Rich Holmes
A work in progress. Constructive comments and corrections via email ( rich@richholmes.xyz ) welcomed — feel free to use a burner address if you want to comment anonymously.
Originally posted 30 Jun 2024. Corrected and updated 1 Jul 2024. Significantly restructured and revised 5 Jul 2024. Further minor edits July 2024.
Thanks to Graham Pierce, Jim Moskin, Michael Gorin, and Will Quale for valuable discussions.
Sex and gender in morris has a toxic history, with the phrase “morris men” not even in common use until it was popularized by Rolf Gardiner, who had sexist views and Nazi sympathies. Revival teams that were aggressively hostile to women as morris dancers were among those that founded the Morris Ring, leading eventually to backlash in the form of the Women’s Morris Federation and Open Morris. Much verbiage has been generated on the subject, but most of it probably dating from decades ago.
In the following I consider some aspects of sex and gender in (American) morris in light of views of sex and gender in the 2020s, significantly different from those of the earlier decades when many American teams were founded. Much may apply also to teams in other parts of the world, but most of my experience and observation has been in the American context — indeed, mainly eastern North America.
This article originated as an attempt to organize and self-guide my own recent thinking. My opinions have been undergoing re-examination lately, and some valuable insights have come to me in the course of writing this up. This is a process I expect to continue, and I will likely want to make revisions to this article as a result.
What are men? (Or women.)
At the time of the start of the American morris revival, it was commonplace to hold a simple aligned binary (AB) view of sex and gender. By which I mean the view that everyone (with negligibly rare exceptions) is either male or female sex, from birth and never changing, and their gender, if one even thinks about it as a distinct thing at all, always aligns with their sex. At least for some of us, this AB view persisted until not very many years ago. It can now be regarded as untenable. Sex and gender have never been fully aligned and binary, and while it might perhaps have been an adequate approximation to reality at one time, that really is no longer the case.
In the AB view, there would seem to be no need to spend time trying to define what is meant by “men’s morris” or “women’s morris”. Everyone knows what men are, what women are. But do they?
There are multiple ways the words “man” and “woman” can be understood.
Most people are born with reproductive organs, either testes or ovaries. (In rare instances, both testicular and ovarian tissue may be present.) “Man” can be defined as one who has testes (and not ovaries). We can use the term “sex” to refer to categorization by reproductive organs; this is, however, not very useful for our purposes.
Better is categorization by physical features — secondary sex characteristics in addition to genitalia. That is, whether a person looks and performs like a man or woman. I’ll use “perceived sex” to refer to categorization by physical characteristics. Defining “man” or “woman” by perceived sex is more ambiguous than by sex, but more useful: What we know and care about in others normally is their visible physical characteristics, not their reproductive organs.
However, this distinction can be less than clearcut. A notable consideration is that some people, transsexuals, undergo surgery and/or hormone therapy to alter these features, usually, but not always, to conform to the typical characteristics of the “opposite” sex. There also are intersex people whose sex-related physical characteristics may be minimal or equivocal. Ultimately, categorizing by perceived sex comes down to subjective judging based on personal appearance.
We can also define “man” or “woman” by gender. Gender is a highly ambiguous and difficult to define term. Raja Halwani enumerates:
gender as identity (which gender one identifies with in light of existing social gender categories), gender as socialization (being socialized into gender norms for men and women), gender as a social position (that one’s gender depends on which social position one occupies at any given time given the gender categories of one’s society), and gender expression (one’s gender presentation given the social conventions surrounding gender in one’s society)1
However it is defined, gender very often aligns with sex, but not always. Transgender (trans) refers to having a gender identity at variance with gender assigned at birth based on sex. (Transgender people may or may not also be transsexual.) Nonbinary refers to having a gender identity that is neither male nor female, or is both, or is something different. The existence of trans and nonbinary people poses a challenge to defining “man” or “woman” by gender.
For men’s or women’s morris purposes, do we define “men” or “women” by sex, perceived sex, gender assigned at birth, or present gender identity? Or something else?
