went barndancing with sb at the hungarian house in the upper east side last night. as one might expect from the word “barndancing” this is a folky funky event, and as you might expect from “the hungarian house” this is not of the hipster variety. the dancing was mostly delightful – especially because we escaped just as they were switching over to contra dancing, which is nowhere near as fun.
we did circle dances and square dances. the crowd was primarily in their late thirties and above, some couples, some beginners, some fairly non-socialized older men*, a handful of single hopeful-looking women. we tripped over our own feet and went the wrong way and laughed and smiled and got sweaty.
however.
in square dancing you call out the moves. and often the moves are for ladies or gents. they just are. some of them are called the ladies ___ or the gents ___ even. no getting around it. and its fine – you have designate partner a and partner b somehow. so.
Caller (this is the dude in charge, who’s showing us moves): gents should be on the left.
Lady on the other side of sb, who is on my left, to me: oh! you’re in the wrong spot!
–she then fairly nicely grabs my arm and pulls me to the “proper” location.
i am used to this. i am not outraged. i dont frankly care, as long as no one’s trying to get me tossed out of the ladies room. if it makes someone more comfortable to think im a dude i neither confirm or deny, i just roll with it and they figure it out or they dont. sb on the other hand is outraged and confrontational on my behalf and gets sputtery and upset and is totally willing to storm out. she is perpetually confused by it. my response is to grin uncomfortably and just tell her over and over “its fine, dont worry about it, its not a problem, its fine” and just dance lead.
she did make the very good point however that the caller could have said at the beginning (not even for sensitivity to androgeny reasons, but just because how do you know there will be an even number??) that the ladies and gents parts were arbitrary markers and just to make sure that whichever role you took, you kept throughout the dance so the numbers wouldn’t get messed up. my response was that straight people are often self-selecting in that regard, especially the type who are likely to show up by themselves at a folk dance – if there’s not an even number, they’ll just sit out til there is.
but i’ve been thinking about it more today, and i am pset by that. is that true? do straight people do that? why? and what should my response be? and why are people allowed to make stupid assumptions? i know the woman was trying to be friendly and was then just flustered, but c’mon! does it really make that much of a difference? will this problem just disappear in another generation or so as people get used to gender fluidity and same-sex couples?
*is there a particular breed of non-socialized older man who always becomes scrawny? are they born scrawny? with chicken necks and big ears and with their belts belted to high? lots of these men were that sort…
