"Choice"?

Sometimes a man may believe he is inviting a woman to dance by look, but he isn’t. He might walk right up to her with a quizzical expression or a visual invitation but too near. He might say nothing but hold out his hand. This isn’t an invitation, it’s an imposition, reason enough to look away, or studiously avoid him. If, cornered, she says ‘no thank-you’, she puts a clear end to it, but he has effectively forced her to engage directly when perhaps she would rather not have.

I have never seen a man who has cornered a woman and been told verbally, no thank you, still insist. Never. Because that would be harassment. It gives me pause to reflect that when I was cornered, just before a social dance and said no, for the umpteenth time, but the person still insisted, it caused so much harm. I have often wondered why the damage from that day has been so lasting.  I have thought about karma: the consequences of your intentions and your actions.  I did get angry because I was harassed, trapped, shocked, horrified.  But such insistence is not normal, would never be acceptable in the milonga, so the fallout is not so surprising. 

For some men, especially men from cultures with a stronger concept of machismo and male pride than here, and for me, as it happens, when inviting a woman to dance, a rejection once often means they will not invite her again. Maybe she didn’t want to dance right then, for any number of reasons, but if he forced her to commit to an acceptance or a refusal then that decision could be long-standing. The guy may justify it to himself: Oh well, at least I know now. But were the means to arrive at that knowledge justified?

Janis says men are walking up to invite more now, that the codes of the milongueros viejos are disappearing, but I suspect they will endure.

When imposition - a form of force - is involved, choice is absent.

*

A veces un hombre puede creer que está invitando a bailar a una mujer con el cabeceo, pero no es así. Puede que se acerque a ella con una expresión inquisitiva o una invitación visual, pero demasiado cerca. Puede que no diga nada, pero que le tienda la mano. Esto no es una invitación, es una imposición, razón suficiente para apartar la mirada o evitarlo. Si, acorralada, ella le dice verbalmente "no, gracias", pone fin a la situación, pero él la ha obligado a entablar una relación directa cuando quizá ella preferiría no hacerlo.

Nunca he visto a un hombre que haya acorralado a una mujer y se le haya dicho "No, gracias", verbalmente, seguir insistiendo. Jamás. Porque eso sería acoso y abuso. Me da que pensar que cuando me acorralaron, justo antes de un baile social y dije que no, por enésima vez, pero la persona siguió insistiendo, me causó tanto daño. A menudo me he preguntado por qué el daño de aquel día ha sido tan duradero.  He pensado en el karma: las consecuencias de tus intenciones y tus actos.  Me enfadé porque me sentí acosada, atrapada, conmocionada, horrorizada.  Pero tal insistencia no es normal, nunca sería aceptable en la milonga, así que el daño resultante no es tan sorprendente. 

Para algunos hombres, especialmente los de culturas con un concepto del machismo y el orgullo masculino más fuerte que aquí, y para mí, cuando se invita a una mujer a bailar, un rechazo una vez suele significar que nunca se la volverá a invitar. Puede que ella no quisiera bailar en ese momento, por muchas razones, pero si él la obligó a comprometerse a aceptar o rechazar, esa decisión podría ser duradera. El tipo podría justificárselo a sí mismo: Bueno, al menos ahora lo sé. Pero, ¿estaban justificados los medios para llegar a ese conocimiento?

Janis dice que ahora los hombres se acercan más a invitar, que los códigos de los milongueros viejos están desapareciendo, pero sospecho que perdurarán.

Cuando se trata de imposición, que es una forma de fuerza, la elección está ausente.

Might

Junction beside a school, Perth 

There are many forms of force, control, imposition:  sexual, social, even conversational. 

Any doubt as to how prevalent people imposing their will on others is, can be dispelled by considering our streets. The Highway code changed on 29 January 2022. There is now a "hierarchy of road users". The idea is to make clearer, to lend more weight to the obvious idea that some people are more vulnerable than others and that we need to take care of them. Pedestrians are clearly more vulnerable than someone inside a ton of metal and among pedestrians, children, and anyone with physical limitations are the more vulnerable "road users". 

My street, on our town's ring road.  To the right, a park.

So far, so straightforward. Why is spelling this out in the Highway Code necessary? Because there are many who refuse to acknowledge it and are even angered by the concept of anything but cars on a road.

In the UK, road fatalities have been dropping for decades, currently under 2000 a year.  But 2000 is quite a lot.  

