Category Archives: academia

Update on using gender neutral language in class:

It’s easy.

I like it.

It’s no big deal.

So now I’m taking it a step further. Yes, there is a point beyond gender neutral language.

I find that I don’t like referring to ‘the follow’ or ‘she’ as though they were some sort of universal object or being, while I’m teaching. I prefer to use my teaching partner’s name. For example, I might say, “If I want *partnername* to move straight ahead, then my right hand pushes (gently!) in that direction, and *partnersname* moves that way. What does it feel like for you, *partnersname*?”

I think that this stops me making massive generalisations about leading and following and dancing, and encourages me to think about how each dance is a unique interaction and negotiation of space and time and rhythm and creativity with each partner. Which if course is the point, right? That’s why we go social dancing – to really sample as wide a range of experiences as possible? Or is that just the hippy in me?

I mean, last night we were teaching double top turns to complete noob dancers, and I found myself explaining in abstract terms why you don’t (as a lead) hold your partner’s hand too high above their head: because it’s uncomfortable. I reached a point where I was just annoyed by myself and said, “Look, this is just common sense, right? You’re gentle with your partner and don’t twist their arm behind their back because that’d hurt them? Stay with them, watch out for them, watch them, because that’s the nice way to dance.”

Sometimes we (meaning me) seem to pursue these abstract essential universal qualities of ‘good dancing’ as though they were divorced from the actual humans involved. I mean, the reason why we make sure the follow’s hand isn’t too far above their head isn’t mostly about good technique. It’s mostly because we are trying to stay ‘connected’ (in a social sense) with our partner, and not hurt them. We want to be with them in a personal as well as technical sense. The pragmatics of this (ie where you actually position your joined hands), is a consequence of this recognition that your partner is a whole, complete human. Someone you want to get to know, if only for three minutes. And as a lead, the follow is trusting you to watch out for them. So it just feels like the right thing to do is to justify that trust by not being a dick.

There is no universal, fixed ‘correct’ way of dancing (ie you don’t hold your joined hands an exact 170cm above the ground and 80cm in front of your face). Partner dancing is about negotiating a series of ongoing, constantly changing relative positions and relationships. My partner takes large steps because I take large steps. I lift my right hand higher on their back because they are taller than I am, and than my last partner. I stop dancing like a crazy adrenaline fool, and take more care and pay more attention if my partner is heavily pregnant, or feeling a bit unsure. I begin each dance with some time in closed, so we can get connected and ‘get in tune’. If I feel them disliking what I’m doing, I stop and try something new. I’m constantly alert to the possibility that they might bring something consciously, or that their change in weight or timing might inspire me to try something new. And that I can then integrate that into our dance. This is much more than a conversation (and what a boring, limited idea that is). This is a dance.

And this is why I think I’m happier saying “I do blah blah if I want *partnersname* to do X” rather than “I do blah blah if I want the follow to do X.”

Let’s put the gender back into the description: “I do blah blah if I want her to do X” or “I do blah blah if I want the woman to do X”, then this depersonalising and essentialising is made even clearer. My partner is defined by her/their gender, rather than their role or even their individual personality. And this essentialising discourages you from thinking of all of your partners as unique people, and each dance and dance partnership as a series of compromises, adjustments, active engagements and meetings of mind.

So, you know, adopting gender neutral language is just a tool, or a gateway to much more exciting thinking and dancing.

[An aside]
As I re-read this, I wonder if this bizarrely abstract, technical approach to teaching is culturally specific. I’d suggest began in the 2000-2003 period, partly because some people got obsessed with technique, micro-level leading and following, groove (and the slower tempos which made all this possible) and blues dance. And most of these dancers came to lindy hop with no dancing, and almost certainly no partner dancing experience. They also tended to be people from technical or academic backgrounds: IT workers, programmers, etc etc. People who like to logic their way through problems. People who mightn’t (and here is where I make a gross generalisation) have much experience touching and interacting with other humans in a physical way. Beyond sex. So they needed to invent a ‘technology’ for partner dancing.
When if you had grown up with touching other humans, with partner dancing and dance in everyday, normal, ordinary spaces, as part of your ordinary day, you’d be all “Well, durh, if I do this dick like thing, my partner won’t want to be my friend/gf/bf and that’d be crap.”

