I think it's important to listen to what Don Veino just wrote. Don is both a caller and organizer. It's not fair to put the responsibility for choosing role names on the callers. It's the organizers' responsibility to make decisions about our dances.
Lisa Lunt She/her Jamaica Plain (Boston) Gender Free Contra Dance On Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 4:17 PM Don Veino via Organizers < organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > As a caller and organizer, this is a hot button topic for me. Please, if > you are organizing a dance, take responsibility for this decision and make > it clearly public to your participants in advance. I understand you may be > uncomfortable making this choice and possibly want to "please everybody" by > leaving it to the caller but that just sets up the worst dynamic for all. > > My take is that the dance's organizers *own* the culture and > implementation policies of their dance. If you would not leave it up to the > caller to decide to do swing dance instead or declare the admission is half > off for a given event, then you shouldn't leave such a topic to them either. > > "Traditional", Larks/ Robins, positional - alternating per event, whatever > - make the determination and let the people coming know in advance. > > I personally will no longer accept bookings from a dance that doesn't have > a stated role term policy. I will call with the terms stated (or decline > the event). I had a booking for a longstanding dance which changed from > decades of "Traditional" to "Caller's Choice" after booking me, with no > heads up. I first heard of it when I started hearing from people advocating > for one or the other terms, as "my choice". The organizers wouldn't make > the call and the publicity was already out there. Bad scene for all, not > the way to set up dance joy. > > On Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 1:28 PM Sandy Seiler via Organizers < > organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > <snip> > Currently terminology is the caller's decision. So it goes back and forth > from gendered to non gendered. That is not mentioned on the website, but I > do know that at least one of our callers has requested that the Lawrence > board make a decision about it so the callers don't have that > responsibility and possible fall out from it. > </snip> > _______________________________________________ > Organizers mailing list -- organizers@lists.sharedweight.net > To unsubscribe send an email to organizers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net >
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