PeteEastern, Wikipedia

If we include those seriously injured, that number jumps to 27,500 (in 2021), according to data released by the Department for Transport. Some 5,400 of those killed or seriously injured (KSIs) were pedestrians, and more than 4,400 cyclists. (Citymonitor) That's 35%.

Tolerable? If the military were suffering that annually, would we tolerate it?  What are the military's casualty figures, out of interest? In 2022, 67 soldiers died. 

 

The Highway Code now says “At a junction you should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning.” Previously, drivers were only supposed to give way when a pedestrian had started to cross a road. It's a gesture, but even in 2023 in the UK, in my town certainly, drivers take precedence all the time, as a rule in fact, even when children are trying to cross the road.

I took the headline picture of this piece while campaigning during 2021 to try to get this junction near my boys' school improved for kids walking to school. For ten minutes at the beginning and end of every day about 100 pupils and between 50 and 60 vehicles battle it out on this junction, with between a fifth and a quarter of of vehicles failing to give way even when there are large groups trying to cross.  The children on the road had been in the middle of crossing but were forced back by the van, which took priority. The black car also failed to give way even though there are ten children waiting to cross and two still on the road. I cannot emphasise how common this is.  Besides being dangerous and selfish towards vulnerable people who also don't pollute our shared air, it teaches our children to perpetuate this behaviour.

I saw countless cars going round this roundabout the wrong way or cutting the corner.  I saw another van go round the roundabout the wrong way and drive straight at a group of kids like the one above.  I saw my own son nearly end up on the bonnet of a car that drove straight at him and his friends. They all froze, believing they were going to be hit. I had picked this spot on his nearly two mile journey because he himself had said it was the most dangerous point. 

Even buses don't always give way. These kids were already on the road when the bus took priority - because it can.

Unfortunately, despite having a campaign group, despite recording statistics of pedestrians and traffic in detail over time, despite photo and video evidence of many near misses, despite engaging road safety organisations, despite someone from the council coming out to assess the junction and despite agreement that it was not ideal, nothing has been done about this junction.

Strangely, on zebra crossings a driver is still not obliged to give way to someone waiting to cross (though many do), only when someone has started to cross. I was already in the middle of this zebra crossing with my dog last week when a woman driver approaching exactly like this black car, clearly saw me and simply chose not stop. I am well aware of the behaviour of a minority of drivers on this crossing and took preventative action. I know a pedestrian however who has been maimed for life from coming off worst, as all pedestrians do, when she was hit by a vehicle.

The kind of motorist behaviour exhibited on the crossing or at that school junction is a black distillation of arrogance and egocentricity but it is as common as blinking. It is when it becomes automatic that it is most iniquitous.  While some road users will, when not curbed, give free reign to their baser instincts, having zero regard for vulnerable road users is not something hardwired in humans - it is spread through cultural tolerance. 

Spain is an example of a car-loving culture which nevertheless uses zebra crossings to a far greater extent than the UK and which respects pedestrians, to the point where I would rather my kids cross roads in Spain, than the UK:

In the Netherlands, of course, respect for all kinds of road users is so normal it is built into their infrastructure:

Road use is just an analogy for  something that happens in many contexts:  the imposition of will on someone else, especially someone more vulnerable. I suppose the first step is being aware of those behaviours, in others as well as in ourselves, the second is doing something about it. There are few better and quieter catalysts for change than good models: seeing someone else behaving in an admirable way, or seeing respect for such behaviour in someone we ourselves respect.

This blog is about lessons I have learnt about life through the lens of the milonga, or sometimes the other way around. At a certain point, one sees each as reflections of the other. Apart from a good physical environment for dancing, is there anything more essential to good dancing than awareness of, care of our partner and of the other dancers in the ronda?  Awareness of the music, too.  Awareness is a term that is often interchangeable with listening, in its broadest sense.  An article in Psychology Today suggests that coffee is not the hardest thing to give up.

Shopping trolley

Openclipart

Chatting with a couple of non-dancing men who live within the AMBA (the greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area) both, independently, seemed to have picked up that there are maybe "signs" the guys gives to women with the fingers to tell them which way to go. When I heard this I was reminded of some forceful fingers while dancing in Buenos Aires. This is in part why my dance experience with local guys was not all that I had expected. That said, I had a few superb partners.

