Dancing As Instructed
I love to dance, but I’m a bit picky about music. If Motown is playing, I’m guaranteed to have a transcendent in-my-body experience, whereas electronic dance music is hit and miss. I was, however, determined to shake and sweat and twitch, and so I did. My new friend danced beside me, trying to talk to me through the foam plugs in my ears—I nodded along with a smile, hearing nothing.
I do have one or two questions – not least regarding the use of foam earplugs – but let us hasten on. The gyrator in question is a seemingly ungendered being named Kier Adrian Gray, who “went to a queer dance party with someone I’d met online.”
We’d had a nice time chatting over sodas at the city’s catholic themed bar before we headed to a warehouse full of slippery, glittering gays, adorned in fishnet and sequin, leather and lace.
Sequins and glitter, and a companion of indeterminate sex, another ungendered being. So far, so flaming. But for a night out to be progressive and fully intersectional, it does need some more improbable complications. And so,
After a while, they [our narrator’s companion] wanted to move closer to the stage and I followed. Before we could make it to the front, though, they explained how the dance floor closest to the DJ was for black and indigenous femmes only.
There we go.
Everyone else was to dance behind them in the following order: black and indigenous then other people of colour then mixed-race people, then whites, and femmes then androgynous people then mascs. Since my new friend was mixed and I was white, I would have to dance behind them, but they pointed to a stranger and told me I could dance in front of him.
Now we’re cooking. Fun times must surely follow.
At first, I thought they were joking—how could such an elaborate and specific system work on the chaos of a dance floor? But as the explanation went on, I realised how serious they were. I found myself speechless, and they interpreted my silence as confusion. “Don’t worry,” they said, putting their hand on my arm, “you’ll figure it out.”
Yes, dear reader, welcome to the world of ideological dancing, all neatly categorised by niche identities at a near-fractal level. And no mingling, of course. Surely the stuff of everyone’s erotic and hedonistic fantasies.
I had just been told that I needed to determine the racial and gendered identities of each stranger dancing near me, compare those imagined identities to my own, and then calculate my proximity to the stage, as well as to everyone around me, using the racial and gendered hierarchies invented by social justice culture, and to do that over and over again, all night long, as I danced behind—but not beside—the person I had come with.
Thus, a decision loomed:
My desire to dance, to smile at strangers, to lose myself in the beat, to close my eyes and feel my body move without caring what it looked like, evaporated. I had a choice to make: I could strike up a conversation about the problems with ordering people to self-segregate by guessing at one another’s identities with a person I’d just met. Or, I could say goodnight as soon as was polite and make my way home. I chose the latter.
This unhappy, rather bonkers tale is followed by much intersectional fretting, during which we are reminded of the evils of “right-wing” people, and pale men in particular. “White men,” we’re informed, “have dominated cultural spaces for centuries.” We’re also told of the woes of those who wish to be progressive and submit to dancefloor sorting, but who have serious personality disorders, or companions of a rival tribe. And then there are those who are just insufficiently familiar with the “unspoken social customs” of “North American leftist spaces.” It turns out that woke etiquette is not for the faint-hearted, or the unfashionable, and even innocent first-time transgressions can apparently result in punishment and elaborate and well-practised rituals of shunning, with those who fail to divine the Made-Up Rules Of The Current Month being “treated in cruel and inhumane ways.”
Ah, progressives. Those cats know how to party.
After several paragraphs of neurotic rumination – and much airing of leftist credentials – a realisation occurs, albeit belatedly:
Here’s what I propose instead. In regards to personal gatherings, I’d like to invite people to consider whether choosing guests based on their warmth, kindness, intelligence, sense of humour, and love of a good time (or whatever qualities matter most to them) may lead to richer events.
Do feel free to gasp at this outrageous innovation, one that has apparently never been thought of before – say, by other, less pretentious, less dogmatic, human beings.
For larger gatherings, I suggest that we ditch identity-based segregation and choose behaviour-based standards instead.
It’s the bleeding edge of party planning. High on innovation, our narrator ventures further into the unknown, suggesting that any shunning and expulsion could be “based on… behaviour, not randomly distributed bodily characteristics.” A terrifyingly new idea. If only someone had thought of that before.
