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I think there's a great number of Shane takes in the fandom that are based on two fundamentally untrue things: a) that a queer person of color can separate their queerness from their race and b) that a queer person of color who has a good family life/a nice support system will be shielded from the trauma of having to survive in a homophobic and racist society.

The homophobia that a character like Shane experiences will always have racist undertones. His experiences and the pressures he faces regarding masculinity and gender presentation are directly affected by him being an east asian man. Funnily enough, even Rachel Reid's "colorblind" approach to writing her story established this difference in the way both Ilya and Shane are seen by the hockey universe.

There are very few instances of explicit, violent homophobic rhetoric in the Game Changers books. The only ones I can remember right now are the Dallas Kent scenes in Role Model and one deleted scene in RR's official website, where Ilya is hanging out with two russian players in Boston. All of these scenes feature Shane as the primary target of the homophobia, and in two of them the idea of him bottoming during sex is brought up in a derogatory way. Now, I don't know what her intentions were when she wrote this, but even if she didn't mean for these insults to have a racist undertone, they still carry that weight because Shane is canonically an asian man (and the racist treatment of asian men in the west often labels them as "less masculine"). The fact that, out of all the players in the league, the japanese-canadian man is the one being pointed out not just as gay, but as a bottom specifically is racially charged.

So the fact that Shane's feelings about masculinity/gender presentation are canonically more fraught than Ilya's can't be (like it frequently happens in meta) entirely attributed to Shane having internalized homophobia/being a dumb jock who knows nothing outside of hockey. That's one of the reasons why the popular headcanons about Shane "not being part of queer culture" or "being spiritually straight" (whatever the fuck this even means) are so myopic, not only because they don't bring this nuance into consideration, but also (and I don't see this being brought up very often) because the "queer culture" that people refer to is usually just... pop culture references that are mostly hegemonic among white queer people from the United States.

Shane canonically wants queer community and he also wants to advocate for marginalized people in the sport. He straight up says to Ilya that he feels left out when Ilya tells him about going to the Kingfisher and hanging with Troy, Scott and Eric. Turning the Irina Foundation into an inclusive space for queer players was something both he and Ilya agreed on, but people only give Ilya credit for that. He expresses admiration for Fabian's unapologetic queerness (a detail many people LOVE to "forget"/crop out when they bring up that part in TLG). He and Ilya are both happy to join Scott's initiative at the end of The Long Game, but it's like Shane wasn't even present in that scene considering all of the weird "Shane would hate going to Pride" posts.

It's interesting that Ilya is a character who the fandom sees as naturally "belonging" everywhere in this discussion: he is simultaneously the Cool Suave Macho top who drinks, smokes and hangs with the hockey bros while also being the Cunty Queer Icon who discusses Bell Hooks with his one night stands. The white man who tops gets to be automatically welcomed in both the homophobic hockey space and the (mostly white) "queer" environment.

(I won't bring it up how even Ilya's whiteness in fanon is almost always stripped of it's eastern european specificity and he is basically characterized as a dude born and raised in the US and not a queer russian immigrant, because this post is already meandering enough. But that's also important to point out).

Then we have the family stuff: Shane has two loving parents who are good at accomodating his needs, so he is of course entirely protected from the impact of the racist homophobia he endures in the sport he plays since he was a child. Shane's mom works for and sometimes travels with him, so of course he couldn't have been bullied by anyone, anywhere, despite being one of the only asian children not only playing but also excelling in a sport where white people dominate the space. Shane's mom is a competent woman who loves him, so I guess the fact that she is also japanese and therefore probably (certainly) also the target of racism by the other parents/players shouldn't be considered. Shane's dad is sweet and soft spoken and also a hockey player, so I guess this cancels out the pain of the homophobic macho stuff that was definitely being said in all of the locker rooms he grew up in.

The persistent idea of Family Trauma as the Most Important Trauma is everywhere both in canon and fanon for these characters, to the point where people will often interpret Shane's family as much worse than they are in an effort to prove he also has "real problems". And I find that really bizarre, honestly, because why are we treating racism and homophobia in the workplace as not enough? This man spent almost a decade pretending not to love the love of his life because he's afraid of being outed as gay. He bought an entire secret building because he was so scared of being found out. He forced himself to have sex he hated for most of his life! And after he finally admitted to himself that he loved a man and wanted to have a relationship with him, he had to spend years hiding that. Then he got forcibly outed and, just like he predicted, he got publicly smeared as a cheater and his homophobic colleagues made his work environment so unbearable that he had to move away from the team and the city he lived in. He lost most of his friends, he lost part of his salary, he lost his leadership position.

These are all serious things - they are serious issues that affect real life queer people and cause real trauma and emotional devastation. You guys don't need to turn Yuna or David into emotional abusers to prove that Shane has a hard life in canon. The life he lived as a closeted gay asian hockey player is already hard enough.

because rachel reid uses ‘bitchy’ or ‘bitchiness’ as a descriptor of shane’s behaviour in the long game, both by shane himself and ilya. what i find bizarre about it — considering that it is a derogatory gendered term — is that it is always used to imply shane is being unreasonable. shane is tone policing himself, even though his response to this situation (ilya telling him that he’s now close with troy barrett, someone shane knows as outwardly homophobic) is logical, and predicated on ilya’s repeated failure to communicate. ilya replies ‘i might be busy having sex with troy’ and then hangs up. despite his tone, despite what he says, he is only described as speaking ‘tightly,’ rather than ‘bitchily.’

to be clear, ilya and shane are both men, but ilya’s behaviour is never described this way, even when he also acts petty, unkind, or bitchy. as another example:

ilya pokes fun at shane’s diet, even after shane tells him to stop. shane loses his patience and reacts to something ilya started, but shane’s behaviour is what is described as bitchy, not ilya’s. shane is reacting unreasonably.

in the same scene — shane describes himself as an absolute bitch. shane is acting unreasonably. and again:

why is shane described this way? or more specifically — why is shane the only one described this way in the book? ilya is jealous of shane interacting with a reporter in a professional setting and shoots a puck at them from behind glass, something shane describes as humiliating, but reid doesn’t describe this action as bitchiness. ilya antagonises shane, but shane responding is what is considered bitchy.

like i said, we cannot extricate ‘bitch’ from its origin as a gendered pejorative, but we also cannot ignore that it is racialised — reid exclusively uses it to describe the gay asian character (who is also a bottom) responding to antagonism. does that make sense? why are you using this particular language to deride shane’s actions in this way, and why is it always utilised in scenes where ilya is an instigator? not to get heteronormative about it, but this dynamic feels like a reflection of the happy husband / nagging bitch wife dynamic. it is that deep.