It’s football season, male NFL cheerleaders are raising eyebrows. This isn’t new — men have been on NFL sidelines since 2018. And male cheerleaders themselves are nothing new. In fact, cheerleading began as a male sport, its chants derived from military cadences. Four U.S. presidents — George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower — were all cheerleaders. Women only stepped into the role when men were drafted into World War II. After the war, Lawrence Herkimer — known as “Mr. Cheerleader” — created the famous herkie jump, patented the pom-pom, and built the first large-scale cheer camps. So why the uproar now? It seems less about cheerleading and more about cultural spillover. The backlash looks like a reflex to the trans debate, where the public has grown wary of men in traditionally female spaces. But these boys don’t deserve that. They aren’t pretending to be women or demanding validation. The truth is, the trans issue has so poisoned the conversation that the movement didn’t just hurt women — it hurt these boys too. The post Male cheerleaders appeared first on Redacted.