Sadly, however, there is a catch.
In order for this to work, we will need to treat one another as adults,
Oh well. I guess that’s that. Still, while it lasted, it was a beautiful dream.
Via Mr Muldoon.
Previously in the world of competitively leftist party-planning. 
Re: Japanese citizenship – There are some exceptions, most notably Lafcadio Hearn (who took a Japanese name and became a Buddhist). But basically you have to do all the things, including getting a family registry and having a chop carved for your official legal name to get stamped on documents, and it is really difficult.
If one marries a Japanese citizen, one basically becomes the problem of an already-existing family/clan. Therefore it is much easier for bureaucrats to fill out the paperwork.
OTOH, it is cheaper and easier to fake your own death in Japan than to get off a family registry, even if your parents abandoned you at birth and you grew up in an orphanage and need adoptive parents. Bureaucrats basically discourage adoption for this reason… And yes, abandoned kids are fully legally responsible for birth parents’ debts, just like in the animes.
I was handed some foam earplugs on the way to see Metallica’s Black Album tour, and haven’t gone without them to any public music experience.
Isn’t that a bit like wearing sunglasses in the cinema?
Isn’t that a bit like wearing sunglasses in the cinema?
Oh, it doesn’t block out all the noise. In fact, I found I could hear the lyrics better.
Regarding overseas citizenship, my (half-German) wife likes to say that our children could return to the village her mother grew up in and settled for several decades, have children, and they’d still be known as “The Americans.”
Abroad in Japan did a video about reasons why you shouldn’t move to Japan, and one of them is to recognize that if anything goes wrong in your neighborhood, the police will suspect you first.
Hmmm, I forgot to close the anchor. I wonder if that will fix it?
I’ll take my coat off.
Isn’t that a bit like wearing sunglasses in the cinema?
Not really, most concerts these days, because all the kids these days respond to is the beat, are way too loud unless you are in the nosebleed seats. Good foam ear plugs, not the rubber bullets pictured above, will attenuate about 20 dB so you’ll still hear without going deaf. Of course you’ll still have to suffer the Saturn V motor sized sub woofers, but still…
Oh, it doesn’t block out all the noise. In fact, I found I could hear the lyrics better.
Well, in the case of Metallica, I’d like at least two continents between me and their PA system, and preferably the Earth’s molten core; but for clubbing…? When did earplugs become a clubbing thing? Don’t the punters want to savour every pitch-corrected warble, every whump and thud? I’m confused.
Get off of my lawn, you kids.
Get off of my lawn, you kids.
[ Surreptitiously slips chamber music CD to David. ]
“Since my new friend was mixed and I was white, I would have to dance behind them, but they pointed to a stranger and told me I could dance in front of him.”
Gibberish. The world has gone insane if this is what actually passes for a sentence.
It would actually be more fun if they organized the dance floor by Cluster B Personality Disorders.
“It would actually be more fun if they organized the dance floor by Cluster B Personality Disorders” hahaha yes.
The fact that mental disorders have waves of frequency suggests that there is a component of social contagion to them. Not the worst ones of course.
Abroad in Japan did a video about reasons why you shouldn’t move to Japan, and one of them is to recognize that if anything goes wrong in your neighborhood, the police will suspect you first.
This, I can attest, is true. The local police could have surveillance video of a drunk, balding Japanese man in his fifties and a wife beater verbally assaulting a clerk at a convenience store and they’ll ask my friend where he was at the time.
suggests that there is a component of social contagion to them
There’s a component of social contagion to the diagnosis of same, certainly. Especially when self-diagnosed.
“have to dance behind them, but they pointed to a stranger and told me I could dance in front of him.”
“We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind”
So, fronts and behinds?
The local police could have surveillance video of a drunk, balding Japanese man in his fifties and a wife beater verbally assaulting a clerk at a convenience store and they’ll ask my friend where he was at the time
And if the police decide that you are guilty, the rest of the process is just to confirm same.
A few years ago I was talking to a Catholic priest who had been in Japan for 60 years. He spends much time trying to help Philipinos who have fallen foul of “round up the usual foreign suspects”.
