21 Jan
2013
21 Jan
'13
9:10 a.m.
Dave's post about booking ahead and people's "responsibilities" to
dance
one role or the other made me think: DO people (read: experienced dancers
who are capable of switching) have a responsibility to dance a particular
role if there's a gender disparity? There's something to be said for
reminding people, "not all couples need to be male/female!" But the idea
that anyone is obligated to dance lead or follow, or to dance with same or
opposite sex, makes me uncomfortable. My home dance regularly has more men
than women (crazy!) but my preferred role is lead; does this mean I'm
obligated to dance follow/dance with men (it happens that many of the men
don't follow, and anyway, the height difference makes it tricky), rather
than dancing with women? Is there a difference in obligating someone to
dance their gender-typical role and their gender-atypical role? How much
responsibility do experience dancers have for evening out a gender
imbalance? (And to what extent is it an okay thing to assume that a gender
imbalance *needs* evening out?)
Cheers,
Maia
21 Jan
21 Jan
9:18 a.m.
I think you might be missing some of my point. I don't think that anybody
is obligated to dance any role, or with any gender. I think that the
people who INSIST on only dancing one role and only dancing with people of
the opposite gender have an obligation, when there is a gender disparity,
to shoulder some of the burden of the imbalance that their preferences have
created by sitting a dance or two out rather than dancing every single
dance with somebody of the opposite gender. For those of us who enjoy
dancing with people of the same gender, it's not an issue; we can shoulder
some of the imbalance burden (which we did not help create, but it's a
community, so it's nice to try to make things work for everybody) by
dancing with people of the same gender.
So my point is not that gender imbalances need evening out or anything like
that. It's simply that, there are some people who will only dance with one
gender. If fewer than half the dancers are people of that gender, then it
is bad for the community for those people to insist on dancing every single
dance with their preferred gender. Somebody else with similar preferences
will be shut out of the partnering process if they do so. I don't think
they should be forced to dance with anybody, of course-- sitting out is a
perfectly acceptable option. I don't see it as evening out imbalances or
anything like that-- it's simply taking responsibility for difficulties in
finding partners that your own commonly-shared preferences have caused.
-Dave
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:10 PM, Maia McCormick <maia.mcc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Dave's post about booking ahead and people's
"responsibilities" to dance
one role or the other made me think: DO people (read: experienced dancers
who are capable of switching) have a responsibility to dance a particular
role if there's a gender disparity? There's something to be said for
reminding people, "not all couples need to be male/female!" But the idea
that anyone is obligated to dance lead or follow, or to dance with same or
opposite sex, makes me uncomfortable. My home dance regularly has more men
than women (crazy!) but my preferred role is lead; does this mean I'm
obligated to dance follow/dance with men (it happens that many of the men
don't follow, and anyway, the height difference makes it tricky), rather
than dancing with women? Is there a difference in obligating someone to
dance their gender-typical role and their gender-atypical role? How much
responsibility do experience dancers have for evening out a gender
imbalance? (And to what extent is it an okay thing to assume that a gender
imbalance *needs* evening out?)
Cheers,
Maia
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David Casserly
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9:48 a.m.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Dave Casserly
<david.j.casserly(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think that the
people who INSIST on only dancing one role and only dancing with people of
the opposite gender have an obligation, when there is a gender disparity,
to shoulder some of the burden of the imbalance that their preferences have
created by sitting a dance or two out rather than dancing every single
dance with somebody of the opposite gender. For those of us who enjoy
dancing with people of the same gender, it's not an issue; we can shoulder
some of the imbalance burden (which we did not help create,
Strictly speaking, if you're partnering same gender, and it's the
minority one (or only minority due to same gender partnering) then you
did help create the imbalance.
If someone insists on partnering with opposite gender, then it's
really irrelevant to the imbalance whether they stick to one role or
not.
10:05 a.m.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Donald Perley <donperley(a)gmail.com> wrote:
if you're partnering same gender, and it's the
minority one (or only minority
due to same gender partnering) then you did help create the imbalance.
Same-gendered couples help weaken the convention that we dance with
opposite gendered people. I'll agree that dancing with another person
of the same gender when you're in the minority for the night does
temporarily increase the problem of gender imbalance, but you've also
helped make same-gender partnering more acceptable, which makes gender
imbalance less of a problem in the future.
