While Jeffrey makes a compelling point, I want to chime in with another thought: that not having these discussions is just as divisive (if not more so) than having them, just in ways that are harder for some sides of the community to see. While people make (very valid) claims that long discussions about terminology, altering words to singing squares, etc. are alienating some more established members of the community, to not have these discussions is to alienate many other folks, particularly people our dance scene has done less well by in the past -- young people, people of color, queer people, trans people... the list goes on.

And if it doesn't look to you like these people are being alienated, that might be because the alienation started so early that they just never came back to another contra dance, after they heard the caller using language that made them deeply uncomfortable, or were "offered" a dance to split them from their partner, or looked out on the crowd and didn't see anyone who looked like them.

So yes, having these discussions may make some folks uncomfortable, and I want to strive to minimize this discomfort; at the same time, many are made deeply uncomfortable by the status quo, often it ways it's hard to see (because often the response to this kind of discomfort is to leave the community and not come back--so we have a pronounced sample bias). To dismiss these conversations because they're divisive or uncomfortable is to prioritize the unity and comfort of one group (the established contra scene) over another (all those who might have been contradancers, were the community more welcoming to them), and that doesn't sit right with me.

Cheers,

Maia

On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 11:43 AM, Jeffrey Spero via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

He’s right… and she’s right.  How can they both be right?

Well… they ARE both right.  There is no clear cut answer on this. People who feel strongly on one side or the other may like to think there is a clear cut answer, but if one thing seems clear to me by the amount of back and forth on this subject it’s that there are differing valid opinions.

In the meantime, while we argue endlessly about whether to gypsy, walk-around, face-to-face, vis-a-vis, spiral, gyre, turn by the eyes, whimsy, kipsy, tipsy, shmipsy - or just avoid the move altogether, we lose why many came to contra dancing in the first place.  Contradances were a place where people would come to actually get away from all of the controversies of life. It was a place where people from differing stripes with differing beliefs (OK, maybe I’m being idealistic here - let’s not kid ourselves, it’s mostly liberal whites!) can come together and leave the real world issues behind and just dance and be friendly.  And now? These controversies have made their presence known on the dance floor.  And it’s not just gypsies or no gypsies.  It’s also questions of role identification (men/women, ladies/gents, larks/ravens, jets/rubies) and whether people should boycott dance weekends that gender balance.

Please don’t misunderstand me… I have very little fight in this game.  I’m moving to the point where I couldn’t care less about what we call moves or people.  I’m just tired of the endless discussions that go nowhere except to continue to divide people and make the dance community cohesive.  Maybe I’ve become an old fart who just wishes we could have the dance community we had decades ago that wasn’t so fraught with divisiveness.  Or maybe there’s something to what I have written here.  Maybe the decline in attendance at dances across the country has less to do with terminology - and more to do with people not wanting to be a part of yet another community that is becoming polarized.  Do I have a solution?  Nope.  And neither does anyone else, or else it would have been solved by now.  So maybe we should just cool it for awhile and see if maybe tolerance for personal preferences might help make the community less contentious. Can we just get back to dancing for the pure joy of it?

My two cents.

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