Contact Milonguero

I’d like to know whether the people on the Argentine tango scene like the people commenting on the London Tango Facebook page who advocate same-sex tango dancing think that women are adult biological females and that biological women are different from biological men and what the differences exactly are.

Given that on some AT scenes I’m regularly told that I can dance with men if I like and there’s apparently no difference perhaps the people running AT, whoever they are, could provide an “official line” on what exactly their stance is on the issue of sex and gender differences.

Because apparently the traditional views are “patriarchal” and “oppressive” and I keep getting gender studies lectures from women between dances but I hear different and contradictory positions coming from leftists and this is all quite confusing to a Neanderthal such as myself.

Perhaps a pamphlet explaining these issues as simply as possible to Neanderthals on entry to a milonga would help us conduct ourselves in a more progressive and civilised manner.

I also suspect that statements of the official line on the AT scene might need to be regularly updated to reflect the rapidly changing social attitudes, perhaps every 6 months, so that we don’t commit any embarrassing faux pas such as refusing to dance with non-gender binary people or incorrectly assuming who leads and follows, etc., and are up to date on whatever happens to be the latest political fashion.

There’s also the recent debate on Dr Phil that recently went viral in which two biological males are “mensplaning” to each other what a “woman” is.

I wonder what the AT gatekeepers feel about Matt Walsh’s point that “What you want to do is appropriate womanhood and turn it into a costume that can be worn”.

As a Neanderthal I find all this fascinating and oh so educational but I really need to be told what I should be thinking, esp. I’m totally confused about what exactly a “woman” is.

One of the things I notice about the whole Argentine tango scene is that I’m basically told what I should be thinking and feeling. The emotional response is prescribed. Everything is prescribed, curated, signposted, and predefined by the performers, teachers and organisers. There’s little room for interpretation: just accept and shut up! Our Tango DJs are amazing, got it!? It seems very important in all of this to present people in loud costumed dancing with a lot of exaggerated movement and dramatic gestures.

Youtuber Tantacrul who is a composer explains how the phenomenon of reification is utilised in the production of reality TV as a mechanism of emotional manipulation and elimination of critical thinking. I’ve always found the whole construction of the Argentine tango phenomenon odd, especially the fact that everything is so rigid and prescribed by the gatekeepers in in terms of what you’re allowed to think or feel, and how you constantly need these shows. The concept of reification seems to explain the psychology behind what’s going on and how this connection of tango music to the exhibitions and costumes is essentially designed to stop us from being able to exercise critical thinking and just accept.

Also:

• What is a thing in dancing? The construction of the discourse of Argentine tango vs. tango milonguero
• The parasitic relationship of performing artists to social tango
• Artists vs the milongueros: the spatial organisation of the milonga
• Economic incentives in tango: empiricist vs. praxeological view

According to New York Post disallowing anti-white and anti-male speech is racist and sexist and is hurting “vulnerable minorities”:

Facebook’s race-blind practices around hate speech came at the expense of Black users, new documents show

Hidden deep down the article is an interesting statistic:

But this statistic hid a serious problem that was obvious to researchers: The algorithm was aggressively detecting comments denigrating White people more than attacks on every other group, according to several of the documents. One April 2020 document said roughly 90 percent of “hate speech” subject to content takedowns were statements of contempt, inferiority and disgust directed at White people and men,

So the algorithm doesn’t discriminate and deletes mostly anti-white and anti-male speech, and that’s racist and sexist. Solution:

They were proposing a major overhaul of the hate speech algorithm. From now on, the algorithm would be narrowly tailored to automatically remove hate speech against only five groups of people — those who are Black, Jewish, LGBTQ, Muslim or of multiple races — that users rated as most severe and harmful. (The researchers hoped to eventually expand the algorithm’s detection capabilities to protect other vulnerable groups, after the algorithm had been retrained and was on track.) Direct threats of violence against all groups would still be deleted.

However, Facebook management decided that allowing anti-white male racism/sexism would hurt the growth of the company outside of the US (I guess they’ve given up on the US market anyway):

The team knew that making these changes to protect more vulnerable minorities over others would be a hard sell, according to the people familiar with the situation. Facebook largely operates with one set of standards for billions of users. Policies that could benefit a particular country or group were often dismissed because they were not “scalable” around the globe, and could therefore interfere with the company’s growth, according to many former and current employees.

So the push to make the algorithm racist against white men failed because there are some white men who are outside of the US who might object and whom we still might try to keep on the platform. The conclusion must be that protecting the more vulnerable minorities over “others”, ie., over white men, means letting people say hateful things against whites and white men. Saying things that are anti-white and anti-male is a human right and deleting expressions of such sentiments is unfair, racist and sexist. I’m starting to understand the leftist mentality on the Argentine tango scene and why I really need all those gender/race studies lectures each time I try to get a dance.