Mansplaining

[barracuda]

Re: the tango.

The tango arose as a dance between men and transvestite prostitutes. It was originally a gay dance form. This is the source of its scandalous allure, because of the association with homosexual anal sex. That is, it was designed as a conceit to allow one partner to enhance the femininity of his (male) partner by exaggerating the machismo of his own moves to conceal his homosexuality. It is in many ways the most patriarchal and macho of dances, yet also the most effeminate for the man vis-a-vis his tanguerina. The tango is one of the most complexly sexually ambiguous dance forms I can imagine outside of the male role within european ballet.

In the tango, the man offers his partner choices, which the partner may decide to accept or refuse. It is up to the lead to create a mood which seduces the follow to appear to conform to his wishes through a combination of invention, surprise, flattery and insistence within the form of the steps. To fail in this regard means boredom or even affront for your partner, inevitable criticism, and subsequent dance refusals.

[General Patton]

Re: the tango.

The tango arose as a dance between men and transvestite prostitutes. It was originally a gay dance form. This is the source of its scandalous allure, because of the association with homosexual anal sex..... The tango is one of the most complexly sexually ambiguous dance forms I can imagine outside of the male role within european ballet.

You can trace the history of tango over several continents and over half a dozen cultures over about 150 years.

As his original post pointed out, it is one of the least sexually ambiguous dance forms in the world. One leads, one follows. Yin/Yang.

http://www.verytango.com/tango-men.html

[barracuda]

I disagree. There's lots of stories about the genesis - I happen to prefer mine for a number of reasons, but mostly because it makes sense, and is kinda fun.

EDIT: For example, in your link...

Reason 3: Suppression of Tango
The third reason for men dancing tango with men is that tango was considered immoral by the upper class and the authorities. So much so that there was a formal initiative to close all cafes and ban tango music from being played on the streets. For example, in 1916 a law was passed in Buenos Aires that banned dancing between men in dance establishments. An attempt was made to slowly eradicate it from Argentina, and we find an account in 1919 by Joaquin Belda, who in his visit to Buenos Aires for 6 months wrote that most of the cafes were either closed or empty.

Why do you think a law would have to be passed to ban an immoral dance between two men?

[crikkett]

Birth control pills cost $600 bucks a year, at MOST. And it IS sex that someone else would be paying for, just the same as if you'd have to pay for someone's std ....

You poor, pathetic bastard, demonstrating no idea of what benefit public health brings to your own self, personally and economically.

I'm a child of rape and incest, and was born because my mother had access to neither birth control nor abortion services. My birth had a huge negative impact on no less than four families and it destroyed her. I have spent my life making up for her stepfather's crime.

Her life is a waste, hearts have been shattered beyond repair, my siblings were put at an economic disadvantage and I was kept away from my own family. I was barely tolerated by the kind of stepmother they warn you of in fairy tales and spent half my life thinking I was worthless and shameful. You would have other families suffer like we have, and for what?

I'm an egalitarian rather than a feminist and it doesn't make me so very popular here. So please catch a clue, while I pile on: you weren't being hounded because you're trying to express an alternative to groupthink. You're just wrong, you poor, pathetic bastard.

[jlaw172364]

@JackRiddler

I guess it just hasn't been my personal experience, because my upbringing involved more female authority figures than male. Most of my teachers and bosses were actually females, and I never really noticed much difference between how they behaved and how the males behaved. Both genders seemed to be channeling the same dominator, authoritarian ethos. The principal at my junior high school was a female. The dean at my high school was a female. Most of my teachers were females. Law professors and deans: females. I hired a female attorney to handle a legal matter I had no expertise in. I've gone before female judges. Half of my peers were females. Etc. Etc. Gender doesn't really play that much of a role in my day-to-day decision-making process, other than seeking out a potential mate.

It's not like I ever thought myself a superior intellect to my female instructors, or my female peer by virtue of my maleness. They were just people who looked different and dressed different than I, but were clearly capable of rational discourse, and everything else I was capable of. I would no more try to explain anything to them than I would my male peers. But am an explainer, because I read a lot, and I lack to share what I read with people. I viewed it as "sharing," not explaining, as in telling it as if it were holy writ.

I prefer the term chauvinist to describe the phenomena, because mansplainer can just as easily lead to label all males explaining things as mansplaining. But whatever, it's really a minor disagreement, yet ProjectWillow as turned me into Andrew Dice Clay.

