[Tango-L] A man and a woman, la marca

[steve pastor]

Well,  YeeeeeeHawwww! No one at the country western place where I dance has been sued for using like words men, women, guys, gals when teaching dance lessons.
  In order to deal with the problem of making women equal to men, our culture (or someone who attempts to determine these things- the pc police?)) began using gender neutral words. Waiters and waitresses became servers. Actors and actresses are now simply actors. Sometimes these changes make a lot of sense. A woman who delivers the mail surely isn't a mail man. OK. Mail carrier works there, and is no more cumbersome that mail woman, which might be an oxymoron of sorts? But, sometimes the use of gender neutral words is just plain denial of reality.
  It sure seems to me that the Argentine Tango people here in the U.S. have a more liberal bent than the country western crowd. So, the AT people have not surprisingly adopted the terminology of political correctness when others have ignored it. (Want to argue that "progress" is inevitable and the English language will be completely neutered in the end? That'll be fun.)
  I wonder, though, if the fact that English nouns do not have gender has made it more likely for us to seek a gender neutral solution to a gender equality problem. Any comment on that from those of you who are multilingual, or live in other English speaking countries?
  

Tango Club <yaletangoclub at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Sergio
This is because in the US where there are people from all possible cultures it is very hard to say anything without people thinking you mean all sorts of things. So the way to get along is to be vague and inclusive where possible and use words with a broadly agreed-upon specific literal meaning. Being from Europe, I find it rather amusing, but I also see the practical side of it here. You can get by just fine without a sense of humor and without thinking too much, and it makes this place much easier to understand at least superficially. Also, you never know someone might decide to sue you. 
Tine


Sergio Vandekier wrote:
I often wonder why people outside Argentina call the dancing partners "lead" 
"leader" and "follow" "follower". As Astrid says those terms are abstract 
functional denominations.

Tango, like the other ballroom dances is done by a pair of human beings, 
most of the time one is a man and the other is a woman.

Furthermore, it has two very well defined roles, masculine and feminine. So 
we generally call the person doing the masculine role "the man" and the one 
doing the feminine role "the woman".

We know that there are all sort of possibilities when dancing: The leader 
could be a woman, the follower could be a man. Both leader and follower are 
men or could be women.

IMO when a man is acting as a follower he is adopting the feminine role and 
when a woman is leading she is adopting the masculine role. No big deal 
about it.

As you know we, men in Argentina practice together all the time. When we do 
so, we say " I am going to be the woman, and you the man" . Period, there is 
no prejudice attached to those transient denominations; roles are changed 
during the practice again and again and everyone has the chance to be "the 
man" and "the woman".

Many of us use the Argentine terminology in reference to most tango aspects, 
such as name of figures, embellishments, dances, etc.

Why do so many people refuse to use the words "man" and "woman", after all a 
man is just that and a woman is a woman; both beautiful specimens of our 
human race. Any shame derived from adopting the other sex role could be 
interpreted as an insult to the other sex. This meaning that you consider 
that sex inferior. Or not? And then is us (AArgentines) that are accused 
of being machistas.

Then you see some men dancing together like the Macana brothers, they are 
elegant, humorous, amusing, masculine , they are spectacular and change 
roles all the time while dancing. And you know what? one acts as the 
"woman" and the other one is the "man" as they dance and change roles.

The other word that we use and foreigners refuse to use is "Marcar" or 
"Marca".

They substituted lead, leading for marca, marcar.

La marca in tango does not have anything to do with the dictionary 
definition of that noun or verb (marcar). (To put a signal on an animal, 
person or object so that it may be recognized, etc).

IMO "marcar" in tango means to indicate, to invite, to suggest. The woman 
waits for the suggestion, the invitation, the indication to perform a step.

So in tango there is a "man", a "woman" ; the man "marca" and the woman " 
sigue" (follows).

What do you think?
Un abrazo to you all, Sergio

PS. but if you prefer to use follow, lead, leading, following please do so. 
I do not care one way or the other, I am merely explained some elements of 
Arentine culture.

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