In the práctica I am delighted that new guys turn up with some regularity. Pretty soon I know that new women will be taken care of by guys who can already dance but there are not enough people willing to dance with new guys. Many of them, maybe most of them at some point try to "steer" you with their hands, usually their left, but occasionally sometimes the hand on your back. The funny thing is that women I have danced with, when they swap roles, almost never do this. Why would they when you have not done it to them? I notice the guys who are most willing to dance in the woman's role first don't do this, or do it much less.

But when it does happen, my reaction to this physical manhandling is always instantaneous. I ask them Are we in the supermarket? (i.e. I am not a shopping trolley), or Is this (our joined hands) a steering wheel? or What button are you looking for? (on my back). I am never cross, but I am clear and I try to make light of it. I used to just swap roles and show they what they were doing to me, but I generally wasn't able to be forceful enough and anyway, humour is more fun and they usually laugh. The main thing is, they get it and quickly.

Nearly slapped

Motto of the royal Stuarts and the Jacobites

Here's another perspective on those tales of "abandonment".

I have abandoned the guy, walked off the floor, only rarely. I try my hardest not to leave mid-tanda. I make an excuse, as though it's my fault - a dodgy knee, playing up, usually. It's not ideal but with an excuse, face is saved as much as it can be.

But guys can take it very badly and these you remember - warnings I suppose. I made a mistake in a choice of guy while dancing away, after Christmas, enduring two excruciating - "dances" is hardly the word, during which this large and heavy man stood on my toes - twice. I simply could not bear it any more and excused myself as politely as I possibly could. I thanked my stars that that second track ended at a discreet exit point from the floor. I guessed he was the type who, for all his considerable urbane charm, would not take it well and had I had to leave him stranded at a very visible point on the floor, things would have been much worse. Were I to have I considered this beforehand it might have helped me in my choice. I passed him shortly afterwards at his table and made a point of smiling, albeit briefly, but my friends said that after I left the floor his face was like thunder. It's better to avoid getting to that point, because as Oscar Casas says, the milonga is a very visual place.

That is why accepting an invitation needs so much care and why painful lessons are worthwhile. That good piece of advice to stop dancing "whenever you feel uncomfortable" has stayed with me. Oscar talks about Argentines who take advantage of tourists floundering in a strange place and making them feel uncomfortable. He also makes a point of saying that some Argentines don't tolerate it which is nice to hear, although it would be nicer to see more of that in practice. I felt very alone in those Buenos Aires milongas. The men know that, the games are more grown up and until we find my feet we are, potentially, prey.

Quarter of an hour in an embrace you don't want to be in is 14 minutes and 55 seconds too long. That's a very long time. Dancing the last track of a tanda with someone new means "let's see", because even three minutes in an embrace you don't want to be in is much too long. If someone is too proud to only dance the last track, there's your answer about what that dance probably would have been like.

Milonga people know that leaving a partner mid-tanda is just about the strongest message you can send in the milonga. Even if accompanied by "Thank you very much" it still means "That was so horrendous as to be insulting. We will never dance again". Leaving a partner mid-tanda effectively means: "you have insulted me and I cannot tolerate it." How can a dance be insulting? I guess it comes down to the guy invited someone he should not have and that is a risk you take in that role. I say this with some experience: the first woman, I danced with, spontaneously, in a class with insufficient men - she was far too experienced for me - didn't exactly abandon me and as I recall didn't say much, but made me feel so small I didn't dance in that role for another year at least, maybe two.

"The most dramatic time I didn't finish a tanda was at an inauspicious event in the famous Blackpool ballroom.

Blackpool Tower

This was two full years before I failed to do the same in Buenos Aires when I should have. It illustrates how easy it can be to lose your bearings, even your sense of self, in a new place. An older guy I already knew slightly started feeling up my neck as we danced.  I stopped the dance immediately and walked off the floor mid track.  The urge to slap him was almost irresistible. He came to apologise later. I accepted the apology but never danced with him again. That seedy, sleazy town was at least a fitting context for that moment. Argentine tango has, in Britain that "ooh-er" reputation but we who dance know it's not like that and men who behave inappropriately, who try to take advantage of women, who push the envelope, who are, actually or potentially abusive sexual predators, are known about. Either they don't last long or they are avoided by experienced women.

I wish more women and more men stood up to these guys but essentially you have to defend yourself.  Apart from which, if you let guys treat you badly, they will keep doing it, it encourages others to do the same to you.