I'm sure if you searched far and wide, you might find some feminist gender theory that would leave you scratching your head. It stands to reason that since their are male dominator crackpot theories on controlling women, that the opposite applies as well. In fact, I distinctly recall finding two of these books at a used bookstore. I read both of them, one after the other, and laughed at how each writer was trying to convince their audience of disaffected peers that the opposing gender was the root of all evil.

@barracuda

"The tango arose as a dance between men and transvestite prostitutes."

Any links or citations? A quick googling reveals nothing.

I'm reading Robert Farris Thompson's book and the closest thing he mentions to a gay connection is ex-soldiers who didn't want to get regular jobs, camping in the Pampas and dancing with one another for sport, the subtext being they're also romantically involved. But no overt mentions of it being about homosexuality.

Thompson is big on the African connection, tracing tango to a Konga dance called milonga which means "argument" or "line of dance" in Kikongo, which is a faster 2/4 tango variation still danced today, known for a distinctive cadence and the rule that requires stepping on every beat. So milonga is an African word.

If you listen to the music on "Milonga Para Fidel," you'll hear what I'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RABasqMVGbY

There are also elements of the European folk dance-derived waltz, and one of the Argentine Tango variations is called Vals, and is in 3/4.

You're definitely right about the ambiguity of who is really leading and who is really following at any given time. But why does it have to be linked with masculine and feminine. Is my female tango instructor a man when she leads the dance? No, she's a PERSON leading a dance. Do I turn into a woman when I follow? No. This is absurd as my "friend" telling me I'm gay because I dance with women, because by dancing with them, I want to be them. In reality, he's just jealous because his male peers shamed him into looking down on dancing, and eschewing it for watching ALL-MALE SPORTS, the most homo-erotic of all past-times: watching other men run into each other and throw balls around while clad in silly uniforms. When I was a kid, I could never understand why nobody else would make that connection. Why didn't the guys get excited about learning to dance so they could use it to dance with women and impress them? It was an early clue for me that the United States was totalitarian.

So far, for me, the dance has been less sexual, and more an exercise in applied intellect, mastery of body-physics, and enjoying a sort of non-sexual romance that comes from being close to someone. It's really hard to explain why it comes out that way. You sort of feel like you're in love with the person you're dancing with when the dance goes well. But it's not based on physical attraction, at least not for me, although I find many of the women attractive, but on empathy. Maybe I just don't have chemistry with them. I went out salsa dancing and really good physical chemistry with a lady that I met, but so far, not so much with the Argentine Tango follows, although when I dance with a great follow, I get a completely different kind of rush that is difficult to articulate. Maybe part of the rush involves going into a social situation where everyone is mostly trying to please each other by performing at their best, as opposed to a yuppie bar where everyone has character armor half a foot thick on at all times, and it's all about displaying status symbols.

[Wombaticus Rex]

You're just wrong, you poor, pathetic bastard.

I love you and I appreciate your catharsis, but still: let's avoid casting aspersions on the genealogy of RI members without the documentation to back it up.

let's find more polite and constructive ways to call each other dumbfucks

[barracuda]

@ jlaw172364 (aka, "The Diceman"),

My instructor of thirty years past used to talk about the homosexual genesis of the tango, but admittedly he was pretty darned queer. In looking for online corroboration, I came across two essays available in excerpted form at Google Books: "Medics, Crooks and Tango Queens: The National Appropriation of a Gay Tango" by Jorge Salessi in Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America, and "Models of Machismo: The Troublesome Masculinity of Argentine Male Tango-Dancers" by Jeffery Tobin in Tango in Translation, both of which speak to the issue.

I don't really want to hijack this thread much further but since you seem to be evincing a commitment, I invite you to post in the dance thread in the Lounge.

[jlaw172364]

@barracuda

I accept your gracious offer. Probably a better use of my time.

Another tango tidbit. In my classes, the women have less problem dancing with each other. But in Argentina, things are a bit different. One of my instructors told me that there are two brothers who dance together as a team. One leads, the other follows. I'm not sure if they switch. But they have no problem with this. However, they are disturbed by the prospect of a woman leading! It reminds me of the guy who only watched lesbian porn because he was afraid watching heterosexual porn would make him turn gay. I guess he's never looked at his own penorz.

These illogical idiosyncratic neuroses surrounding sex are always amusing to me . . . until they hurt someone.

