I think it's about people whom we call hermaphroditic and if so, then it's a different pheonomena to transgenderism. There is a rather ugly track record of forcing them surgically down one path or another, irrespective of how they self-identify. As if the world has to compartmentalize them for its own convenience, and much misery has been needlessly caused as a result.

To be honest I prefer not to read such things. The fictionalisation of my situation causes me enough grief in so-called well-researched medical and psychological literature. To read explorations of my life done by somebody with no conception of what it feels like can be distressing. I prefer not to subject myself to such things.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Because cultural experience is determined by the colour of one's skin.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

The identity of the company as a group of women of color, diverse in race, age, nationality, ability, sexual orientation, but uniformly committed to artistic excellence and social justice, is vital to me and to the success of my choreographic work.

Heydrich announced that mixed-race persons of the first degree would be treated as Jews. This would not apply if they were married to a non-Jew and had children by that marriage. It would also not apply if they had been granted written exemption by "the highest offices of the Party and State." Such persons would instead be sterilised.

"Mischlings of the second degree" would be treated as Germans unless they were married to Jews or mischlings of the first degree, or had a "racially especially undesirable appearance that marks him outwardly as a Jew", or had a "political record that shows that he feels and behaves like a Jew". Persons in these latter categories would be deported even if married to non-Jews.

In the case of mixed marriages, Heydrich advocated a policy of caution, "with regard to the effects on the German relatives". If such a marriage had produced children who were being raised as Germans, the Jewish partner would not be deported. If they were being raised as Jews, they might be deported, or sent to Theresienstadt, depending on the circumstances.

So who is coloured to this woman ? Full colour, half-colour, people of caucasian appearance who self-identify as black ? The madness of Heydrich, reproduced above, shows how nonsensical this becomes when written down.

Just as in wimminism, essentialism rears its head in racial theory. I reproduce its tenets here, it's not hard to see how it applies more generally

The idea that men and women are essentially fundamentally different and that the only way for women to find their own unique expression was to withdraw from male society as much as was possible.

Now it is easy to criticise essentialism, its basic premise of what makes certain groups of people the way they are (for example, women, blacks, Jews), are the political-philosophical constructs of conservatism. The history of essentialist argument is one of oppressors telling the oppressed to accept their lot in life because "that's just the way it is." By buying into the idea that women are the only non-aggressive, nurturing and life giving gender they were actually supporting patriarchal assumptions that kept women oppressed. Ironically, essentialism is becomes a specifically anti-progressive philosophy

I've heard the same argument in bellydance. It's ridiculous. If you're having a women's therapy group where women get together in communal self-healing, then okay, but don't pretend it's a dance class. And you'd better have a qualification in therapy else I might suspect there's a certain amount of bullshit going down.

Especially when it's a dance form with a tradition (however buried and denied) of male as well as female practitioners.

People who select on criteria of culture or race or gender should be challenged. Cultural separation is always a dead end and is invariably, as I found within bellydance, a veneer over much darker prejudices. And cultural relativity, the idea that equality is okay for white people, but we have to relax our expectations of other peoples because, well frankly they're not "advanced" enough, is an overtly racist concept. And if racists or sexists want to hide behind such things then they should be confronted.

keep to the Fen Causeway

So if you're a man suffering from abuse, they have no interest.

The issue for me is defining groups according to externals instead of dynamics. What matters is the fact of abuse, not the individual attributes of the person being abused.

Similarly with women-only dance groups the narrative seems to be one of victimisation, oppression and redemption. It doesn't actually have a lot to do with belly dancing as an historical art form.

You can imagine a situation where sculpture was socially defined as female, and watercolour painting was defined as male. That looks silly now - but it's not really any sillier than claiming any other art form as the exclusive preserve of one gender or other because it happens to fit the teacher's own morality.

Hijacking an art form like this doesn't do the art form any favours. Tying a truck full of ideology to something free-spirited like dancing is just plain perverse - and also may not really benefit the practioners. It's hard to develop artistically if you're encouraged to feel that you're Making A Point rather than just doing whatever you're moved to do.

I have a similar problem with things like Five Rhythms Dancing, some kinds of Drumming Workshops, and so on. I'd rather do art as art and therapy as therapy. There's something a bit worthy and stilted about combining them - you often seem to get the least fulfilling parts of either without the best benefits.