John B. Freeman wrote: Exactly. I hope nobody is advocating converting groups which are used to and happy with calls addressed to "boys" and "girls" or "men" and "women" or "gents" and "ladies" to "bands" and "bares" or "hippos" and "geraniums"; I know I'm not. (First, such a group is by definition comfortable with using the gendered terminology - because if there any people who couldn't tolerate the gendered terminology they didn't stick around - so there is no win, even from the pushing-an-agenda perspective, in merely annoying the stakeholders. I'm not in the least surprise that whoever it was in this comment thread offered to use gender-neutral terminology at gendered dances with a big gender imbalance and found no takers. I also hope nobody is advocating going to a gender-free group which uses non-sex-linked terminologies because they're more comfortable with it (and I claim such people exist because people who feel that way have told me so) and telling them they should get over it and use sex-linked terms, because again, all you do is annoy the stakeholders. There are people in the world who like contra dancing and are uncomfortable with having to take on a role with an identifiably-gendered name in order to it, and for them to feel embraced by a dance community, they need non-gender-linked role names. (I am not promoting an action program based on that fact; I am attempting to promote understanding of why "bands" and "bares" is useful for GLBT contra.) Most of my calling has been for the "usual" contra Hear, hear! -- 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 ===============================================================================