Don't Drop the T

right now at patreon dot com. Slash woke af by Ilia Parker, creator of Decolonizing Fitness and participant in Fit for Us. Ilia's mission is to detoxify fitness spaces, and together with these organizations, they are working to make supportive and safe spaces for people of all genders and sexualities. As many of us leave of our home gyms and head back into society, it's important to make them better, healthier, and more inclusive spaces for fitness, and Ilia is doing

his part to effect change and raise awareness. Once you hear our conversation, I hope you do as well. Elia. Let's talk about how this all came to be. How Fit for Us moved from being what I have read and learned from like a WhatsApp chat group, to an actual organization. And why, Absolutely, that's a great question, Danielle,

And I'm excited to be here. So I think with any institution, because we need to look at fitness first and foremost as an institution, and historically institutions are usually embedded in white supremacy. So fitness, when we talk about fitness, we talk about a group of individuals that create a culture. And this culture is usually dominated by white system men six men who are able body, who are thin, who are aesthetically pleasing by European beauty standards, and so on

and so forth. So fitness Fit for Us was a call to that, a call to so decolonize away from this toxic fitness culture into more of a culture that is not only carving space for black folks, but also celebrating black folks and making sure that we highlight the

inequities and do something about it. So I love that Fit for Us now is bringing members of the black community and fitness and wellness spaces that also exists beyond the typical, the stereotypical version of what we think is a personal trainer or a wellness professional, and then you start bringing in the more marginalized voices within the black community.

You know, one of the things I found so interesting as I was reading up on your work and on Fit for Us is, you know, when we think about how black and brown bodies have been policed, when we think about you know, you just brought up these European standards of beauty, even with some of the biggest athletes

in the world. Right I'm thinking about, you know, Serena Williams and how disrespected her body and just herself has been throughout her career, and thinking about right now the attacks on trans youth right in Florida, in these places where they're saying, oh, transgender girls can't play sports with their peers, right, which is a really big part of creating community and self esteem in young people. Can you talk to like your response to this target that is

happening right now, particularly around trans youth and sports. We've always highlighted the hierarchy that exists in the LGBT community, and because of that hierarchy, we've always positioned what we thought was important for LGBT voices, and throughout that we've seen an erasure of trans people, and particularly back to black trans people. So with marriage equality that usually lifted up, CISS had assumed or this normal package of what LGB

looks like, it diminished and further erased trans folks. And so now you're seeing an uptick in this type of anti trans legislation. So we give a direct pushback. Number one, I do want to say that we've constantly been doing this work. So people now are understanding because it's hitting more of online spacious social media. Everyone's conscious people want

to know. But we've been working against the erasure of trans folks way back when when cross dressing laws were in effect, way back when, even when you go all the way back to enslavement and the legal the forming of disrupting the enslavement and then you having the slave patrol calls that coming out of that, all folks who existed beyond the gender buyingary had to deal with this type of So now what we're doing is we're calling attention to that, but we're making sure we let folks

know that this hierarchy exists and we have to do away with the hierarchy even within our community. You know, it's so important that you say that because I was one of you know, many people who was on the front lines with regard to marriage equality. And I've been you know, I worked on the hill and did various forms of policy work on social justice issues throughout my career.

But I can remember being on Capitol Hill and this is you know, this is many years ago, and them, you know, wanting to create lgbt inclusive legislation, but having an active conversation about removing the t removing just let's just focus on lgb We'll come back, they were saying. And these were you know, these are politicians, legislator, these are people also within the LGBTQ advocacy space saying no, no, no,

we're good. Well we'll come back for them. And I remember sitting at a table and saying, no, you won't. You never circle back. We're here right now because you, because of how people have been marginalized, you'd never circle back. And I said, and if you can't with in the context of our own community, within the LGBTQI a community, recognize the importance of lifting everyone up, particularly the most

marginalized of us. If your responses will will come back at a later date, like what does that say about our inclusiveive inclusivity when we're asking the mainstream CYS society to include us, and but we are acting actively excluding trans the trans community from the work because it's too hard right this in these word that they do you feel like there has been any movement in a way to have more inclusivity or do you feel like as part of the trans community you're still fighting to be

