Cognitive Dissonance and the Dual Life of Danny; or Facing a Privilege of Knowledge

As most of you know by now, I'm an English Lit/Kinesiology double major. A lot of you also probably know that I consider myself a heArtist, an activist from the heart, with a decent working knowledge of gender/queer/racial theory and praxis.

I often find I introduce myself with: "and I prefer he/him/his or they/them/theirs pronouns."

I question the use of race and ethnicity in any kind of survey format.

I cringe when someone uses "sex" and "gender" interchangeably.

Rather than calling myself a feminist, I say that I work on feminist projects because I think that with many of the postmodern influences within contemporary, third-wave feminism it's very hard to "be a feminist."

In short, I'm a bit of a queer who questions institutionalized systems, even those bureaucracies that I work for.

Being a Kinesiology major then has proven somewhat ironic at times as I constantly feel as if I have to question authority and what I'm learning. Kinesiology as a generally health-related field is biased against me in many ways. I'm generalizing, but it in part instills the kind of institutional behaviors and thought processes that I spend most of the rest of my time fighting to educate people about.

Let me give an example: most of my kinese-peers are fairly athletic, or at least active. We're constantly studying the human body, how it works, how to make using it more efficient, how to fix it when something goes wrong. So it wouldn't be uncommon to hear someone make a comment about a person needing to find the right diet/exercise program to lose weight and be happy. While it is true that changes to behavior can lead to changes in mood, the assumption that they have to happen in order to be happy is fat-shaming. But in many ways it's built into our field of study because from a clinical perspective to be obese is something that needs to be fixed.

I'm always working to be very careful to frame my arguments in ways that are sensitive to people of different body types and even catch myself before I outright agree with any claim that would denigrate another person's body. But the bias is there. It infuriates me when people don't take care of their bodies, when they are lazy and inactive and only eat junk and then complain about feeling like shit.

I constantly have to remind myself though that there are institutional pressures that affect these kinds of things in so many ways. Race, class, geographic location, education, all these areas I experience as privilege allow me the time to eat pretty damn well and make the free time to work out, part of privilege is access.

Talking with a friend before class the other today I had to explain what asexuality is and how it's different from most people's colloquial conception of it, and while he was open to the concept it was so foreign to him that he barely had words to respond to me. Part of privilege is being so normal the sometimes if you're outside of that normal there aren't even words for you.

This is the field I'm going into right now.

And I recognize that I will face similar conversations and thoughts in any field I go into. The fact that the discourse of the field itself is often part of the problem drives me crazy though, just a little, because it often marginalizes or erases any recognition of the kinds of privileges and oppressions concurrently at work in favor of the stripped-down facts.

How do I do this without removing the humanity?

Culture Shock

As some of you may or may not know, I am not just an English major. In declaring, I diversified and multiplied my options. I'm also a kinesiology major.

This is my first quarter at Western taking mostly kinesiology classes. Previously, I've mostly worked on English classes and science prerequisites, and though it's only been one day, entering the world of kinesiology and the PEHR (Physical Education, Health and Recreation) has been a bit of a culture shock.

The differences in syllabi alone is worth mentioning. Compared to syllabi from my English classes, these have been downright scientific. I've never seen footnotes on a syllabus before. Granted a lot of the information is so detailed it almost feels like the professors think themselves talking to dullards.

In class, the contrast between English and Kinesiology is as stark as a football coach next to a science fiction writer. In some cases, I wouldn't be surprised if that were actually the case. This isn't to deride my Kines profs, from what little interaction we've had it's apparent they're quite intelligent. But it's so... targeted: physics and bodies and athletics. Even in my survey course when suggesting possible research projects, it was all optimized movement of legs during running and analyzing arm reach during the swing of a baseball bat. Okay, I made those up, and it's not like the English department (or other humanities for that matter) is all that different in their specialization with their overlap of literature, philosophy and history.

I suppose it's mostly a culture shock. The personalities of the type of people drawn to both my majors just seem so wildly different.