During my first placement in school before Christmas we were discussing sexual violence in a poem. A fifteen year old then said to me she had been groped at the local fair and asked - asked - if that was sexual harassment. In the UK, 71% of women experience sexual harassment in a public place.

Coercing women, taking advantage of women any way at all on the dance floor is another form of force, imposition and sexual harassment. 95% of incidents of sexual harassment in a public place go unreported.

Sexual harassment

Thomas Hawk

A (woman): I like it when the woman invites the guy to embrace her from an open hold.

B (woman): Of course! 

A: When you and I started dancing in the embrace sometimes, it was when I felt ready.

B: Obviously! Where's the rush? It's actually amazing when, after months, someone eventually gives you that trust.

A: Exactly. But sometimes guys try to pull me into an embrace when I’m not ready. 

B: Like, yesterday, in the city?

A: Yes.

B: Who did that?!

A: Lots of them do it.

B: Oh my god! What did you do? 

A: I pulled back to get some distance.

B: So did they twig?

A: They must have, but they kept doing it.

B: Wow. What did you do?

A: I got really tense and stressed.

B: No kidding. Time to say “thank you very much” and leave the floor! I mean, where’s the pleasure in that?

A: I didn’t want to cause a scene.

B: So you put up with being maltreated?  Pulling a girl into an embrace when she doesn’t want to?  That isn't dancing at that point. Just say no! 

The use of force

Fighting impalas

I couldn't have predicted one of the best things that happened, dancing away.  It wasn't the beginning of a great friendship.  It was not that it was a marvellous venue, though it was nice. It was not a musical vortex into an evening of one danceable track after another. It was not one of those rare and magical dances where the world recedes and you seem to enter a different dimension of music and connection and shared movement, now and together.  It didn't start auspiciously at all.

I arrived towards the end of a pre-milonga practica.  There were maybe three middle-aged couples on the floor and their teacher.  I sat by the bar and passed the time of day with the barman while I waited for people to arrive.  I wanted to see how the seating would pan out.

A couple of older guys arrived and sat further down the room, chatting.  One of them began saying hello to people.  The other stayed where he was, waiting for his dance partner to arrive. Later, I watched this couple dance tanda after tanda together, quietly, smoothly and beautifully, in the embrace.  At one point something went slightly awry for a second or two, perhaps somebody tripped, I don't remember exactly what it was.  I wasn't quick enough to look away.  Separately, first he and then she caught my eye, embarrassed, and we smiled.  In the milonga a lot of things including invitation and refusal, are understood individually, yet are secret more widely and it's how it should be.

Suddenly, the guy who had been moving about and who was much smaller than me, had approached and was asking me to dance.

No matter how often this happens I am always taken aback. It's different if you know the person well and it's even different if you might have been chatting with someone beforehand because you've had some time to consider how you might reply if they do ask you - directly - to dance. But it's different to be asked "cold" and unexpectedly by someone you don't know, especially if you haven't seen them dance. It's against traditional milonga etiquette which avoids imposing on people like this. I am not great at managing this well in the milonga. I can usually handle it in familiar territory but dancing away in new places again makes things different.

Many say, and I agree, that your chances of an enjoyable dance under these circumstances are very small.  Before this evening, initially, I had danced little in these unknown milongas.  But the evening before I had taken a risk accepting a guy who had invited me by look and from a respectful distance even though I hadn't seen him dance.  Things had gone quite well. I generally figure that if a guy I haven't noticed dancing has seen me in inverted traditional roles and still wants me to dance with him as the girl, then I am more inclined to be less cautious than usual.

Perhaps it was the memory that the previous evening's risk had paid off.  Sometimes though, some of us just do feel we should spare people who ask directly the embarrassment of a refusal.  

Update, 2023:  Spoiler alert:  we are being manipulated.

I have no idea why, when, rationally, it is they who put us on the spot.  Sometimes a direct refusal to a direct request can blend into the general activity of the milonga and that makes it easier.  Here, though, there were probably fewer than a dozen people in the room and I had a sense that everyone knew one another.  Locals are always curious to to see how a visitor dances.  They watch to see who they first accept and murmer "Good choice!" or groan inwardly for them...I knew this!

