Okay, that's a fundamentally different situation, I can hardly imagine it. Well, in my memory, I often wanted to dance well enough for this or that woman(*), but not better than this or that man. There was less of a feeling of competition, more of a feeling like "we are the last of our kind", and that can be quite pleasant.
I don’t know what it mean by the last statement. What would you do differently to learn actual following apart from dancing in that role in practicas. Or milongas.
While I have no problem dancing a tanda or two with a man, I do care about whom I am dancing with. I have a strong preference to dance with a female follower. If that dynamic in the dance community changes, I won’t be enthusiastic or regular dancer.
Hmm. My view is different: female leaders are often the most musical on the floor, most visibly in milonga.
There is a huge difference between understanding how a particular lead should feel (let's say the cut of an ocho cortado, for example), and actually being able to follow in a milonga.
Largely true for the female leaders. Some of them can do it, but none I've seen around here. They mostly dance some stylized form of tango nuevo / tango salon mixed. There are some excellent followers who do role switching with other women but they don't do it often. Women leading men rarely works aesthetically. And floor craft is a whole other issue.
I find them very musical but too static. I haven't lived the life of a female leader, so I cannot say why it is so, but when I'm dancing behind a female leader, I know that 4-5 metres of space will open up in front of them while I'm progressively more squeezed behind them. At least how I was taught, you move at once into open space – you do not dawdle, because it hurts everybody behind you. For female leaders, that seems to get lost somewhere along the line. It might simply be because women are on average shorter than men, and so can't see whether there's space to move into.
While female leaders could be as good or as bad as male leaders, they often are pretty bad at keeping the ronda. They are "Everything Everywhere All at Once" so to speak...
<sarcasm>I'm surprised they're let out behind the wheel of a car on the public highway, let alone as a truck driver, or ship's captain, or flying an aircraft, or space travel. Should know their place rather than multi-tasking.</sarcasm>
I agree that floorcraft tends to be the biggest weakness, but then again in London it's true of many male leaders too, albeit for different reasons.
I haven't seen any sign of the latter, but certainly women here are realising they don't have to sit around waiting for men, they can dance with each other.
What you have learned and can apply, you also apply, at least if you have advantages from it, I think that's quite normal. Even men who have learned to follow will eventually use it to impress their partner.
How the turn tables!