Now, however, as we move into what’s really functioning as the second or even third wave of lindy hop revival, partner dancing has become so normalised, so much a part of normal life and social interaction, you don’t need to explain every little thing in tiny detail. You can be much more pragmatic and socially oriented.
I mean, one question we get repeatedly from brand new dancers in class is “We did this move, now the handhold is weird – how do we fix it?! [paniiiic!]” I love this question, because the answer is beautifully simple: “If the handhold feels weird, just change it.” And everyone lols, because it’s funny that we’ve gotten so caught up in the mechanics of what we’re doing we’ve forgotten how to hold hands. Of course, the nicest part of all this talk about hand holds is that if you preface all your thinking about hand holds with “Have relaxed, gentle hands, and be cool with letting go of each other,” then you quit worrying about hand holds and get on with feeling the good adrenaline feels.

This all really brings me back to that point: if you’re used to holding hands with people, you’re pretty comfortable with figuring out how to make a hand hold work. But if you’ve never walked down the street holding someone’s hand, or never touched someone casually, or never partner danced, then you are acutely aware of hand holding and are paralysed by HOLYFUCKHOWDOESITWORK!?! panic.

[/aside]

[aside 2]You know why my posts get so long? Because I start writing and thinking, and write as I think, and one idea just prompts another, and another and another, and suddenly the post is a million words long and my brain feels like it on fire with ideas. A long post is the sign of a happy and excited brain.[/aside2]

(image: “Ultracrepidarian: A person who gives opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge” from The Project Twins’ A-Z of Unusual Words)

I reckon this post about dancesplaining is good stuff. I like the way Jason expands the idea of mansplaining. Mansplaining is about power, and dancesplaining is about power. I like the way Jason has expanded the idea of explaining-as-power. He’s making the point that this act of power isn’t about biological sex, it’s about social power. This seems to be something that a bunch of commentary on sex and gender in dance getting about at the moment doesn’t seem to grasp.

In other words, while we might associate particular characteristics or qualities with masculinity or femininity (eg violence or aggression or technical know-how might be associated with masculinity in anglo-celtic discourse), they aren’t actually biologically determined. Men aren’t naturally aggressive or violent or good with tools (lol) because they have a bunch of testosterone or a dick or a brain wired in a certain way. Men often demonstrate violence or aggression or are the first to have a go with a tool because the society they grew up in encouraged them to be that way.

So mansplaining isn’t biologically determined, it’s an act of power, where the person explaining assumes they know more, and assume they have the right to speak/explain. When this explaining person is a man, explaining something to a woman, they’re often taking advantage of the fact that women in this same cultural context are brought up to be ‘polite’ and to avoid confrontation. That means avoiding interruption or telling an explainer that they already know this stuff. Avoiding conflict can also be about helping other people save face (and avoid embarrassment or loss of face/status). Many women help men save face to avoid conflict because in their experience conflict can often involve physical conflict: an angry, embarrassed man can be a violent man.

Danceplaining and mansplaining isn’t often malicious or deliberately dictatorial. It’s usually an unconscious demonstration of discursive power. Just as a man mightn’t stop to worry about whether that guy who just got on the train is about to sit next to them and make suggestive comments, a man who explains mightn’t stop to think about whether he should shoosh. In both examples, men have lived with the experience and idea that they will be safe on public transport, that they won’t be harassed, and that it’s ok to explore or explain their thinking out loud. Both of these public behaviours are about status, power and confidence in public space. They’re both also about the power of feeling safe enough to explore a new idea in front of other people.

If you want to have a bit of a read about the ‘mansplain’ concept, I suggest starting with Rebecca Solnit’s piece ‘Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn’t Get in Their Way’.

