Re: [Callers] require their new pledges to come to a contra dance in a skirt

Jon Southard wrote: pledges are CHOOSING to undergo that ritual to get something they want (membership in the fraternity). They can bow out at any time. A little harmless and humorous gender reversal (something we normally encourage on the contra dance floor) is leagues different from the kind of physical bodily harm described in the Massachusetts law. Whipping, beating, branding, and ... skirts? That's specious, given that frat pledges have agreed to accept rituals that do mess them up badly (physical injury, alcohol poisoning, etc). You say they're not forced to wear a skirt; well, they weren't forced to accept being beaten by a gauntlet of upperclassmen with paddles, but they did. The problem folks are seeing with this is that the intent of the _frat_ is that wearing a skirt in public is doing a bad/embarrassing thing and therefore involves the pledge making a sacrifice (of dignity or of being perceived as a manly man). If wearing a skirt were really no big deal to the frst, there'd be no point for them in having the pledge do it. wearing a skirt, since many choose to do so on their own? You assume incorrectly (and reason speciously). Many people (small percentage, but fairly large in absolute numbers) choose to get beaten, pierced, or even branded on their own. That doesn't make it not harmful to beat, pierce or brand someone who didn't choose to do it on their own. Whether they're really harmed by the act of wearing a skirt or whether all the risk and humiliation is entirely in their heads - which is where humiliation lives, anyway - is another question. pose a threat to any regular dancer's enjoyment of the dance, since we dance with men in skirts all the time? No. (At least, if I knew that the dance I enjoyed attending was being posited as a place of ritual humiliation, and if there were people at the dance who felt they were being humiliated, and who didn't want to be there and weren't enjoying it, that would be a threat to my enjoyment of the dance.) (and I am not sure how that could be done, in practice), or we can recognize that when we welcome young people to the dance they bring with them a few things we older folk might not -- such as techno contra and a sense of humor that includes frat pledges dancing in skirts. I think it would be better to lighten up and welcome the youngsters. I think you've misconstrued the whole issue. Hazing frat pledges - while done by and to youth, certainly - isn't a matter of youth having a sense of humor which old fuddy-duddies ought to lighten up about. it's old-school, man. And humiliating boys by making them wear skirts in public is old-fashioned and dysfunctional. I agree that there's not only no practical way to exclude the pledges in skirts but that doing so would be playing into the frat's hands, since then they'd not only be wearing skirts in public, they'd be getting barred at the door for wearing skirts in public - also a public rejection and humiliation. If anything, I think the dance ought to jujitsu the whole thing. When the boys come in the door, welcome them; girls should ask them to dance in a friendly way and treat them just the same as first-time dancers in pants. Make them not feel not humiliated but embraced, and embraced as presumably straight men. This has the advantage of also being the right thing to do even if the frat doesn't have archaic gender attitudes and isn't make the pledges do it to humiliate them. -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- WINSTON(a)SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================