Among the English majors you can tell that the majority of them do so many other things. They're in sports and active and have interests outside books. Kinesiology majors I've seen are focused much more, oh how do I describe this? Physically. On bodies and sports and the like, but it's even hard to imagine them crossing the line in the other direction and talking about books or poetry and meaning. Which isn't to say English majors are better. No, it's just a different kind of intellect, a different side of the brain. And this is going to take a few weeks to habituate to.

Which means again, we find Danny bitching and moaning about straddling the fence between two disparate worlds. Though it's not an uncomfortable place being between. Liminality may be dusky, but there's always light.

The true-life account of a conversation I have at least once a week

“So, Danny, what are you majoring in?”

“Um, I'm actually double majoring.”

“Oh wow, really? In what?”

“English Lit and Kinesiology.”

Short pause.

“That's an interesting combination, what are you going to do with it?”

How the conversation reaches this point changes, but the exact wording of the exact same questions is surprisingly stable for the number of times I've had to explain myself.

I like English. I've known since about the eighth grade that when I went to college I would most likely would end up as an English major. Sure, there was a period in high school where I considered a Journalism major, but this was only because it was similar enough to English and would have allowed me to continue in my passion for journalism. I realized pretty quickly after getting to college that my passion wasn't for journalism itself, but for the journalism community I had build up around me in high school.

So as I neared the end of my sophomore year, I was struggling. I was running out of GUR classes to take and needed to declare in order to get into the upper division classes I would take within whatever major I chose.

As I sat with this decision, I knew I didn't want to be one of those people who starts at university straight of high school and takes forever to finish their undergraduate degree because they waffled and wavered and switched majors five times. I didn't want to get so far in a program only to realize it wasn't for me with a year left before graduation.

So I looked around me. I had one professor tell me that if I went into English I should be prepared to work in a non-English field. There are so many people majoring in English out there, but only so many jobs related, and with the critical thinking abilities you get through an English major you're able to go into things like teaching or data analysis or even law should you apply yourself in that direction.

As an English Lit major I've learned to deconstruct a text, to pick it apart and analyze it in order to see both the broad implications and the minute interrelations between facets. This appeals to me. I love reading something and just mulling it over until I see the socio-cultural, political, narrative, historical implications. For example, rereading books by Orson Scott Card with the knowledge of his conservative politics has completely reshaped how I interpret them.

I'm a better feminist, queer and activist because I can better understand the plurality of discourses at work in any given conversation. That kind of bigger picture, holistic mindset is something I've learned to strive toward.

But at some point I realized this isn't what I want to do. I want to do this and I want to apply it everywhere in my life, but it's not something I want to make a career out of. So I looked at what else fascinates me and eventually concluded that the only other fields of study that really held my interest were related to human bodies.

There are multiple reasons for this, not the least of which stemmed from watching my mother go through physical therapy the latter half of my high school career. As an extrovert with an interest in serving people, a health-related field seems natural in a way. That and my experience rowing on the crew team gave me an appreciation and understanding of myself I never knew I had.

Yeah, in all reality I was the weakest guy on the team, but I was consistent and determined and absolutely captivated by the dynamics of movement involved: the kinesthetics, chemistry, and physics behind each muscle contraction, the leverage necessary to generate each little movement, all of them have captured my attention. And it taught me to be physical, that I can do something with my body beyond just move from place to place.

Growing up I was always a bookworm, eschewing the outdoors and ball games of my peers in favor of flying through the works of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and countless others. In a similar way, I've come to appreciate the human body as a book I want to learn to read. Not just muscles either; the whole thing, from nutrition to psychology to immune responses.

And as a double major with English, I can do that. If I take the time to understand material, I feel like I can explain it and make connections clearer than I would be able to otherwise.

That's not exactly why I'm double majoring, which has far more to do with me being stubborn and wanting to be well-rounded.  But it helps explain why I would choose such disparate majors.