Perhaps it can be hard to turn down a walk-up because we feel that their gaucheness is unwitting, but our refusal would be knowingly done. This assumes the request is not predatory which is simply too difficult to know.  Assuming it is not, you, then, are in a position of comparative knowledge about etiquette and therefore I think, of responsibility and responsibility to be decent and not unkind. 

Update, 2023:  This is far too generous.

And yet...if you don't want to dance a dance that is intimate, really, my feeling is you just shouldn't.  I knew this too.  But, under pressure it's easier to apply right-thinking to some circumstances than it is to others.

I find the "don't feel bad you would be teaching them a lesson" argument a bit arrogant and hard-hearted. In reality, if I see it coming and I don't want to dance, I avoid eye contact, or if I was caught unawares, when it's busy, all things being equal I can often make up an instant excuse. But the music was great and for an unfathomable combination of the reasons I gave, and a couple of seconds in which to decide - I did accept him.

As the only couple on the floor, though I didn't want to look, I imagined all eyes on us.  I was pushed into ochos and out of them.  I had no freedom and no choice over how to move or when to move.  There was no invitation, no suggestion, there were only orders.  This is what happens with guys who "do" not guys who "feel"; guys who just implement upon you, do to you, moves they have more than likely learnt in class, never mind that they are in fact embracing another person and a stranger of the opposite sex.  These moments are precious!  I completely fail to get inside the head of a guy who thinks it's fine to push and pull women about as though we are a sort of particularly flexible life-size doll.  

2023 update:  That's because there's a healthy "empathy gap". 

It feels like they think we are inanimate that we have no feelings about what is going on.  These are not the guys who listen to the music and their partner.

I was jammed up against him yet there was no connection.  I felt like property, like an object and I was desperately embarrassed for him and for me and my poor judgement. 

2023 update:  That's why you shouldn't feel bad for ever turning down walk-ups.

There might not have been any music, it felt so irrelevant in the circumstances.  I immediately considered leaving after the first dance but realised this would be worse than having refused him at the bar.  I felt completely stuck. The second track began.  What on earth to do?

In dance as in life, we deal with being pushed around differently and maybe how guys deal with it tends to be different to how women deal with it.  Sometimes people just put up with it.  Sometimes we put up with it but as a trade-off for other things.  We might put up with it - but only once. Some of us simmer with resentment, but put up with it. The more belligerent, confront.  The impetuous, the strong, the aggressive, courageous or foolhardy fight back.  Sometimes we don't put up with it and stalk off, aggrieved, angry and making a loud point.  At some stage we've probably all done each of these but each of us probably does have a tendency.  As things turned out, this time I didn't even think about it.

I stayed but found myself wordlessly refusing to be shoved around. He pushed me firmly forward or sideways.  I resisted.  To my astonished mortification he pushed more.  I dug in my heels, aflame with shame and fury.  When he released the pressure, I turned or moved where he had wanted. I could tell he was puzzled and couldn't think what else to do.  I stood my ground.  Things repeated themselves and reached a crisis.

I can't remember exactly when they started to change.  Perhaps at the end of the second track because I'm not sure I could have borne another two dances.  Nor perhaps could he.  But certainly in the third track a miraculous thing happened.  I realised the guy wasn't pushing me. He let me turn on my own.  He gave me physical and musical space.  Nobody had said anything but he had listened, heard and understood!  It was a wonderful, astonishing moment.  We had started to have if not quite a conversation, then an understanding.   In the fourth track I could close my eyes and relax.  I don't know that I can remember being so relieved and pleased in a dance.  At the end, through my daze at how unexpectedly things had changed, I realised he was saying nice things and we parted on good terms.

I sometimes wonder how his story goes.  Perhaps his starts, "I took pity on a stranger and wished I hadn't bothered." But I hope it doesn't.

I must have been riding a euphoric high or been too surprised at what had happened or had become over-optimistic because although I can remember thinking "Oh no, not again", I nevertheless accepted another guy who appeared next to me from nowhere.  He walked right up and held out his hand which is a particularly difficult thing to refuse.  This is another danger of accepting walk-up invitations - you become even more fair game for the truly predatory guys who struggle to get dances locally. I endured two tracks before being shocked into a chasmic volcada in the last bar. This is what happens when you have people who do different dances calling them by the same name and meeting at the same event.  If the lesson earlier had been "people can listen and change tack" I think the lesson of that lesson was "do not push the lessons you learn too far..."

Thanks to http://www.micro2macro.net for permission to use their photo.