yes i live like this

If we’re asking ourselves what we can reasonably expect Shane to know the first time he hooks up with Ilya, we have to put ourselves in his position: a 19 year old boy who’s fresh from Canadian junior hockey leagues in 2010.

I legitimately don’t think someone in Shane’s position would reasonably know about the queer experience in Russia.

First off, it’s 2010. I’m thinking back to over a decade ago, so I may be misremembering this, but I don’t recall there being a very big focus on the Russian queer experience in the news back then. Like. In 2010, gay marriage is still illegal in many parts of America. It’s been legal for less than a decade in Canada. The news was much less inclined to put a spotlight on queer struggles and was certainly much less inclined to portray queer people in a sympathetic light. I don’t personally recall Russian queer rights entering the global conversation until 2014, because they only made it illegal to promote LGBTQ+ rights a year or so before the Sochi Olympics. I don’t think you can reasonably expect most Canadian teenagers to be educated on the topic back then. It’s just not in their realm of experience.

I especially don’t think you could expect a boy from the Canadian junior hockey league to know it. Because, speaking broadly, boys who participate in Canadian junior hockey—especially at a high level—tend to be very undereducated.

Please do not misunderstand me: I am not saying “hur dur boy hockey players are stupid.” They are not stupid.

They are exploited.

That is different.

So, I just started reading We Breed Lions, and I’m already going to start promoting it because it’s so far it’s been phenomenal.

Right at the start of the book, there’s a really fantastic breakdown of how this system exploits young boys to their detriment. The junior hockey league has its own draft. Teams draft promising young players, who often leave home to live with billet families, leaving them with their only structure being their team. They join for-profit teams, who are promoting them as young celebrities and making enormous amounts of money off them. It is frankly weird to think about, because America doesn’t have any kind of corollary system that I can think of where a children’s league is promoted like they’re pro-level teams, but apparently in Canada they’re very profitable enterprises. Top junior hockey competitions are broadcast nationwide. The teams receive sponsorships from major corporations. The absolute best players gain celebrity followings.

All of the boys playing on the team are being paid below minimum wage, because they are “student athletes.”

It is industry standard to have them be professionals in all but name. These athletes regularly miss school and assignments to accommodate the demands of their hockey schedule. Teachers regularly look the other way and just let them fall behind so as to not interrupt their participation on the team. The book describes one student who was still playing despite pulling a 16% average in math class. There’s another student who got suspended for one (1) game because he skipped school for 30 days straight.

Recently, a video of Macklin Celebrini went viral because he was playing a game of Heads Up, where someone holds a card to their head with the name of a famous historical figure on it, and you have to describe that figure to them so they can guess it. Celebrini had to keep skipping basic prompts like “Henry VIII,” “Julie Andrews,” “Dick Van Dyke,” “Charles Darwin,” and “George Orwell” because he had no goddamn clue who any of them are. The Canadian junior hockey league for the most part does not produce well-educated people, especially if they are performing at a high level, because those are the players who have the most demands on their time.

These educational failings are not the fault of the 16 year old boys who have been taken from their homes and drop kicked into a hockey town where they’re flooded with the message of “you are SO SO special for your hockey, just focus on your hockey, YES you need to miss class again but do not worry king!! hockey is all you should focus on!!! We will look the other way for you!!!” all to accommodate the demanding schedules of the extremely exploitative teams farming them for cash while giving them stipends that are below minimum wage.

Shane Hollander was one of the most talked-about prospects on the fucking planet. He has most likely been working sixteen hour days minimum since he was fourteen years old and then had to be a full-time student on top of that. There are literally not enough hours in the day. He was probably fighting for his life trying not to fail out of fucking math class. That guy is not reading up on the Russian sociopolitical landscape in his free time. He doesn’t have free time. And he is not in the kind of environment where the common topic of conversation is “hey fellas, maybe we should educate ourselves on the struggles of the Russian queer population” like fuck no. The main topics of conversation for Canadian Junior hockey players are hockey and their own dicks. Shane likely had no idea what it was like for queer people in Russia. He didn’t have a reason to know.