Why men? (or why not)
Presumably the answer to that must be related to our reasons for wanting to have single sex/gender morris. But over the decades many such reasons have been cited (in some cases as reasons to support only men as morris dancers, but let’s not get into that) and it seems clear there is no widespread agreement.
A few such reasons I have heard, and some comments about them, are:
-
“single gender participation is what it was in the olden times, and are we wanting to change that?”
- It wasn’t, strictly — there are documented cases of participation by women in the 19th century South Midlands,2 though these were the exception, not the rule. In any case, even traditional things become traditional for reasons, and those reasons may have been valid at one time but are no longer. Women’s status in Victorian England as subservient childbearers, child raisers, and homemakers was strongly at variance with being morris dancers who often spent a week at a time out on tour, drinking and fighting, and this was probably sufficient reason for the scarcity of women as morris dancers at the time — but not now.3
-
“Women and men move differently, and you want uniformity in your morris side.”
- But old and young people, fat and slim people, tall and short people also move differently, and teams typically have no restriction on age (past adolescence), weight, or height.
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“I like hanging out with other men.”
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“Men’s teams tend to function differently, with different attitudes and approaches, than mixed teams, and I prefer the former.”
The second of these reasons is based on physical characteristics, that is, perceived sex. The third — well, do you prefer the company of men because of their male identity, or because you enjoy their physical attributes? The fourth, if we grant its premise, surely has nothing to do with perceived sex, and so the cited differences presumably correlate with gender. As for the first, it sidesteps actual reasons and isn’t clearly grounded in either sex or gender.
Sex and gender in other groups
To get a better handle on the why of sex and gender in morris, consider it in other groups.
Sports teams almost always are all men or all women. This is commonly assumed to be because of physical differences — that is, perceived sex rather than gender. Hence the ostensible argument against allowing trans women on women’s sports teams. (The real reason usually being transphobia.)
What about the more informal case of groups of friends? Such groups pretty commonly are all male, or all female. Both gender and sex are involved in friendship. Gender because same gender people often relate socially to one another better, having more common concerns, interests, and attitudes. Sex because sexual attraction often is seen in opposition to friendship — both between the attracted people (“Can’t we just be friends” meaning “let’s not be lovers”) and between them and other people, especially singles. The resulting group dynamic of course differs depending on what sexual orientation(s) the members have. In the case of all- or mostly-heterosexual groups, the gender and sex preferences both can reinforce a single sex/gender makeup.
One also finds single sex/gender groups in non sports organized activities, particularly musical groups. Patriarchy being what it is, an all female band will almost inevitably be labeled as such whenever they are described, while the sex/gender makeup of an all male band will likely not even be consciously noted — they almost certainly would not be described as a “men’s music group”. The members of the latter themselves almost certainly do not think in such terms. Rather, I think, it’s very commonly the case that musical groups arise from or as single sex friendship groups.
Even if, for example, two male friends, a guitarist and a bass player, decide to start a band and advertise for a drummer, they may be more likely to select a male drummer in part because, at least in present day America, most drummers are male (for gender role reasons), but also in part because they feel they’ll get along better with another male. We are no longer talking about friendship, but similar considerations of compatibility apply. Likewise if a musician leaves the band and they have to find a replacement. So what starts out as two or three male friends eventually becomes a long history as a male-only group.
(Some of that same dynamic works in sports too. For example, women have played American football on otherwise male teams typically as placekickers, a role that places less demand on size and strength, but not commonly. The prevalence of male placekickers can probably be ascribed to preferences of their teams similar to those of bands.)
Morris dancing being a physical activity, there is a temptation to draw a parallel with sports teams. But morris dancing differs in that it is not (usually) (overtly) competitive, so differences in capability are not so important; and it has little to do with size or speed or high strength, so differences in capability are not as great. Sex-related physical characteristics just matter much less in morris than in football. On the other hand, like a band, a morris team often begins with a few friends. In that case, whether its members are male or female or both may be determined not by ideology but by motivations similar to those in friendship groups and bands, with both sex and gender likely to play a role.