recognized and seen within the community as a whole. I think that's where I want to bring Fit for Us back into this conversation, because that's where I see the movement work. Because what happened was when we think about the harbor dreadful bathroom bills in my home state that got a lot of attention for that, it was a lot of grassroots organizing that inform legislative policies that shut that down. A lot of grassroots organizing is happening now to shut down a lot of the anti trans legislation

that we see. And so when we have organizations that Fit for Us, that reach to the roots of community, that pull those community members up who've been boots on

the ground, myself included. I've been a grassroots organizer for about fifteen years now and so when we merge with organizations where you have the grassroot influence who really value our lived experience and the work that we do, and then are able to partner with corporations and companies and other major ords that we never ever be on the radar for, that's where the work. That's where we feel included and not only included, but literally dismantling these systems.

But because we can't be included in systems that are rooted in white supremacy, that's never going to work. You know. In the self article that Fit for Us was profiled in the Conversation. Part of it was about how, following the murder of George Floyd that we all witnessed and then now the trial which retraumatized many of US, companies, you know, particularly health and fitness companies ran to declare there, you know, we're we're anti racists, like we don't stand

for racism. And you know it, during Pride Month they run to put up their rainbows and commodify pride. Right, how do you make how do you build the bridge between the commodification that is happening around inclusivity? Right, these health companies and fitness companies saying Oh yeah, we're doing these you know, we're doing the work by putting out their statements, but then it doesn't actually connect back to the instructors that they're employing the people that are coming

into the classes. So how do you build that bridge between making these very you know, declarative statements but then not actually changing structurally and through your policy, we continue to hold them to account and hold them to the fire and essentially tell them to cash in on all the promises they made, and then we show them how to do that when we partner with organizations that are

actually doing that work. For example Fit for Us. Now I have the opportunity coming up to be one of the feature keynote speakers for a diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging panel that's happening with Class Pass Fit for Us. As partnering with these organizations, this puts me in a room with major, major companies who can directly see and learn from the folks who are doing this work. And

then we help them build the blueprint. We know this takes tim We help them build the blueprint and we show them what to do and continue to hire us and bring us in these organizations so it can be done because there's a lot of companies out there that are actually doing the work. It should be more, but it's folks that are out there doing the work. Now, what does it look like? What does success look like

for fit for us? What does it look like to feel in a way we are making progress, We are denting this very enormous industry right and changing it for the better. That's a great question. I think understanding that

it's a consistent thing. Understanding that we are reflective of our community and we actually help to move away from some of the disparities that black and brown folks face, in particular black folks with multiple intersecting identities of oppression, and also realizing that the onus as a collective, especially since we're so rooted in doing the work for black folks,

that it always shouldn't fall on our shoulders. So success for me also looks like the looks like the partnerships that we're merging with major corporations continue to do the work and elevate us with resources financing, putting us in the right rooms, with folks continuing to amplify our work as best that they can. Because I just have to be explicit, we can do this work, but we need

help with the greater community always. Do you feel like you've had to do how to do like purposeful education process to explain to people how white supremacy works in this space or do you think that pete folks get it right, Because I feel like we're in a space right now in so many different ways, still having to explain to people how that one that white supremacy and white privilege exist, that we're still in that place and so getting to the actual work of unlearning this behavior,

we're not even really on that path because we're still It's like I'm trying to convince you still the sky is blue. Well, I can't move into gravity and all of these different facets of the atmosphere and what have you, because I'm still in this like very elementary place. Do you feel like that? Yeah? And I feel like more so because I think white folks get it. I know

white folks get it. You can't not get it. I think it's more so white folks feeling like we have to be palpable or we have to coddle their feelings and make sure it's delivered in a particular way. And so I want to lift up even the privilege that I carry with that as someone who is light skinned, someone who speaks well, someone who has a little bit of accolades, that white people listen to me a little differently. But I'm saying the same stuff that all my kindred

is same. So I think white folks get it. But once we get past the place of I want you to deliver it this way in order for me to affirm it and validate your experience that I'm really ready and willing to do the work with you in a sustainable way. Those are the conversations we need to continue

to have. You know, I want to talk about for a minute to because it's just, you know, it's popped into my mind about how how is the pandemic played out in the feeling of inclusivity with working out right, Like jims were closed, you know, places where you took classes were closed, and then folks were online, right, So the anxiety, maybe the fear of having to walk into these spaces and not know how you were going to

be treated. Did you find that in some ways for the community, if they were doing this kind of doing health and fitness online, that it was a better and safer place to engage like did you did you find like any upsides? I would say to us being inside, Oh, absolutely, you know, because now on a greater scale, fitness institutions, businesses everywhere has been forced to do essentially what my Kindred has been doing around the work of disability justice.

