Fair enough.
It could be that women are dancing to meet societal expectations (despite not particularly enjoying dancing), or it could be that (straight) women like dancing so much that they’re willing to hit the dance floor without any men in attendance.
Goth, punk, and rave are all subcultures in which putting on the subculture costume and going to a club is a main activity; and at that club, dancing is one of the main things to do. They share a lot more in common with one another than they do with other subcultures like knitting groups, hiking groups, or political groups–groups that don’t go clubbing as a major social activity.
For myself, I love dancing, but haven’t danced in years, for reasons I don’t entirely understand but blame largely on stress and exhaustion and this fuckin world. But I’ve definitely observed gender disparity, in some specific settings:
All of this is, of course, toxic nonsense that deprives people of the joy they might otherwise get from dancing.
A man goes into a club where there’s 100 women he doesn’t know. He sees a few who aren’t with other men, engaged in a group of girlfriends, or absorbed on their phones
“Would you like to dance?”
“No”
Would you like to dance?”
“No”
No matter what else they were occupied with, 98 women instinctively are aware they don’t want to dance with that guy who no one else wants to.
Wait, what? This guy has no friends to go to the club with? Or he’s unaware of club culture, that it’s a group activity that you usually go to with folks you already know? Maybe the 98 women realize that he’s got some social issues going on that make it sketchy to hang out with him, that if they say yes, he’s going to want to parlay that dance into something much more?
If that’s why he doesn’t want to dance, he’s vastly misunderstanding the situation. Instead of going clubbing, he should be going to a contra dance, where there’s much more of a “would you like to dance” culture (in my experience).
Edit: my comments about club culture are based on my going to clubs back in my late teens and early twenties, with a focus on goth and punk clubs. It may be that club culture has changed since then, or that other types of dance clubs are much more open to single guys approaching single girls and asking them to dance. But I’d be a little surprised.
Yes. I disagree that they involve different kinds of coordination.
You are aware that ballet also involves tracking movement of objects, right? They’re called “the rest of the corps”.
I have a standard “Dancing like a White Boy” routine that kills at parties, and that’s basically all it is.
I think both sorts of women exist.
Fair enough - of the dancing subcultures I know, most don’t seem to have a male deficit on the dancefloor.
I do know of ones that have a lack of proportionality - ballroom, for instance, had a strong female-favouring disparity, as does English and Scottish country dance. But a lot more people go to Ibiza than a ceilidh…
Sorry, is this the 70s? Or prom? Unless you’re at a specifically ballroom-y event, you don’t need a partner to dance. That guy should just dance. By all means, chat to other people. But asking women to dance, at a modern club, feels like something from a John Hughes movie.
Back in the early 80’s, my bestie and I would go dance at the lezzie disco. They had no cover charge, no guys to hit on you, and since we were together, women didn’t either. Used to dance blisters on my feet.
Most white guys are so awful at dancing we never wanted to dance with them anyway. I used to dance with gay men and black and hispanic guys. They all could dance. That same era, my bestie and I heard music coming out of an upstairs window at night, downtown, and we just started dancing in the street. A guy leaned out and asked if we wanted to come up, so we did. It was a bunch of black people up there, dancing. It was fun. I was way more adventurous in the olden days.
I think you are not giving enough weight to social expectations. Lots of women play tennis, because that’s seen as a “normal thing for a woman to do”, in a way that playing baseball or football isn’t.
My mother told me that when i was in kindergarten, the teacher put on some music and told the whole class to dance, with no other instruction. And every other girl did something resembling ballet. And i pranced around doing my interpretation of an “Indian war dance”. And that’s when she knew i wasn’t like the other girls. (I think I’ve mentioned that my kids think I’m trans, or at least, non-binary. Not having those concepts at the time, my mother pegged me as lesbian.)
Anyway, none of the boys tried to dance ballet. That was no-doubt seen as a “girl’s thing”.
But there are a lot of types of dance. Morris dancing is traditionally done by teams of men.
But mainstream, white, American culture does tend to mark “dance” as feminine.
And on an unrelated note, ballroom dancing is harder for the lead (traditionally a guy) than for the follow (traditionally a gal). A lot of my square dance friends also ballroom dance, and they all prefer to follow, especially for dances they don’t know well. So at least part of the disparity may be that we (mainstream white Americans) think “ballroom” as the default dance form, and that’s actually a lot more accessible to women. Except for the problem of them finding a lead to dance with.
Either line dancing or nightclub/prom-style dancing would be the default, surely,? And I don’t think even the slow dances of the latter qualify as “ballroom”
It’s not that ballroom dance is the dominant dance form – not by a long shot – but i think it’s what comes to mind when someone says “dancing” without any qualifiers.
Except to people who actually dance, who will likely think first of whatever dancing they do. And yes, the most popular dance form in the US is “club dancing” , I’d guess.
For you (and possibly many other Dopers).
For me, it’d be a scene from an 80s teen movie. Like both types of dancing on display in this bit of Sixteen Candles. So yeah, akin to your “club dancing”, I guess, but surely that’s the kind most Americans who attended high school have at least some experience with even if they no longer dance, themselves.
WTF?
Many women are stocky and/or top-heavy. And many women work their butts off (more or less literally) to try to become willowy and slender; and quite a few of us fail at it.
“Western society” isn’t particularly representative of “humans in general”; however much it likes to think so.
That’s fair. I agree that there are elements of social expectations in play as well.
I enjoy dancing but understand the OP. I remember a school dance truism: If you lift your arms above your waist, you’re gay.
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Oh, I’m a challenge square dancer. The first thing that comes to mind when i hear “dancing” is something like this:
But yes, what’s in the video you linked is something most Americans have at least tried.
I know three men who are really into dancing: two tango, one salsa. These and a number of others (folk dancing, clogging, line dancing, there’s quite a list) have devoted participants who meet regularly. Probably any large town has a few of these ongoing. Many of these dances are accessible to anyone reasonably coordinated who puts effort into it, some are not couples dances, nor are they about showing off or demonstrating your sexuality. Dance includes and transcends all of this. It is as universal as music. It’s one of the things straight white Anglo guys often miss out on experiencing.
And many men are willowy and elegant, but neither are the default. If your body shape fits the medium, then you excel at it, and when it doesn’t you don’t. The typical fit woman is a shape that’s perfect for dancing, the typical fit man is a shape that’s perfect for sports.
Of course there’s plenty of crossover potential, but it tends to be more women lean toward dance, and more men lean toward sports. Which is the OP’s question.
Oh wow that’s brutal.
Anyway, most of the responses seem to be focusing on the “doing” part of dancing rather than the “liking” part. Societal expectations, gender norms, etc., can and do influence whether someone likes a thing, but they more often influence if they do it or not. Sure women do tend to dance more than men for various reasons, but is it because they like it more, or is it because men feel like they can’t, even though they might want to? I think that’s the more interesting question.
A way to filter out the bias and gender normative performance expectations might be to look at solo dancing. For instance, people dancing while mopping or vacuuming, usually while listening to music. There’s even sitting dancing, such as in the car or at the computer. Obviously you can’t do much when sitting down, but some people bip and bop to the beat while others don’t. So I think if you dance with a broom, that says something more about what you like than whether you sit off to the side at the club because you’re afraid of embarrassment.
Just my opinion but I think the differences between men and women physically are really unimportant in this discussion. Otherwise, why do many many cultures dance with equal delight of the sexes? It’s really just Anglos.
This is completely bananas. Where on earth are you getting this idea from?