[jlaw172364]

@barracuda

"The History of Queer Tango

While queer tango has become very popular in Argentina during the last two decades, it, surprisingly, did not originate in Argentina. Queer tango was born in Hamburg, Germany, where the first gay milonga opened in the mid 1980s. The first queer tango festival was also held in Hamburg in 2001."

http://sarahmlangdon.wordpress.com/2011 ... argentina/

I somehow doubt that it was "born" twenty years ago. Maybe it came out of the closet, or underwent a revival. Tango has periodically gone in and out of style. When of the women I have danced with, who is actually from Argentina, said that she never wanted to dance it as a teenager because it wasn't "cool," since it was danced by "old people." Never mind that these old people were a million times "cooler" than any of today's youth could aspire to.

I was primarily drawn to it because it's not as pattern-based as some of the other dances, it's more improvisational. Also, by learning it, I felt that it would making learning other dances easier. Unfortunately, many of them now seem boring by comparions. It also seems much more playful and expressive than the other dances. It's like doing a jazz solo on the dance floor.

[Project Willow]

I don't really want to hijack this thread much further but since you seem to be evincing a commitment, I invite you to post in the dance thread in the Lounge.

Thanks B.

"The History of Queer Tango....

.....

....

Misogynists don't do well observing and respecting boundaries. As we see again and again in this thread, they have take over the conversation and make it about themselves.

For umpteenth time, stay on topic.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Not that I pay much attention to these things, but last time I checked women didn't go on the subway to pick up men, so if you see a woman by herself, reading a book, listening to music and wearing a wedding ring, how about just leaving her the fuck alone?
Or better yet - If you see a woman on the subway in general - just leave her the fuck alone. Odds are she's not there to find Prince Charming.
Same thing goes for pretty much anywhere people don't go to date. Seriously - how hard can that be to understand?

A lot of good points have been made on the thread, but I honestly think that this is one of the most useful posts, because there really are guys who still need to be told these things. Somehow no one ever told them.

Dressed head to toe in spandex, reeking of sweat after their bike ride, on a public train, they will still make that noble attempt, to no one's benefit. And then they'll get angry and yell that she's a whore from the other end of the carriage. Somehow no one ever told them that you can't do that either.

I speak from experience here, bros - my record of getting a date with a woman after running up behind her in a dark alley with my hood up is lamentable. It's never worked once.

Likewise, my habitual pick-up technique of standing behind lone women in elevators while hyperventillating and muttering to myself has never resulted in a single success.

You see a ring on this finger bro?

Mansplaining is speaking ex cathedra, from the chair, with the full authority of office. I have done it, and still do it all the time. So do you. And you too sister. If we are concerned with harmonious relations between male and female here, then one of the main arguments against mansplaining, as a habit, is that it is unattractive. So stop it.

BTW, I'm no feminist, but what in God's name has happened to Jezebel? Dropped in there recently and they were mansplaining up the wazoo to their largely female audience, and it was women doing most of the mansplaining. In a very modern, corporate, dumbed-down fashion too.

Sorry for crashing into a serious thread, I'll go now.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

In any case, this shallow, "hey hey, ho ho, this penis party has got to go" school of gender studies is

mainly an invention of your own mind, a strawman, and not at all in evidence here or in Willow's threads generally. In fact, there is almost no evidence of it in the world outside a very small group of separatists a la Mary Daly.

You just don't understand, Jack. They destroyed the Snow Penis. For many in the MRA movement, it was tantamount to a declaration of war.

Never Forget : http://www.salon.com/2003/02/28/ice_4/

[jlaw172364]

@Jack and Ahab

So I guess you both subscribe to all theories posited by Andrea Dworkin then? I guess we could also say that the abuse she endured at the hands of various men at different stages in her life IN NO WAY influenced her worldview, and that her opinions were as completely objective and unbiased as those of say . . . Sigmund Freud, what with his supposedly universal Oedipus Complex, NOT AT ALL gleaned from his own life experience of, wait, what's this, he had a young attractive mother, and an old, cold, distant father? Could there be a connection? Also, what she and women she sought out for common ground, is endured by all women all the time, at all times in history, including the Queen of England, Doris Duke, Elizabeth Bathory, etc. etc. etc.

If I had nothing better to do, I would spend all my time combing the Internet culling only most entirely implausible, utter devoid of fact, illogical feminist theory I could find.

Come on! You KNOW it's out there.

