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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/07/recasting-masculinity-the-cheerleaders-subverting-austria-gender-stereotypes>
"Dressed in short shorts and tight T-shirts, they bounded on to the gymnasium
floor. After the female roller derby teams had pushed, pounded and smashed into
each other, the men and their pompoms were now on the same court in Vienna,
ready to offer up the exact opposite: a hip-shaking, acrobatic half-time show.
“We wanted to play with the stereotypes,” said Andreas Fleck, one of the
founders of Austria’s Fearleaders, believed to be Europe’s first squad of male
and non-binary cheerleaders. “We have this idea of heroic, strong male players
on the field and on the sidelines these very sexualised female cheerleaders. We
wanted to turn this around.”
Their boundary-pushing quest traces back to 2011 when Vienna became home to its
first roller derby team. Made up mainly of women, their fiercely aggressive,
full-contact playing style challenged the clichéd role of women in sport. Fleck
and others soon wondered if there was a way to push things further.
“We wanted to create this tension between roller derby, this very physical
sport that is mainly done by female players, and these more fragile, funny and
dainty men on the sidelines supporting this team,” he said.
What emerged was the Fearleaders, made up of about 30 members whose shorts,
braces, colourful headbands and shimmying dance moves have become a staple of
Vienna’s roller derby scene and beyond. The group echoes the inclusiveness of
roller derby, in which teams on roller skates use their hips, shoulders and
chests to block a member of the other team from scoring points, and which is
one of the few sports that welcomes trans and non-binary players.
The Fearleaders name is a nod to their courage, Fleck said. “There’s our own
fears of getting into this outfit and exposing yourself to an audience,” said
Fleck. “And then there’s the example we try to provide to others, to erase
their fears so that they say: ‘OK they can do it, why can’t I?’”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
