Pom-poms for all Austria's first male and non-binary cheerleaders subvert gender stereotypes

Dressed in short shorts and tight T-shirts, they bounded onto the gymnasium floor. After the female roller derby teams had pushed, pounded and smashed into each other, the men and their pom-poms were now on the same court in Vienna, ready to offer up the exact opposite: a hip-shaking, acrobatic-laced half-time show.

- Ashifa Kassam

"We wanted to play with the stereotypes," said Andreas Fleck, one of the founders of Austria's Fearleaders, believed to be Europe's first squad of male and non-binary cheerleaders.

"We have this idea of heroic, strong male players on the field and on the sidelines these very sexualised female cheerleaders. We wanted to turn this around," he said. Their boundary-pushing quest traces back to 2011 when Vienna became home to its first roller derby team.

Made up mainly of women, their fiercely aggressive, full-contact playing style challenged the long-cliched role of women in sport.

Fleck and others soon wondered if there was a way to push things further. "We wanted to create this tension between roller derby – this very physical sport that is mainly done by female players – and these more fragile, funny and dainty men on the sidelines supporting this team," he said.