[Callers] Another vote for "jets" and "rubies"

Chet Gray via Callers callers at lists.sharedweight.net
Sun Jan 29 17:43:17 PST 2017


Michael, is there any real reason to maintain the conflation that a male
person ends a swing on the left and a female person ends a swing on the
right? I see none.

Nobody is proposing "funny terms for people when [...] we already have
perfectly good terms". There aren't *any* terms for people. Just those dang
terms for dance positions that happen to have historical conflation with
genitalia.

Far too many new (and even not-so-new) dancers of whom I've asked "do you
have a preferred role for this dance?" have never even considered the
possibility that role has *absolutely nothing* to do with one's gender.
They have never considered dancing the "non-traditional" role because of
the subtle (and sometimes, regrettably, overt) reinforcement of the
male-dancer="gent"-position female-dancer="lady"-position.

Why reinforce that conflation at all?

On Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 2:26 AM, Michael Barraclough via Callers <
callers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 2017-01-27 at 09:04 -0500, Angela DeCarlis via Callers wrote:
> And many people are fine with things the way they are! I get that, and
> that's great for you, but why on earth wouldn't you change things if it
> meant being more inclusive, more just?
>
> I understand that from your perspective we would be more inclusive if
> we used gender-free terminology. It is my belief, however, that the
> majority of the population would see the use of gender-free terminology
> for roles as something that 'excluded' them - additional terms used by
> a private club of people with their own rituals, kind of like masonry.
> They can understand why we might need funny terms for the moves. They
> cannot understand why we need funny terms for people when (as far as
> they are concerned) we already have perfectly good terms -
> men/gents/blokes and women/ladies/sheilas etc. From their perspective
> it is definitely not 'inclusive'.
>
> Michael Barraclough
> www.michaelbarraclough.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers at lists.sharedweight.net
> http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
>
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