Jack and Jill went up the hill, to get into an internet flamewar

Recently I was a witness on the sidelines to a big internet fight about the name given to a particular sort of dance competition.

People fight on the internet about everything!

This was a fight about calling a dance competition a Jack and Jill competition, rather than calling it a Random Partner competition or something similar.  That's what Jack and Jill is; a dance competition where you dance with random partners rather than a partner you brought with you.  I suppose it has the advantage that you don't have to have an established partner to go, which is nice, but I suspect for some people it is more comfortable to compete with a known person.  In any case, it is a format that exists.

Now you might well think that changing Jack and Jill (which is spectacularly nonspecific to outsiders) to something more descriptive would be an easy sell.  Sure, some people will be sticklers for tradition, but it hardly needs an internet flame war.

The trick is why it was being changed.  A lot of people felt uncomfortable with it because of the gendered names, and because traditionally men led, women followed, and men and women paired off with each other specifically, and Jack and Jill reinforces that.

There is a swell of change pushing through our society as a whole to get away from enforced gender norms, heteronormativity, and anti queer bigotry.  Dance is just a microcosm of society in this.  While you might see two women dancing together, you will still see a lot of straight guys standing around treating it like the only purpose of those two women dancing is to provide them erotic entertainment.  While you will see two men dancing together, you will still see other people act as though they must be gay (and that there is a problem with that) and people will distance themselves from it.  While there exist spaces where queer people can dance and be relatively comfortable, a lot of places aren't anywhere near there yet.

Just like the rest of society, really.

So when the change to Jack and Jill is billed as a way to be more inclusive of people, especially trans and queer people, it gets a ton of pushback.  People get angry, because it isn't just a name of an event, it is an attack on their entire life.  When you say "we should be more inclusive" people hear "you are acting like a bigoted asshole" and they react accordingly.  Much as some might try to soften that blow, a lot of people are being bigoted assholes, and that being pointed out angers them.

So they fight.  They yell about liking their tradition, about liking the role they have, and not being run over by the rainbow steamroller.  The crazy thing about the fight is that people often pretend it is all about the name of the dance.  They act as though Jack and Jill is critical to their life experience and calling it a Random Partner dance would destroy them.

Let's face it though:  The name of the dance is small beans.  If the community was a happy joyful place for queer people of all stripes the name Jack and Jill would be a tiny issue.  The real problem is all the other stuff, the bigotry, the sexism, the enforced gender roles.  But since the organizers of a dance community can't change those things directly they change things like dance names to try to send a message about the direction they hope to go in.  The dance name becomes a proxy war for all of the other fights that are going on because it is a simple, concrete thing for people to argue about.  It is hard to fight about men treating two women dancing together as erotic entertainment because it isn't usually happening when the argument is going on.  The exact behaviour you want to change is hard to pin down, hard to define.  But a name!  That you can be precise about, and that makes it a perfect thing to trigger a fight that is really about larger changes in society.

This is much like the fight about trans people using bathrooms that is completely ridiculous and is just a signalling issue; a way for bigots to signal other bigots that they are suitably bigoted.  It is an actual concrete thing they can use to rally all the people who are upset by cultural change they can't quite grasp.  It is really tough to fight about a gradual shift in the acceptance of people wearing non gender conforming clothing.  Who do you yell at exactly?  But a stupid rule about bathrooms or the name of a dance, now there is something you can rally around!

It all comes down to people feeling like they have a choice between being angry or feeling terrible.  When you tell someone that they have to change, that their behaviour has been hurting people, that they are wrong, they either must accept that their education and actions and beliefs are wrong, or they fight back.  Most people don't want to feel terrible about all their choices and doubt their heroes and mentors, so they fight.

You can soften the blow.  You can try to change dance names to Random Partner without saying why you are doing it, and claim it is just for clarity to try to make it easier on newcomers.  You won't get a fight that way.

But fuck that noise.  When you make good changes like getting rid of Jack and Jill you should tell people why you are doing it.  Many of them will fight you on it.  That will be wearing and shitty and sad, but eventually they will get crushed by the rainbow steamroller.  Everyone does, in time.