Posted on 01/29/2019 5:12:06 AM PST by Kaslin
If I were to tell you that a growing group of killjoys wants to ban NFL cheerleading, would you guess that this group is on the political left or right?
Must be the right, right? They're the religious ones with all the sexual hang-ups.
Wrong.
They're on the left.
And what's their problem with cheerleading?
I'll let them speak for themselves.
In The Boston Globe, Margery Eagan, Globe columnist and co-host of NPR's "Boston Public Radio," wrote a column titled "It's time to say goodbye to the NFL cheerleaders." She described NFL cheerleading as "creepy and demeaning."
USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour came to the same conclusion: "The underlying premise of NFL cheerleaders is degrading. ... NFL cheerleaders need to go."
Chicago Tribune sports reporter Shannon Ryan wrote, "The league has shown only that it regards cheerleaders as pieces of sideline eye candy." To make her point, she asked, "why aren't there scantily dressed male cheerleaders and dance teams?"
Only the well-educated could ask such a stupid question -- because only the highly educated deny that, with few exceptions, the only people who would like to see scantily dressed male cheerleaders are gay men.
In USA Today, Yale Divinity School Director of Communications Tom Krattenmaker added a theological voice to the anti-cheerleader chorus. "It's time," he intoned, "to call this out for what it is: demeaning to women and an anachronism that ought to be beneath the male fans to whom this titillating eye candy is served." This sentence, and his whole piece, is what goes for deep thought on the left today. He doesn't explain how being an NFL cheerleader is "demeaning." He simply declares it so. Did he bother to interview any cheerleaders? I did, and the consensus among cheerleaders is that it is one of their greatest life experiences.
Jacie Scott, a black woman who retired from being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader in 2016, wrote in response to Nancy Armour: "I spent four years as a cheerleader in the NFL, and the experiences that each year brought helped shape me into the woman I am today. ... I saw countries I never imagined seeing. I made a positive impact in lives, young and old, and I did it all with 30-something incredible women. I wouldn't trade my time as a cheerleader for anything."
What is demeaning to cheerleaders is not cheerleading but people like Tom Krattenmaker, Shannon Ryan, Margery Eagan and Nancy Armour who have the conceit -- and meanness -- to label these women demeaned.
I interviewed a former Atlanta Falcons cheerleader, Nina Ahlin (now Noa Hami), on my radio show. When she entered my studio, I was struck by how attractive she was 20 years after retiring from cheerleading, and by her modest dress. Regarding her dress, she explained that soon after retiring as a cheerleader, she met an Orthodox Jewish man, fell in love, converted to Orthodox Judaism and married.
Apparently, her religious husband, a successful businessman, didn't find this woman's cheerleading background "demeaning." On the contrary, like the vast majority of men -- religious or secular -- he was delighted to be dating and ultimately marrying an NFL cheerleader. Good thing he didn't go to Yale Divinity School.
It was clear that even now, as an Orthodox Jew who dresses in the long skirts and long sleeves, she doesn't find cheerleading demeaning: She sent me a photo of herself from her cheerleader days.
As she wrote to me: "I can't imagine my life without having the experience I did as an NFL cheerleader. It was literally life changing for me. The friendships I made, the places we were able to go and the people we were able to meet can't be duplicated. ... The thought of that being taken away from young girls who dream of one day becoming a pro cheerleader scares me!"
Why do leftists have contempt for cheerleading and cheerleaders (who, after all, choose to be cheerleaders -- and for virtually no pay)?
A Vanity Fair piece on cheerleaders gave the game away: "The league profits from selling a retrograde notion of masculinity -- big, strong men, unafraid to take a hit, surrounded by enthusiastic, scantily clad women."
Or as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article titled "Pro cheerleading 'should be abolished'" reported, former professional basketball player Mariah Burton Nelson said, "Cheerleading implies that women's proper role is to support men, smile at men and fulfill the sexual fantasies of males."
The left has contempt for masculinity and the male sexual nature that is part of it. The new emasculated man will not look at sexy women. And the new defeminized woman will not want to "support men," let alone appear sexy for them.