(Note that in this way of looking at it, there is no reason to expect different criteria for dancers and musicians, and yet in most single sex teams the sex/gender requirement applies only to dancers. There may be an entire article’s worth of things to say about this, but I’ll simply note it and move on.)
Men’s morris and privilege
An apparent problem with men’s morris I have recently considered is the following argument.
Let’s leave mixed and joint morris aside for the moment, and consider men’s and women’s morris. They may seem to be mirror images of one another. But in fact they are not symmetric, because men and women, in 21st century America, are not symmetric. Women generally occupy a relatively disprivileged position. Not entirely, there are some aspects of life where women have the advantage over men, but mostly not. Socially, politically, economically, it’s the (cis) men who have more privilege.
Single sex morris is exclusion. You can use a different noun if you want, but it’s still exclusion: Here is a team, and you are not permitted to join it, because of your sex or gender. Now, is exclusion always bad?
The argument is that no, it isn’t. When you have members of a disprivileged population banding together, forming a group exclusive to that population, it’s an instance of fighting back against the privileged. By saying “this group is for us, you can’t have it”, it is taking a small bit of privilege back. It’s celebrating and uplifting the disprivileged — it’s good exclusion.
On the other hand, when you have members of a privileged population forming a group exclusive to that population, the result, intentionally or not, is to increase and not to diminish the privilege disparity. “This group is for us, you can’t have it” acts to the benefit of the privileged and to the detriment of the disprivileged — it’s bad exclusion. Viewed that way, men’s morris is not symmetric with women’s morris, and may be regarded as less justifiable.
On the other hand
Is this a strong argument? Perhaps not. Certainly I don’t see exclusion of women to be as reprehensible as, say, exclusion of non white people. Why? I’m not really sure. Perhaps merely that it is more socially accepted.
In any case, there’s a gap in the argument which becomes evident if you consider a hypothetical alternate universe. Suppose in such a universe things were much the same as they are in ours, with greater social, economic, and political privilege for men relative to women. But suppose, for some reason, morris dancing were more or less a gender flipped version of what we had in about the 1970s. The majority of morris teams are women only. Some don’t even allow men as musicians. There are relatively few men’s teams and mixed teams. Many women disparage men’s morris; some even say there is no such thing, because if a man does it, it isn’t morris. There’s an English umbrella organization for women’s morris only, none for men’s morris. Morris events for women’s teams only, none for men’s teams. In summary, within the morris community and with regard to morris specific things, in that universe it’s women who have the privilege relative to men.
In such a world, it would be the men starting up a men’s team who are fighting disprivilege, taking on the morris matriarchy. It would be the women starting up a women’s team who are the (morris-)privileged acting to exclude the (morris-)disprivileged. The same women are disprivileged in society in general, but it’s not privilege in the world at large, primarily, that affects and is affected by single sex morris; it’s privilege in the morris community. And that is true in our world as well.
In our world, in about the 1970s, women certainly were disprivileged in the morris community, probably even more so than in the world in general. But are they still significantly morris-disprivileged in 2024?
That’s not entirely obvious to me. As far as things like attitudes toward women’s morris, number of women’s teams, and so forth, I don’t see a significant amount of disparity. Maybe because I’m naive or blind, but I think men and women are on fairly equal terms in these regards.
On the other hand, you can’t separate morris from the wider world entirely. So, for example, men tend to make more money than women, and morris events cost money to participate in, hence men are more able than women to participate in morris events.
It therefore seems to me there is necessarily some degree of morris disprivilege for women. But how significant is it?
If it’s not very significant, then men’s morris is not doing very significant harm to women.
But does it do harm to someone?
The 5.1%
The above argument is couched in AB view terms. In a modern view of sex and gender, there are additional things to consider.