There are two separate questions here:
1) If you want to make your partnering decisions based on what's best
for the community and what will make people happiest, what should you
do?
2) How much should you be willing to limit your enjoyment for the good
of the group?
My point above only applies to #1.
Jeff
1:59 p.m.
It seems to me that because we've misidentified the problem, we've gone on
to misidentify the solution.
The problem is not gender imbalance. The problem is people who want to
dance who are instead sitting out.
The solution is not gender bending. The solution is asking people who sat
out the last dance to dance this dance.
Trying to game the ratios seems like a different route to people sitting
out. As a ridiculous example:
If there are twice as many men as women and none of the women are
comfortable asking each other to dance, and all of the men try to
compensate for the imbalance by asking each other to dance, then all of the
women sit out instead of half the men.
Furthermore, since all of the men are comfortable dancing with each other,
had they just paired up normally, the leftover men could all have danced
with each other and therefore nobody sits out.
I don't mean this as a serious example of what could happen, but as a
reminder that the issue of dancers sitting out dances is a lot more
complicated than a failure to have even genders.
At my regular dance I've sometimes been one of up to 4 men sitting out a
dance, not because the gender balance was so bad we couldn't find partners
and didn't want to dance with each other, but because we danced really hard
the dance before and wanted to take a dance off to chit-chat.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Jeff Kaufman <jeff(a)alum.swarthmore.edu>wrote;wrote:
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Donald Perley
<donperley(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
if you're partnering same gender, and
it's the minority one (or only
minority
due to same gender partnering) then you did help
create the imbalance.
Same-gendered couples help weaken the convention that we dance with
opposite gendered people. I'll agree that dancing with another person
of the same gender when you're in the minority for the night does
temporarily increase the problem of gender imbalance, but you've also
helped make same-gender partnering more acceptable, which makes gender
imbalance less of a problem in the future.
There are two separate questions here:
1) If you want to make your partnering decisions based on what's best
for the community and what will make people happiest, what should you
do?
2) How much should you be willing to limit your enjoyment for the good
of the group?
My point above only applies to #1.
Jeff
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2:09 p.m.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Ryan Smith <thesmithra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Furthermore, since all of the men are comfortable
dancing with each other,
had they just paired up normally, the leftover men could all have danced
with each other and therefore nobody sits out.
Being comfortable dancing with someone of the same gender (and knowing
both roles) and being good at the partnering game are correlated.
Jeff
9:31 a.m.
Personally, I feel that no dancer should be obligated to do anything that makes them feel
uncomfortable. If men don't want to dance with other men, or if women don't want
to dance with other women, they should not be obligated. It is an evening of dancing,
leisure, enjoyment. I know that we strive for the ideal that people dance with anybody
regardless of physical gender, but for a great deal of dancers, especially newbies, they
are not comfortable with that, and if they feel forced to do something outside their
comfort zone, they won't come back. Best we can do is suggest that dancers can dance
with anybody, but we shouldn't pressure or obligate people to do anything.
Perry
________________________________
From: Maia McCormick <maia.mcc(a)gmail.com>
To: Caller's discussion list <callers(a)sharedweight.net>
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 12:10 PM
Subject: [Callers] Gender disparity responsibilities (was: booking ahead)
Dave's post about booking ahead and people's "responsibilities" to
dance
one role or the other made me think: DO people (read: experienced dancers
who are capable of switching) have a responsibility to dance a particular
role if there's a gender disparity? There's something to be said for
reminding people, "not all couples need to be male/female!" But the idea
that anyone is obligated to dance lead or follow, or to dance with same or
opposite sex, makes me uncomfortable. My home dance regularly has more men
than women (crazy!) but my preferred role is lead; does this mean I'm
obligated to dance follow/dance with men (it happens that many of the men
don't follow, and anyway, the height difference makes it tricky), rather
than dancing with women? Is there a difference in obligating someone to
dance their gender-typical role and their gender-atypical role? How much
responsibility do experience dancers have for evening out a gender
imbalance? (And to what extent is it an okay thing to assume that a gender
imbalance *needs* evening out?)
Cheers,
Maia
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6 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Dave Casserly -
Donald Perley -
Jeff Kaufman -
Maia McCormick -
Perry Shafran -
Ryan Smith