Well it is actually two questions.   First to mtf's how badly did you want to be a cheerleader?   Were you on the football team, but sighed and wished to be a cheerleader waving those pom-poms around and chanting 'goooooo TEAM!'   Thank goodness we don't have cheerleaders over here.   My dysphoria would have been off-the scale!

FTMs, Were you a cheerleader?   Did you sigh and think why can't I be playing football instead of wearing these goofy outfits?   

I stole a netball skirt from the girls' changing rooms.   It was short, red and pleated and I wore it in my bedroom until my mother found it.

Some people here are probably thinking.  'Jocks'? 'Cheerleaders?'  ' I went to High School in the 90s and the noughties not the 50s.   Somebody has watched Grease too many times.  lol'

True story:

Me: Coach (female lady):  I want to play "lacrosse." In my HS there was no Lacrosse boys team
Coach: OK but you have to wear the girl's uniform
Me: OK
Coach: OK then, see you Saturday

-after many training session the girls and the coach thought I was the cat meow. yet i was never allow to play in any official games.

Corollary: The Captain of the Cheerleaders was my girlfriend !!!

No.

I find cheerleading to be one of the most horrifically sexist and misogynist relics of this country's school systems.

Quote from: Happy Girl! on November 25, 2011, 05:40:42 PM
FTMs, Were you a cheerleader?   Did you sigh and think why can't I be playing football instead of wearing these goofy outfits?

No. One year for Halloween (in middle school) I went as "the opposite of me" which entailed me borrowing the gym teacher's old uniform from when she was little, putting on makeup, wearing super flashy dangle earrings, and styling my hair like in a hairspray commercial. I did all of that for shock value because I really never showed any skin and never gave any thoughts to my appearance. I was generally a rather disheveled person who was 'mistaken' for a boy even though I had hair down to my waist.
I have always had a low opinion of cheerleading as an activity and people who subscribe to the image and mindset associated with it even if they're not actually cheerleaders(Yup, I'm prejudiced). I did a lot of things to try to please my parents and society. I sacrificed a lot of myself and my own well-being just to take the lead role in acting as a character I'm not for the sake of the world (Heck, most if not all of us here have done that), but there were limits to what I could do. Donning a skimpy outfit and thrusting my chest at a crowd while grinning was just something that I could not do.

As to the football thing, I hate sports. Being a guy doesn't make me a beer-drinking, football-watching stereotype. That was a bit of an obstacle when I came out. My parents knew that I tend to be almost Vulcan in how well I think things through logically before taking any action, but when I told them (though in a much more eloquent way) that I wanted to be the boy I really am, they assumed at first that I was simply a girl who desired that stereotypical male image. How could they not, when that's what society has taught them; that even though 'real' men can be whoever and whatever they are, a 'trans' man just wants to be that social image.

I cook. I sew. I clean. I read. I write. I draw. I paint pictures of bunnies. I have a fluffy white lapdog. I enjoy poetry and flower arranging. I am attached to a vagina, but I have more balls than any stereotypical football jock I've ever met. Likes and dislikes and preferred activities are not what makes a gender. Rather, society has generalized both genders and uses those generalizations to force everyone into a cookie-cutter. Society likes little boxes made of ticky tacky. History wants us to all be just the same.

I know that that's not what you meant by the question. I know it was just a harmless, innocent little query, and I'm sorry for the rant. I sincerely apologize for that. I get frustrated when other transpeople say something that reflects the social stereotypes. I shouldn't. Heck, I'm guilty of it too! But, ugh, I've just had to explain that point so many times to cisgender people recently that I still get riled up over it. I'll delete this post if you would like me too.  Eep.

I'm not athletically talented by any stretch of the imagination, so it's just as well I never had a desire for either. Considering the kinds of injuries they both risk, it's another reason for me to be against them for myself, but I'm not opposed to anyone taking the risk voluntarily.

I was more of a nerd, so I got paid to tutor the cheerleaders.  Football was never my thing, but I wouldn't have minded getting back into soccer.

Quote from: Happy Girl! on November 25, 2011, 05:40:42 PM
First to mtf's how badly did you want to be a cheerleader?   Were you on the football team, but sighed and wished to be a cheerleader waving those pom-poms around and chanting 'goooooo TEAM!

Yes i always wanted to be a cheerleader!  very badly but yeah uh no not happening in this life!  I wasnt on the football team but in the HS band so i guess i did sit on the bleachers wanting to be down there waving the pom poms in the cute skirts!

