In the States "dancer" is used colloqiually to describe a profession, not simply a person engaged in the act of dancing. It's that "...most dancers are women..." bit that indicates that that's the context in which the parent is speaking. Certainly, that subtext is a little unclear, but if I talked about "dancers" at a wedding, I believe most people would expect that I was describing people dancing professionally. If I instead talked about "people dancing" at a wedding, its more likely I'm talking about people dancing for fun.

There's room for "dancer" to mean "person who is actively dancing", e.g. "Jim is a great dancer, but I am not". But I've never heard someone say "I'm a dancer" to simply mean "I dance [at all]". Its technically correct to say "I'm not a dancer", but most people say "I don't/can't dance".

In the States, you'll find that the gender ratio in the average dance class (ballet, tap, jazz, hiphop, etc) is strongly skewed toward girls and women. You see similar ratios in college dance degree programs.

If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman.

Thanks for the analysis. I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead.

Btw:

>> If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman.

You mean in the US. Reference, please?

You mean aside from the anecdotal evidence from 35 years of being the son of a professional dance costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical), and brother of another professional ballet costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical)? And both have worked with a variety of very large and notable dance companies across the western US? Or about 17 years now observing the gender imbalance in dance schools that my sisters (and now daughters) attend. Or the entire fucking genre of media that clearly shows that gender imbalance (seriously, Billy Elliot's central conflict only makes sense in light of this very real and very sustained phenomenon)?

Ok. https://datausa.io/profile/soc/dancers-choreographers#gender...

There's a subsection about educational levels of professional dancers, and the gender imbalance is persistent between high-school educated (so only private dance instruction) as well as college-educated professional dancers.

I found similar statistics in Australia.

>> You mean aside from the anecdotal evidence from 35 years of being the son of a professional dance costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical), and brother of another professional ballet costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical)? And both have worked with a variety of very large and notable dance companies across the western US? Or about 17 years now observing the gender imbalance in dance schools that my sisters (and now daughters) attend. Or the entire fucking genre of media that clearly shows that gender imbalance (seriously, Billy Elliot's central conflict only makes sense in light of this very real and very sustained phenomenon)?

You don't have to be so stand-offish, I don't know who you are and who are your relatives, and I just asked if you had a reference. Like, has someone done a study on this? Is there data or just hear-say? Was my initial comment really so obnoxious, or do you think it impossible I really didn't know what I asked about?

Not everyone here is from the US, or from Anglophone cultures- I'm Greek and a lot of the gender-based nuances that are obvious to the Anglosphere are completely alien to me. To give you an example, you know the riddle about the man and his son who are in an accident and the son who survives is wheeled into the ER where the surgeon says "I can't operate on him, it's my son". Well, I had to have that one explained to me because I didn't get it. I didn't get why it was a riddle. Half of the doctors I've met in my life were women. On the other hand, every time I see Rishi Sunak visiting a car factory or something like that and he's standing next to a girl in a hard hat and overalls, well, that does strike me as weird; but not the locals (I live in the UK). These kinds of things are really not as identically distributed throughout the world as people tend to think.

So please try not to instantly presume bad faith, alright?

Or, you know what? Do you, and I'll just try to get used to the idea that everyone on the internet has a chip on their shoulder and is ready to pounce at the least opportunity. Because apparently that's the internet everyone wants, and they should get it good and hard.

I got standoffish after I said "in the States" twice in my initial explanation of the colloquialism. You apparently missed both, and yet you insisted that the "correct" way to express it was (as you later revealed) more adherent to your understanding of British English. And I don't even concede that point either.

It would be, at a minimum, abrasive if I, as a person who does not speak Greek, tried to insist that you must speak Greek in a way that better fits my conception of how your language works.

Your other examples don't really compare, since there is not extra connotation to "motorist" or "cyclist" or "leisure maker" (although in the states, we might say "vacationer" instead). The best examples I can think of are "arborist" or "forester" vs "someone cutting down a tree", or "trucker" (as in, person who drives a truck/lorry professionally) vs "person currently driving a truck/lorry".

Or you could just not be a twat about it when someone questions you. Twat.

Also, I disagree categorically with

>I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead.

Maybe its a British English vs American English distinction (if that's the case, that would be helpful to point out, and is very much in the yard-vs-garden realm of language distinctions, and why I keep saying "in the states"), but it was pretty apparent to my American ear/eye. Its also important to point out that its not necessarily a professional dancer, but rather someone who has gone out of their way to train to dance for an audience. Doing the dougie in the club does not, by itself, make you a dancer, and it feels weird to describe people drunkenly dancing in the club as dancers.

In the UK where I live, people driving cars are described as "motorists", people riding bikes are described as "cyclists" and people strolling on the beach are described as "leisure makers". I mean they are described like that commonly, in the news.

So, yeah, in my British-English trained ears (I'm a native Greek) "dancer" sounds like "someone who dances". For any reason.

Just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful and thorough way you’ve handled all of this. I would’ve done a worse job. Cheers.

>> Just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful and thorough way you’ve handled all of this. I would’ve done a worse job.

Because you assume bad faith.

Quite the opposite. I know you had good intentions. You were here to correct a misconception, and you’re fighting the good fight against people being wrong on the internet.

But in the process, you left no room whatsoever for nuance. You treated it like someone said 2+2=5 without even pausing to think that maybe your own experience isn’t representative. The whole point of the thread is that our experiences aren’t representative of women’s. So if you can’t even admit that dancers might be skewed towards women (which was my one idea of how to make it click for men that women feel very out of place in tech through no fault of their own), then I didn’t even begin to know where to start with you to make progress. petsfed did a remarkable and patient job, and all I was doing was thanking him for that, and you’re coming in ranting about how you’re being treated badly. What are people supposed to think? You’ve made this all about you.

The thing is, I don’t even have any negative feelings towards you about it. I’m numb to it because this is just how the tech industry is, for a large fraction of people. It gets exhausting after awhile, but I know that things will change with time and patience. Which is why I thank people when they make progress towards that end.

Like, what do you want out of this interaction?

The other half of this is that it’s disrespectful to OP to make this thread yet another instance of having to explain things to men. My whole goal was simply to thank stormqueen for setting an example. That’s all. Being dragged against my will into a conversation about how the stereotype I chose may or may not exist was not the point of the thread. It has nothing to do with assuming good or bad faith.

Think of it like this. Imagine someone who’s white, and married to someone who’s black. The white guy thanks the black person for being a great example that their daughter can one day look up to, and then someone else comes along and challenges the basis of why the guy was even thanking them in the first place.

If that still doesn’t make sense, I don’t know what to tell you. But this is my honest attempt at reaching common ground.

You got called out for wrongly assuming a stereotype, and now you're being a dick about it. Sort yourself out, twat.