blogs

I started blogging publicly again for three reasons. Firstly, I like writing. I'm much better at writing than I am at talking, and probably better at writing than thinking, to be honest. Secondly, I wanted to get rid of the fear of people reading what I write. It's a nothingy little personal blog, and it's never going to have much of a readership, but it's here and people can read it (and occasionally they do, and even more occasionally someone says something nice about it, and then my world gets a little bit brighter). Thirdly, I like these blogs. I like silly personal blogs that don't really have an audience to cater to and post about whatever the author wants to post about. I've read hundreds of things which say that nobody cares, nobody's interested in your dull day or your personal feelings, write about bigger things your audience can relate to. Well, I care. I'm interested in your dull day and your personal feelings, provided you can type legibly. I'm interested in the thing you do that I also do, the thing you do that I wouldn't do for a roomful of puppies, diamonds and ice cream, the thing that really pisses you off for no real reason. I'm interested in the happy things, the sad things, the weird things, the mundane things. Fuck trying to be relevant to the wider community, tell me about the time you went food shopping and you found a really weird-looking potato.

I read other people's personal blogs. If you're a Facebook friend of mine who likes to link to their blog posts, I've read yours. Certainly the posts you've linked, and probably back a bit further too. They're not all on my regular reading list, but the ones with an interesting voice - which is certainly more than half of them, to my mind - I go back to time and time again. You write about your fun-filled adventurous life? I read it. You write about your struggles with mental health and/or bereavement? I read it, and probably cry. You write about parenting a child I've never met? I read it. I know all about babywearing and extended breastfeeding and reusable nappies and different rates of child development and what horrendous things giving birth can do to a body, and I find it fascinating despite having all the maternal instinct of a fairy cake.

I also read the blogs of dance teachers I know, or know of. My dancer friends (and occasionally the teachers themselves, if I'm friends with them) will post links, and I read them all, because I love dance and I love other people's perspectives on dance. I often wonder if I should stop doing this, because I hate them all. OK, I don't hate them all. Quite a few of them are written by very professional people running a very professional blog on their very professional website, which don't colour my opinion on the authors as dance teachers at all. This is probably the best way to approach it unless you're an exceptional writer who has exactly the right instincts for this sort of thing. But I like personal stuff. I want to read opinions! ...riiiiight up until I read them, and then I hate them all.

Dance teachers are just people; people who look very pretty when they move and are good at teaching other people how to look pretty when they move. There's no reason to expect them to be able to present themselves well through the medium of the written word, or to want to take a critical eye to the state of their local scene and their own approaches. But I can't shake my unfair expectations. I want to read a dance teacher's personal opinion and feel like I would be encouraged, safe, and free in their scene. I want to read posts that express potentially controversial views while still being mindful of their authority and position. I want to read perspectives I haven't heard before, phrased eloquently and tactfully. I want to read staunch advocacy for scene safety and consent culture that includes concrete actions they've taken to embed this in scenes where they have responsibility. I'd also quite like them to be funny, because I like funny. Most of all I want to read what they write and be inspired to learn from them and dance with them.

It's a lot to ask. Too much. I'll never find a dance teacher who runs this kind of blog, and that's OK. In fact, it's probably for the best, since the combination of dancing and writing would probably be too much for me and I'd start following them to every festival they taught at like some kind of horrendous fangirl. But all the dance-teacher blogs I've read that express personal opinions, I hate. I hate them to the extent that I will actively avoid being taught by these people, and in some cases, actively avoid dancing with them. I don't want to learn from someone who will proclaim that nobody gets to call themselves a dancer unless they're Pina Bausch. I don't want my scene leader to be a drama llama. I don't want teachers who are so determined to be contrary, or so determined to oppose someone else's opinions on everything, that they write post after post of rude shit about perfectly well-accepted styles or choices that affect them in no way whatsoever. And I really, really don't want teachers who openly dismiss sexual assault, place the 'traditional' on a pedestal, and urge the cutting of slack for men while expressing disgust at women who complain (yes, I am going to link that post every time I write about dance, because it's either that or have a paraphrase of the exact same sentiment in every single post).

