#****& to be clear i don't mean like. actively bigoted backlash. i mean coming from other fans of drag/music/pop culture

[himbeaux-on-ice]

(You don't have to respond to this) I just wanted to say I agree 100% with you. I think fans of any sport, fans of tv/movie actors & actresses, and any other celebrity fall into this trap of believing that every famous person is our friend. Like they tend not to care about unless it for publicity and even if they do actually care about important issues, they cant or wont speak up due to the chance of being outcasted. And on the fans side we do get way to invasive into celebrity private lives

I think there are plenty of famous people who do a lot of good work for marginalized communities and do show up as allies in meaningful, genuine ways, and we shouldn’t assume that all shows of activism are purely performative! But in general I agree with you here.

We need to remember that the NHL in particular is a notably conservative-cultured sports league in just about all aspects (including conservative as in “unwilling to try new things” lol). Just as importantly we need to remember that, as with any celebrity, the versions of these players we are talking about and being fans about are not real. They are by and large characters that are crafted (with varying degrees of finesse lol) by PR teams and managers and media, and beneath all that is a flawed human person who is capable of all the same mistakes and harms as any of us. They are fallible.

In engaging with them as characters, we are going to project a lot of our own values and beliefs into the blank spots of what we don’t know about them, which is a natural human thing to do. And that isn’t inherently harmful. I think we all want to believe that most people hold the same moral codes as we do until proven otherwise. But especially in a league where many players lean conservative, it’s important not to conflate that projection with somehow “knowing” that they’re “one of the good ones” without them every actually making that clear. You are setting yourself up for heartbreak that way.

I think it’s okay to be an enthusiastic fan of players as long as you on some level recognize the difference between the persona and the person. It’s similar to how a lot of RPF fandom operates on the premise of like, discussing a slightly alternate universe where we politely remove the players wives and families (who are typically not celebrities or public figures and thus did not consent to be involved in these narratives) from the picture in order to write about romances between the public characters of the players, with the implicit understanding that most of do not us believe what we’re writing is real in a conspiracy theory sense. The particular type of fandom we do here is a peculiar kind of multi-layered thing, where we both focus primarily in our works and discussions on those fictionalized personas, while also trying to hold the real people behind them to account to improve the fucked-up culture of this sport. Those two things have to be held in tension, with nuance and a constant need to make judgement calls.

Like, a good example of this two-layers fandom approach is how when I talk about/cheer on Ovi, I’m talking about the character that he is in hockey culture and the hockey narrative and in fanon, not the actual man who is married with children and gets chummy with dictators. I don’t actually think that Ovechkin and Bäckström are in love or that he’s even a person I would get along with or find tolerable in real life. I’m engaging with a character. I engage with pretty much all other NHL-ers the same.

With Ovi and the whole Putin+Trump thing, I don’t find it as necessary for me to personally address or consider as, say, Jamie Benn’s transphobia, because I don’t think the fact of whether I personally (via absolutely no financial support at all) enjoy the persona of a famous Russian hockey player is anywhere NEAR an influential factor in the power those dictators hold. We’re at like six degrees of separation at that point. My five posts a week from watching a pirated Caps stream are such a drop in the bucket in Ovi’s influence and Putin’s that it doesn’t even matter at all whether I do it or not. Putin will continue to be a dictator regardless of whether or not I post gifsets of this hockey player.

But I also recognize that there are times and situations when dealing just with the fictionalization of a player isn’t enough, when it is necessary to step back and make commentary and critique about the flawed human person underneath because they are in a position of visibility and power, and their actions have great influence.

Setting that Ovi example aside, I think there’s an important, nuanced difference when it comes to players who are unapologetically and unreformedly racist, homophobic, transphobic, violent, etc. Because those players are harming people, directly. I’m not talking about players who just support awful politicians, I’m talking about those who explicitly express harmful, bigoted personal opinions from their own platforms or enact direct harm on others personally. When they do this, they are making people less safe, they are making this sport less safe for fans and for other athletes. This cannot be separated from the fame and praise given to their fictionalized personas, because continuing to laud and support and cheer for them directly enables their ability to be in a position of power and influence where they can personally harm people, with actions or with words.

So again, it is important to understand that the version of your favourite player you engage with in the act of most fandom is not a real person, but a character. It is also important to make principled judgement calls, based on your own moral code, as to when is the point at which you can no longer justify promoting and/or financially supporting that character because it means feeding into the influence and ability to commit harms of the real person behind it all. You need to know where the lines between it all are, and where you personally draw a line in the sand you won’t cross. Making the hockey community safer and more welcoming should always be your first priority, because getting to not prioritize that and instead “focus on just having fun” is a privilege only afforded to those who are already safe here.

Support those figures in the league and the sport who choose to use their massively influential platform in this league to go to bat for marginalized people, because you’re right, there is a risk of backlash that comes with that choice, and we (as in the broader many-faceted community of hockey fans) should try to positively reward and reinforce them taking that risk if we want to see more of it! It’s an important part of making this sport something that everyone (except bigots and abusers) can be a part of.

But yeah, it isn’t healthy to pretend that you have a knowing personal relationship with these famous people, or to put responsibility/trust for your emotional well-being into their hands when they don’t even know they’ve been given it. Parasocial relationships like that can really fuck you up if you get sucked too deep into them. Understand that you don’t know these people, and be prepared in advance to make some difficult choices if you don’t like it when they show you who they really are.

(And feel free to grieve privately about the outlet or fun thing or favourite character you lose if you decide you cannot support them anymore. That feeling of betrayal is real for you, and it is okay to feel it and work through it as long as you understand that it might not always be appropriate to focus on doing so publicly (an example of it being inappropriate to focus publicly on your feelings would be a white fan lamenting how sad it is for you personally that your fav turned out to be racist).)

Take care, anon. 💜