Right, I've been thinking about this whole thing a lot. As I've said, I agree with you.
It was really annoying feeling like I wasn't allowed to dance with you. Difficult enough navigating the intersection between the physical constraints on my waltzing, societal obligations to dance certain dances, and a slightly awkward poly situation regarding whether I would dance any couple dances with you that night [and I'm pretty damn sure I didn't do such a good job of that...so this is a note that we should talk about it, especially if I'm right] without adding in a social obligation not to dance with you because you were in men's clothes.
I was thinking that perhaps you're a test case: the first person in our community to attend an event in male clothing while having a specific desire to dance with another person in male clothing. Then I thought of the number of openly gay cis-male couples who have attended other related events, and realized that's just crap.
So, the situation for them, as I've observed it, seems to be that they dance primarily with women but nobody raises a stink when they dance the "special" dances with their partner or dance a couple of dances here and there with men.
I can't speak to how they feel about it. I'm not even sure if it's a "reasonable compromise". But it's an improvement. It's also from other historical [different period] events called by Susan de Guardiola.
I've briefly considered the argument that men dancing with men might drive people away from the community, a community too small to be able to afford to drive anybody away. If anybody wishes to advance that argument, I request they identify the specific people [offline], as our community is small enough we can readily name names rather than speaking in generalities. I'd then ask them to compare that number to the number made uncomfortable by the current situation [already outspokenly, you, me, rm] and consider the number of people each group is likely to bring to the community in the future. IOW, I wouldn't suggest making it a numbers game.
There were a number of people I wanted to dance with and didn't get to simply because the number of people I wanted to dance with exceeded the number of dances available. I think I'll pretend that's what happened this time and just make a point to dance with you next time; that work for you?
[Note: I considered whether to refer to SdG by name, which I'm generally against on the internet, before concluding that it's appropriate when discussing a person in their professional capacity to refer to their professional name. Linking it back to their private life would be inappropriate.]
no subject
It was really annoying feeling like I wasn't allowed to dance with you. Difficult enough navigating the intersection between the physical constraints on my waltzing, societal obligations to dance certain dances, and a slightly awkward poly situation regarding whether I would dance any couple dances with you that night [and I'm pretty damn sure I didn't do such a good job of that...so this is a note that we should talk about it, especially if I'm right] without adding in a social obligation not to dance with you because you were in men's clothes.
I was thinking that perhaps you're a test case: the first person in our community to attend an event in male clothing while having a specific desire to dance with another person in male clothing. Then I thought of the number of openly gay cis-male couples who have attended other related events, and realized that's just crap.
So, the situation for them, as I've observed it, seems to be that they dance primarily with women but nobody raises a stink when they dance the "special" dances with their partner or dance a couple of dances here and there with men.
I can't speak to how they feel about it. I'm not even sure if it's a "reasonable compromise". But it's an improvement. It's also from other historical [different period] events called by Susan de Guardiola.
I've briefly considered the argument that men dancing with men might drive people away from the community, a community too small to be able to afford to drive anybody away. If anybody wishes to advance that argument, I request they identify the specific people [offline], as our community is small enough we can readily name names rather than speaking in generalities. I'd then ask them to compare that number to the number made uncomfortable by the current situation [already outspokenly, you, me,
There were a number of people I wanted to dance with and didn't get to simply because the number of people I wanted to dance with exceeded the number of dances available. I think I'll pretend that's what happened this time and just make a point to dance with you next time; that work for you?
[Note: I considered whether to refer to SdG by name, which I'm generally against on the internet, before concluding that it's appropriate when discussing a person in their professional capacity to refer to their professional name. Linking it back to their private life would be inappropriate.]