Choreographer Rosie Kay forced to resign from her own company

[peonyred]

This is a share token so you can read the story. Another Janice Turner article. Simone suggested Crowdfunding for her new company.

Rosie Kay: I resigned from my own dance company after I was accused of transphobia

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3935bc4a-5858-11ec-a3f7-65d2d47c7fea?shareToken=d4efe0ddb11ede84d52835a0a02d70e3

The simplest answer (I go with William of Ockham when I can) is that she didn't, but they felt obliged to give more and more upsetting reasons to have got into a state over when they were a] talking about it among themselves afterwards and working each other up and b] put on the spot by adults asking them what exactly they were actually making a fuss about.

Sorry; the quote didn't appear. I was replying to CatherinaJTV's "so why did she ask to the point that everyone found the energy to write that complaint and get it investigated?"

I conclude that CJTV has never had the experience of being part of a group of several people.

exactly, so why did she ask to the point that everyone found the energy to write that complaint and get it investigated?

And you ask this despite knowing full well that women are being called terfs and bigots and transphobes and having police complaints about them and complaints made to their employers and whatever, for just tweeting pictures of suffragette ribbons or saying biological sex exists or all sorts of stuff someone thinks is “terf rhetoric”?

The coy surprised “well she MUST have done something very offensive!” tone is wearing very thin.

exactly, so why did she ask to the point that everyone found the energy to write that complaint and get it investigated?
This has been discussed. We don’t know exactly what was said, but quite possibly it was a rhetorical question rather than ‘tell me what genitalia you have!’

"And it’s your lot who want us all renamed as persons with vaginas/penises, vulva owners and menstruators! And then you want to complain you mustn’t hear words about genitals in company like so many miniature Victorians? We get called person with a vagina when it suits you, but you will gasp and stretch your eyes if vaginas are ever mentioned when you don’t like it?"

This is the stupidity of the whole thing. There's threads on here about parents worried that their children are being taught it's less offensive to use the terms "person with a penis" and "person with a penis" in school, instead of the altogether easier boy and girl - the TRAs are the ones pushing this nonsense. But as soon as someone trying to have a discussion about the nonsense that NB extrapolates too - stating that you either have a penis or a vagina and that denotes your biological sex, well then, they're APPALLING and OBSESSED.

TRAs want it all ways, all of the time.

IIRC, one of the complainers said that Ms Kay used the words "penis" and "vagina" which the former felt constituted sexual harassment.

Blimey! They’d drop dead if they worked in some of the places I’ve worked at! Proper sweary words and insults!

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Sorry; the quote didn't appear. I was replying to CatherinaJTV's "so why did she ask to the point that everyone found the energy to write that complaint and get it investigated?"

I conclude that CJTV has never had the experience of being part of a group of several people.

I fail to see what your point it. It still needs a lot of energy and is not entirely conducive to your career to bring a complaint against your boss/line manager/trainer etc.

It still needs a lot of energy and is not entirely conducive to your career to bring a complaint against your boss/line manager/trainer etc.

Do you think young people who genuinely believe they are actually magical unsexed, aka “nonbinary” beings, have this level of common sense?

@foxgoosefinch

It still needs a lot of energy and is not entirely conducive to your career to bring a complaint against your boss/line manager/trainer etc.

Do you think young people who genuinely believe they are actually magical unsexed, aka “nonbinary” beings, have this level of common sense?

have you even read the Medium piece? The dancers in question are between 21 and 40, not really all of them "young people"

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

I have a simple factual question to ask: do dancers with male genitals need to wear any sort of protective "box" over them? I would have thought that in a leotard/tights, male genitals or the lack of them would be blindingly obvious to anyone. (Nureyev had a definite bulge.) Or do dancers who wish to pretend to male genitals they don't have wear padded codpieces? What can those with male genitals do if they wish to pretend to female ones?

I doubt that Rosie needed to ask which sort of genitals any of them had, to be honest. They'd done rehearsals with her.

Yes, they have to wear a dance belt which is a kind of jockstrap. No-one with male genitalia at DD’s school was allowed to dance without one. Once a boy did and ended up with severe bruising.

have you even read the Medium piece? The dancers in question are between 21 and 40, not really all of them "young people"

Does this not strike you as even worse? Have the younger ones been led on by someone who should know better, do you think? Or are the older ones just going along with the nonsense?

Shouldn’t people age 40 know better than to go along with making these reports, intended to damage the very person giving them a career opportunity —then be surprised that it backfires and the job disappears, along with suddenly realising that they themselves now look bad?

Does that sound like common sense to you?

