Male philosophy and Turkey dancing.

Logan here. Quick post examining male gender capitol and how different cultures or perceived cultures allow for very odd behavior.

My friend Halil celebrated the 3rd anniversary of his 21st birthday over the recent weekend. Halil, as his name might suggest, is not originally from America. He is a Turkish exchange student. With his different national orientation come his different customs and practices. Much like American customs, he celebrates birthdays much the same – a party with friends and shenanigans. However, I observed a few things that were different about the way he and his fellow Turkish friends interacted and how his and my own American friends interacted.

One common thing for Americans to do at parties (within the college realm) is to play drinking games such as beer pong or flip cup. Both of these games invoke and environment for people of different groups to interact and compete. It is a way to do something that isn’t simply sitting or standing and talking to friends and strangers though the games may be inherently inclusive of standing and talking. Americans also often use the excuse of alcohol to do certain other activities. One of these activities is dancing. There are many gendered aspects to dancing that could be brought up at this point; however, alcohol can be used to explain why someone might be dancing at a house party whether they are of any gender or sex. This creates an atmosphere of alcohol being inclusive for dancing environments but limits those who don’t consume the intoxicant. This, as observations had shown, held true for the Americans of the party.

The Turkish community did not require alcohol to set their dancing atmosphere. They did indeed partake in sitting or standing and talking to other people much like the Americans. They tended to veer away from beer pong or flip cup though there may have been other reasons for that (perhaps the American crowd seemed intimidating. I would feel odd letting myself into a group of solely Finnish people playing beer pong). What was a change in culture to me was the dancing. The Turkish people of the party were down to dance as soon as the national pop music started. Dancing as odd? Of course dancing didn’t inherently seem odd to me. What was odd was that the Turkish men were very willing to dance with each other. It wasn’t krunk or grinding but a Turkish style of dancing but nonetheless it was dancing. They did now give justification for their actions such as “Gonna go dance to try to hook up” or anything along those lines. Everyone seemed to not only accept the behavior but expected it much like it was expected that a two man team would “bro five” after winning games of beer pong.

The culturally identities of the men who were dancing showed a very strong argument for gender being a social construct. It also highlighted gender as giving action and action expectation to the people that had inherited their gender. The Turkish group of the party all seemed to be very common with what Halil and the other’s dancing in much the same way that the Americans would understand post-fight hugging between men. It was simply something that men did and will do.

Admittedly I tried to join in but I really need to practice on my Turkish belly dancing skills; something that Turkish men are also very common with. And yes, there is a male and female form of belly dancing, well, at least there is in Turkey.