26 Jan
2017
26 Jan
'17
5:24 p.m.
Cognitively, it's not as complex as you make it out to be, Donna. (With all
due respect)
Roles are used almost entirely as the first word in a prompt. For dancers,
it's not a new vocabulary, it's a prefix change. That's a lot easier, and
I've heard *lots* of feedback from dancers of "I stopped noticing after the
first dance" and I have not heard any "even at the end of the night I still
had issues".
Further, there are dance communities experimenting with different terms -
Brooklyn, Hampshire, Village as examples - I've yet to hear that their
dancers are all messed up. I've heard the contrary, in fact.
Further, there are dancers who dance in multiple communities with different
terms. If your hypothesis were true, we'd expect that these people would be
having difficulty. They're not.
In addition, I find it funny how no one complains how hard it is to switch
between the very different sounding words "gents" and "men" /
"ladies" and
"women". Again, if this "oh no, different terms are hard" hypothesis
were
true, we'd already hear complaints. Plenty of dances have callers that use
either / or / both. No big deal.
From a caller's perspective, I absolutely
appreciate that it's harder. I'd
like to see a standard genderfree set of
terms be adopted, absolutely. I'm
also glad we're moving away from bands/bares, if only because the words
sound too similar. That was a good solution for many years, but it's time
to move on.
For me personally calling, I find swapping terms isn't *that* bad, but I
know I don't represent everyone. Some callers need a second set of dance
cards with the terms. If a caller isn't up for a requirement of a
community, then, I guess they don't need to call there.
Change meant to broaden inclusion may pose challenges, but I for one think
they're worth it when dancers are requesting it in large numbers.
Best regards,
Ron Blechner
On Jan 26, 2017 11:42 AM, "Donna Hunt" <dhuntdancer(a)aol.com> wrote:
I'm sad to hear that so many groups are using
different role terms and
such a variety to boot. Not only do our beginners have to learn a brand
new vocabulary (sometimes in a foreign language) and then remember the
movement to go with those new words, but now they have to deal with
remembering a role that there's no basis for, and that role term changes at
different dance locations. Augh my head hurts just thinking about it.
Donna
-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Blechner via Callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
To: Barbara Groh <babsgroh(a)gmail.com>
Cc: callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
Sent: Thu, Jan 26, 2017 3:37 am
Subject: Re: [Callers] Another vote for "jets" and "rubies"
Let's please not presume to speak for the feelings of marginalized groups?
Not thinking something is a problem because it doesn't affect you
personally is super privileged.
Ron Blechner
On Jan 25, 2017 1:36 PM, "Barbara Groh via Callers" <
callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Michael, if this view makes you a Luddite, sign
me up as a member of the
Luddite Club. I think it's realistic to say that the members of all the
contra, English, and Square Dance groups will NEVER all agree on which
alternative terms to use for ladies and gents, so all these new terms being
bounced around will only cause confusion (and some eye-rolling).
You've already made a solid argument for the Luddite position, so I won't
say anything more....except this: Please, let's not start an argument over
whether it's pejorative to use the term Luddite!
Barbara Groh
On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 4:55 PM, Michael Barraclough via Callers <
callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
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I guess that I am a Luddite. Here's how I see
it.
Somewhere between 80-90% of the population is 'straight'. Surely, we
want these people as well to come to our dances. It can be difficult
enough to get past the dance lingo without adding the complexity of
renaming labels for people that almost everyone already understands. To me,
what really matters is that we run dances where everyone accepts everyone
else's sexuality; where individual dancers can feel free to dance either
role; where everyone is welcome. I am not convinced that 'non-straight'
individuals are put off by the historical labels that we use, rather the
lack of the 3 conditions that I have just outlined.
Census data show the U.S. adult population is about 239m. Searching the
web I can find around 300 contra dances, 150 English Country Dances and
1000 MWSD clubs. My generous guess is that less than 100,000 people go
to these dances, less than 50,000 if we ignore MWSD. Did you know that
over 700,000 people in the U.S. own a ferret? That means there are 7x as
many people in the USA who own a ferret compared to the number of people
who go to our dances!
Let's put less rather than more barriers in the way of getting those
who don't dance with us (that's 99.6% of the population) to join us.
Michael Barraclough
www.michaelbarraclough.com
On Tue, 2017-01-24 at 16:19 -0500, Ron Blechner via Callers wrote:
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_______________________________________________ I know I'd appreciate it if people had new
suggestions, they'd review
existing considerations for what makes terms usable. Things like 1:2
syllable ratio, distinct vowel sounds - these disqualify a lot of
terms as being unfeasible for the same reason "bare arms / arm bands"
as terms are not preferable. The PDF spreadsheet that Dugan linked is
the result of my study with teamwork and sourcing from many dancers.
Best,
Ron Blechner
On Jan 20, 2017 7:28 PM, "Keith Tuxhorn via Callers" <callers(a)lists.s
haredweight.net> wrote:
> This conversation exhausts me, even though I know and accept it's
> all part of the folk process.
>
> So I will make my one contribution... two terms I thought of a
> couple weeks ago.
>
> Mun and Wem.
>
> They sound enough like the current terms that the brains of both
> callers and dancers can make an easy transition. They're made-up
> words, so they have no gender. And they're short. And easy to say.
>
> Mun and Wem.
>
> Okay, I've done my bit.
>
> Keith Tuxhorn
> Springfield IL
>
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 4:04 PM, Dugan Murphy via Callers <callers@
> lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> > Since it was an article about my dance series that started this
> > conversation about role terms, I'll offer that the primary reason
> > we chose "jets" and "rubies" as gender-free terms is so
that
> > regular contra dancers from other places can come in and dance
> > without needing anything to be explained to them since the terms
> > are pretty similar to "gents" and "ladies."
> >
> > We also took a look at this graphic of Ron Blechner's analysis of
> > gender-free role terms people have been talking about: http://amh
> > erstcontra.org/ContraDanceRoleTerms.pdf
> >
> > We may not use "jets" and "rubies" forever, but we figured
we'd
> > give it a try. There didn't seem to be any reasons not to try
> > and there are certainly plenty of reasons to try.
> >
> > Most men at our dance dance as jets and most women dance as
> > rubies, but for the few who dance opposite, switch around, or
> > whose gender expression doesn't fit the man/woman binary, I'd
> > like to think that formally separating dance roles from gender is
> > validating in a meaningful way.
> >
> > Dugan Murphy
> > Portland, Maine
> > dugan at duganmurphy.com
> >
> > www.DuganMurphy.com
> > www.PortlandIntownContraDance.com
> > www.NufSed.consulting
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Callers mailing list
> > Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
> > http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.n
> > et
> >
>
>
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