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. Added ideas about “men’s morris” as a prescriptive or a descriptive idea, and removal of some unsatisfactory discussion of the “why” of single sex morris and of going mixed, March 2025.
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 my views of sex and gender in the 2020s, significantly different from those of earlier decades. 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 have made and probably will continue to make revisions to this article as a result.
Much of what’s said here about men’s morris pertains equally well to women’s morris; it’s just easier sometimes to speak clearly about “men’s morris” than about “single sex morris”.
What is men’s morris?
Let’s start with a question whose answer once seemed so obvious few even thought to ask it: What is men’s morris?
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.
Now, “men’s morris” can be understood as a prescriptive term. That is, it refers to dancing subject to a requirement that the members of the morris team all are men. There’s a bit of complication: Some insisted (a few still do) this meant everyone on the team while others allowed the possibility of female musicians accompanying male dancers. In the AB view, and taking “men’s morris” as prescriptive, there would seem to be no need to spend time trying to define what is meant by the term. Everyone knows what men are. But do they?
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. 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, present gender identity, gender expression? Or some combination of the above? Or something else?
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:2
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 ) 3 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
The apparent difficulties identified above may be considered to be 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.’” An example of the former might be Red Cuthbert Morris of Bedford, UK, one of whose members once described it as “militantly mixed”.
Conversely, a team consisting of all men or all women may regard its sex/gender makeup as unimportant to its operation and self image.
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.
“Men’s morris” as a descriptive term
Another way forward is to question the assumption that “men’s morris” is a prescriptive term. Instead, look at it as descriptive. Start with this question: Why do we form and maintain men’s morris teams?
Is it because we want to dance with people who have relatively deep voices? Or with people who are capable of growing beards? Or with people who have a particular type of genitalia? Of course not.
Much more likely, it is to a large degree because of the way we want to dance. There is of course a lot of variation of dancing style between different men’s teams, or different women’s teams, or different mixed teams, but I think most of us would agree there’s a general tendency for men’s teams to dance differently from women’s, and both tend to dance differently from mixed teams. (My suspicion is that while some of this difference is due to physiology, a lot of it is probably cultural. Men and women mostly grow up doing different kinds of physical activity and therefore learn to move differently. And it may be that men’s, women’s, and mixed teams tend to bring different attitudes toward practicing and performing, which affect the way they end up dancing.) Some of us have a preference to dance in a way that is more like the way men’s teams dance — and that leads to a preference for being on men’s teams. In that sense, it’s not that we want to dance with men, but we want to dance as men.
Similarly, there tend to be differences between men’s, women’s, and mixed groups in how those groups function. And there tend similarly to be differences in how they socialize. Again, these vary within men’s groups, women’s groups, and mixed groups, but the tendency is for the categories to differ. Some of us prefer to be with groups that function the way men’s groups do, and to (sometimes!) socialize the way men’s groups do.
So we form and maintain men’s morris teams because we want to dance, function, and socialize in a men’s team like way.
But individuals also vary, and not all of those who want to dance, function, and socialize like men are in fact cisgender men. Some are SGMs, and some are cis female. Such people may feel most at home on a men’s team, may fit in better on a men’s team, even though they aren’t, at least by some definitions, men. And isn’t that, rather than voices or beards or genitalia, the important consideration?
If so, then “men’s morris” can be understood as descriptive. It describes a team’s sex/gender identity by the way the team dances and functions and socializes, without prescribing a rule by which to decide which people are and are not allowed to dance on the team.
Mostly men
Will tells me that Windham, a team from southern Vermont, 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.4 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.
More recently, on the Bouwerie Boys Morris Dancers (BBMD) of New York City, founded in 1979 as an all male team, a female sex, transgender male dancer joined the team, preferring to be there rather than on the Ring O’ Bells women’s side. Here the question of whether they continue to hold a men’s team identity is murkier. In an earlier draft of this article, I said “Graham Pierce and Jim Moskin tell me the team does still consider itself [a men’s team].” 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”. 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 personal characteristics, is what matters.
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. Another was recognizing that “men’s morris” can be a descriptive and not prescriptive term.
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 prescriptivist 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 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/ )
3 Wikipedia: LGBT#SGM/GSM/GSRM ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT#SGM/GSM/GSRM )
4 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.