except if we'd boycotted the olympics, it would do literally nothing. I agree that the passive-aggressiveness being shown is definitely not the best we can do, but we have to remember that 60 countries skipped out on the olympics in russia back in 1980 and it had no effect on cold war policies. the athletes just want to compete in the prime of their lives; not going to the olympics is a huge, HUGE sacrifice to ask them to make, especially when most can only go once or twice in their lifetimes...
ah yes, the poor athletes.
look i understand that athletes train for this their entire lives. i love sports. in particular, i love the winter olympics. i’m a huge hockey fan and i love figure skating and speed skating, especially.
but you have to realize you are dealing with people’s entire lives here. people die because they are discriminated against. they get taken away from their families and have to go to prison. they have to hide in secrecy and pretend to be something they’re not. trans people who cannot present themselves or be identified in the way they need to be experience extreme body dysphoria. queer people literally get killed, they get fired from their jobs, they spend their lives living in fear that people might find out that they are something that they didn’t even choose to be.
so i’m sorry, i don’t care about the athletes. i want you to tell all the lgbtq russians who are living in fear right now that it’s not worth it for people to take a stand for them. really, go and tell them that “hey, these athletes are in the prime of their lives, it’s not fair to ask them not to go! sorry you’re literally terrified and have no human rights, but gosh, think about the sacrifice the athletes would be making!”
also, using the 1980 olympics boycott/cold war as precedent is so flimsy. you cannot compare two completely different situations in history to each other and act like you know what the outcome of one will be because of the outcome of the other. if you even understood the situation now vs. then you would understand that the comparison is laughable due to, at the very least, the differences between the ussr and russia. because no one boycotted the 1980 olympics in russia - they were in the soviet union and there is a world of difference between the two.