@foxgoosefinch

have you even read the Medium piece? The dancers in question are between 21 and 40, not really all of them "young people"

Does this not strike you as even worse? Have the younger ones been led on by someone who should know better, do you think? Or are the older ones just going along with the nonsense?

Shouldn’t people age 40 know better than to go along with making these reports, intended to damage the very person giving them a career opportunity —then be surprised that it backfires and the job disappears, along with suddenly realising that they themselves now look bad?

Does that sound like common sense to you?

as the parent of two young adults at the lower end of that range, no, I don't think they were led on.

as the parent of two young adults at the lower end of that range, no, I don't think they were led on.

So you think then that it’s so imperative that a young person that age should save the world from the awful harm that is encountering that their boss holds a different, perfectly legal, opinion to them; that they should ruin the boss and their own career prospects because of it?

Would you be proud of your young adult children if they did that?

And Catherina do you really think someone talking about the terms of trans ideology and disagreeing with ADULT dinner party guests by using the anatomically correct names for the human genitals is the same thing as sexual harassment?

Are your young adults so unfitted for society that they would be made to feel “unsafe” by the mention of human bodies at the dinner table? Have you brought them up in 1821 by accident?

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

The simplest answer (I go with William of Ockham when I can) is that she didn't, but they felt obliged to give more and more upsetting reasons to have got into a state over when they were a] talking about it among themselves afterwards and working each other up and b] put on the spot by adults asking them what exactly they were actually making a fuss about.

Comprehension does seem to be a problem among certain TRA groups though. TRA twitter is alleging (among other things) that JKR has called all trans women rapists and that she is saying that TW can’t be victims of rape. Her tweet seems very clear to me that she is protesting the absurdity of counting a male rapist female if he says he is but the wilful misreadings of something set down in words is illuminating as to how a conversation could become distorted out of all recognition,

Personally I have some sympathy with the inappropriate workplace behaviour argument, especially if she was pissed, but I think the fact that the dancers set out in their open letter to emphasize their experience and expertise and age range doesn't chime well with the power differential argument. This is presumably an open progressive workplace what with asking for pronouns proactively, so I would expect people there to be able to cope with robust open debate.

Yes! A group of young adults, whose chosen career involves them being in close contact with the sweaty, thinly clad, appropriately guarded bodies of others falling apart at the sound of their tutor and boss talking about body parts they will endlessly not apologise for brushing whilst dancing. Doesn't sound feasible to me.

As one who once was grabbed by the crotch by a male cheerleader who, on realising the error, had 2 choices, drop me from 7 feet up or deal with it and get me to the floor safely. That a 17 year old boy back in the late 70s could make the right choice without flinching and apologise afterwards instead of scuttling off embarrassed just illustrates that this isn't new and is smething that many performers have to cope with.

But then again, the word of women have long been deemed literal violence, haven't they @CatherinaJTV

@KeflavikAirport

Personally I have some sympathy with the inappropriate workplace behaviour argument, especially if she was pissed, but I think the fact that the dancers set out in their open letter to emphasize their experience and expertise and age range doesn't chime well with the power differential argument. This is presumably an open progressive workplace what with asking for pronouns proactively, so I would expect people there to be able to cope with robust open debate.

It said in the article that everyone got "loud and lairy". Why are you singling Ms Kay out?

Because she was their boss. Getting pissed with underlings is not hugely professional.

@KeflavikAirport

Because she was their boss. Getting pissed with underlings is not hugely professional.

It’s a good thing then that no-one has those work Christmas parties any more that I keep hearing about…

You’ve never worked in the city or journalism then... I even got ratted at a works do when I worked for the church..

@KeflavikAirport

Because she was their boss. Getting pissed with underlings is not hugely professional.

Where is your evidence that she was pissed?

@KeflavikAirport

Because she was their boss. Getting pissed with underlings is not hugely professional.

I totally agree.

Where did it say she was drunk?

It is another of those examples of putting a bad interpretation on something and to hell with having actual evidence, isn't it?

We do need to work out whether her house, complete with her child's deeply offensive bedroom, is their work environment or not. I would say not: unless they were working in it which I rather assume they were not, since they are dancers and need a certain sort of floor and space to work on and in that's not a workplace. So if she got drunk over the meal, for which I don't think we have evidence, she was not unprofessionally getting drunk at work, any more than someone getting drunk with fellow workers at a pub would be. (Unless they work at that pub.)

Stupid to trust these tiny-minded idiots, certainly; but then, what is the use of a dance company if some of its members cannot be trusted? It isn't a coherent group at that point, is is a disparate rabble.