It makes me sad, because now there are several amazing dancers I'll never feel comfortable dancing with. There are teachers whose lessons would just depress and discourage me after reading their thoughts on their students. There are scenes I wouldn't feel safe dancing in anymore. What's worse, these isolated opinions make me more wary of other teachers, whose thoughts I haven't read and whose views I haven't heard. Why would they be any different just because they don't write about it? I become convinced that it's easier to just not dance with teachers, because they'll be judging my technique and that's no fun, and maybe I should just dance with people who I know for a fact enjoy a dork-dance interlude.

Part of me thinks I should just avoid reading this stuff anymore. Stop reading and just start dancing. After all, they're all just people, and a lot of people have fucking terrible opinions on things. If I don't know someone's a judgemental arsehole, I can just dance with them and walk away none the wiser, right? I have more dance and less bad feeling in my life, everyone wins.

Except, if my dance teacher believes "men are the leads, women are the follows, that's the traditional way; I know people can do the other role, but let's not be pedantic about this" I want to know that. If I'm giving money to someone who is paying lip service to an inclusivity they don't really subscribe to, I want to know that. If I'm dancing in a place where the scene leaders protect creeps (and gropers, and people who have punched multiple people in the face) from repercussions, I definitely want to know that. I want to support safe, inclusive environments run by safe, inclusive teachers, and if that's not where I am, I need to have the knowledge to protect myself.

On a less dramatic level, I want to know about the people teaching me. The way this scene is set up - its size, its dance style, the devotion of its members - you have to like and respect your teachers. You have to buy into their philosophy, you have to trust what they're telling you, you have to understand where they're coming from, and you have to want to share a whisky with them afterwards. Otherwise, what's the point?

So I'm going to keep reading. Sometimes it will make me cross, but I want to know. And maybe if I read widely enough, I'll come across dancers - maybe not teachers, but dancers - who write about dance in a way that inspires me. And if not? I'll read whatever they want to write about. Hair, depression, ferrets, anything. I'm listening.

on boundaries

I went dancing on Sunday. A lot of the regulars were out of the country, but it was a good crowd, I met several lovely new people, and was delighted to dance with almost everyone there. I say almost; there was one guy I prefer not to dance with (two if you count Mr Spine Trumpet, which now that we've built up a long and beautiful tradition of not dancing together, I do not). There's something about the way he behaves when we dance that makes me uncomfortable. It's not overtly creepy - he's not gropey and when he does say something it's far to the ambiguous side of being inappropriate, but I don't like it, and I see shades of the same thing when I happen to make eye contact with him off the dance floor. Usually dancing with one specific person isn't hard to avoid, but it was a quiet night, and when I turned to the bar to take a sip of my drink, out of the corner of my eye I could see him standing in front of me, slightly too close, and silent. Waiting for me to turn around and suddenly be staring him in the chest. I would be slightly startled, look up towards his face, where he would be smirking, and still silent. He wouldn't ask me to dance; he would assume that the dance contract was affirmed as soon as we made eye contact.

I hate this. People whose faces I recognise but whose names I don't know asking me to dance by suddenly looming over me in silence? Nope. Nope nope nope. So what did I do? Completely ignored the fact that he was there, turned back towards the bar and poured myself a glass of water. He melted away again. Was this the best way to handle things? Probably not. But it was the best I could do in the moment.

The reason I started overthinking this minor interaction? I was reading this post at Captain Awkward, about a creepy guy using creepy pick-up artist techniques, and thinking "Wow, that's creepy, using horrible strategies like that to get around someone's boundaries". Several people in the comments (I actually recommend both the post and all the comments, because that site is made of unicorns) said, "Well done for getting away now. It would have been so much worse if you'd actually ended up dating him." It would, wouldn't it? Imagine dating a guy who...

HOLY SHIT I TOTALLY DID

I'd forgotten. My memories of the guy when he was my friend were all good ones. More than once, when we were still dating and afterwards, I thought to myself, "It was so great being friends with him. It's a shame he changed so much after we started dating." But reading that letter, reading about a guy commenting on her body language and how guarded she was, reading the comments about PUA techniques, I suddenly remembered that he did that all the time when we were friends.

