GNOME PENDANT CONNOISSEUR

Apologies for the late response, my computer is at war (the repair shop) and I miss asks on Tumblr mobile all the time because it sucks objectively as an app.

As a warning, you are about to hear about almost every Shane Hollander gender thought that I have ever had. I am so sorry.

ANYWAY! First of all something you have to understand is that we ALL like to have our gender affirmed. Cis women and trans women alike, like to feel feminine and womanly and be told so. Cis men and trans men alike, like to feel masculine and have that validated in the court of public opinion. The resulting dysphoria from not feeling affirmed in your gender may not be as all-encompassing for cis people, because they have the societally-approved backup affirmation of being cis, but it does still happen. Women will talk about feeling 'frumpy' or even 'mannish' if they're not feeling comfortable with their gender expression. I, myself, feel very uncomfortable if I am performing my femininity in a way that does not mesh well with my internalized view of myself. I vastly prefer A-line dresses, knee-length skirts, knit leggings and oversized sweatshirts above basically ALL other fashion choices. When I wear things that are tighter or shorter or not cut the way I like, I feel like I am performing a version of femininity that does not fit me. These feelings are a similar, although lesser, version of what trans people refer to as gender dysphoria.

It is worth mentioning that this is a HUGE oversimplification of some very intricate concepts, so keep that in mind, but also if I contextualized everything I WOULD actually just be writing a dissertation.

Now back to Shane. My thoughts on him are two-fold. First of all, I am currently writing a continuation of Wild Geese, in which Shane is a trans man. I've been thinking about his gender and how he would view his own masculinity A LOT. In Wild Geese, Shane and Ilya only hook up, so endearments don't come into it much. Ilya calls Shane 'baby' once or twice which, to be clear, is something Ilya does to a lot of his hookups--but Shane likes it. The fic is Ilya POV but I think I made it clear that Shane likes it because he pulls some of Ilya's hair out afterwards, lmao.

The version of Shane that exists in Wild Geese sees himself as a gay man primarily, which is as intertwined with his identity as a trans man as you can imagine, but you would sooner hear him identify himself as a gay man than as a trans man, although both elements of his identity are important to him. To this end, there are some very specific things that are gender affirming to him: his partners calling his anatomy his cock or his dick, most importantly. He's had partners who CANNOT seem to keep that terminology in their mouths. It bothers him. It's also gender-affirming for WG!Shane to only be penetrated via anal sex. Bottoming makes him feel masculine. Topping, with a strap or otherwise, feels performative to him. He feels most at home in his body when he is having sex with a man who sees him as a man and is taking pleasure in his body as a man. It's gender-affirming and, because of that, it helps him to get off. It turns him on.

Now, why am I saying all of this? Well like I said, I think about trans Shane basically all the time lately. But canon Shane has some of the same struggles, and the struggles of canon Shane, of course, helped inform my portrayal of Shane in WG.

Shane has been disenfranchised repeatedly from his own masculinity by homophobic and racist elements within his professional life. He's coping with an absolute hurricane of internalized homophobia at any given time. He has fully compartmentalized 'Shane Hollander, hockey player, Yuna and David's son' and 'Shane Hollander, sexually active gay man who enjoys bottoming and submitting, Ilya Rozanov's...something' into two FULLY separate parts of his brain. And that does damage! No matter what he is doing, there is always some part of his brain yelling YOU ARE A FRAUD and because his sexuality and his masculinity are so tied up in each other, there is probably a dysphoric element to how that makes him feel. When he is with his parents or his team, he over-analyzes his every move to make sure that he is BEING A DUDE the right way. Because he likes being a dude and he so so badly wants to be seen as one. But in the back of his head is forever the knowledge that he is gay and he had Ilya Rozanov inside him X number of days ago and he can never let ANYONE EVER know about that. Even though, in a perfect world, people would know. They would know that he's SO GOOD at being Ilya's. They would KNOW that he is the best fucking hole that Ilya Rozanov has ever been inside. In a perfect world Shane Hollander would only ever have to think about playing hockey and riding dick and people would know that he is the BEST at both those things.

Anyway. I'm getting away from myself again.

Coming out as gay and finally putting a name to his thing with Ilya does a lot to affirm Shane's sense of himself and his own masculinity. He can now talk about these things to someone, even if it's only his boyfriend--that's literally 100% more people than he could talk to about it this time last year. And he also has Rose! Rose, who would gladly and immediately start calling Shane Your Highness if that's what he needed to feel comfortable in his own skin. The occasional tipsy FaceTime call about how badly Shane misses his boyfriend's dick is literally just what friends are FOR.

