2 items.

1. Jets/Rubies

A story I'm unsure how many have heard:

Ultimately, what sunk "jets/rubies" wasn't so much "airplane" or "black/red" (ships and planes are traditionally named after women, so, I never got the whole "a jet is masculine" thing, but, I digress).
A dance I called in Brooklyn with Bob Isaacs was a tipping point -  before Brooklyn's contra dance had settled on terms.
The orgs got a few complaints that "jets" sounded _too_ much like "gents" in a "who are we kidding?" sort of way.

This came as a surprise to me, as the going assumption was that "sounds like gents, but isn't actually gents" was a feature, not a bug (coming from Hampshire College's tests that Jets/Rubies had initially became the initial non-bands/bares popular set of genderfreee terms to try out). Jets/Rubies was also my favorite, but my experience isn't a transgender one, and being queer isn't a uniform viewpoint.

2. Maia's email:

Amen.

I had reached out to Jon in a private email, asking about whether the tone of the email was joking or not; I've received no reply.
At a face value read of that email, it wasn't especially tactful or sensitive to anyone that's not cisgender and straight on this email list.
Jon's email could be an attempt at humor, so, I'll leave that there, but, the email bothered me as well and I'm happy Maia spoke up rather than letting that be without any response.

in dance,
Julian


On Mon, Feb 13, 2023, 11:07 PM Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Unfortunately Jets/Rubies sounds gendered to a lot of people: while "Jet" is a jemstone, it's also an engine, a plane, sports team, and a fictional gang, all more male-ish than female-ish.  And "Ruby" is a commonish female name and gemstones are more associated with women than men.

There's also a lot of benefit in having terms with "L" and "R" to tie the role names to the roles.

It's definitely harder for experienced dancers and callers to switch from Ladies/Gents to Larks/Robins than to Jets/Rubies, but as someone who helped their dance switch over (and who considered Jets/Rubies at the time) people got the new terms pretty quickly.  It's a total non-issue at our dance now.

Jeff

On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 10:47 PM Amy Cann via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I LIKE THIS!
I hereby nominate "jets and rubies" as the likeliest contender, far
outshining my own personal fallback, suns-and-moons.

And btw, I'm absolutely seeing "jets" in my mind as black shiny beads,
not flying machines.

On 2/13/23, Michael Fuerst via Contra Callers
<contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> jets/rubies might be the best solution several reasons:
> (1) no relation to gender roles,
> (2) sound like gents and ladies, satisfying those who cognitively have
> difficulty associating larks and robins with the corresponding roles.
> (3) easier and faster to say.   Jets, unlike larks, has no hard consonant.
> Rubies has a hard consonant "b", but the sound of the "u" leaves one's lips
> and tongue positioned perfectly  to utter the "b". (This is a benefit to new
> callers, who often have difficulty prompting on time.)
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