Leading, following and sexism in social dance: change of meaning as contained secondary adjustments

Abstract

By assigning men the role of ‘lead’ and women the role of ‘follow’, social dance can be viewed as a form of serious leisure that appears to perpetuate a system that positions women as subordinate to men. Interviews with 29 women and 10 men who self-identified as social dancers revealed that women used several strategies to create meanings for following that allowed them to achieve parity with men while operating in an explicitly sexist idioculture. Women’s interpretation of following and the relationship between leading and following was as learning a complex set of skills and abilities that allowed them to make an important contribution to the dance. The meanings women applied to following can be understood as contained secondary adjustments. By viewing following as a performance that requires considerable skill, women can expose the idea that the role of follow is subordinate to the lead as a social construction, and, in the process, use being a follow to subvert the expected social organisation.

通过赋予男人'领导者'和妇女的'跟随者'的社会作用，交谊舞可以看做是一种女性依附于男性的正式的娱乐形式。通过对于采访了29名妇女和10名男子的采访发现，妇女使用策略来尽力使她们在传统文化男性领导的性别歧视中争取平等地位。妇女对于跟随的诠释和对于领导和跟随关系的理解，使得她们能够学校复杂的能力和技巧，从而对于舞蹈的发展做出贡献。女性赋予跟随者的意义可以理解为对舞蹈的二次调整。把跟随看作是一种表演所需要的技巧，女性可以公开这种思想并且对于社会构建做出贡献。并且，在实践中，跟随者也可以颠覆传统的社会组织。

Keywords:

• dance
• feminism
• gender roles
• Goffman
• serious leisure
• sexism

• 关键词
• 舞蹈
• 女权主义
• 性别角色
• 高尔曼
• 正式娱乐
• 性别歧视