<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/24/15 12:12 AM, Amy Wimmer via
Callers wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:-4730000549848525391@unknownmsgid" type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<div>Hello All,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I taught a dance this evening that included a ladies' gypsy.
I received the email below a few minutes ago. In teaching it I
wanted to convey that it is a flirty, eye contact sort of move.
This person was obviously offended. I am at a loss for how to
respond, except to apologize for offending. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm pretty sure I described the move accurately. I meant
absolutely no offense. I didn't make up the name for the move,
but don't want to make excuses. Does this move need a new name?
How would you respond?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<br>
</blockquote>
I think apologizing for unintentionally offending is good but I
don't think you have to take on all of what your correspondent is
offended over. <br>
<br>
Your correspondent made up the idea that it's so named because of
the idea that Romani women are oversexualized.<br>
<br>
Here's my take on this:<br>
<br>
- the use of the term "Gypsy" is inherently offensive to some of the
people to whom it refers in just the way the use of the term
"Indian" is inherently offensive to some Native Americans. It's a
name they don't accept (a) because it incorrectly ascribes an
incorrect geographical origin to them (Egyptian for Gypsies, India
(well, East Indies) for Indians) and (b) was assigned to them by
outsiders and became the terms used for them by people who wanted to
move them along / kill them. (Although the term the Nazis used,
Zigeuner, derives from a Greek root meaning "untouchable" rather
than "Egyptian", according to the US Holocaust Museum website.)<br>
<br>
- The term "Indian File" for walking in a line, one after another,
doesn't suggest anything particularly derogatory about Native
Americans; I think it's an observation or speculation that the way
East Coast (forest-dwelling) indigenous people walked through
forests on minimal trails was in single file. We can point out that
white society thinks there are many admirable things about native
peoples - the whole "Indian Guides" thing shows that - and that the
use of the world "Indian" in that isn't intended to be offensive,
etc, etc, and yet the obviously right thing to do was to start
saying "single file" instead, because the benefits of not
pointlessly offending people vastly outweighed the benefits of
continuing to use a non-descriptive term. It's virtually never
effective and rarely kind to tell people they shouldn't be offended.<br>
<br>
- By me, the same logic suggests that we should stop calling the
figure gypsy. We can go at length into why it's not named after
Gypsies, why "Gypsy" is a superset name that includes Rom and other
traveling people, some of whom don't mind it, the use of gypsy to
mean "traveler" (from which dance gypsy, Gypsy moth, etc, derive),
the admiring use of gypsy to mean free spirit ("gypsy in my soul"),
etc, but none of that actually matters in this context. What actual
benefit do we derive from calling it "gypsy", other than the sunk
cost of having a community of people who know it by that name? It's
not descriptive. (It is evocative and we have a bunch of dances
with "gypsy" in the name; not sure what to do about those.)<br>
<br>
(I had been thinking that it would be very difficult to get a
universal change of name for the figure in the absence of a
Callerlab for Contra, but Yoyo's post (where he says he'll just
drop the name and prompt by which shoulder you go around) opened my
eyes to the possibility of effective individual action by callers;
you don't need universal agreement on a new name. That does open
the door to a dancer on the floor saying "you mean gypsy?" but I
guess you can say "that name is offensive to some people".) I'm
going to have to think more about this for my own practice as an
English and a contra caller.<br>
<br>
- I'm personally interested in the history of things and how they
got their names, and I'm convinced that gypsy in contra was picked
up from gypsy in English which was picked up from "whole-gyp" and
"half-gyp" in Morris and that there's not necessarily any
relationship of the name to any group of people in origin, and I do
not believe that in naming the figure anybody was saying anything
about the stereotypical characteristics of any people. I really,
with all the intellectual honesty I have available, don't believe
that. (And I've heard different stereotypical characteristics
assumed to be the origin - sexuality, untrustworthiness, tendency to
do non-touching dances, so I think these are all just-so stories, ex
post facto rationalizations.) I don't think this blameless origin
is a reason to keep the name, and I know it's absolutely ineffective
to point out the blameless origin to somebody who's offended.<br>
<br>
That's the end of my argument, but I have more thoughts.<br>
<br>
- This is different from people who are offended by callers who
sexualize the figure, which they could do whatever it's called. I
don't mind gypsy meltdowns, but I find "until you just can't stand
it anymore" kinda tedious; let's just walk around each other
maintaining a comfortable level of eye contact until the music tells
us to swing, how about that?) (And I think sexualizing things and
telling dancers how they're supposed to feel, especially if it's
sexual, is just getting more and more passe as different people of
different (and no) sexual orientation are dancing on different sides
of the set. We're all people, we're all dancing together, that's
enough.)<br>
<br>
- I *like* the figure, and I really like the dance providing a safe
space to look at somebody else's face and look them in the eye
without it necessarily signaling anything. In the general world
meeting people's eyes can carry a lot of unintended freight; I think
it's great to have a place where you can just do it as part of the
dance. Ideally a connection is established, but there are all kinds
of connections and they're not necessarily sexual. (Which is not to
say that I haven't gotten stirred up, even in meltdown-free,
far-apart English dance gypsies, but that's way different from the
caller telling everybody they're supposed to.)<br>
<br>
-- Alan<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>