There is one other way we should contextualize that statement within Canadian junior hockey culture. And that’s in the context of the normalized degradation of your sexual partners.

Canadian Junior hockey is very sex obsessed. It is very misogynistic. It is very homophobic. And the widespread expectation is to go into that locker room and talk about your sexual partners like they are objects to fuck and sexual exploits like they are conquests.

Canadian junior hockey leagues typically have players aged 16-20. But Shane is an exceptional player who was recognized when he was very young. His real life analogue, Sidney Crosby, was drafted by his junior team at the age of 13. He started playing some games in the season with them by 14.

So imagine Shane is 14 years old. He is the youngest person on the team. There is already a crushing amount of national attention on him. And he is going into that locker room for the first time with his 20 year old teammates, who are standing there talking about how this weekend they fucked this bitch who was such a slut for it, fuck, she was on her knees slobbering for it like a whore in seconds.

Hey, Hollander, have you fucked anyone yet?

In Shane’s experience, telling people all the gorey details about your hookups is what you do. It’s what the people around him have always done. It is baked into the culture that he has been marinating in since he was a very young child. With those experiences in mind, I think it’s very understandable to be in your first hookup with someone and have a flash of fear that they’re going to walk out of this room and go tell their teammates “Shane Hollander dropped to his knees and started slobbering on it like a whore the second I shut the door.” Because that is what happened to every single woman who hooked up with one of his teammates. He has been hearing that shit almost every single day since he was 14. It is so deeply understandable to be afraid of that.

Now, granted, his teammates are not regaling the locker room with their gay hookups. This is where you get to prong two of the analysis.

Sometimes you ask someone to confirm something that is seemingly obvious, not because you don’t see it yourself, but because you’re scared and anxious and you want reassurance.

Like. First off, even if he had the context of Russia, he doesn’t know if Ilya has some queer-friendly person in his corner who he can share secrets with. He already knows Ilya has had other gay hookups. So it’s understandable to want to voice “I don’t want this to be told to anyone else” because this is not the kind of secret that you just assume everyone is on the same page with on keeping it. But beyond that, I think you could be fully aware of all of the reasons Ilya had to keep it a secret and actually believe he would keep it a secret and still want the vocalized assurance that this isn’t going to be spread around.

Look. I am an adult with a law degree. My brain is fully developed. I am very well educated. My entire job is to be articulate and reasoned and to weigh risk.

I still walk into my coworker’s office five times a week and say “hey so I’m gonna ask a stupid question and I already know the answer to it but I just need someone else to confirm for me before I do this because it’s pretty big and I need the reassurance.” And my coworker, who is equally intelligent and educated and accomplished, turns around and does the same thing with me. Sometimes, you say something that sounds stupid not because you’re stupid, but because you’re human and it’s natural to seek reassurance in others.

I don’t read that scene as Shane being oblivious to the risks Ilya faces if this comes out. I read that as him being a 19 year old boy who is battling a lifetime of fear around his own sexuality, who is extremely aware of at least some of the risks but who just wants some extra reassurance from the dude whose dick was just in his mouth. And that is okay. It’s not obliviousness. It’s just being human.

I personally find that I have the best experience with a narrative if I read the characters’ actions in a compassionate light. If something they do doesn’t make sense, put yourself in their shoes and try to see where they’re coming from. Give them grace and understanding. And usually, what characters are doing makes a lot more sense and the narrative overall becomes more interesting. Personally, I think “Shane’s seeking reassurance from one of his first ever sexual partners because he’s a child coming from a sex-obsessed environment where your sexual partner is routinely degraded for the amusement of your peers” makes for a much more interesting story than “haha, Shane’s so fucking stupid and oblivious.”

A lot of the analyses of the character’s actions—and in particular Shane’s actions—that I’ve personally seen coming out of this fandom are almost entirely devoid of compassion and understanding. And it’s kind of hard to be surprised when the author herself is climbing onto discord to say “Shane is so stupid and oblivious.” Like. The call is coming from inside the house.