The BBC’s new obsession: nonbinary Morris dancers

Move over drag queens, the BBC has found a new group to obsess over: LGBT Morris dancers. As X user ‘ripx4nutmeg’ pointed out at the weekend, Britain’s state broadcaster has developed a curious fascination with gender-nonconforming English folk dancers.

On Saturday, the BBC published an article about a ‘queer-inclusive Morris dance group’ in York. Ramshackle Morris was founded by four dancers who wanted to create a more ‘inclusive’ Morris-dancing team, or ‘side’. Hetty Skinner, one of the founders, told the BBC that her aim was to be ‘gender inclusive, queer inclusive, disability inclusive’. Many of the members are ‘nonbinary’ – that is, they ‘identify as’ neither male nor female – and so don’t feel comfortable participating in traditional male or female sides.

Incredibly, Ramshackle Morris was not even the first group of ‘gender-noncomforming’ Morris dancers tracked down by intrepid Beeb reporters. Last month, the BBC website published another article, titled ‘The Morrisance: Morris dancing’s inclusive revival’, which featured two ‘queer’ teams.

To those who may not be as up-to-date with the woke lingo, ‘queer’ nowadays doesn’t refer strictly to gay people. Most often, it refers to those who labour under the misapprehension that they are ‘genderfluid’ etc.

‘When you think of the English tradition of Morris dancing’, that article begins, ‘you might not picture a group of young, gender-nonconforming, drag kings who dress like “chimney sweeps”…’. To be fair, the BBC may have a point here.

Morris side Molly No-Mates is the main subject of the article. It is based in Bristol (where else?) and was formed in response to a local protest against Drag Queen Story Hour. ‘It feels like we’re kind of bringing visible queerness into spaces that don’t always have it that much’, co-founder Scarlett Hutchin explains.

I don’t doubt that there are some licence-fee payers out there who are keen to learn about the recent queering of the Morris-dancing scene. I’m sure all six of them are delighted by the BBC’s generous coverage. But Auntie’s fixation on writing puff pieces about niche identitarian pastimes will strike most people as a little, well, queer.

Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.