. Now the thing about this hierarchy, there is two things I wanted to especially talk about to share these ideas. I'm not pretending that I'm the expert on this, but it's just something I've been thinking about and noticing. I've talked to some people about this and I just wanted to share it in case it's helpful, supportive, useful, and also I want to share my thoughts around this because I'd be interested in your thoughts and interested on whether there's, you know, whether you would like to add any extra pieces to my thinking, in whether I've missed the mark or missed something. And I think talking about ideas, and you know, sometimes I'll have thoughts around things like this, where I might talk in some spaces, but often can feel reluctant to talk about it openly because of that feeling of like, you know, needing to kind of have it figured out and you know have it right and what I really want to challenge with myself is that supremacy culture tactic and characteristic which says that we kind of have to have it figured out before we can talk about things. Absolutely, I think there's a certain level of awareness and maybe a certain level of kind of reflection that we might want to do before bringing things, o that might just be me personally. But I really want to challenge that piece of myself. I suppose that feels like oh, I shouldn't speak to that because I don't have all of the pieces or all of it. So that's a tangent. You know me all of my tangents.

So hierarchies and power, so we see it in bodies, we see it in the health system, we see it in dietetics. so a couple things I will talk too, so two things, so one is around when we create the hierarchy, which is one person or group of people sitting above another, so it's like a ladder. Imagine a ladder and each rung on the ladder is a differential or a characteristic, a ranking, a category or however you want to think about it. And often it relies on two things. So it relies on a desire or a drive, or creating an environment where people want to go up rungs. So like where it's positioned as more desirable to be at the top of the ladder, you know, the higher up you get. So there's that piece and with that desire or with that cultivation of that is an ability to influence or control control, possibly, or try to control or create situations where people feel like, possibly more that, we have to act or be a certain way. Okay, so if we think about from health professionals, you know us dietitians, we could say dietitians, to speak of us collectively tend to have as a collective and not necessarily as individuals. I don't tend to have this, although I did earlier in my career, I do remember reflecting on this, a bit of a chip on our shoulders, and i think it's true for lot of allied health, around being lower down on the ladder, I suppose compared to doctors for example. And there's questions like 'why aren't we respected enough? Why aren't we seen? and so there's this whole like pulling us into the system and to be in the system. So it creates a space where we desire to be higher up right? We desire more respect we desire more

you know, rights I suppose within that system, which which can equate to power, and it might not be that we, because I know myself I don't necessarily think of wanting more say power, to have power over, but definitely I know different situations, definitely like say respect could could resonate, so I'm using different words and interchanging, but interchange your own kind of words or what you sort of see as the things in the space. So it relies on that and, we can get so caught up in, you know, what do we have to do to even maintain our rung or increase and so I see within health professions, you know, there's all this stuff about professionalism and tone policing. And, you know, creating this way where this keeps us you know, we've got to act in a certain way otherwise, we might lose our spot on the rung.

It also, to be on a rung higher up on the ladder, it necessitates, people have to be below you, you know, there has to be people on those other routes. There's no one below you then you're on bottom right? And within our current culture, within the system or the environment, like the space around us. This position is really undesirable. Now i'm talking about this in the big, like, you know, overarching point of view if we were all each of us individually, you know, we're all at different levels or different spaces or stages of us kind of unpacking that, so I'm not saying that you're sitting on this ladder wanting to have power over people, but when we look at it from the overarching collective, you think about like dietetics for example there's all of that stuff around, you know, trying to keep that space on the ladder, and then there's also trying to keep the people, quote unquote, below us in their place. So we think about the stoushes or the conversations that happens around, you know, nutritionist, you know, we just had dietitians week in Australia, and I saw several posts around the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist. Now again, I'm not gonna lie, there were points in my career where I used to rant on that and also, I was thinking when I saw that, and we just, you know, it's not a judgement, just more a noticing in myself like, Oh, we're still having this conversation we still like feel this push or drive to, which is what I see it as now is like a push or drive to differentiate ourselves, to make sure it's seen that no, we are, basically we're better than. We are both nutritionist and dietitians but the nutritionists who aren't dietitians well they're not as good as us, which is kind of like the theme underneath it. And yes, we can talk about oh, well, no, it's really just keeping people safe. We can talk about from all kinds of different perspectives, but at the end of the day, that's the vibe that I tend to get from that kind of, you know, information is like we're really pointing out why we deserve our place higher on the rung. You know, in the physio world it's probably similar sort of stoushes with PT. In Australia, PTs, are personal trainers and I know in the US PTs can also be physios, the PTs or chiropractors or other things in Australia, for dietitian there's nutritionists, naturopath, health coaches, you know, there's all this kind of stuff, where we try to create these, you know, well we perpetuate, that we're not necessarily trying to create it but we perpetuate the heirarchy.