In 2022, Pew Research reported:4
Some 5.1% of adults younger than 30 are trans or nonbinary, including 2.0% who are a trans man or trans woman and 3.0% who are nonbinary – that is, they are neither a man nor a woman or aren’t strictly one or the other. … This compares with 1.6% of 30- to 49-year-olds and 0.3% of those 50 and older who are trans or nonbinary.
5.1% is not a negligible number. Many of us know members of that 5.1% who are morris dancers. Some trans or nonbinary people could be excellent candidates for men’s or women’s morris teams — if the teams will allow them.
So now replace the word “men” in the argument presented above with “cisgender men and women”, and the word “women” with “SGM ( Sexual and Gender Minorities ) 5 people”. Where does that lead us?
At one time the narrative was that while men-only morris by itself was exclusive and damaging, the existence of women’s teams alongside men’s teams corrected that. If there’s a team that excludes women, then women can start a team that excludes men. Problem solved?
Not really. Whether “men” and “women” are defined by sex, perceived sex, or gender, there may be SGM people who meet neither definition and may be excluded from both men’s and women’s teams. And these people are clearly disprivileged in the world at large, and probably significantly disprivileged in the morris community, so this is bad exclusion. Fully accommodating them into morris dancing is something we need to address. Yes, they probably can dance with mixed teams, but they may not want to. In any case, that’s just saying “it’s not our problem, we’re cisgender men/women, we don’t have to deal with that” when in fact it’s a problem of single sex morris’s creation.
Men’s teams could clarify what they mean by “men”, defining the term to include at least some SGM people, and accept as members people who sincerely want to dance on a men’s team even though they may not be men-as-sex-and-gender from birth. (And similarly for women’s teams.) But this is a difficult path; it involves drawing a line through murky territory, separating those they include from those they exclude, and doing so fairly — if fairness is even possible. And it does nothing to help those who fall to the “wrong” side of that line.
Another approach is to open membership to all sexes and genders — to abandon single sex morris and go mixed. This spares the team the whole thorny “what are men/women” argument, and is as fair as it gets. To me this is probably a better argument for going mixed than the preceding argument regarding exclusion of women.
But is it the best way forward — killing off single sex morris because it’s hard to define “men”? Is there a third path?
Morris team sex/gender makeup and identity
I believe the apparent difficulties identified above are in part the result of a blinkered view of morris team sex/gender identity.
In writing this article I was stunned to realize that, though I’d rejected an AB view of sex and gender years ago, I was still clinging to a binary view of morris teams. They were, in my mind, either single sex or mixed. But this is equally an oversimplification. There is a spectrum with single sex and mixed at the two ends — and there are teams that do not operate on that axis at all.
In particular, one can refer to a morris team’s sex/gender identity, analogous to a person’s, and then observe that such an identity not only can point in different directions, it can be more or less sharply focused; it can be high or low intensity; and in fact such an identity is optional.
That is, a team can have little or no sex/gender identity — which is not the same thing as being a mixed team. A male and female team can have a strong identity as such, with its mixed status a significant component of how the team operates and thinks of itself — or not. Will Quale has spoken of mixed morris teams where “the ‘mixed’ gets more emphasis than the ‘morris’, whereas in [others] the ‘morris’ is most important and the ‘mixed’ is just how it happens to be.’” 6
Conversely, a team consisting of all men or all women may regard its sex/gender makeup as unimportant to its operation and self image.
And such a low-identity or identity-less self-perception is, as alluded to above, the way many non morris groups regard themselves. All male bands typically are such not because they are feeling and expressing a powerful sex/gender-based identity, but simply because that’s how the group formed and evolved.
Consequently it is probably better to reserve terms like “men’s morris” or “women’s morris” or “mixed morris” for use in discussing team sex/gender identities, and to use “all male team” or “all female team” or “male/female team” and the like to describe a team’s sex/gender makeup.
Mostly men
The discussion about privilege and disprivilege was written using the sex/gender identity terms “men’s morris” and “women’s morris”. That is, it is in reference to teams which have a strong sex/gender identity. But not all morris teams do. In fact, perhaps many teams that describe themselves in binary terms really do not.
