We attended a renaissance/medieval dance event. This event would bring 150-200 people together. In years past, it was understood that you treated people with respect.
Turns out last year, a teacher was grabbing a transgender female dancer and forced them to the man's position for the dance, along with chastising them for dancing on the woman's side. The teacher was warned that this was completely unacceptable. (Be aware, that this is a private event, and she could be ejected for, you know, battery of forcefully moving student.)Ok. Fast forward to this year....
All the past teachers are invited to propose a class to teach. My wife usually teaches the beginner dances. During that, the event steward, then says to sign this paper that was a code of conduct in the form of a loyalty oath. She refused to sign it immediately and opened dialog as to why this is being put to teachers - it felt like it was a "you have been horrible in the past and this tries to fix it". It had the shame and insulting tone that we familiarly see with CoC's.
In the end, my wife chose not to sign, and chose not to teach the beginner's class. And when we showed up at the event, we saw some striking things. We had ~95 people attend the event, as opposed to 150-200. We had at 12 classes (normal is 4 tracks from 10-4, minus lunch, for 20 classes normally). Now, obviously correlation != causation... But the only factor that was significantly changed was demanding a CoC signed as a loyalty oath.
We attended a renaissance/medieval dance event. This event would bring 150-200 people together. In years past, it was understood that you treated people with respect.
Turns out last year, a teacher was grabbing a transgender female dancer and forced them to the man's position for the dance, along with chastising them for dancing on the woman's side. The teacher was warned that this was completely unacceptable. (Be aware, that this is a private event, and she could be ejected for, you know, battery of forcefully moving student.)Ok. Fast forward to this year....
All the past teachers are invited to propose a class to teach. My wife usually teaches the beginner dances. During that, the event steward, then says to sign this paper that was a code of conduct in the form of a loyalty oath. She refused to sign it immediately and opened dialog as to why this is being put to teachers - it felt like it was a "you have been horrible in the past and this tries to fix it". It had the shame and insulting tone that we familiarly see with CoC's.
In the end, my wife chose not to sign, and chose not to teach the beginner's class. And when we showed up at the event, we saw some striking things. We had ~95 people attend the event, as opposed to 150-200. We had at 12 classes (normal is 4 tracks from 10-4, minus lunch, for 20 classes normally). Now, obviously correlation != causation... But the only factor that was significantly changed was demanding a CoC signed as a loyalty oath.