Let’s get the obvious objections out of the way. Cheerleading involves the following egregiously offensive activities: - Girls cheering for (mostly) boys - Girls wearing short skirts that submit them to the male gaze - Girls in said short skirts in front of large audiences - Girls wearing outfits that are gender normative I mean that’s really it, right? I realize those are big categories, encompassing all sorts of entrenched gender dynamics that, upon analysis,…

There is a certain point in your 20s when you become an adult, if you haven’t done so already. Not turning 21, not graduating from school. Some event--an arrest, a disaster, a revelation, getting fired, getting humbled, getting an abortion, or some other legitimate voyage out of your well-traveled comfort zone. Nobody actually told me that when I started my 20s, and I didn’t know it was coming until years after it had passed and…