They've been wanting to make spaces more accessible and providing an online opportunity that's embedded in your practice is making spaces more accessible. And so this is a this is a major shift for the fitness industry because I know a lot of companies have established so much of an online presence now because of the pandemic, they're just keeping that factor in their business. So that allows for them to support a wide, diverse group of people that they

normally wouldn't serve. So this is great. Yeah, I found that too. You know, I say on the show often that you know, with obstacles, you know, you can look at obstacles as opportunities, right, and the pandemic, you know, presented a lot of obstacles also showed us a lot of the institutional issues that we kind of just swept under the rug and figure that they would you know, figure themselves out at some point and they were exasperated,

exacerbated by the pandemic. But then there was this other side right where folks who had been traditionally shut out UM had a weigh in because everyone was online UM. And so for folks you know who who have UM, who have who have disabilities, I thought to myself, you know, this is a tremendous opportunity right in to work in different spaces, in different places where you have been shut out, right, not even interviewed, not even you know, looked at UM

in any type of way. And I've been thinking, you know too, with regard again to to queer youth right and the fact that being online and learning online UM decrease the bullying in some there was new ways of bullying that I that I have heard about, but decrease the pressure, the social anxiety of what it means to

kind of show up in the classroom. UM. What do you feel like the community needs to do in order to continue to uplift the needs and center the needs of trans folks in the health and fitness space and in general. I'm really quick. I want to go back to what I just shared. I want to be clear that there's still so much work. As you highlight it to there's still so much work for those of us who are most marginalized. There have been spaces of opportunity,

but it's disabled folks in general. We need to continue to do as much as we can to lift them up in fitness and wellness spaces period. But I think the work continues around being reflective as a practice as a person, what biases you hold, where your sticking points are with your exclusivity and fitness. Fitness is very very very exclusive industry that define certain people as experts that

very rarely listens to particular groups. And that's why I created Decolonizing fitness in the first place, to carve spaces for those vulnerable boat populations who could benefit the most from fitness and wellness services. So it's about being reflective. It's about getting honest with what your practices look like, what your business models are. It's about bringing in the people who can understand and help you without exploiting them, And it's about getting down and doing the work. And

it's as simple as that. What is next elia form fit for us and for decolonizing fitness. How can people get involved if they're if they're interested in learning more, if they're folks that are listening to this that want to partner. Please absolutely, First, you can go to Fit for Us dot org and plug in and become a member. You can follow Fit for Us on social media. Instagram is my favorite social media platform. You can follow us there.

You can reach out to me directly on you can reach out to me on my website, Decolonizing Fitness dot com. And I'm always open to answering questions. So become a member of Fit for Us learn, especially if you're a black fitness and wellness professional. If you're a corporation or work for a major organization, again, reach out to Fit

for Us. We're constantly partnering with companies I like I mentioned, I do DAIB consultancy work for Fit for Us, so I would love to come in and work with their organization. We have a wonderful team. I'm not the only one that does that inclusion work, but we have a wonderful team of folks that are willing to work with you now, So just reach out to us and extend that branch to us and let's do this work. Acceptance for the

trans folks in our community is crucially important. Whether you are under the LGBTQ plus umbrella or not, it is not an exaggeration to say that transgender people are under attack throughout our country. Finding against anti trans legislation in this moment and beyond is crucially important, but it's also important to create spaces of safety and acceptance. Since many of these hate bills are about banning trans athletes from participating in sports, it's even more important to create an

accepting environment. In the world of fitness. Ilia Parker, Decolonizing Fitness and Fit for Us are all doing the work

to drive us towards that necessary reality. I will be having more of these conversations, so to hear them as soon as they go live, and to support me in my mission to make our world a woker place, consider joining the WOKEAF Nation on Patreon at patreon dot com slash wokeaf You'll get five full one hour episodes every week, exclusive interviews, and some fun bonus content, and I'll be back here next week with some exciting news on what's next for the podcast, So stay tuned. Power to the

people and to all the people. Power, get woke, and stay woke as fuck.