On Mon, Feb 13, 2017, Neal Schlein via Callers wrote: > > I do not want to replace gent and lady as terms, based on my own experience.
What I'd say is that what I want doesn't matter much. > Some context: I've been dancing for between 29 and 37 years, depending on > how you count--my parents met at a square dance and I grew up dancing. Somewhat similarly, I'm a second-generation dancer, although my parents were more into folk dancing (they met on a hike). > I am a happily married man and prefer to dance with women as partners and > corners. I don't mind dancing with men, but that's not what I go to dances > for; if I wanted to get close to a bunch of sweaty guys, I'd play > football. If we're honest, we can admit that the vast majority of our > general dancers (both new and old) are probably similar. So why not let > the dance reflect that? That's more likely to win friends than taking a > wonderful dance with character and making it into "gender free diet > crystal contra." Normally I make a point of avoiding any discussion of my gender and sexual preferences, but because it's relevant here: I'm cisgender male and heterosexual. Like Neal, my personal preference is to have women as partners (regardless of whether I'm dancing boy or girl -- and particularly in contra I'll happily gender-swap near-constantly). But I want my contra community to be inclusive, and because of the kyriarchical society we live in, I am happy to lose some of my preference to encourage greater participation from groups who would not be comfortable with hetero- and other kinds of normativity. [Not going to bother discussing Neal's points about gender styling; it's something that I don't care about.] -- Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/ <*> <*> <*> Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html