Like. Here's the thing. The closet protects us. Generations of queer people lived happy, successful and relatively safe lives while in the closet. The closet gives us plausible deniability. The closet is there for a reason. The closet is not a fucking prison. The closet was, for much of history, the very thing that gave us community.
Stories about unhappily closeted queer people are not exaggerated or unrealistic or meant to be avoided but they're also not meant to be used as fables and cautionary tales to other queer people. The idea that you HAVE to come out of the closet and that if you don't do so, you are somehow lying to yourself and the people around you is...a bad faith interpretation of those stories, at the very least. The idea that being 'honest with yourself' and being in the closet are mutually exclusive is reductive.
The thesis of Heated Rivalry the TV show is something to the effect of You Deserve Sunshine. It's poignant and effective and I enjoy it thoroughly. It's a good through-line for Shane and Ilya and their developing feelings for each other. It's the idea that they can love each other in the daylight; that they can show each other their feelings.
It is also the line in the show that I hate maybe the most because of how it is delivered. From the mouth of a (presumably) straight woman and into the ear of a closeted gay man immediately after a discussion about whether said closeted gay man deserves love if he's going to stay in the closet.
This is maybe an oversimplification. It is not, however, an inaccurate interpretation of that scene--in my opinion. And I fucking hated it. It felt audacious. If I hadn't known that the script was written by a gay man, it would feel deeply unkind to the gay community as a whole.
I understand that Scott was not happily closeted. And I understand that Kip was not interested in being closeted with Scott. The line still felt tone deaf, especially given the context of the rest of the show and what it was meant to say about Shane and Ilya.
Shane and Ilya never even speak about the closet. It goes without saying that they are in it and must stay in it. The closest they get to discussing the closet is Ilya's rebuff of Shane in Tampa where he says a few things about Russia, mostly in innuendo, but even then the implication is so explicit that it's clear what the audience is supposed to understand even with very limited information--it is not even an option for this man to leave the closet. It would be dangerous for him. It would be enormously consequential not only for his own career and safety, but possibly for that of others as well. Shane, as a similarly closeted gay man, does not need this explained to him beyond the few bare-bones insinuations about Ilya's background.
And yes the catalyst for their relationship entering the proverbial sunshine is Scott Hunter's coming out. And yes it was inspiring for Ilya to witness. Shane and Ilya also are not privy to the agony of the Skip timeline. They don't know that this is as grand a gesture for Kip as it is to everyone else. Ilya sees only what he is capable of interpreting from the moment he sees--that it's possible to get what he wants. That he can love Shane quietly, that he's allowed to do that, and then when the time is right--they can be together in the open.
The protections of the closet are still there and still highly important. Russia hasn't changed. The fact that Ilya and Shane must remain closeted has not, on any meaningful level, changed. By the time they are outed at the Cottage, any meaningful discussion of the closet or coming out has yet to take place. This first outing is given more or less the correct amount of weight for what it is--more or less contained, limited to Shane's family, and the catalyst for emotional vulnerability that feels appropriate for the end of a romance arc. There is something to be said for the fact that not enough is brought into the narrative about how much of a violation of privacy it would have been for Shane, even if he hadn't been galavanting around his own private residence with his gay lover, but that's a discussion for another time.
The outing in TLG is, on the other hand, narratively weak. It's almost labeled as something that might as well have happened because well, they were going to come out anyway. After a lot of pushing from Ilya who, out of him and Shane, is the one who needs the protections of the closet the most. There are of course closeted Russians. Probably even famous ones. There are plenty of people the world over who do wish that they could come out and be publicly a member of their community, who cannot do so because of the totalitarian regimes in the countries of their residency or birth. This not the fault of the closet--this is the fault of the society that forced us to create the closet.
Throughout TLG, we hear about Ilya's guilt--his guilt surrounding his team, at the idea that he is not being open with them. At some point he has come to believe that it would make him a better captain and friend to his teammates if he was quote-unquote honest with them about himself. That he must share every aspect of his life with them in order to be an effective leader. This is a rapid about-face for a man who is still actively experiencing the protections of the closet. We see him become jealous of his own partner for his ambiguously closeted status, despite being shown two particular things about Shane's experience in leaving the protections of the closet: 1. It did not go particularly well for him and 2. The confidence with which it was done was IMMEDIATELY violated. Why does Troy Barrett, who plays for a violently homophobic team, come to Ottawa already knowing that Shane is gay? Somebody on the Montreal team did not keep Shane's confidence, and allowed their lips to slip in extremely mixed company. Shane's sexuality has now become the stuff of rumor.
And we are sort of expected to believe that this is the better outcome! That well, it's at least better than being in the closet for the rest of your life! But for God's sake, how? How is being out and worse off for it better than being in the closet, especially when that is where you and your lover have built a home. Like, how am I supposed to believe that that is the ultimate goal? To be out and open to ridicule so wide-reaching that you will never actually know who is ridiculing you, let alone what they're saying.
I am not advocating for anyone to return to the closet, or to not come out if that's what they want to do, and if I see anyone interpreting what I'm saying here in that way they will be summarily blocked. That is clearly not what I am fucking saying. But I also need it to be acknowledged that two queer men living quietly in the closet and loving each other there is not a fucking travesty, and not antithetical to the happy ending that Shane and Ilya wanted and deserved. Being outed not once but TWICE is not a fucking Happily Ever After, and the fact that we are expected to think of it as one boggles the mind.
The decision to come out of the closet should have been Shane and Ilya's to make--and that SHOULD have been their happy ending. Even if it actually did mean that they came out after retirement.
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