I know this feels uncomfortable. Ultimately the we all sacrifice our bodies, and that looks different between men and women. We all have much more trouble handling a woman sacrificing her body.
I would love it if you could put the ‘gender war’ goggles down for a minute. The underlying issues that create the cheerleader situation affects people of all genders, race, creed, sexual orientation. I beg you, look at this objectively.
This isn’t about being right or wrong. The only way to lose in this argument is to deny the opportunity of personal growth.
I know you’re smart enough to be a devil’s advocate to your own point.
I know an Olympic qualified skeleton rider. He pays 50,000$ a year to compete in his sport. Just like cheerleaders, male and female dancers, women’s sports teams, and bowlers not enough people want to pay to watch.
As long as they have the freedom to choose otherwise the ethics are very clean, completely fair, and appropriate. These are some of the most empowered women around. They have good alternatives and made a hard choice, like my skeleton rider.
Please, don’t take that away from them.
You can’t fix sexism with more sexism. The only sexism here is what you’re bringing along.
Decrying this as female oppression weakens our credibility when we try to address serious bastions of sexism, like the corporate world, or competitive high school cheer leading responsible for 66% of “catastrophic” sports-related injuries among women in the US. Competitive cheerleading organizations, run predominantly by men, have been more resistant than any other sporting organization to improve safety for their players.
Please, I beg of you. There is enough real sexism and nondiscriminating abuse to fight. Don’t insult these empowered women by casting them in that light.
It weakens our ability to address the real issues.
The real issue that may simply be: Are we truly OK with free market capitalism as a society?