So that's one thing I just wanted to talk to. I don't have the answers on this, by the way, you know in my intro 'we.ll probably end up with more questions than answers' that's what this one's about I suppose, it's really just to talk about this. I'm not coming up with suggestions or strategies around how we're gonna solve this problem, except for maybe just focusing on our own humanity and our relationships. But that was that's one of the pieces like the hierarchy is created by certain standards that we think we have to conform to to maintain our role, our spot, our level, but then also maybe some of the behaviours or tactics that get used to maintain the kind of the you know, what happens, quote unquote, below the rung that we might see for whatever reason, whether that's, for health professionals, within our professions like what I tend to see or what I noticed, I suppose what I've been reflecting on, but we can see it in our work as dietitians if you're working in the non diet space, you can see it around bodies, we can see it within ableism within all of those areas, you know within within patriarchy, female bodies or male bodies are above female bodies, which are above trans bodies and non binary, you know, so there is that kind of hierarchy we can see it in everything. I see it in parenting, adults are above children in the traditional sense. It's not necessarily saying how I choose to parent but if we look at it from that collective or from the bigger picture piece, so we have that. So that's something to think about. Where does it come up for you? And also, I suppose, why I think it'd be useful is to really question some of those behaviours or question some of those things like that nutritionist vs dietician posts, because for me, I never really saw a problem for a very long time. I was just like, yeah, that's just important to educate people and keep them safe. And until I really challenged the whole idea that its not any part of my business, to decide what is safe, or what is what people need to know, but also just to really think about how that plays into that just really question those things. And like I said, it's not to blame judge create shame or say one way is right or wrong, but really just overlay that lens on these other ways of looking at things.

So that's one piece the other thing that I felt was really kind of revelatory, but also there was a sense of knowing, when Sonya Renee Taylor talks about it is so if we think about it, because I've always thought about like ladder, like a hierarchy and what I've often thought about is the ladder leaning on a thing, leaning on the system, right? Leaning on the structures leaning on the hospital, you know if it's health professionals, or the health system leaning on the educational system, whatever might be. But what Sonya Renee Taylor talks about in that interview is the ladder is the system, we are the system, and I'm just like, yeah, like wow, and also Yes, exactly. Too often we think about the change having to come like outside of us like in the system, or we need to like burn down the system. And you know, I'm kind of all for a little bit of ranting on that space, but don't go commenting that on Instagram because I actually commented on someone's post, we should burn it all down and like got flagged for like, inciting violence, so heads up, be mindful of your burning down things comments, tangent. but really, what it made me think of when when that kind of landed was yes, it's not outside of us, it is inside of us, it is in what we do perpetuate to create the system and James-Olivia Chu Hillman has this great line, but also just like I suppose a framework to start from, is 'we come by it honestly'. So we acknowledge that not to bring guilt or shame or blame onto ourselves but really just to recognise that this is the system that we're in we come by it honestly, now what? what do we choose to do, so knowing that, now seeing that and this is what it's been for me which is why I wanted to share it. now that I've seen this, now by having this an overlay in all the different spaces, in business spaces, in any space is like okay, well, yes, that happens and that comes up and I notice that come up in myself and I've talked about before the difference when we create spaces or when within ourselves when we create that grounding in our values, is when the stuff comes up the supremacy culture values or our you know, this kind of programming or indoctrination, how ever you think about it. to think about things as hierarchies and ladders is when this comes up for us, Is that opportunity to to look at it, and ask am I making these choices or taking these actions or missing myself because I'm trying to maintain the ladder, the hierarchy? whose values are coming up and then we have that opportunity to ground in, you have the opportunity to ground in your own values and say, are they the values I want to move forward with?

So that's what I wanted to talk about a little bit today or talk to talk around, bring some questions out for you and share some thoughts. I'd be really interested in your thoughts like I said What have I missed or what's missing the mark? What, have you thought about this before? Have you noticed it? Maybe you've thought about it in relation to bodies but maybe not those other types of places - it's everywhere. And when we see it, when you know when we know better we can do better because we can see it and we can analyse it, we can think critically we can slow down we can ground in our values and we can choose, we can choose whether we act into the system or act into behaviours that maintain the ladder, maintain hierarchy or that remove it. And like I said, I don't have the big answers. the space or what I tend to come back to is showing up in our humanity, honouring the full humanity of others and relating relating, bringing it back down to that piece of relating and I'll link to some other podcast episodes I've done on it being about relating and bringing out humanity into our work. So I'll leave that one with you. Like I said, more questions than answers. But I'd be super keen to here about your thoughts. Feel free to reach out over on Instagram at dietitian values either comment in the podcast posts or just DM me directly or you can always email me Laura at dietitian values.com If you wanted to chat more, I'm always open to continuing the conversation and to hear your points of view. And like I said to hearing about any difference you've got with what I've shared or anywhere where like I said I've missed mark or missed something. Okay. Until next time, I hope that you are going well. And we'll talk again soon. Bye for now

Transcribed by https://otter.ai