Football never appealed to me. I had fun with ballet and soccer, even though I was often the only boy. Cheerleading is even worse, I don't really like showing a lot of skin. Swimming was always awkward.

I'm kinda femme-y anyway, although I hate cheerleading.
Though I know two girls who want to play high school football and my ex-boyfriend wanted to be a cheerleader. In both instances they were all pushed away for sexist reasons.

as a rule, no.

I did like powder puff tho cause ...what an excuse to tackle the girls.

When I was a kid I went to the UK as a student ambassador. At one of the schools I went to I got cornered by a gaggle of girls who wanted me to teach them cheers. I said "what?" and they said cheerleading cheers teach us cheerleading! Lol I knew no cheers and just could not convince them that I knew no cheers. I've never even met a cheerleader, in any grade or at any age.

I have been to football games, though. Saw cheerleaders there.

Really sorry to hear you bumped into some idiot low lives, Felix. Hopefully that was the low point of your stay.

Like others, I didn't really fancy being a cheer leader, as such. Though my only understanding of it is from stereotypes. Some are, no doubt, really smart.

Since I'm in the UK and went to an all boys boarding school, my experiences are very limited.

But I'm sure most can understand the appearance of the clothes.

Cheerleading is very demanding physically.   It requires strength, stamina, flexibility and suppleness.   It is a form of sexism to classify them as bimbos.    I was talking about this with my sister today and she said that she would have loved to try cheerleading.


It wouldn't surprise me if there were cheerleaders here now.   We have adopted the Prom with its stretch limousine, and the concept of 'sweet 16'.

Cheerleading does seem to be a kind of uniquely American deal, pretty much confined to the big two, football and basketball, seems to have started in 1898 at the University of Minnesota by a student, Johnny Campbell.  Female cheerleaders start in the 1920s, also on the college level.    So it's pretty much a 20th Century American deal too.  When it comes to large people in large groups doing stupid stuff, we're number one!  U.S.A.U.S.A.  But the Brits sing to their soccer teams, so the idea is the same, the level of formality is the only thing that changes.

And by 'be a cheerleader' do you mean getting out there and cheering my football team on to victory by using such clever tactics as chanting "We've got spirit yes we do, we've got spirit, how 'bout you?" while point to the other side taunting them into letting their team down?  That kind of stuff?  Always seemed stupid to me.  Football is pretty distant from the crowd, even at the Pro level and on the field a lot of that is just a noise wash anyway.  Basketball, yeah, that rocks.  I've been in small town HS gyms, packed with people that were just at an elevated state of being while the game was on.  Same too with the big college teams/games.  It gets really loud at those places and the cheering becomes far more a part of the game.

So yeah, I bet being a cheerleader for K or K State in the big home game is a hoot.  You do get to go to all the games, and for the big time college teams that's some nice travel perks. 

Or do you mean 'be a cheerleader' in the sense that that's what I do on Friday nights, but I'm also student body president, head of the yearbook committee, homecoming/prom queen, National Merit Scholar and possibly one of the most popular girls that has ever lived? 

What we need is one of the artistic types to design cheerleader outfits for the Roman Games.  That would be hot.

I never wanted to be a cheerleader and I absolutely despised participating in the "rough and tumble" sports. I think I would have enjoyed gymnastics, but it wasn't in the Phys Ed curriculum for the boys and therefore denied to me. I thought about taking the music route, but there was a strong sense of "music is for girls and sissies" among my schoolmates, and I was still trying miserably to be a boy back them. That's one thing I would do differently if I had a chance to do it over.

My neighbour's son has a female P.E. teacher!      Unthinkable in my day.

I didn't know that the cheerleaders were supposed to diss the other team.   I thought that they just supported their own side.

Americans behave so much better than British people at sports events.   Over here we have racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-catholic, anti-protestant, anti-women chanting,and the atmosphere at football grounds is often ugly and menacing.

Americans behave so much better than British people at sports events.

For reasons I don't understand - so someone Brit please enlighten me - the British soccer fans have set the standard as far as bad behavior at sporting events goes.  Really, they make Philly look OK.  And Philly has a jail and courtroom right there at the stadium to process all the people arrested at those games.  The Brits gave the world 'soccer hooligans'. 

^my seats at the old "Vet" exited past the jail. Yes, that was like a preschool class compared to good old fashioned Euro soccer riots.

If I could go back in time 20 years as a girl, I would do all that stuff that Tekla mentioned prior.