[TANGO-L] (fwd) Community Growth: Harmful unsolicited "teaching" & sexual advances

[Ed Loomis <TangoBear @OSBtown.com>]

Hi folks,
     I doubt that there will be any easy answer to this. After forty years
of "feminism" it is no longer safe or politically correct for men to
intervene and protect a woman. Since American women rarely arrive with a
duenna to watch out for them they are vulnerable to this kind of jerk
behavior. That leaves it up to the women in the community to devise a
strategy for dealing with the malefactor. Shunning him en masse and
refusing to dance with him is effective in a small tightly knit community
but is impossible to arrange in a larger scene where new dancers are
arriving and departing constantly. It is common to see the men who have
made themselves unpopular with the local ladies, for whatever reason,
waiting to pounce on any new face that walks in the door. This has the
effect of turning our worst examples into ambassadors for our community.
They wind up being a new lady's first experience of tango. Once it becomes
clear that promising new ladies are being lost to a certain jerk's
attentions then the men can get involved but by then a lot of damage has
already been done. In our eight years of tango here in Sacramento we have
had two individuals who inspired the other men to close ranks and advise
them to go find something else to do. These guys weren't bothering to learn
tango so they were easy to single out. Otherwise if the ladies don't
complain, the men in the community tend to not know there is a problem.
Every community has this problem to some degree or another and I will be
happy to learn of any new and clever ways to deal with it. Ciao......
Ed

On Mon, 23 Dec 2002 10:04:42 -0800, Bugs Bunny <bugsbunny1959 @HOTMAIL.COM>
wrote:

>In my opinion, ignoring a predatory individual does nothing. Putting the
>onus on women (esp. if they are vulnerable beginners & often quite young),
>alone, to deal with this isn't the right answer either.  Especially if most
>of the experienced regulars know about this.
>I think every situation is probably unique, depending on the people involved
>& how its handled. I started this branch of the thread to get some ideas.
>