Finally, to answer your question (and I am SORRY for ranting so much about things you did not ask) Shane and Ilya know that it is gender-affirming for Shane to call Ilya baby because it helps him to A. Reaffirm their relationship to himself. It is an affirmation in the truest sense of the term. It's something Shane can say out loud and make it real. Ilya Rozanov is his. HIS baby. It also helps him to B. Marry the part of him that is a gay man and the part of him that is a Dude In A Locker Room. Because as I mentioned in the post, Shane grew up hearing boys in the locker room call their girlfriend Babe and Baby. And he LIKED that. It sounded so sweet and also, like, cool? And jocky? A confluence of romance and jock culture that really appealed to him. Much like growing up and realizing that he wanted to kiss a man on the mouth, Shane grew up and realized that he would someday like to have someone that he called baby. And for previously mentioned kissing men reasons, that person would HAVE to be a man.

It helps him feel intune with his favorite aspects of his own masculinity. His strength, his passion, his protectiveness over the people he cares about and his ability to provide. And he gets to show it to Ilya, who he feels the most himself around. It's a short one-syllable word that means, in a way, "I am a man and you ARE my man and because I love you I get to call you baby. Because that's what men call their partners."

Race absolutely matters. Racism absolutely exists. But different racial groups are stereotyped in different ways, and those stereotypes can produce completely different social expectations.

For example, I’ve seen people criticize Rachel and Jacob for joking about Hudson being unintelligent because he’s a person of color. If Hudson were Black, I would understand that criticism more, because there is a long history of anti-Black stereotypes portraying Black people as unintelligent. But Hudson is Asian. Asian men are stereotyped in almost the opposite way. They’re often assumed to be intelligent, studious, and academically successful. The stereotype is still racist, but it’s a different stereotype. It doesn’t suddenly become an anti-Asian stereotype just because we’ve replaced “Asian” with the broader category of “POC.”

The same thing happens constantly in fanfiction with Shane.

A lot of writers portray Shane as being afraid to fight because he knows he’ll be judged more harshly than white players. I understand where that idea is coming from, but as a black person I’ve never found it particularly convincing.

If Shane were black, that analysis would make more sense to me. Black men are often stereotyped as aggressive, which means behavior that is considered acceptable from white athletes is often interpreted differently when black ones do it.

But asian men occupy a very different place in the racial imagination. They’re frequently stereotyped as passive, non-threatening, weak, nerdy, emasculated, etc. If racial stereotypes were influencing Shane’s approach to hockey, I could just as easily imagine the opposite dynamic: feeling pressure to prove he’s aggressive enough to belong. Maybe he’s fighting TOO much.

But that doesn’t make sense for Shane. He’s the league’s golden boy. He’s polite, media-friendly, and heavily inspired by Sidney Crosby. He’s a superstar. Fighting is often delegated to players lower on the depth chart whose role is specifically to provide physicality. Star players generally aren’t expected to be enforcers. Teams usually want their elite talent scoring goals, not sitting in the penalty box after dropping the gloves.

So Shane not fighting much doesn’t strike me as evidence of racial pressure. It strikes me as evidence that he’s Shane Hollander.

Crosby is a useful comparison here. For years, people mocked him for not being physical enough (and for talking to the refs too much). They questioned his toughness and masculinity. They called him “Crybaby Crosby” or “Cindy Crosby.” Fans edited photos of him in dresses or makeup. The criticism wasn’t really about hockey. The joke was that he wasn’t a “real man.”

And that’s a white player.

Imagine how much worse those conversations could become if the player in question were Asian.

That’s the kind of racial dynamic I could actually see affecting Shane, not him worrying about people thinking he’s too aggressive, but people questioning whether aggressive ENOUGH.

There’s a good chance that if Shane fought exactly like many white players, he probably still wouldn’t be viewed as tough enough. Meanwhile, if a Black player fought exactly like those same white players, he might be interpreted as more aggressive.

People often criticize Rachel for not doing much racial analysis in the books. But sometimes fandom fills that gap with racial analysis that feels disconnected from both hockey culture and the specific stereotypes that affect different racial groups.

Not every POC experience is interchangeable.

A stereotype that affects Black athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Asian athletes. A stereotype that affects Latino athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Indigenous athletes.

If we’re going to talk about race- and we should- we have to talk about the actual racial dynamics at play, not just substitute “person of color” for a more specific analysis.