Claire Dederer’s ‘What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?’. Once you get past the Woody Allen stuff, she asks:
It might sound as though I’m conflating two things—male predators and female finishers—in a troubling way. And I am. Because when women do what needs to be done in order to write or make art, we sometimes feel monstrous. And others are quick to describe us that way.
This resonates with me. Because doing ‘the right thing’ and tackling sexual harassment (taking on that feminised role of caring) has had direct consequences on my own creative work. Less time to write, to DJ, to work on my own dancing, to work with musicians. My energy and health spent on tidying up after bastard men rather than fostering my own work.
Men are largely absent in the Australian dance scene’s responses to s.h. There are _some_ very good men squirrelling away, but for the most part it’s women writing codes and policies (for which male organisers are happy to take reflected credit). Women who could be dancing or playing music. It’s a second subtraction from our creative lives: we pay once when we fight off these arseholes, and we pay again when we pick up our sisters and chase down the offenders.
Yes, this caring labour does build skills and networks and confidence. But it also detracts. And choosing _not_ to step up and help is a bastard act. Monstrous. As this writer notes, choosing to pursue our own goals, to set aside that role of carer is monstrous. It feels that way. And it is oftenmen who are quickest to dismiss the woman lindy hopper’s failure to ‘help’ their lead as a moral failure.
I found your blog because I wanted to start working with safe spaces in my own community, of Argentine tango, here in Helsinki Finland, so I started googling “Code of conduct” + various terms.
Your review of the policies from 2015 was useful, and also inspired me to actually do something. Now we have a small group building our own safe space policy and framework. So far I have been verbally harassed in a long Facebook discussion (by one person) and gotten a lot of support (by a huge amount of people). I hope and believe our work will spread to other European tango communities. You have your part in this, so: Thank you for working with this. Together we can change the world.