 the male dancer
written by Thinker at on 15.08. at 01:00:20 Firstly, I must confess that I am in the middle of the argument - I am a man who aspires very much to be a ballet dancer for what are considered the 'right' reasons - appreciation of a beautiful artform and love of unrestricted movement - but I also, shall we say, experience 'un-natural feelings' about ballet. From previous postings, though, this would seem to be an impossible situation in some people's eyes - you are either a serious dancer or a fetishist, right or wrong. I think the issue is far less black-and-white than this, and that both sides of the camp - the serious dancers especially - would benefit from trying to understand each other. Being prone to self-analysis, I have thought about my love of ballet at great length and have, I think, come to understand its complexities. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a ballet dancer, but as a child it was made clear to me that ballet was not a suitable interest for a 'normal' boy and my love became unspoken. In secret, I was fascinated by ballet and practised whatever I could learn, longing to take classes. But when I hit puberty I started to experience new feelings and they seemed to be aroused by my love of ballet - the seed of a fetish had been planted. While I have enjoyed normal sexual relationships during my adult life and found them to be far more gratifying than any masturbatory activity, I continue to experience arousal from ballet when I feel so-inclined, and the doubt that I am a bit weird has alway lingered. Trying to understand my feelings better I turned to the internet and found a surprising number of men who shared my love of ballet, both for 'natural' and 'unnatural' reasons. Reading postings from men who had longed to do ballet all their lives but been stopped by their fear of others' prejudice only to realise their dreams in later life made me realise that I too had been stopped from doing something I really wanted to do by my own fear. The path I should take would have seemed clear, but for the fact that the more dubious postings and sites reminded me that my interest may not be for acceptable reasons. After much soul-searching, though, I decided that taking ballet classes was something that I simply had to do to realise the full person inside me. But as I tried to find the courage to take a class I found myself falling more and more to my old ways. It seemed that the fear of what people would think of me was as strong as ever, and the only place I could hide from it was behind my fetish. I've shaped this realisation into a bit of a theory - I believe that fetishes develop in response to fear of performing some activity that is not widely considered to be acceptable by society. When a person has a passion I think that it creates an enormous amount of energy that if channelled in the right way can lead to incredible achievement in a particular field. But if the person feels they have to deny that passion, this energy builds up and has to be released somehow, and the mind creates a fetish as the release mechanism. Further, I think that fetishes are self-perpetuating, serving to re-inforce the feeling that the particular activity is a bit weird, and making it seem less desirable to conquer the fear - a cruel trick of the mind. What I'm saying here, I think, is that the constant fetishising of ballet on this board and others like it is indeed perpetuating the prejudiced opinion that ballet is a weird interest for a male. I imagine that many men/boys come to this board hoping to find out that they are not alone in the world, that they are not some freak, only to find that even here a normal interest in ballet is pretty unusual for a man. Longing for some feeling of community, it becomes easier to give in to the fetish and to live a sad life masturbating in front of a computer - at least you're not alone.... I have enormous respect for the few men that have followed their dreams in the face of all the prejudice, and hope that they will not leave this board and that they may inspire other men to do the same. I think that a lot of the fetishistic replies to serious posts are simply the expression of other men's resentment that they do not possess the strength to follow the example of the stronger guys. Well - I for one put my hand up and say that I haven't got the guts to take ballet, but hope that one day I will. Anyone else care to admit that? Answers to this message:
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