(I had to take a short substack break, so I’m making up with a two-parter that is going to make you laugh, I hope, and feel better about your life)
My mom was a very good Christian lady, and she very much wanted to be a good Christian parent. She recognized my obvious developing queerness long before I even had the word gay in my head, let alone in my self-identification.
Hoping to protect me from heartbreak on earth and hell in the afterlife, she scrimped and saved and pushed and prodded and cajoled and then simply informed me that after my eighth-grade graduation, I would not be attending public school. Instead, she enrolled me in a small fundamentalist Christian high school we'll call Sonshine Christian Academy.
The tender loving care of the teachers at SCA saved me from many things*, but not from being a Big Huge Public Bulldyke. Or a Radical Nonbinary Genderfreak, depending on which era of my life we're discussing.
SCA taught civics exclusively from Bob Jones University Press textbooks. I can remember vividly a 9th-grade quiz that contained the question, "Name five ways we know that God ordained the United States government to carry out his plan for salvation." This was not an ironic question, and "ha ha ha ha, you're joking, right" was not an acceptable answer. I'm sure the indigenous folks of North America would also love to know five ways we were sure of this! But considering the textbooks were published by a university that prohibited interracial dating until 2000, perhaps I should be grateful that's the only thing I can remember from my government classes.
SCA also did not permit the wearing of parachute pants, which perhaps doesn't sound restrictive in modern times, but in the 1980s, this was akin to saying, "Wear only Amish-made dungarees." Their rationale for prohibiting this type of clothing was that the material didn't breathe well, and it was an unsanitary practice. This is a hilarious if weird way of saying, "liable to show off below-the-waist physical reactions."
SCA modified the school dress code during my senior year to forbid "flannel shirts over tee shirts" on female students. It's conceivable that this was added to the student handbook just for me since I was the only person in our 25-student graduating class who thought this combination was a particularly good look. It's hard to hold this ruling against them. Wearing a multi-layer flannel over 80s neon tees was perhaps not a sin against God, but it was certainly a sin against fashion.
SCA was also an ENDE; an Enforced Non Dancing Environment. We were informed that SCA didn't allow its students to dance because dancing leads to impure thoughts and that prohibiting dancing also helps young people delay sexual activity. This made me wonder if the folks who created this rule had ever attended a 7th-grade school dance. There are few things in the world less sexy than the awkwardness displayed in such an environment. In fact, thinking about the school dances I attended in junior high doesn't make me simply not horny; it makes me feel like I might never want to have sex again. It seems like intense repeated exposure to such situations might actually be a very effective way to manipulate teens into delaying sexual activity, but what do I know?
SCA didn’t even have a prom; we had a "junior-senior banquet," which is 100 percent precisely as dull as it sounds.
Because of all this, I never learned to dance.
Upon hearing the phrase "I don't know how to dance," many people erroneously believe I am merely indicating I am not a confident dancer, or that I only know how to dance a little, or even that I prefer not to dance. So I have to explain more specifically that I can't do a smidgen of salsa, nor a bit of ballroom, nor a little line dancing. I cannot zip my way through a Zumba or demonstrate a tiny touch of tango. None of these are possible.
I do not know how to dance.
My guess is that Footloose—a well-known 1980s movie with a plot loosely based on actual events that took place in an Oklahoma town that outlawed dancing–contributes to this confusion.
Footloose follows the travails of a teenager with a peak 80s name, Ren McCormick, who moves to a small town from a big city and successfully circumvents the town's anti-dancing ordinance to organize a high school prom.
According to the movie's timeline of when the anti-dancing laws had passed, the young people of Footloose had lived in an ENDE community for six years. But at the conclusion of the movie, Ren gave them access to a feed plant decorated with balloons and filled with neon confetti. As the teenagers stood awkwardly near the plant's interior walls, Ren burst in wearing a purple double-breasted jacket and yelled "I thought this was a party, let's dance."
With this, he converted the young people of the town not just into typical mediocre teenage dancers but into professional dancers.
They became dancers who could do backflips.
They became dancers who instantly knew how to perform a choreographed line dance in high heels.
They became cut-to-stunt-double-for-a-triple-backflip-across-the-dance-floor-level-dancers.
If this is someone's only exposure to ENDE-associated young people, I can see why "really, I don't dance" doesn't ring true. This is perhaps why my Very First Gay Friend thought going to an iconic lesbian club in the 1990s would be an excellent Very First Gay Outing for me…
Read the rest here.
*when my mom died a few years ago, my English teacher from SCA came and picked me up from the hospice where I had been staying with her, cooked dinner for me, let me stay in her house until the end of the weekend, and drove me to the airport. See what I mean about tender loving care? Please note this was more than 30 years after I graduated. And after I had come out as queer. People do not fit in the little boxes you want them to.