"You're standing there with your arms folded. That's a very defensive gesture. What makes you so defensive?"
"You're turning your body away from me. Why is that? Makes it seem like you're nervous. What have you got to be nervous about?"
"How come you're looking away? Are you scared? Look at me."

People analysing me has always made me massively uncomfortable, and when folding my arms EVEN MORE didn't help, I tried standing differently to get him to shut up. Which he did not. "Hey, you've got your arms down today, you're more open. That's good."

Then I remembered an exchange that happened shortly before we started going out.

Him: Those guys over there were asking if you and I were a couple.
Me: ...OK.
Him: I told them you'd probably scratch their eyes out if they said that in front of you.
Me: ...uh...
Him: I mean, no offense, you're very attractive and all, but... [pulls face] no.
Me: ...OK.

I remembered going home and writing in my DeadJournal (yes, DeadJournal. Teen Goth Jen had a DeadJournal, the existence of which I'd also completely forgotten up to this point) about what he'd said, and how I'd had a slight feeling of "oh, charming" but mostly a massive sense of relief because he'd said he wasn't attracted to me and I wasn't attracted to him either and it was great that everything was clear now and I didn't have to worry about the weird vibes anymore. Then we started dating shortly afterwards because he was smart and funny and that was what was important, right?

DUDE, YOU WERE FUCKING NEGGING ME.

(I asked him about that exchange a few times when we were dating. He would either flat-out deny it happened or embark on a long melodramatic display of What An Awful Person I Must Be To Say Things You Interpreted In Such A Way.)

I tell these two largely unrelated stories because remembering the second one made me feel (after I'd got over the minor urge to go and find him and yell WHAT THE SHIT WAS UP WITH THE FUCKING NEGGING OF THE SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL, DUDE) a hell of a lot better about the first one. That second story just wouldn't happen now. I wouldn't stay friends with a guy who gave me updates on my own body language every time he saw me and offered his various opinions and approval on the way my shoulders were facing. I would sit far, far away from that guy, and he would call me a stuck-up bitch to his friends, and everybody would be much better off. It wasn't until I started dancing that I realised I was even allowed to have boundaries, much less that I could enforce them, and though my methods aren't perfect yet, the knowledge that I have the power to get away from situations and people that make me uncomfortable does a lot for my peace of mind.

I deleted multiple versions of a paragraph justifying why I ignored Mr Loom-and-Smirk, because that's not the point of this story and I've written about such things previously (please see here for my feelings on creepy dance guys and women's socialisation to be silent, and here for my feelings on being told to "cut him some slack"). I don't want to set myself a benchmark of behaving perfectly in every situation because that's not fair; in an ideal situation I would have behaved differently, but then so would he. We all have imperfect ways of handling things and that has to be OK. Having this idea of The Perfect Human What I Am Going To Become in my head is immensely damaging and I'm trying my best to get rid of it. Dismantle unreasonable perfectionism, build comfortable boundaries - this is my plan for the next eight hundred years (or however bloody long it takes to do these things).

I have grown as a human this week. Or rather, the space around me has grown, making me a slightly more comfortable human. I think that's probably better.

missing

For a year and a half, the most important thing in my life was dance. I went to any and every dance class or social I got a sniff of, and as many festivals as I could afford (and some I couldn't). All of my friends were dancers, and I went to everything, dance-related or not, that they invited me to. It was my life's infrastructure. Well, I'm never free on Tuesdays or Thursdays, probably not Wednesdays either. Last Friday of every month is out. Second Sunday of every month is out. I don't know how healthy or sensible that was, but I was busy and happy and had no desire for change.

I've lost that recently. I went for well over a year without missing a single one of my Tuesday classes, and now I go to maybe half, if that. I haven't been to Thursday classes in months. I go to socials infrequently, and usually leave early. I sold my ticket for the one festival I was planning to go to. It's even hard to enjoy stupid bouncy dancing in my bedroom at the moment. I don't quite know how to cope without that, because it's one of my default comfort behaviours and has been since I was a kid, but dancing just isn't fun anymore.

Maybe it's the dance. I've got stuck. In terms of steps and moves, there's not a huge amount more I can learn, and in terms of technique, I've been learning from the same (excellent) teachers for two years, and if they haven't been able to explain it to me by now I'm probably not going to get it from them. Maybe I'm bored of the moves and the music and it's draining my love for dance as a whole.

