Post-Dancing with the Dashwoods

This past Saturday I attended a Regency Ball. As always, I danced as a gentleman, and as often, I had a lovely time of things. There were several friends in attendance who I don't get to see often, and I had a spectacular time flirting, dancing, and eating cookies that looked like jellyfish¹.

The ball went almost without a hitch, from a gender standpoint --I took two couple dances with gentlemen of my acquaintance, one a fastpaced polka and sauteuse when the hall was half-empty at the end of the break, and one the last waltz with my boyfriend. No one complained or chided me for this action, which I approved of.

In fact, the only problem was during the workshop beforehand, when I was still wearing jeans and a t-shirt like any girl, instead of the multiple layers of frippery and finery I put on as a gentleman. We were split into two groups across the hall to learn the waltz, ladies on one side, gents on the other. I was standing by a friend, chatting casually, when an older gentleman leaned over to me.

"The ladies are on that side". He explained, in semi-patronizing tones.

I gave him my most terse smile. "Yes, but the gentleman are on this side" and returned to my conversation. It galled though, both the assumption that as a female I can't dance gentleman, and honestly, just the idea that I am so oblivious and unobservant that I could not tell we had split up along genders and I was on the wrong side.

The other interesting thing I noticed was that I was not the only female-shaped person who was on the "gents" side of the dance². There were, however, no male-shaped people on the "ladies" side of the dance. This happens often, and is one of the hardest barriers to having an ambidancetrous dance floor --while women are often taught and encouraged to lead (in general, they have to be, due to there usually being more women on the dance floor than men), men are almost never taught to follow, and encouraged even less.

I'd like to fight this arrangement. I like dancing with everyone, and the idea that some people are ill-equipped to dance a certain role simply due to their biological gender is simply absurd. Teach everyone how to dance both roles! Make a stronger dance floor for all.

1: Technically I believe they were meant to be fans. But they looked like jellyfish! And tasted delicious.

2: I later talked to at least one other --the reason she provided was that she went to so many balls that were so female skewed that this was the only way she could be sure of A) getting to dance at all and B) dancing with good dancers --there is a lot more choice available to gents than to ladies. It was neat to talk to her though!