cambrian explosion enthusiast

Brown Jay (Cyanocorax morio), subadult, family Corvidae, order Passeriformes, Rio Grande Valley of South TX, USA

There is a lot to say about Curl that is very upsetting but also not surprising

As any marginalized who’s worked anywhere before knows, you will have coworkers with abhorrent views you cannot avoid interacting with. These abhorrent views may be about you (tho they may claim you’re the exception) and you’ll know they’re full of shit, and that they’ll often be polite to you in one on one or maybe even laugh about that crazy phone call you just got at work but also that they’re going to go and campaign for the government to kill you later and cheer on angry vigilantes who try to do the same, and then deny that this is their intent. If they aren’t totally lost in the sauce they know what topics to avoid and you the same so neither of you lose your jobs, because the workplace does not care about actual principals or morals and just wants you to not make a scene. In some situations you’ve probably figured out how to be cordial with this person even if you don’t trust them.

Now sports teams take the normal coworker dynamic and turn it up to 11, because you guys are up your ass all the time, around each other way too much and playing a game in which people are trying to slam you against glass unless you’re on the same team.

All this to say, I’m sure there’s some players that just situationally tolerate curl. I’m sure there’s other players, probably too many, who genuinely dgaf about her bigotry, because her two biggest transgressions were racism and transphobia, and white people tend to downplay racism and cis people tend to downplay transphobia. Even for the offensive things she’s said that affect someone like Barnes who’s lgbt in general, I think there’s a lot of rationalization these players do. Most of them grow up going to catholic school programs with very conservative parents in conservative rich white suburbs, but also playing in these teams that are some of the only spaces they have where they can explore queerness, and you end up on teams where half the girls act like Zoe boys and the other half are posting like Britta curl and then like 25% of the girls posting like curl have some deeply repressed shit they’re working through and keep sending you longing looks while also saying truly horrible things. Ask me how I know

All this to say, I think everyone would like to think that their team would reject curl if she was traded or signed to them and demand she leave the team, but likely they would be fine with her and she’d still be at team hangouts. Some for understandable reasons (sometimes quiet truces with people who suck are the best thing you can do to stay employed) and some for reasons that are not so noble (people really really love to avoid anything that makes a conversation uncomfortable, and to downplay bigotry, especially bigotry they are not effected by, and hockey culture does a lot to normalize this behavior. )

the people who suffer the most, of course, are the teammates of color curl and her like will encounter and any transfeminine person in the space (both of which are minorities in the women’s hockey world due to behavior like this, and in the case of trans women, being straight up legislated out of it.) because they will see their white and cis teammates / friends / coworkers / whoever memory hole and normalize and excuse this bad behavior and no one stand up for them when she does say out of pocket things and no longer want to be there. Overall too I wish teams cared about not hosting a player who took it upon herself to harass marginalized people on social media repeatedly and was only “apologetic” when literally forced and then still keeps trying to sneakily promote these harmful beliefs and clearly not learning her lesson on when to shut the fuck up and get out of her own way

Sorry this is a whole rant that’s barely related I guess, it also probably makes no sense because I got interrupted 20 times when typing it and my coworker is still blasting music. I probs won’t say much further bc I always get a tick in harassment when I talk about this stuff and also my head hurts

@/PWHL_SanJose: Guilday’s coming to the Bay 🙂‍↕️