Maybe it's the scene. Where we once had a group of people learning stuff and having fun, we now have competitions and auditions and troupes and teachers in training. People practise and rehearse rather than dance. Teachers pick favourites and don't know how to hide it. Friends and acquaintances have long, detailed conversations in which they try to pin down their exact dance level in relation to other people we know, and discuss dance like it's our profession, not our hobby. Maybe that's been sucking all the fun out of it.

Maybe it's my body. I'm frustrated at my limitations, limitations other people don't seem to have because they came into this dance with years of learning technique in a different discipline, rather than what I did, which was just show up to a class after spending the vast majority of my adult life sitting on my arse thinking about aubergines. I'm analysing every move I make, trying to persuade myself to take up other dances to get this technique stuff and make my dancing look prettier, so maybe I'm sucking all the fun out of it.

Maybe it's my priorities. When I started dancing I had a dying relationship, almost no friends in the city, and an ache for interaction that had been growing for years. Two years later I have a very healthy relationship and friends that I believe I would keep even if I never danced another step again, so maybe the need is gone. Maybe I never really loved dance as much as I thought I did.

Maybe it's my head. Anxiety is getting in the way of a lot of things right now. Maybe that's all this is, and when I learn how to control it, dancing will be fun again.

It might be any, or all, of these things. There isn't really a fix for any of them, at least not within my power right now, which leaves me without a passion acting as the driver for my life. I'm not good at handling life without that driver. For some reason I can't drive it myself, so it either goes careening off into some bushes or I freak out and stop the whole thing. I wrote in November about needing a new thing, and I've tried several since then. I've enjoyed them all enough to keep going with them; I have made an improbable number of cushion covers this month. But none of them have gripped me in the way I'm looking for. I think about what I've done and where I could go next - dressmaking! Kickboxing belts! - and I don't feel enthused, just scared and a bit sad.

There's something missing. I've tried to fill the empty place but it doesn't want to be filled. Is that because my love of dance will come back, somehow, and doesn't want anything else to crowd it out, or is this a bigger problem? I don't know. Either way, it kind of hurts.

silence

The other night I went dancing. The scene is still small and I'm pretty much always there, so I generally recognise most people I see when I enter a venue. People I know well, people I know by face but not by name, people I love to dance with, people who are in massive demand that I have to fight to dance with. Then there are the people I will not dance with again under any circumstances.

This dance shitlist is small and not based on dance quality. I can easily dance with someone who's not very good. To get on the shitlist you either have to dance in a way that's physically painful to your partner, or be seriously creepy. For example, my shitlist contains the following names:

Ass Groper: guy spent most of the dance just shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, then suddenly reached out and started rubbing my ass.

Spine Trumpet: whose idea of leading is to hold me uncomfortably tightly and poke me in the back and/or hands, leaving me in some pain and also once with a bruise on my wrist.

Crotch Lead: WORST DANCE EVER OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT.

This time I saw the most recent addition to my Do Not Dance list: the Skirtlifter. When I danced with him a couple of months ago, he held my hand quite low against my leg, and then using my hand as a sort of cover he physically lifted up my skirt and started stroking my thigh. I went Eek and tensed up my hand to force him away, he said, "Mmmm, just as good as I remember," and I fought back the urge to throw up on his shoulder. There will be no more dances with this guy.

I told people about him. There is a creepy guy, he did a creepy thing, would recommend you avoid. And said people, after going, "Ew," would say, "Did you say anything?" or "I hope you smacked him."

Well, no, I didn't. I froze up and tried to work out how I could get out of this with the least amount of fuss.

We are socialised to believe that nothing is a problem until someone draws attention to it, and therefore that the act of stating the problem out loud is what creates it. So when people complain about something that's made them uncomfortable, they're making a scene, creating drama, forcing everyone else to be aware of something unpleasant when they were quite happy in their ignorance, thanks. So we are tacitly encouraged to keep quiet, try and make the problem go away as politely and diplomatically as possible, without letting anyone know the problem was ever there, including and perhaps especially the perpetrator (because they can't have meant it, they were probably trying to be nice, it was only a joke, it didn't actually hurt you, now, did it? Which leads to that lovely and familiar pattern where you're overreacting because it didn't hurt you, right up until you do get hurt, at which point you really ought to have done something about that, you know).

