Challenging hegemony

I know that people are curious about why I decided to start this blog now. There are lots of things that have contributed to this being the time to take action. The most significant being an incident that occurred recently in a job interview.

It really does not matter where the interview was or who was on the interview panel. Discrimination against large bodies happens time and time again.

I was told I was the frontrunner in the competition for a job. That was exciting. The first interview was a preliminary one and was conversational. It went quite well.

The next stage was presenting to a panel of folks. I spent a good amount of time preparing and went beyond what they were asking. How did my presentation go? I am not sure.

The reason I am unsure is that two of the panelists spent most of the time staring at my stomach and struggling to pay attention. The third gave me no eye contact at all during my presentation.

Is it possible that my presentation was lacking and in the end I was not the correct candidate? It is possible. Not likely though. They can't know if I was the correct candidate because they did not attend to the presentation.

After struggling to keep the incident "right sized" in my world and not internalizing the fat phobic oppression, I decided to speak my truth. I wrote them a letter. I shared my observations. I needed to.

See sitting idly without taking any action only supports the existing oppressive structures. Inaction allows business as usual and silences those of us who are being injured by phobic practices.

So I am challenging the hegemony that exists. I am telling my story here and to people when it is appropriate to share. I am making connections to previous experiences and asking people to share their own. And I am going to dig about in theory and discourse to find moments of connection and clarity.

Because things cannot continue as they are. Staying silent on this ism allows all the others to continue to grow and fester too. I want to be a part of transformation.

So why create theory?

I have been talking to friends, family, and colleagues about this blog. Some of them are not sure why I am interested in discussing and creating theory. I thought I would speak to that here.

Here is what I know about me. I know that in order to stay committed to something I need to be fully engaged. Fully engaged to me includes my body, my mind, my emotions, and my passion. I want to feel all of me engaged - and my mind loves taking in new ideas, pulling them apart through discussion and contemplation, and putting them back together in ways that reflect the integration of dialogue and experience. I also know I prefer to be engaged with others for at least part of the time. That is where you come in. I also need to be engaged in action. I know that one of those actions is writing this blog. And another will be creating theory.

Here is what I know about creating social change. I know I have met a lot of great people doing lots of interesting things in the name of social change. I myself have been in and out of issues and campaigns. One of the things that has been missing for me is capturing the experience in theory.

As a whole, I see some shift in social change. We have gotten better about capturing movements in photos and tweets. That is largely due to the prevalence of social media. We see more community engagement projects and grassroots campaigns out there. Some of them are even going global!

What we are not getting better at is creating, writing down, and sharing our theories of how change happens. So why is this important? Because when we do not decentre the notions or ideologies of the powers that be with theories of our own, we do not have something to sink our teeth into. Instead we end up with catchy slogans and chants. Slogans and chants are important part of building a sense of solidarity. They do not sustain change.

It is hard to maintain the energy and commitment we need to transform things like FAT PHOBIA if we don't have theories about where that comes from, why FAT PHOBIA is still acceptable, and what we can do to change it.

Any time we run into resistance - and there will be lots of resistance - we are at a loss of how to own space. We have organized around an issue, learned some great slogans, and taken some actions but when we are challenged we don't have the experience with responding with more than personal stories that show our feelings and passion. And when we can't demonstrate to ourselves and others that we know how this injustice happens and what we plan to do to change it, nothing happens.

And what is the name of that nothing? HEGEMONY.

Let's look at this Ted Talk and see what one doctor's journey from hegemony to creating new theory looked like.

So what do you think?