I like Jason’s piece because makes it clear that explaining – dancesplaining – isn’t necessarily about gender. While men might do it it women a lot in class, women quite often return the favour and explain to men why they’re doing things wrong. But I do think it’s about power, and I’d argue that certain types of power can be gendered (or associated with a particular gender identity) in certain contexts. So dancesplaining is often perpetrated more by men, and as most dance classes have more men leading than women, we see more leads/men dancesplaining to follows/women than vice versa. I’d probably add that a male lead teacher should be particularly careful not to paraphrase and repeat a point his female follow teaching partner has just made in class settings. That’s a type of mansplaining too.

Jason extends this thinking to explore how this type of behaviour in class affects the way we might think about leading and following generally.
I’d argue that dancesplaining (as a gendered behaviour) works with other gendered behaviour to create a continuum of gender and patriarchy. This is how discourse and ideology work: if it was just one little thing that bothered us (and we could fix with a quick solution), then feminism would be redundant within a couple of hours. But patriarchy is complicated. This is why I have troubles with the recent posts about ‘sexism’ on Dance World Takeover: the thinking is too simple, and the solutions are too simple. A reshuffling of ideas about connection isn’t going to magically solve sexism in a community. It might be one point at which we can engage with particular ideas about gender and power, but tackling that one thing this time will not quickly or easily ‘solve’ patriarchy.

If we are to engage with gender in the lindy hop world in a constructive way, we need to think about all sorts of stuff: clothes, notions of ‘beauty’ and ‘strength’, discussions about food and ‘health’, teaching practices, competition formats (eg how is a jack and jill competition judged, and how does this process articulate ideas about gender?), the role of solo dance, the place of aerials, how we manage and think about injuries and pain, ethnicity and race and how we think and talk about it in dance, talk about sex and sexuality in dance partnerships, labour relations and the role of ‘volunteers’ and unpaid labour, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Gender: it’s complicated.

This is why, though, I’m quite pleased by Jason’s piece. He takes one behaviour (or use of language and power), and then draws out the effects and related behaviours and thinking within a culture (and cultural practice). I’m especially delighted by the way he presents his own thinking and behaviour. This really is what I would call being a feminist ally. Doing feminist work. I am also very pleased by the way this thinking makes clear that feminist work can also be socialist work, and also be the work of pacifists and human rights activists. Feminism might be centred on gender, but we can’t talk about gender without also talking about economics, ethnicity, sexuality, violence, and so on.

I was especially delighted by this paragraph in the ‘establish permission’ section:

Both as a teacher and as a student, I have found it is often really helpful to approach first with a question along the lines of “Can I make a suggestion?” If he or she says “yes,” then we can proceed to having a discussion about it. If he or she says “no,” then I keep my opinion to myself unless that person is causing serious harm (in which case I might have led with something more direct like “I need to talk to you”). The act of asking for permission can feel a tad cumbersome but it respects the other person’s boundaries and gives them a moment to adjust to a state of readiness to hear feedback. It is the dance class equivalent of inviting someone to a performance evaluation rather than barging into their office and telling them they need to shape up or ship out.

I think this is a gorgeous illustration of how undoing the power dynamics (and hierarchies) of pedagogic discourse in dance can work to undo other dodgy power dynamics in a dance community. The class is, of course, where we socialise new dancers – where we teach them not only how to dance, but how to be in a dance community. It’s something I need to remind myself: though I might be a teacher, I don’t automatically have the right to correct someone’s dancing in class. And how I should correct them needs to be carefully thought about, to promote and encourage mutual respect.

If you’re curious, I’ve written other posts where I’m pretty much annotating the development of my ideas about teaching. I’m only new to teaching dance and boy am I making a lot of mistakes.
– Dealing with problem guys in dance classes: where I write a huge, long, rambly post exploring my ideas about this, and nut out some strategies.
– Self Directed Learning: where I look at alternatives to the formal dance class, and how this might destabilise hierarchies, and also complement traditional learning models.
– teaching challenges: routines, structure and improvisation in class: where I remind myself that rote-learning is about power and hierarchy, and not in the spirit of lindy hop.
– Teaching challenges 2: drilling and memorising: kind of like that previous post, but with some dodgy referencing of pedagogic lit.
– Valuing the process rather than the product: where I talk about a bunch of things, but most importantly, about the importance of being wrong and making mistakes.