Survival of the feminist: social change and institutional evolution

Gender roles have changed. The once-clear lines between men and women’s roles in our culture have become increasingly blurry over the last four decades or so. The sharp distinctions we used to make between men’s work and women’s work, or men’s abilities and women’s abilities, have softened. Gender roles, while in many ways still intact and enforced, have been steadily breaking down for some time now.  This was one of the most thrilling conclusions made by Judge Vaughn Walker, who last week ruled that it was unconstitutional for California to ban two men or two women from marrying each other. From Walker’s ruling:

The evidence shows that the movement of marriage away from a gendered institution and toward an institution free from state-mandated gender roles reflects an evolution in the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage. The evidence did not show any historical purposes for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.

In other words, the way we think about gender has changed, and it’s time for the way we think about marriage to change along with it.

That’s some pretty impressive gender analysis, and it’s going to upset a lot of people, particularly those people who are deeply invested in the idea that men and women are inherently different, not just biologically, but psychologically, emotionally, socially and culturally. That kind of worldview makes it awfully difficult to accept the kind of gender role creep we’ve been seeing over the last few decades, a creep to which feminism has undeniably contributed.

The idea that cultural beliefs, attitudes and norms change over time and that our legal institutions must change with them is as old as the Constitution. The most important legal document in America has within it provisions to amend it for a reason: the framers realized that over time, America would change, and that its laws would need to change with it. Legal institutions are always evolving to reflect the evolution of the rest of our culture.

But what about our cultural institutions? A fascinating article in this past weekend’s New York Times explored how one cultural institution, classical ballet, has responded to the slow but radical change of gender roles in America. In short: it hasn’t responded well.

The article focused on story ballets, which, it observed, have lately come back into fashion with a vengeance. Story ballets, while they’re thrilling to watch and can make ballet far more accessible than abstract, plot-less short ballets of the kind for which the New York City Ballet has become well known, don’t reflect changing gender norms at all. They tell old stories – The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet – all of which contain heterosexual romance plots. There is no story ballet that I know of that involves a same-sex romance. And to tell a heterosexual love story in ballet, you need a pas de deux, which is a chance for the couple to dance alone together. As the Times’ dance critic Alistair Macaulay explained, the pas de deux hasn’t evolved to reflect changing gender norms either. Even in the newer story ballets:

The man must partner the woman in supported pirouettes; the woman may not return the compliment, and the device is never practiced in same-sex situations. There is also far more lifting — by men of women — than ever before… Though ‘pas de deux’ means ‘steps for two,’ it is not unusual to hear dancers now use the term to mean the task of lifting and supporting women.

Macaulay is right in his observation that the pas de deux is a way to use the man’s strength to showcase the woman’s beauty – a traditional gender role arrangement if I ever saw one. Very often, despite their remarkable skills, the men in pas de deux end up looking like… well, like forklifts in tights, really. They aren’t given a lot to do besides lift and support the woman as she twirls and twists her body into beautiful lines. Both partners are working hard in their own different ways, and it’s lovely to watch, of course, but one gets the sense that this isn’t exactly an equal partnership. And, as Macaulay notes, a same-sex pas de deux is very hard to find, and when you find them, “those are never where ballet comes into its own.”

So what’s a classical ballet dancer to do when their institution hasn’t changed to accommodate social and cultural changes? I asked Devin Alberda, who dances in the corps de ballet at the New York City Ballet and who is currently a Senior studying English, gender and queer studies at Fordham, what he thought of the state of gender in classical ballet.

Part of the problem, Alberda said, is that there aren’t a lot of women choreographing classical ballets, which means that a feminist perspective on gender is unlikely to make it to the stage. Secondly, when critics talk about ballet, they usually focus on the quality of the dancers’ performances, and when they talk about whether or not the choreography was any good, they tend to ignore any rebellion against traditional gender roles that might occur. Alberda gave one example of a new ballet that featured seven women and one man, paired off into couples, with women assuming some of the traditionally male pas de deux duties. “Though the work received a lukewarm reception,” Alberda observed, “these sly subversions went unnoticed.”

Finally, Alberda said, many choreographers don’t give much thought to the cultural context in which their work will be performed. They don’t realize that in their reliance on old gender norms, they’re sending a clear, though probably unintentional, message about the ongoing dominance of those norms. Part of the problem, then, is choreographers who “innocently utiliz[e] regressive ideas about gender difference in the service of a purportedly apolitical aesthetic ideal.” But they’re not apolitical at all: ballet, like all art, like all culture, has the power to shape, convey and preserve ideas about all kinds of political issues, gender among them.

The legal institution of marriage will soon change to reflect our culture’s constantly evolving ideas about gender. Ballet will have to do the same. And so will every other cultural and legal institution in America. Because that’s what equality is going to take: a complete overhaul of the old roles and the old rules. Someone should make a ballet about that.