whyhereiam

So it is extremely plausible to me that men who aren’t the awful Trump-supporting, Andrew Tate-loving, Ben Shapiro-listening type assholes are “feminist” in some way, and that the violence and sexism they witness the women in their lives go through is a large factor in how aware and critical they are of women’s oppression.

Especially when they have women in their lives who probably are feminists, and it’s likely that these women’s female rage and rants about the sexism they experience positively influenced them. Which I think would absolutely apply to Svetlana.

Ilya is shown being enraged by the violence inflicted on the two central women in his life by the men in his family. His brother calling him a faggot gets no reaction from him but he completely loses it when Alexei calls Svetlana a whore. BUT - and this is a very important point - he doesn’t let his rage and his feelings take over and become that priority. So often, a man taking revenge against another man on behalf of a woman becomes about that man’s own righteous rage and toxic masculine ideas about women’s honor and needing to be the white knight who protects and defends the helpless woman, and often turns into a sort of pissing contest with the man he’s fighting, rather than about the woman’s feelings. But that doesn’t happen with Ilya at all - when Svetlana tells him to stop, he immediately listens, he doesn’t draw it out.

His admiration of his mother extending to how he sees other women is also highly plausible - and in fact his words about the women he sleeps with directly echo his words about his mother (which… very Freudian lol) “She was so beautiful and funny” “And they’re so sexy and fun”.

His opinion about his mother goes further - “I don’t want you to think she was weak” when women are so often called weak and there is so little empathy for their mental health struggles (another great post by @wtf-is-hockey about Ilya’s empathy for Irina.) He also calls his father traditional - it’s probable that extended to women's role in the household and Irina being responsible for domestic labor and the way she was abused by his father having a distinctly misogynistic flavor to it, which also would’ve affected Ilya’s perspective.

Another telling example is that we see Ilya's very extreme jealousy over Rose, yet he never makes even a single derogatory comment about her (hilariously, his actual most notable comment about her as a person is apparently agreeing with Svetlana that Rose has great style and assuming she dressed Shane). If Ilya was going to be misogynistic at any point, that would have done it, but he does not direct any vitriol at Rose herself.

As we see with Shane, he also cares deeply about consent and comfort of his sexual partner, which of course would've also applied to his hook ups with women. And you just know he absolutely loves to make women cum and makes sure they have a good time. You can see that in the way he jokes about leaving Shane without getting him off during their first hook up before going “you think I am asshole?”

I think sometimes people see men’s attraction to women and casual sex as inherently threatening, but there is no evidence that Ilya was a fuckboy or a dick to the women he slept with (a good post by @themoonandmyman about this).

Not that all of this means he’s immune to sexism! I’m sure he has his casually sexist moments. (I also definitely don’t think he goes around calling himself a feminist or anything). But that is far superseded by his admiration of women, considerate treatment of them, and rage at the violence and prejudice aimed towards them. And it’s notable that this exists while he’s in the most toxically masculine atmosphere possible with men’s sports.

Hudson: “What’s always been something that’s frustrated me, not even with like other men, but also just there’s a lot of taboos around exploring physical intimacy with people you admire and love without people, especially in Western culture, being like, ‘Oh, they’re fucking, they’re doing this.’ I just was always frustrated by these kinds of notions. Especially with Connor, who I love dearly, it was something I was always kind of adamant that no matter what people think or want to infer, I’m always going to just physically express my love. I feel like if you’re still biased or jaded or uncomfortable with expressing physical love for people in 2025, you got to f*ing, just, you know, get over yourself.”

supporting the shane as snoopy agenda

And here's Shane. Shane who folds his clothes before sex. Shane who will always be happy with a cold ginger beer. Shane who has a stylist and an interior decorator because he likes things to look objectively nice.

Shane who answers "How many times can you cum in an hour?" completely literally. Shane who has no filter and comments on the bed being dirty within 0.2 seconds of cumming all over it. Shane who comes out to Ilya the moment he figures it out himself, and who tells him point blank that it's not just sex, because he never ever expects Ilya to read his mind.

SECOND of all shane no longer has to be the prodigal son. like he is, obviously, and everyone knows it, but without the C on his chest and with the centaurs’ more kind, brotherly team vibe, he finally gets to just be one of the guys. no world on his shoulders, no burden

everyone pranks captain ilya & shane is sprinting in the middle of the pack from his playful wrath. everyone gangs up on captain ilya, chirping the hell out of him, and shane uncharacteristically steps in and delivers the final blow. whole team erupts, hollering, cheering, whistling, slapping shane on the back in the locker room while ilya tries to look mad but is secretly so pleased because shane is integrating so well & he loves these boys, they’re his.

"It's a long story."