Power, Rank, and Privilege in Relationships

Sidewalk Talk

Come hang out with us for an honest and heartfelt conversation about power, rank, and privilege in human relationships. Eight incredible panelists—psychotherapists, community and culture healers, and facilitators from around the world—share personal stories, deep reflections, and real-life insights about how power shapes our lives in complex and surprising ways, even in how we see each other.

This isn’t about quick fixes, but you’ll walk away with some practical ideas to try and maybe a fresh perspective on your own relationship with power. Watching this group come together and hold space for such a rich exchange is like a balm for the soul.

Big love to Sadaf, Aryan, and Liz for staying up through the night to join us from India and Australia—you made this global conversation even more special.

Episode Timeline

00:00 Introduction to Sidewalk Talk

01:04 Meet the Panelists

01:52 Defining Power, Rank, and Privilege

02:46 Personal Reflections on Power

04:49 Opening the Discussion

07:04 Exploring Power Dynamics

08:21 The Complexity of Power in Relationships

11:25 Interpersonal Power and Freedom

14:10 Power in Professional and Personal Contexts

21:56 Embodied Power and Conceptual Power

40:54 The Role of Community and Responsibility

46:00 Understanding Privilege and Power

46:55 The Role of the Body in Power Dynamics

48:33 Initiation and Spiritual Growth

49:53 Relationality Beyond Human Interactions

54:12 The Myth of Independence and Interdependence

57:03 The Importance of Grief and Healing

01:02:06 Stories of Authenticity and Connection

01:07:04 Children's Wisdom and Gender Identity

01:15:22 Closing Reflections and Gratitude

 

Standout Quotes

Defining Rank, Power and Privilege:

Power is the ability to get things done. And privilege is like the power in a certain context that will give you access to the resources more easily than the other. And rank is the accumulation of power, but that is … contextual and situational depending on the field that you're in. (Sara Huang)

Regulation What We Feel As Power:
If we can regulate what's happening in here, then we can share whatever gifts, whatever love we have and find the pathways, not just to individual power, but to shared influence and relationship inside of it. (Eric Fitzmedrud)

How We Use The Word Privilege:
But I feel a lot of the concepts we use, for me, they don't hit the mark to help us develop our deepest powers, and they don't help us to be authentic with each other. So when I hear, just take the word privilege. Usually, I find in the discourses that I hear, people use [privilege] as an accusation, “You're privileged,” or they use it as an apology, “Oh, I'm so privileged.” And I've been thinking about privilege lately. Privileges is random. It's random. We don't choose the race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, whatever thing. We don't choose any of that. You get your circumstances in life. And then you make something of it. (Dawn Menken)

Shame, Blame, and Guilt:
We've misunderstood shame, blame, and guilt. We think they're emotions, and they're not. They're actually where we go to hide from emotions. So when I hear them in the room, the first question I ask is, “What are you trying not to feel?” And often, it's just deep grief and sadness. And often, we'll take the shame, blame, or guilt so we don't have to take responsibility. And in a culture that's an adolescent adult culture, we want all of the freedoms and none of the responsibilities. Responsibility is the ability to respond, and so for me, that's stepping into our own agency. (Quanita Roberson)

More Than Human World:
Because a lot of the things I'm really interested in as someone who is trying to do my little bit to repair wisdom culture, is so much about that relationality with the sort of the more than or other than human world, as well as our relationship and our superiority and exceptionalism to the rest of the world. (Liz Scarf)

Comfort vs Safety and Victim vs Truth of Who We Are:
I think we often mistake comfort for safety. And we've moved into a culture that actually glorifies victimization. Instead of what communities, a part of communities job is to remind us of the truth of who we are. (Quanita Roberson)

Embodying Power:
I think words are too little to define how we embody power. And I feel that is also one of the problems that I think the world is having at the moment is. We talk, we conceptualize power a lot, but we don't embody it. So when it comes to the real situations, the person is talking so much about power and systemic oppression, and this big jargon but is not even able to stand up for themselves because they're not embodying it. Like they're, they have no experience, they don't have any modeling for that. (Aryan Somaiya)

We Misuse Power To Protect Against Loss:
That misuse of power is the protection against loss. That when we misuse power we’re protecting our hearts from ever knowing that somehow love could be perfect. We're protecting our hearts from knowing that we lose love. We're protecting our hearts from knowing that people die. We're protecting our hearts from knowing that people fail us. We're protecting our hearts from knowing that we're real shitheads to one another and we hurt each other. And so we'll misuse power. And I just I'm sitting with that a lot these days. (Traci Ruble)

