#but I'm kinda sad seeing stuff like this being brough up and the silence from the other side yk

[ivyglow]

ABOUT NOLAN PATRICK AND SLURS

As someone who's always talking about the issues trailing hockey culture, I feel like pointing some things out, considering this is about acknowledging issues and actively working on them.

After speaking up on the Vince Dunn issue it came to my knowledge that Nolan Patrick also used slurs on Twitter during the same time Vince did, and since we don't use two sets of standards here I couldn't simply ignore it.

As human beings, we grow up in a society that bases itself on forces like racism, homophobia, a set of other equally problematic issues, that means with fourteen to fifteen years old you may not know the implications of a slur in a whole oppressive system, but you do know the slur is wrong! You can't tell me that a fourteen years old was too young or too innocent because at fourteen years old I was months away from traveling all alone to a different country to study, at fourteen years old as a poc I do remember how it hurt to see people using slurs, I was well aware because I was at the receiving side of that violence, we cannot pretend as if age excused us of answering for what we did/said. Age does influence our understandings, yes, but it does not excuse you, you do know it is wrong, you may not be well aware of the bigger picture or educated enough, but you know it's not right.

What we have to consider while thinking about those players' backgrounds? Most of them are white, male, and rich, which means the chances they were exposed to social debates like racism, homophobia, etc are very low, but when they become a public figure, they are now dealing with the bigger picture, and not educating themselves on important topics is a choice. Not speaking up on issues that are constant in their leagues is also a choice, but choosing to do it when there is old stuff about you being brought up is even more problematic. How can we be sure you changed if you choose to sweep the dirt under the rug?!

The second thing I want you to consider is that at age fourteen/fifteen these guys were already playing hockey in a minor league that is also very violent when it comes to homophobia, racism, and social issues. They are part of hockey culture, a culture that has been building itself since a long time ago, and it still in the building process when we choose not to acknowledge this stuff. And I'm well aware that the way we openly debate things nowadays is different than how we used to do five years ago, but we still hurt people in this process and we need to recognize this and speak about it in order to change. If we keep choosing to ignore what happened and "move forward" we'll never really move.

The environment these guys grow up in is problematic and they shape the stuff they said/thought while young, but what are they openly doing nowadays out of that environment?? are they really out of it??

Vince Dunn not only tweeted slurs when he was sixteen, but he also used the N-word during a live stream and proceeded to pretend as if he didn't, and he chose not to speak up on racial issues until he was pressured to. Everything coming up about Vince is proof that he hasn't really changed -at least not how people thought he did, while in Nolan's case there's nothing and this non-existence is a problem as well because it brings uncertainty, therefore you can't neither defend nor accuse him, but you can recognize that what he did was still wrong. His friends using it around shows that it wasn't a one-time thing, that it was a common vocabulary and this common vocabulary harmed idk-how-many queer people inside and outside his bubble.

While you may think this is calling someone homophobic based on an old tweet, this isn't! This is about pointing an issue and seeing the way it reflects on hockey culture nowadays. This is about recognizing our roles in oppression systems and working to change them. I'm not walking along with canceling culture, but I think people need to be held accountable for what they do (this goes from Vince to favs like Nolan). As Robin would say the key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort.

That being said, me >>>melinda<<< as a bisexual woc am not comfortable talking about Nolan like I used to, I won't be writing about him anymore. I'm still comprehending the whole thing, but this just turned me off.

We can choose to discuss this openly and agree that white supremacy/straight cis structures are violent and use this debate as a door to change not only hockey culture but also the culture of our little bubble, or we can choose to sweep the dirt under the rug -as we always do, and the NHL does- and keep watching these aggressions making the league and this community even less safe and more harm to bipoc/queer.

You can see about the Vince issue here and here