{"id":13982,"date":"2009-11-30T10:32:39","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T15:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=13982"},"modified":"2017-09-16T18:56:58","modified_gmt":"2017-09-16T23:56:58","slug":"naturalizing-male-harassment-of-women-in-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/11\/30\/naturalizing-male-harassment-of-women-in-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Naturalizing Male Harassment of Women in Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This one I put out there for debate.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t get a chance to watch the many dance shows out there, but I&#8217;ve seen a bit and I have a question for those of you who&#8217;ve been watching them more carefully.<\/p>\n<p>The video below is of S\u00e9bastien Soldevila and Mimi Bonnavaud dancing at the Cirque de Demain festival (thanks for the info, netrus).\u00a0 In the dance, a woman is torn between rejecting a man and being powerfully drawn to him.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve noticed that this theme crops up frequently in even just the little bit of dance programming I&#8217;ve watched. In this video, you get the idea in just the first few seconds, though you might want to watch the rest because it&#8217;s <em>awesome<\/em>. (Video title, btw, is not mine.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WMxf2HzP8gA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I can see why choreographers return to this theme again and again. I think this is a common human experience (lord knows I&#8217;ve been there) and great fodder for art.<\/p>\n<p>My question is: Is this theme gendered? That is, is it usually the woman who is desperately trying to escape the man and her attraction to him, and not vice versa?<\/p>\n<p>I ask because, if it is, what we&#8217;re really seeing is not just a drama about a conflict between attraction and repulsion, we&#8217;re seeing a drama in which men are allowed to be deaf to women&#8217;s insistence that they want to be left alone, released. Really, deep down, this narrative tells us, she wants him. Therefore, it&#8217;s perfectly ok for him to ignore her &#8220;no.&#8221; If he just follows her for long enough, grabs her to make her look at him one more time, forces her up against his body enough, then she will relent.<\/p>\n<p>From a different perspective, this is a man who is stalking and harassing her, but the narrative (which almost always ends in her giving in to him\/her desire) suggests that this is perfectly reasonable, even passionate, loving, devoted behavior.<\/p>\n<p>Do we sometimes (or ever) see women doing the stalking and harassing in these choreographies? Or is it usually the man?<\/p>\n<p>Also in &#8220;no&#8221; doesn&#8217;t mean &#8220;no&#8221;: <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/12\/15\/caveman-courtship\/\" target=\"_self\">caveman courtship<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/08\/09\/on-deadgirl-the-movie-nsfw-trigger-warning\/\" target=\"_self\">it&#8217;s not &#8220;no&#8221; if she&#8217;s a zombie<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/04\/16\/no-doesnt-really-mean-no\/\" target=\"_self\">you may say &#8220;no,&#8221; but your perfume says &#8220;yes,&#8221;<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2007\/10\/29\/since-were-on-the-topic-of-grotesque-t-shirts\/\" target=\"_self\">some pretty grotesque t-shirts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p>Lisa Wade is a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\/followers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Lisa-Wade-PhD\/174350419354908\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This one I put out there for debate. I don&#8217;t get a chance to watch the many dance shows out there, but I&#8217;ve seen a bit and I have a question for those of you who&#8217;ve been watching them more carefully. The video below is of S\u00e9bastien Soldevila and Mimi Bonnavaud dancing at the Cirque [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16039,329,55,2090,108,133],"class_list":["post-13982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dance","tag-emotion","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-sports","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13982"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71138,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13982\/revisions\/71138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}