The idea that we aren't to upset Creepy Guy, that it's not nice to set boundaries with Creepy Guy or get him banned from places where he's been persistently creepy, is so ingrained at this point that it's very hard to fight against in the moment. I'm a lot stronger about boundaries than I used to be, but my instinctive reaction to being unexpectedly felt up was Oh God hand on thigh get it off very politely and then finish the dance and say thank you and walk away and never come back. Reprogramming myself not to do this is going to be pretty tough.

In the latter days of Crotch Lead's reign of doom and terror, I told several people that I'd had enough of hiding on the other side of the room and letting him take over my night. I told them that the next time he asked me to dance, I would say no, and also tell him why I was saying no. Most people, including the ones who'd said they'd just kick him in the nuts if he tried it or that he "wouldn't dare" dance with them like that, looked completely taken aback. "No thank you, the way you dance makes me really uncomfortable" shouldn't be such a radical statement, but there is something about a person (particularly a woman) openly and bluntly refusing to do something she's not comfortable with that feels almost transgressive. In the end I didn't say anything, mostly because he never did ask me again. But that, in turn, was mostly because I never really did stop hiding from him.

Dance-wise, I am absolutely secure in my limits. I don't question whether I should be enjoying something more than I am or whether I'm overreacting to a certain hand placement. I am completely comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, as it were, and I won't subject myself to it again just to be nice or to seem more likable. But actually saying something directly, even to someone who clearly knows he's doing something inappropriate, still feels like it's beyond me, and I don't quite know why that is. It would be better for the scene if we spoke out. And the worst that could happen is - what? That the person in question mocks me for overreacting and won't dance with me again? That he mocks me to other people? That his feelings are very badly hurt by me taking his innocent groping the wrong way and never comes back? None of these are catastrophic things, and having Creepy Guy and his creepy friends avoid me or socials in general as determinedly as I avoid them would improve my evenings tremendously. And yet still I keep quiet.

This shouldn't be a part of the scene. We should be able to deal with this when we see it, instead of defaulting to the strange and inefficient method of letting them dance with everyone in the scene until everybody is avoiding them and they stop coming back because all the women mysteriously vanish between songs (in effect, what happens is that the regulars all find out pretty quickly and Creepy Guy just spends months upsetting new dancers and putting them off the scene entirely). It should be normal and expected for dancers to set boundaries, and for those boundaries to be accepted by others. We shouldn't be managing Creepy Guy's potential hurt feelings first and foremost, driving other dancers away from the scene in the process, but that's what we do. It's easier to go with what we know, to not make a fuss, to underreact for as long as possible then feel bad when people start to get hurt.

I have no solution. But maybe seeing the problem is a start.

power cut blues

Tonight we were dancing, and the music stopped and the lights went out.

We carried on dancing to piano and harmonica by candlelight (and iPhone light, because what year is this).

I love the things that happen to me.

Scenes

This is a thing I used to do back in the days when I had a LiveJournal. I'm starting it again in the hope that it'll get me in the habit of writing more frequently.

[I am doing a shift on the door at a social dance. A couple approaches]

Guy: So, what is this?
Me: It's a blues dance night.
Guy: So, it's blues music, but you have to dance?
Me: Yes, essentially.

[The guy puts his head round the door to have a look]

Guy: Oh! So it's a dating event!
Me: No, it's not.

[He looks at me sceptically]

Me: It's really not. That's just what the dance looks like.
Guy: Oh, I see, so these are all established couples?
Me: No, people just come and dance with anyone.
Guy: So it IS a dating thing. Just going up to strangers?
Me: Most of the people here know each other. They come for the dancing.
Guy: It must be a dating thing. Like couch surfing.
Girl: What? What are you talking about?
Guy: We're going to go somewhere else.

[They turn to leave. As they go up the stairs:]

Girl: What do you mean 'it's like couch surfing'? What do you think couch surfing is???