1329  human words for human beings

Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 13:15:15 -0700
From: Tango Guy <tangomundo55@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: human words for human beings

How about my 2 cents worth?
Point 1: Personally, I prefer the gender terms of male/female, man/woman, he/she, etc. The role of leader is usually male and the role of follower is usually female. (Using gender terms seems like a much better way of humanizing humans then the non-gender ones of leader and follower). I realize that at times, roles do get switched. However, I don't think this happens often enough to justify the use of gender neutral terms except when the usual gender roles are momentarily switched. Just my opinion. Sorry!!
Point 2: Carlos Gavito once said that he likes to think of his leader role as leader AND follower. Why? Because at times a follower fails (for various reasons contributable to one or both such as: lack of skill or knowledge, tiredness, moodiness, momentary unconnectedness, failure of effective lead, etc.) to follow what the leader leads. At these times the leader needs to go along with what the follower actually does and keep the dance functioning and looking good.
In addition, (Although Carlos Gavito didn't say this) the follower's role can actually be a follower AND leader role. Why? Because the follower expresses herself through her adornos. If a leader is a wise leader, he will "follow" her "lead" in allowing her space and time to do the adornos of her choosing.
Point 3: Our modern American society has been in the process of dehumanizing humans for a long time. For example: Businesses like to think of their employees not as people but as 'units of production'. Politicians like to think of their constituencies as 'votes' It seems to me we need to take every opportunity of re-humanizing humans.

Tango Guy


Marisa Holmes <mariholmes@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
Hi, Andrew,

I think you've missed what my linguistic concern is -
although we're in sync otherwise. We do not disagree,
I think, except that I only accept "leader" and
"follower" as descriptions for people. "Lead" and
"follow" are actions. In this posting, you use "lead"
as well as "follow" for humans, but you did not in
your previous posting. Nor is it common.

In any case, I did not say that calling a person a
follower denigrated their role in the dance. I did
say that their role is commonly treated as less
important, by many people. And I think that calling
the leader by a name which describes an active human
("leader") while calling the follower by a name which
denotes an action ("follow") may reflect this problem
- and even contribute to it.

You will notice that engineer, tech writer, support
person, marketing people, CEO, VP Finance, and
janitor, are all the names of professions - you did
not call them "design", "write", "type", "market",
"supervise", "number-crunch", or "sweep". (I admit the
last one crept into English at a time when people used
chimneys - but it was not an honored status, no matter
what you see in Mary Poppins.)

Anyhow, I'm all for using leader and follower as
sex-neutral terms (even if I do always respond to
"men" while leading). And for having them be
sex-neutral roles, as far as that goes. I just don't
want to call people by the names of actions - and I
really don't want to only call half the people that
way.

Cheers!
Marisa

--- Andrew wrote:

> I understand and empathize with your suggestion, and
> don't want to start a
> long thread on pc speech, but I think there are also
> some reasons to use
> this phrasing, and as some sort of terminology has
> to be used in a lot of
> the posts to any tango list, thus making this
> subject fairly relevant, it
> seems like it might be alright to post an
> alternative viewpoint to the list
> in reply.
>
> I used the terms pretty intentionally, but perhaps
> with a different
> "reading" than you're taking from them. The way I
> usually see these posts
> or articles written refer to the man and the woman -
> the man does this, the
> woman does that .. I find this somewhat troubling
> due to the fact that
> several of my favorite leads are women, and that I
> like to follow. As such,
> I need some way of referring to the dance roles with
> consistent gender
> neutrality. If I'm referring to people off the
> floor, and what they're
> doing, I would not refer to them by using role
> names. However, if - as
> another example - I am referring to employees in my
> company, and am
> referring to company business, I may be likely -
> without dehumanizing
> anyone - to refer to to people by the names of their
> roles/positions - the
> engineer will do this, the tech writer will work
> with the support person to
> do that, the marketing people will handle this part
> of the campaign while
> the CEO and VP Finance will take care of this. I,
> the janitor, will take
> care of the coffee spill .. ;)
>
> Anyhow, within a framework of a dance discussion, in
> a dance that at it's
> core involves a distinct separation of roles between
> the lead and follow -
> this is not to say there is a difference in
> importance between the roles,
> nor have I implied such - even when the roles are
> switched, or the lead is
> swapped back and forth, there is always this lead
> and follow aspect to the
> dance - providing detailed descriptions of what the
> (equal!) partners are
> doing, and doing so without gender specificity,
> suggests either referring to
> "lead" and "follow" - referring only to the roles
> within the role of the
> dance - or to constantly saying "the one who leads
> does this, then the one
> who follows does that, then the one who leads takes
> the one who follows
> around until the one who leads can ... " etc etc,
> which is unduly clunky for
> my compositional comfort.
>
> It also seems like suggesting that saying that this
> phrasing dehumanizes the
> one who follows, but not mentioning the lead,
> suggests that there is
> something inherently "less" about the follow role,
> which I disagree with ..
> the follow role, the follow, is in every way equal
> in importance to that of
> the lead - there is no "inequity" between a lead and
> a follow role for me,
> as you suggest .. it (the follow role) is a
> consensual, powerful role, and
> referring to someone as a "follow" within the
> confines of step descriptions
> shouldn't imply anything more negative than
> referring to someone as "lead"
> within them.
>
> Anyhow, I do understand your concerns, but I think
> this syntax also has some
> advantages, and following does not seem like a
> negative role to me ..
> particularly as I enjoy following, and don't mind
> being referred to as a
> follow for descriptive purposes while I am doing so.
> I hope we can agree to
> disagree. :) I'd also wholeheartedly agree with
> part of your concern,
> which is that the follow / one who follows often
> does get taken for granted
> and treated like a doll in classes as well as on the
> floor .. certainly
> something to ameliorate.
>
> Yours sincerely,
> Andrew