The left claims to be pro-choice. But it demands the abolition of NFL (and NBA) cheerleading without giving women a choice to be cheerleaders -- just as it never gave Miss America participants a choice when it abolished the Miss America swimsuit competition. Leftists believe they are morally superior people and, therefore, have the right to deprive anyone -- man or woman -- from choosing what the left disdains. The only woman's choice the left cares about is the choice to extinguish nascent human life.
Even if you have no interest in football or cheerleading, this should be your issue. We have to tell the left here, as in virtually every other area of life, and in the most forceful terms possible: Just leave us alone. Let us live our lives with our small joys. And grow up -- men like looking at women, and women like being looked at.
A world with NFL cheerleaders is far preferable to the world the left wants to create: a dystopia in which men and women are interchangeable.
Lucky you. :)
Yup
Why watch folks getting all sweaty for a few hours?
What useful thing does it accomplish?
Are these same feminists leftists wailing about Superbowl half time shows like we saw the Satanists do a couple of years ago; Madonna and that black gal with the drone show, or the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction of years ago?
If so, I missed it.
If they want to impress me, they should concentrate their attacks on the feminists who use their sexuality in the ways they object to.
Beginning in high school, the prettiest and most athletic girls are elected to dance and cheer in front of the public in somewhat immodest attire. Where do you start with discouraging this behavior if that’s what your goal is? I was raised in a large family; four boys and four girls and my sisters went to great efforts to look as attractive as they could before each school day and got sent back to fix anything my folks deemed inappropriate.
Banning the cheer leaders from sports is pure silliness. One might insist on a bit more modesty in the attire, but short of a burka, beautiful girls are easy on the eyes of most men regardless.
It is normal for females to want to be noticed by males, and to go to great pains to make it happen.
“Half time at division three basketball games turned into a mixture of Urban hip hop and a muffin top parade.”
Last college game I saw (football) had a few rather portly majorettes waddling out there with the band. There’s inclusion for you! It really gets trashy with the high school drill team. Looks like a tribal fertility dance. They should be ashamed.
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Football should be played in four ten-minute quarters, and the clock should stop every time the whistle blows. This idiocy where the clock runs while the ball is not in play is a ridiculous feature that football shares with soccer.
I dated two different cheerleaders. At our school though, the real babes were on the drill team. The cheerleaders were more into gymnastics.
They're better than you, they're smarter than you, they know exactly, to the last detail, what's good for you. If you don't swallow it willingly, they'll shove it down your throat at the point of a bayonet.
The only answer, ultimately, is armed resistance.
And that's why they're so desperate to ban guns.
Well I lived in England for many years and if anything, the women there have been going totally nuts over male strppers for decades now and it's pervasive. It's much more widespread than you think.
Now you've just brought up yet another fetish of some people...
Put the NFL cheerleaders in burkas, that should satisfy the left.
The gay guys want to be the new cheer queens.
It’s almost enough to make a fella kill himself!
I came here for the pics and found practically none...
...man, Free Republic has really gone down the tubes lately.
Y’all might as well include #MeToo on this thread.
“Please. They are fully clothed IN ADDITION to having monstrous equipment which makes them like big robots. Can’t even see their faces to see if they’re good looking.”
I remember the reaction of my young sister in law many years ago, when she accompanied Mrs. BCC and myself to a motorcycle race I was participating in. She was enjoying the eyeful of athletic male gluteus maximi in tight fitting race britches. And we racers where not at all interested in looking good for the girls, we were there to race.
The first time I heard Rush's "Undeniable Truths of Life #24" it was stated as "Feminism was established to help ugly women get dates" or something very close to that.
Am I wrong?
LOL. Fortunately it’s not my fetish
I am not sure they actually wanted dates, just not other women to have them!
Reminds me of science fiction books I read as a kid. A future where both men and women dress the exact same in a unisex and unsexy manner. This seems to be what the Left is driving for. I think Star Trek went in that direction but the women could still be quite sexy nonetheless.
You too young to remember the days of Mao?
Look at pictures of Maoist China - they were not called the “Blue Ants” back then for nothing!
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