YOUR PARTNER'S CORNER'S PARTNER (December 2012, reviewed December 2014)
By: Jeff Garbutt, Bunbury, Western Australia

We have "gender neutral" titles for almost every dancer position in a square. Except for one; the opposite person to each dancer's Corner. Of course men tend to think of this person as "The right hand lady" and the ladies think of this person as a "Left Hand Man".

You might think that this is good enough and we don't need to consider this topic, but, consider this sequence:
Allemande Left your Corner - Walk by your Partner - Men Swing the Right Hand Lady, Ladies Swing the Left Hand Man" What a mouthful!

Furthermore in the twenty first century it is not acceptable to have gender bias in our terminology. I suppose we could always use "Your Corner's Opposite's Partner" or "Your Opposite's Corner's Partner", but it is difficult enough to decode double possessive nouns on the fly!

Wouldn't it be easier if we had a one word "generic, gender neutral" title for this person? But what could we use? The term "Corner" correctly describes the relationship of two dancers next to each other who are not partners. Likewise the term "Opposite" correctly describes the relationship of two dancers who are opposite each other. "Corner" and "Opposite" can be thought of as "geographical" type words.

It would be nice if we could use a geographical or geometric term for the "Right hand lady/Left hand man" position. We need a term that describes two dancers that are "near" each other but have someone else "between them".

Neighbour correctly describes someone who lives near you, but not necessarily next to you, (as in the case of someone who lives two houses away.)Adjacent is also someone near you, but the term also means someone who is "next" to you as in the definition of "corner". "Tangent" is a geometric word with a similar meaning to corner.

Of course "Neighbour" is already used somewhere in the Plus program. So it could cause some confusion in the minds of dancers. But try as I might I haven't been able to find out if it has an exact definition.

I asked Nasser Shukayr what he thought and his suggestions included:
- Far Corner (where Near Corner would be your actual corner, Far Corner would be your partner's corner)
- Handy (because men's Right Hand is handy)
- Preferred (same reason as "Handy")
- Fourth (because in a normal singing call, he or she is the 4th person you swing with)
- Number Four (same reason a "Fourth")

As a "Star Trek" fan I like "Number Four" myself because it is similar to the term "Number One" that Picard used for Riker. But we are square dancers, not mythical space travellers.

What do you think? What other terms can you think of?

December 2014 Addition

Back again. I just won't leave this subtect alone will I? I guess another way of looking at this is to think of family relationships. Another possible "non sex dependant" title that we have in our family tree is the term "Cousin". A cousin is a family member that is just a little bit removed from your immediate family, so is a good term that could be used for your "partner's opposite's partner's corner".