The men's rights version would be the "don't trust anything that bleeds for a few days and doesn't die" school of men's rights.

As for the Snow Penis, LOL, well I congratulations Ahab, you trumped mansplaining as a feminist poodle complaint.

This is EXACTLY the kind of frivolous bullshit the university controlled student newspapers like to get the little buggers wound up about. A snow penis! Oooooohhh!! It's a penis!

This story proves that people at Harvard aren't that intelligent, they're merely better at following orders and obeying rules than other people. Who in their right minds would get offended by a phallus sculpture? What chain of thought led to this? Would some guy destroy a vagina sculpture or a nude lady sculpture? It's hardly worth the effort.

That being said, it's also not worth getting angry about if you are MRA either. But of course, a stupid "contraversy" like this (maybe the student paper manufactured the incident?) will be used for mutual trolling for at least a few days until the next troll-fest replaces it.

Also, why would this even be newsworthy? May as well report on how the Alpha Beta's TP'd the Lambda's fraternity house.

[jlaw172364]

@Project Willow

"For umpteenth time, stay on topic."

Your topic has already been talked to death. This is the aftermath. If you don't like my digressions, ignore what I write. But don't tell me what to write. And what I wrote was not completely off topic, because it has to do with what I perceive to be ambiguities with regard to gender roles, which you seem to think are fixed in stone. And stop telling me I'm a misogynist. You don't know me. You don't know my experiences. You don't know the history of my relationships with women. You're just saying it because you don't like, or don't agree with what I wrote. Frankly, I don't understand how someone with your experiences of being victimized by actual, real-life misogynists, would label someone who disagrees with them about one minor point into the same boat as a bunch of rapists. You'd be on sounder footing arguing that I'm a misogynist because I dance Argentine Tango.

@ahab

If a bunch of women are doing the mansplaining on Jezebel, how the hell is it mansplaining? You're helping my case, because pretending to be an authority on something is a gender neutral activity.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

@Jack and Ahab

So I guess you both subscribe to all theories posited by Andrea Dworkin then?

Aye, all of them, without exception. She's great. I can't speak for Jack, but I reckon Dworkin was spot on, especially in Ice and Fire, one of her few fictional works. Definitely one of my favourite womyn.

I don't really get what you are arguing against jlaw, and so passionately - I really don't, but on the plus side I learned a lot about the argentine tango that I had not known before and that is a positive thing.

Would some guy destroy a vagina sculpture or a nude lady sculpture? It's hardly worth the effort.

For hundreds of years the genitals of both male and female scultures (and paintings) were vandalised and altered by people who had the full weight of the Church behind them. Yes, guys have destroyed sculptures of vaginas and naked women. Look up the Sheela Na Gig in Europe, mainly in Ireland where some good examples remain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig

But other guys don't bother with sculptures, they destroy the real thing. Men kill women every day, it is barely news anymore, after all these millenia. And men kill men all the time too - no one cares much about that either anymore. We're used to it by now.

But a Bobbitt or a Catherine Kieu Becker is news (or a Wournos, or a Myra Hindley, or a Rose West). What you must know is that these things are still news because they are rare. A lot rarer than a man killing women. You don't have to actively worry about being targetted by these women yourself. They have never done me any harm anyways.

You are talking as if women talking in their own places about male privillege is some kind of direct threat to your own manhood, when it is not, and never will be. Women have every right to say, and write, what they like about the bad behaviour of men because (as I hope you would acknowledge) our bad behaviour is often every bit as shocking, horrific, inexplicable, frustrating or just dull and boring to them as their bad behaviour can be to us.

Mansplaining is a real thing, though. Think about it. My Mum was a stronger person than my Dad, as I bet yours was, or is, a stronger personality. She is still alive and he is dead - but growing up I could always get away with circumventing or outright insulting my Mum, until she invoked my Dad. He was the great arbiter and dispenser of justice. So no matter what my Mum said, it could always be ignored, laughed at - until she invoked the Great Father. At which point (if he could be arsed at the time) the mansplaining would commence. He had all the authority, held in reserve, just by virtue of being a man.

And the point is that this exact same dynamic existed for a hundred generations before me, and before you. It is not so long ago that women couldn't hold political office or be judges because of this. They could not speak ex cathedra because they could not (were not considered worthy) to sit upon the chair of judgement - hence Pope Joan.

Ach, i need my bed.