Will tells me that Windham has identified as “mostly men’s” for most of its existence. They were founded as an all male team but early on recruited a woman. They felt she would be a good dancer and would fit in well with the team, and chose not to be absolutist about sex/gender. “She joined, it worked, no drama.” Other women have joined since but apparently the team still regards itself as “mostly men”.
Will also mentions a genderqueer dancer who joined Juggler Meadow around 2012. The team evidently didn’t attempt to define “men” in such a way as to include the new dancer, nor did they entirely erase their all-male makeup; they just accepted the newcomer as a member based on their dancing skill and enthusiasm and went on.
Jim Moskin pointed out to me another case: Thames Valley International, established in 1980 as an all male team, had a woman dancing in as early as 1984, and a couple other women joined by 2010, yet they continued to identify themselves (for Marlboro purposes at least) as a men’s team. It seems to have been a similar case of welcoming dancers who fit in well, even though not men. (More recently additional women have joined, and TVI now lists itself as mixed.)
Maybe one could argue an even older precedent is one or more 19th or early 20th traditional sides, with a couple of instances of women on the team.7 Granted, as I recall, it does seem that they were there only for as long as it took to recruit and train up a man to replace them. Still, the team was willing to bring a woman on, and they did not thereby “go mixed”. Not surprisingly, given that at the time, mixed (Cotswold) morris teams didn’t exist as a concept.
Consider now a recent development on the Bouwerie Boys Morris Dancers (BBMD) of New York City. BBMD was founded in 1979 as an all male team. Recently a female sex, transgender male joined the team.
Is Bouwerie at present a men’s team?
That’s where it gets interesting. In an earlier draft of this article, I said “Graham Pierce and Jim Moskin tell me the team does still consider itself so.” Michael Gorin then wrote me to say he views it differently: According to him, at that time the team voted to remove any sex/gender requirement for members, and he called Bouwerie a “non-gendered or post-gender team”. To add to the confusion, in subsequent discussion Jim said he didn’t think Bouwerie ever had a sex/gender requirement!
This may seem odd, given that Bouwerie ran the Suds as a men’s morris event. But probably many (maybe most) teams don’t actually have any sort of charter or constitution or official statement of principles or whatever that has such a requirement in writing, in which case it may be indeterminate whether that requirement really exists, versus simple past practice. John Dexter founded the Suds and Bouwerie (and the Binghamton Men and the American Travelling Morrice) as all male teams and events, but perhaps this is best described as John’s preference and not something codified as team policy.
In any event, I think it is fair to say BBMD was an all male team, de facto if not de jure, and they now are on record as not having a sex/gender requirement. As for whether they now identify as a (de facto) men’s team or not, that seems not entirely settled.
One can stridently insist that a team cannot be a men’s team unless all its members — at least its dancing members — are firmly in the “man” column. Equally, one can stridently insist anyone not possessed at birth of male genitalia is not a man. But there is no denying the reality of SGM people whose perceived sex is not male but whose gender identity is, and similarly, there can be teams that identify as men’s teams despite the presence of non cis male dancers, or that do not identify as men’s teams despite having all or mostly male dancers. Their self identification, and not a checklist of physical characteristics, is what matters.
Going male/female
But end running around the sex/gender quagmire by converting to a male/female team is indeed an option, as is going male/female for other reasons.
It’s reasonable to be concerned that changing the sex/gender makeup of a team will fundamentally change the vibe of the team. But my own experience suggests this need not be the case. I left an all male team in 1996 when it went male/female, and at the time I felt it would have been better to dissolve the existing team and start a new male/female team, rather than try to claim it was just a continuation of the old team. Since then I’ve changed my mind. The new version of the team differed and differs from the old, but more, I think, due to change in focus and change in members than due to sex/gender makeup.
Ultimately, if a team does not have a strong sex/gender identity, then its sex/gender structure is less significant to its nature than its personality and style — which may be gender linked, but certainly are not gender determined. This is especially true of teams that curate their membership by accepting as new dancers only people they feel will be a good fit with the existing team.
