Very interesting advice column letter

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A grandmother writes in, worried that her 12 year old grandson is competing in an all girls dance troupe as a girl. Sounds like a story from here: http://www.creators.com/advice/annies-mailbox/and-now-quot-s...

In our distorted reality.

I don't doubt the story at all. They boy will hit puberty soon enough and then he may lose his taste for it. I do not know if it is true, but I have been told that most male dancers are gay. Perhaps he'll get through this season and be done with it.

The reality of T folk is distorted partially by guilt and partly by guilt.

I refuse to accept that simply dancing with the girls will make him transgender.

G

You'd think, but...

Gwen, you have every reason to think that! I wish it was so...

I'm somewhat involved (in a workman-way, construction) in the 2nd most major dance school/performance house in Canada (the Royal Winnipeg Ballet) and having hung out with the professional 'corps' dancers and those in training, I can very safely say that the vast majority of them are very straight.

Or at least, most are either married (many have kids already) or are dating, and girl, lemme tell you.... I can't keep up with them when they invite me out. They snap up every cute girl at the bar.

Those dudes are horn dogs, I tell ya!

It's a wee distressing, actually, as although I myself am a fairly large, hairy, never-able-to-pass blue-collar guy, I've always wished that ballet was 'home to the gays', so to speak.

I dreamed it was true when I was 10 and dancing myself, only to find only one single 'playmate' at the studio I went to out of a dozen male kids enrolled... and my own stories are written as if almost every single ballet dancin' male was gay as Zorro's blade :).

So anyway, I guess there probably is "more" than average, but it certainly isn't obvious and it's definitely nowhere near even half.

Hmm...

Kinda reminds me of "Dancer's Legs", and excellent story by Julia Manchester over at Crystal's Story Site. I've tried to contact Julia to be able to get her to post it here, but I can't find her.

Words may be false and full of art;
Sighs are the natural language of the heart.
-Thomas Shadwell

Life imatating art.

Not knowing the details to this situation does make it very interesting. Indeed there is the posability that that there is a young person who is trying the waters
of the opposite gender in an imaginative manner. If so all the power to the young lass.

In competive step dancing the difference between the two divisions at a young age is not that much. The division my oldest daughter compeated in there was no boys to compete against. That may be the situation here. The dancing is about coordination , style and proper form of each step. Irish step dancing has few SET dances unlike Scottish dances where most dances are very set in form.
The competition is more endurance than hard mussels so there is no advantage over the other gender.

Also in my daughter's division there was no prize money, but in honesty if there ever is or if it is an international compatition the judges should know. As of now I do not see any harm or fouls going on, and the traditionalist Irish dance regalia is to die for beautiful made up of beautiful colors and velvet , where the boys tend to wear white ruffled shirts and black pants.

The dancing is good character building and extreamely competave.

Huggles
Michele

With those with open eyes the world reads like a book

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