Well, in some cultures wives are required to walk three paces behind their husbands.
And in some others they walk three paces ahead. Land mines. I’ll get my coat…
♪♫…You might think I’m on a bender,
But I’d live a life of splendor,
If I only had one gender…♪♫
Philosophers since Socrates have been pondering this question.
Big fan of the earplugs.
At a local metal venue there is ear plug dispenser mounted to the wall next to the bar. It kind of looks like a large clear soap dispenser full of yellow ear plugs. I was at a gig when I saw a very tall bloke with extremely spacey eyes pulling fistfuls of the earplugs out from the top and stuffing them in his mouth. Once he had finished with a mouthful (some fell out, but I guess he swallowed most of them). I asked why he was eating earplugs. He may not have heard me (or perhaps was not in a condition suited for receptive speech) but while reaching for another handful he explained his actions by saying something to the effect of “these lollies really suck but I need to line my stomach”.
You might think I’m on a bender
It won’t survive The Axe of Zaslav.
Re: the dancefloor hierarchy, when I was a young chap and going clubbing, such a problem couldn’t emerge because there was no front and back. Only a few nerds wanted to be near the DJ. I went to Turnmills for years and never really knew where the DJ booth was…. Then the “DJ as performer” thing came in and clubs were organised facing the stage, with the crowd dancing in a line. Not as much fun.
BTW a mate of mine of similar vintage always wore earplugs when clubbing to protect him from the worse excesses of the sound system. Not a new thing.
Re: Japan – it is a marvellous country, which I have visited on a couple of dozen occasions, but it is unashamedly set up for the benefit of Japanese people, an idea even more alien to the modern west than maid clubs and blow-dry toilets…
’ Everyone else was to dance behind them in the following order…’
I too wondered how this worked in practice.
Were there lines painted on the floor like some sort of representation of Dante’s Inferno?
Or do they have some super special awareness of positioning like flocking birds?
The Axe of Zaslav.
Band name. Or a new Conan movie.
A few years ago I was talking to a Catholic priest who had been in Japan for 60 years. He spends much time trying to help Philipinos who have fallen foul of “round up the usual foreign suspects”.
I have read that if you are a tourist or a visiting business person, then you are “an honored guest”, but if you are a foreign worker then your status is much lower and you may be treated accordingly. I have only read a few essays by young Americans working in Japan as assistants in the teaching of English, so I don’t know the details of this status hierarchy.
I have read that if you are a tourist or a visiting business person, then you are “an honored guest
My sister in law went to Japan 30 years ago as an English teacher. She married a very educated Japanese man- not an urbane hipster type comfortable with western culture and fluent in English, but one who grew up on a farm and was very comfortable with all the rigidities of Japanese culture and who barely speaks English. His work meant that they moved around Japan every couple of years- often to remote areas where she might be the only white person for 100 miles.
She actually came to hate Japan- the casual and routine insults towards her and her half-Japanese kids from her in-laws and on the street; the rigidity and demands of the schools which she thought was crushing for kids; the class system which is almost caste-like. My wife spent some time out there with her. Initially she really liked the efficiency, the cleanliness and the politeness etc but she began to sympathise with her sister’s views after a while.
My wife’s classic Japanese anecdote was a “car chase”. She was in a car with her sister and they heard a voice coming over a loud-speaker. It was a police car following another car at about 40 mph. The policeman was saying, very politely, “This is the police. Please pull over” over and over (as translated by the sister in law). The car stopped and the police got out to talk to the driver. The sister-in law just commented that if the driver was foreign or lower class they were fucked . The fact that they had been pulled over by the police meant that their fate was whatever the police decided. My wife found that contrast between the almost comically orderly and polite “chase” and the arbitrariness of the possible consequences to be very unsettling.
Fretting or frotting?
Fretting or frotting?
[ Doffs Sgt. Joe Friday hat. Dons morning tabloid sleazeball hat. Opens notebook. ]
Yes, David, do tell us more.
[ Begins writing lurid expose without waiting for response. ]
Working title: The 120 Days of Typepad.
“It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few
I’ll be writing more in a week or two
I could make it longer if you like the style
I can change it ’round
And I wanna be a paperback writer…”