helen, do you know things about hockey? i've been trawling reddit and asking people and trying to get a sense of what the culture is like generally and what the nhl is really like about gay people bc i don't know anything and i'm very curious, and the more people say the less i feel i know
i do! i watched it very actively for about 5 years (2013-2018ish) and went to games until 2022/23, and still keep up with a few players who i'm fond of. i would say that the nhl is pretty weird about gay people, in some expected 'major sports league' ways but also in some very men's hockey-specific ways (in my opinion, anyway - the nhl is the only major sports league i've ever paid very close attention to, so this could be off-base). some thoughts below:
the big thing is that there has never been an openly gay nhl player, active or retired (luke prokop is an out player who was drafted a few years ago but he has not played an actual nhl game and probably never will). the line for a while was that there were no gay hockey players at all, which is why no one had come out (statistically obviously unlikely, also absurd). since the early 2010s it's been a Known thing that there are gay players but they aren't coming out For Some Reason. if you're curious, it's worth reading this 2015 article about an organization that the nhl partners with called You Can Play, which encourages inclusion and acceptance in hockey, etc etc.
a relevant excerpt from the interview:
Then, Burke said, there's the question of hockey culture itself.
"Hockey is all about the team. Hockey culture hates individualism," said Burke. "Whether that's right or wrong, hockey culture is that you do not stand out. You do not make yourself different from the team. We've had players in our league that have been yelled at for high-fiving too aggressively. So I do wonder from talking to a bunch of different players in the league that this is a team sport and almost an obsessively team culture and I think there are guys out there that are nervous about the idea that them coming out would somehow be going against that."
burke's not exaggerating here, there's a huge emphasis on conformity in hockey culture that's also extremely tied up in the idea that the Ideal Hockey Player is a "good [white] canadian boy" who doesn't stand out or rock the boat in any serious way, especially not politically. a small but notable example would be michel therrien, a horrible person and former coach of the montreal canadiens, banning a specific handshake/high-five that two of his players used to do (pk subban and carey price; notably neither of them are white). therrien later justified the ban by saying
"...we had to change the culture of the team. We wanted to remove the individualistic side of each player and institute a collective concept.""
anyway, at this point the official party line of the nhl and most players is that they would be fine with a gay teammate, and it's entirely possible there are guys who are out to some degree to their teams, but who knows. i don't think any of this is particularly shocking for men's sports in north america, although there are some levels of racism and xenophobia, and things like the billet system, that maybe add some more dimensions to it than you might see in e.g. major league baseball, idk.
where it gets weirder and messier is on the topic of how the nhl feels about gay fans. the thing that made me stop buying tickets and going to games was the league announcing, in 2023, that they were banning all 'theme night' jerseys and on-ice displays related to "special initiatives", including the use of pride tape (rainbow-colored hockey stick tape) because a very small number of players (about 5 of the 900 active players) had not wanted to wear themed jerseys on pride night during the 22-23 season. for context, every team in the league hosted a pride night at the time, along with many other theme nights (hockey fights cancer, military nights, etc etc). theme nights have special jerseys that are usually auctioned off after the night with proceeds going to specific charities - worth noting the jerseys aren't worn during games, just warm-ups, so for about 20-30 minutes total. that's it!
that banning jerseys and "displays" was the league's answer to not liking the bad publicity james reimer & co gave them by being too homophobic to spend 20 minutes wearing a jersey with a rainbow on it is wild, but what was really bizarre was the weasel-y, ambiguous way they framed it in a league-wide memo:
"Players shall not be put in the position of having to demonstrate (or where they may be appearing to demonstrate) personal support for any Special Initiatives. A factor that may be considered in this regard includes, for example, whether a Player (or Players) is required to be in close proximity to any groups or individuals visibly or otherwise clearly associated with such Special Initiative(s)."
when the "special initiative" you're concerned about is lgbt pride, one begins to wonder what exactly "close proximity to individuals visibly or otherwise clearly associated with" pride might mean! the nhl ended up clarifying/walking back some of the memo, and unbanning the use of pride tape after a player used it anyway (i guess fining or suspending him for that would have been even worse publicity), but clearly not because they have any integrity or moral clarity. the overwhelming impression i and many other people got from this whole situation was that the league was ready and willing to throw even the most nominal moves towards inclusion under the bus when it was deemed a distraction. not shocking that a sports league would prioritize finances over anything else, but it did make me completely unwilling to spend ~700 dollars a year on hockey tickets.
after 2023 i pretty much stopped following most nhl news, so i don't know if the league has improved in any way, but given the current political climate i doubt it. my impression of the nhl over a decade of following it very closely is that they have managed to be on the wrong side of most social issues - not in the name of open bigotry, but because taking a specific political stance would be 'distracting' from the sport of hockey. officially, Hockey is For Everyone. unofficially, they have made it very clear that welcoming queer fans to the sport is not worth any trouble whatsoever.
eta: this post also sums up a lot of my issues with organizations like you can play and the nhl's relationship with them and with addressing homophobia. my tags on it from march 2023, when the league's memo first went out: #it turns out that even ‘your money is as green as anyone else’s’ is a political statement!#but even if it weren’t. it’s frustrating that the league feels it has cover to pretend#that some neutral middle ground actually exists between real inclusion and blatant homophobia and transphobia.#let alone that this is a middle ground the league or sport in general can lay claim to#neither of these things is true! let's be honest about it.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Ships: Fox/Breha/Bail
Tags: omegaverse, author chose not to use archive warnings, misunderstandings, developing relationship, power imbalance, Fox needs a hug, Clone trooper mistreatment, angst with a happy ending, eventual smut, non-consensual body modification (more at the link)
Summary: The first time it happened, Fox assumed it was a bribe.
The Alderaan MirrorBright Lullaby edited to the theme of ‘Once upon a December’ ! 🥺
“Alderaan had possessed a moon for only one day of its existence. When the Death Star appeared, little children must have looked up in awe, believing the moon from their bedtime lullaby had come to their skies at last. They would've smiled up at it, pointed their tiny fingers, sung the song. Leia squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to imagine it.“ — Bloodline by Claudia Gray.
“Alderaan had possessed a moon for only one day of its existence. When the Death Star appeared .” - excerpt from Bloodline by Claudia Gray i
Give me them helping the early rebellion and ending the war far sooner than it ends in Canon.
Give me Obi-Wan and Cody neither young at this point (though they figured out a way to prevent Cody's accelerated aging) looking upon the galaxy with hope for the first time in so many years
Give me them holding Luke and Leia the closest things they will ever have to children of their own tight as they celebrate
Give me Bail, Breha, Owen and Beru having a nice picnic with Obi-Wan and Cody as the twins run around causing chaos and mayhem the Skywalker and Amidala legacy.
Give me Obi-Wan rebuilding the Jedi with Cody at his side. not the same as it was before because everything has changed nothing will ever go back but there are still force sensitive people out there and they deserve a place to learn should they want it. And shortly after Obi-Wan discovers that there were a lot more survivors than he knew about.
Give me Cody setting up a station to take the chips out of all of the clones heads freeing them. Some of them stay, the clones and the Jedi tied together forever protectors of each other but others go off into the galaxy to start their own lives