Conclusions
Sex and gender are complicated, for morris teams as well as for individuals.
This article has been an exercise in fighting my tendency to think in terms of well-defined, well-specified things. I was trained as a physicist, after all! Laws, definitions, measurements, logic. But that sort of absolutism doesn’t serve well in considering matters of sex and gender. It leads to blind alleys and fake dichotomies, conundrums that can be avoided once you take into account the gooiness of the subject.
An essential step in my progress was the realization of how artificial the single-sex/mixed distinction is, how there really are varieties and nuances and a spectrum of team identities, and no clear necessity for having a team sex/gender identity at all.
But privilege and disprivilege do matter, hard though they may be to quantify. Whatever we do, it must not be to the detriment of those with lesser privilege. And it need not be, if we are not misguided by absolutism.
Should we recruit dancer X? Why not, if X is a good dancer and has enthusiasm and commitment, and fits well with the team, regardless of their sex/gender? But what if our concern is that X will not fit well because of their sex/gender? What if our concern is that everyone whose sex/gender isn’t what we have in mind will not fit well?
Well, what’s more important: Your team’s sex/gender identity, or its dancing? The answer to that will help inform such a decision.
1 Halwani, R. “Sex and Sexual Orientation, Gender and Sexual Preference” . Journal of Controversial Ideas [seriously! - RSH] 2023, 3(2), 3. ( https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/2/257 )
2 There was at least one 19th century instance of a woman dancing with the Bampton side, one well-documented women’s side at Spelsbury, Oxon. and one less certain at Blackwell, Warks., and some participation by women in Adderbury. See Keith Chandler, Ribbons, Bells, and Squeaking Fiddles, Hisarlik Press (1993), pp. 26–27; Chandler, Morris Dancing in the English South Midlands, 1660–1900, Hisarlik Press (1993), pp. 133–136, 201–203, 221–223; and Janet Blunt’s Adderbury notes (from Cecil Sharp House), citing informant William Walton on “Princess Royal”: “It was a man’s dance but was often (“Bless you — yes!) danced also by or with women”.
3 I’m reminded of this story:
A young husband noticed whenever his wife prepared a roast, she’d cut about an inch off the end of the roast before cooking it and set it aside for other use.
He asked her why she did this and she replied, “That’s how my mother taught me to do it, I don’t know why.”
So the next time they visited her mother they asked, “Why do you always cut an inch off the end of a roast before you cook it?” Her mother answered, “My mother taught me that, I don’t know the reason.”
Later they visited the young woman’s grandmother and asked, “Do you always cut an inch off the end of a roast before you cook it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because my roasting pan is only about this long.”
That is the best explanation of tradition I have ever seen.
4 About 5% of young adults in U.S. are transgender or nonbinary | Pew Research Center ( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/ )
5 Wikipedia: LGBT#SGM/GSM/GSRM ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT#SGM/GSM/GSRM )
6 One clear example of a (mixed) team with strong sex/gender identity is Whistle Pig Morris of Boston, MA, whose website says right up front “Boston’s first queer-led, queer-focused Morris team!” https://whistlepigmorris.com
7 Chandler, Morris Dancing in the English South Midlands, 1660–1900, pp. 133–136 notes Sarah Ann Taylor (mother of Jingy Wells) danced dressed as a man in Bampton around 1874, but apparently on only one Whit Monday. Chris Bartram, in a 1998 post to the Morris Dancing Discussion List (incorporated into this article ( https://doctroidalresearch.wordpress.com/pages/morris-dancing/morris-dancing-origins-and-history/the-ladies-go-dancing-at-whitsun-or-do-they/ ) ) wrote “At Bampton, was it Ada Tanner who turned-out on a couple Whit Mondays in the 1920/30’s?”, but I can’t find confirmation of that. My vague memory is that I have read about other cases, but I can’t at present find any sources.