Hi Read! I wanted to add that the times when I (a non-binary person that is generally assumed to be a man) have encountered neighbor men who refuse to swing with me, it has often been accompanied with either thinly-veiled disgust or even an overt "ew I'm not dancing with a man." I'm so sorry that you were physically assaulted, though I'm not surprised.

I agree with Read that this is just general homophobia, and again it makes me worry about the women these men are dancing with, simply because they clearly don't want to "hold a man" in the same way that they are "holding" all the women they neighbor/partner with.
Polite declining is 100% acceptable and I've never been upset by it. But more often than not, men refusing to dance with me has been a rather dramatic production that leaves me feeling icky. 🤷


On Sun, Mar 17, 2024, 11:27 Read Weaver via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I’m kinda doubtful about how common reason 2 is, I think most of what might superficially seem like insisting on conventional gender roles is actually (men's) homophobia—dancing with a man might make me look like a…, or the man dancing with me might be a…. (I specify men because I’ve never once lived and danced where women were exercised about this—occasionally a preference for mixed-gender, but never a strong one). The guy who assaulted me at NEFFA years ago because he came across me in the line dancing the “wrong” role didn’t do so because I was rejecting conventional gender roles, he did it because of homophobia.

Read Weaver
Jamaica Plain, MA
http://lcfd.org

> On Mar 12, 2024, at 1:36 PM, Julian Blechner via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>
> ...
> - So, when someone says they prefer to dance in non-genderfree dances, with a partner of a different binary-presenting gender person, in trad roles, there's 2 possible, non-exclusive reasons:
> 1. That their choice is about courtship, but "make exceptions" for people you're not attracted to. Which, I guess is fine in and of itself, but I think people with this preference often may not consider _just how many exceptions_ there are.
> 2. Their choice is more about embracing traditional gender roles. I'll get back to this
...
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