The evil gin does is hard to assess

[venta]

Miscellaneous extra thoughts from DERT...

Even in this day and age, there are still plenty of people who are trying to have the conversation "Is it ok for women to dancer rapper?" There are even some who are still trying to state that it is not.

As this year's DERT results - where women's teams almost completely swept the board - show, there's quite a lot of us who are largely ignoring them. Yup, I agree: traditionally rapper was danced by men. And you know what? Traditionally professional jobs were held down by men, too, and I've got one of those. Grr. Anyway.

I was really quite pleased to notice that one of the single-sex rapper teams appears to have a trans person dancing with them. It's not something I've been aware of before, and I like the idea that trans people can join dance teams without it being an issue.

At the same time, I was kind of disappointed with myself for even noticing rather than just counting the number of dancers.

Mind you, I'm only identifying this person as trans based on appearance and one of Mabel was mis-identified as trans or (more frequently) male a number of times over the weekend. So I may be blathering up the wrong tree entirely.

On Friday night, I was hailed by a group of people who demanded to ask me a question. It was clear that, from the expectant faces, there was quite a lot riding on the answer.

We were in the school which was doubling as indoor camping. Lots of people were sitting about chatting, and at the other side of the room a group of musicians was sitting about playing tunes and occasionally breaking into songs.

"Who," Richard enquired "are those people playing music for?"

I hesitated briefly, because it seemed like a trick question, before answering.

"Themselves."

Cue a roar of laughter. It seems Richard's new partner[*] is not used to this idea of spontaneous music occuring. She'd been confused that there were people playing, but no one paying them much attention. She'd observed that it was such a shame that people were playing lovely music for us, but no one was listening.

Richard had assured her that they weren't playing for us, though we were welcome to listen. They were playing for themselves.

She'd found this hard to believe, and so passersby had been hailed and quizzed. At the point I replied, I made 5 out of 5 replying (unprompted) that the musicians were playing for themselves.

She still looked unconvinced. I've grown up round musicians' sessions, I'm used to this idea. It never occurred to me that there might be people in whose lives this kind of thing - not necessarily folk music, of course - might never have happened.

[*] ObGossip, probably only of interest to exspelunca. Richard Bugrovski has a new lady in tow. She has a name. Which I have been told. Er... it might be Carol. She seems very pleasant.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Ooh, could I be the first to say Madeira M'Dear, Flanders & Swann?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it looks like you could!

Have a kudo with that madeira, why don't you?

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Yum, cake and a kudo!

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Cake?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows that Madeira M'dear is about a nefarious old man offering an innocent young girl cake :)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Ohh, of course!

I had rather assumed that the 'is it blasphemous for women...' thing was Morris-specific rather than rapper. This may well be because I generally hear about rapper from a woman what does it and so assumed this to be normal, though.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I certainly think that it's much worse if you're doing Morris, but not non-existent if you're doing rapper.

A few years ago, Headington Quarry Morris Men (who are staggeringly traditional, and perceived as being quite anti-women) invited Mabel out for the evening. We ended up ringing them to say, er, you do realise we're a women's team, don't you?

The reply was that yes, they did, but since we weren't dancing "the Morris" it was all fine. Even then, it seems that some of the team members didn't come out that night, because they disapproved. (On the plus side, the ones who did were so keen that we should feel welcome that we had one of the most enthusiastic and effusive audiences we've ever encountered ;)

You do still hear horror storries, though, of teams who refuse to dance when there are women's morris teams present, or won't allow male teams to their events because they have female musicians... and blah blah blah. I do think it's getting less and less, though.

[zotz]

Try Scotland. Look around, and you might find people who don't want men dancing rapper either. Or anything else.

My dad remembered a joke from when he was young about the Close Brethren only ever committing adultery lying down, in case God thought they were dancing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

:)

Is there still a lot of that about? I thought being puritanical had quite gone out of fashion.

[zotz]

Some places it has, but not so much in others, and there are a scattering of the fiercely presbyterian all over.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

As all seasoned folk dancers know, sex is described as horizontal folk dancing.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I was kind of disappointed with myself for even noticing

I don't think there's anything reprehensible about noticing. Trans people have in common with cis people that they can't choose exactly how to appear. It is often far more problematic for them, but that's society's fault rather than the fault of whoever happens to glance at them.

Mind you, I'm only identifying this person as trans based on appearance and one of Mabel was mis-identified as trans or (more frequently) male a number of times over the weekend. So I may be blathering up the wrong tree entirely.

The whole habit of assigning gender by appearance is something that we're so used to doing I find it difficult to train myself out of it. Indeed, I doubt I'll ever manage - although I may eventually get good enough at not voicing my assumptions that it won't matter much.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think I'm reasonable at not voicing my assumptions. It's less of a problem if you look at someone and think "not sure" than it is when you look at someone and get it so wrong that you don't even realise there might be an issue (I think that's only happened to me once, and someone fortunately addressed the person by their name before I managed to do any foot enmouthination).

I guess I've always assumed that someone would rather be identified as their gender of choice rather than as trans, but maybe that's wrong. I do know at least a couple of people who deliberately describe themselves as "transwomen" rather than "women". I guess it's likely to differ from person to person anyway, so the best bet is always going to be hold tight until you hear how someone describes themself :)

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

I think the issue is not you noticing that they are trans but rather that people as a whole are overly keen to want to define people by gender and find androgyny unsettling.
In a Utopian society people would see people as people and gender would be as irrelevant as their eye colour.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thinking about that idea in this particular context is proving a little interesting to me. In general, I'd say that I'd sooner dance with a women's rapper team than a mixed team. This is mostly because you'll end up with better dancing if you have people of a uniform(ish) height, weight, strength and style of dancing.

Obviously, we don't: we have massive height variance, and so do some of the men's teams. I do find the strength thing a problem dancing in a mixed set. Ditto the style, though I imagine that's more learned (men do usually dance in a more pushy, aggressive way and it unbalances things).

So saying "women only" doesn't remove these problems, but it does limit them a bit. And I think I'd feel more uncomfortable dancing with a team that set a height/weight limit on new members!