#and ik geno does seem to genuinely like. care and im glad of it but

[tblueger]

TheThe thing is that Malkin only reposted Ovi’s Team Putin thing after being publicly harangued along w other Russians. Ovi went to rallies and pressers with Putin and has kept up a one sided PR “rivalry” with Malkin for the media. Malkin has made pro LGBT+ commitments and statements almost his entire NHL career (including the jerseys and sticks) and never received backlash. People are only isolating him because he’s an isolated case.

(i just woke up and might not be totally coherent/able to read right now disclaimer)

my tags on that post weren't meant to be attacking geno/people who are fans of him, i'm a fan of his he's my big beautiful bitchwife and i love him. the point i was (badly) (kind of pissed-off-ly) trying to make was that blaming the sudden abandonment of pride nights on The Russian Collective is xenophobic and probably just straight up wrong. we don't know all the ins and outs of these organisations and we don't know the details of every player's political beliefs (...for the best. i think). i know that there are some guys who are vocally against shit like this (jordan harris, connor murphy) and i know panarin spoke out against putin (and that there was backlash).

i was just pointing out that

(a) the sudden regression to no pride nights probably has a lot more to do with the rush of trans/homophobic laws tearing through america rn (and the lack of significant repercussions to the flyers proving that like, you just can)

(b) blaming it all on the team's russian members demonises The Russians. which is yk. bad. maybe they had smth to do with it maybe they didn't but regardless making out a giant largely-faceless cultural Other to straw-man all of your problems onto is dangerous. more so when you pick one out to be A Good One and decide that they all can/should be like this and if they aren't they're The Enemy. it's a complicated situation that i at least, don't fully understand all the details around lmao so i'm not a huge fan of blaming everything on them.

(c) there are homophobic american and canadian players who are now getting to hide behind The Russians and we can pretend that our guys are Good.

#not sure if this . actually answers ? but #im not making excuses and im not justifying the lack of pride um . stuff. it's that i dont like Its Because Of Russia excuse #the russian guys wear american military jerseys and thats fine but pride nights where we draw it ? interesting. #and ik geno does seem to genuinely like. care and im glad of it but #its complicated and im sleepy . i hope this makes slme sense ? #m