Submission:
Submission is power. (Aryan Somaiya)

Harmful Power Narratives That Live In Us:
Power for me was always harm. Whoever had it was the person that harmed. And so, for me, my relationship to power is complicated, right? Because for me, it's bad. So you better not have any personal power. And I'm not so sure I feel about people that have the power. And what that means then is then what the heck am I doing in my life? Because I don't have it for myself, and I certainly judge and, prosecute other people that have it, because to me, it's all bad. I'm not saying that I believe that anymore, but I'm saying that lives inside of me, that relationship to power. (Traci Ruble)

Conflict Between Power Rules and Our Values:
 …where power is playing out and rank is playing out about who gets to catch whose eye, walking down the street. And it made me think of the experience I have when I'm walking to the shops and I might pass a man on the street. And in the moment, I feel like, yeah, patriarchy is requiring me to acknowledge your existence here. I have to make some kind of eye contact or smile at you or acknowledge you somehow. Like I feel that, as a woman, that I am supposed to do that. So of course, I want to do it. I'm just like, I know I want to pretend this person doesn't exist actually, because I don't want to be forced to have to do that. It feels oppressive in the moment, right? But then my own values, I really appreciate, I really value community friendliness. And I think the acknowledging of each other in public is really important, right? To being a really safe and healthy and friendly culture, I really like that. So in that moment, that kind of power issue around, gender and whatever puts me in a little bit of a complex or conflict against my own personal values. (Liz Scarfe)

Becoming Aware of Power Scarcity:
…my experience working with couples is that when fear or a desire for control is motivating the pursuit of influence, it tends to be fleeting, and it tends to be fragile. I become afraid that my ability to have influence will be taken away from me and somebody else will gain the levers of power or control. But if I'm motivated out of love and connection, then my influence endures and I find it easy to cede the floor, to listen to the needs or the influence and be influenced as well. And so when that shows up in couples, a lot of the conversation about rank comes in about who perceives themself as having skill in whatever's happening in the relationship. Who perceives their partner as having influence in the relationship? And a lot of what I work with is people who are unaware of their power and influence through the levers of critique, feedback - through speaking louder, being physically bigger, holding positions or identities of power or privilege race or identity, and the unconsciousness of that. (Eric Fitzmedrud)

Systemic power problems are happening in our close relationships:
We don't experience patriarchy or caste or class as this sort of big monster that's going to come and meet us on the road, right? We experience all these systems in our relationships. So it's the mother, the friend, the father, the colleague who is going to be patriarchal, who's going to be homophobic or transphobic or whatever. So the systems are going to show up in our relationships, actually, right? It isn't this abstract concept we'll meet outside somewhere. And we have more agency in that two or three or four-person relationship. Which we sometimes forget because we think that the systemic oppression is so big.  So I can't change patriarchy. So what's the point sort of thing, but the interface with patriarchy is probably in a relationship. And there we do have some agency. So it's that power that gets spoken about quite less about what we can do in these smaller ecosystems that we exist in. Just because we can't erase that systemic problem doesn't mean we shouldn't engage here in the two, three, or four person unit. (Sadaf Vidha)

Parenting and Power With Kids:
 How aware are we with our power when we talk to kids? Can we encourage them in their relationship to us? And parents often forget that we are the first authorities. We are the first power folks in the child's life. And I always tell parents when I work with them, “Hey, if your kid isn't free to bring in an opinion with you or to disagree, don't you expect them to stand up to peer pressure. They won't be able to do it.” We are the playground for all of that. (Dawn Menken)

Resources Mentioned

Diamond Leadership Training https://diamondleadership.com/power-intelligence-training/

Connect: Find Our Guests:

Eric Fitzmedrud - https://www.drericfitz.com/about-me/

Sara Huang https://www.bureautwist.nl/wie

Dawn Menken - https://www.dawnmenken.com/bio

Quanita Roberson - https://www.nzuzu.com/about

Traci Ruble https://www.traciruble.com/about

Liz Scarfe https://lizscarfe.net/about/

Aryan Somaiya - https://guftagutherapy.in/founders

Sadaf Vidha https://guftagutherapy.in/founders

Find | Sidewalk Talk

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On LinkedIn: @SidewalkTalkOrg

Find | Traci Ruble

At Traciruble.com

On Instagram: @TraciRubleMFT

On Twitter: @TraciRubleMFT

On Facebook: @TraciRubleMFT

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