When I finished watching Heated Rivalry over the break, my first thought was, “How soon can I watch this again?”
I spent the drives to family gatherings glued to my phone, scrolling through scenes from the show posted on social media. Texts with friends didn’t mention holiday travel itineraries or sibling drama; there was simply no time for menial updates when a gay hockey romance was taking over the television universe. Catching up with my gay uncle didn’t involve sharing special moments from the past year, but rather sharing our favourite moments from the show and our excitement for the second season, announced by Crave and HBO Max on Dec. 12.
The fixation brought me back to a state of adolescent fan-girl I thought I’d long outgrown. Memories resurfaced of staying up until five or six in the morning watching and rewatching the Isak and Even plotline from the Scandinavian TV series Skam. I was reminded of my middle school self, who spent lunches obsessing with friends over Yuri and Victor from the show Yuri on Ice. Now that I’m older, I’ve noticed a pattern. As a straight woman, why was I so enthralled by romantic stories between two men?
Mathew Gagné, a sociology and social anthropology professor at Dalhousie University who researches queerness, sexuality and digital media, says it has to do with how sex is portrayed in fiction.
“When you look at a lot of depictions of heterosexual sex between men and women, they are often steeped in a power dynamic that is about submission and domination,” he says. “Women are objectified in the representation of heterosexual sex because it’s often coming from a male perspective.”
When it comes to fictionalized gay sex, he says that depictions written or consumed by straight women allow them to engage in their heterosexual desires for men in a way that doesn’t position women as passive or subordinate.
Heated Rivalry follows Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie), two professional hockey players playing for rival teams. The players compete against each other over several years, forming a public feud. They are each other’s biggest competition on the ice, and skillfully almost equal.
Their similarities intensify their off-ice romance, but it also diminishes the possibility of a problematic power dynamic because the two characters share an equal level of fame, skill and strength. Unlike romances between straight characters, which are inherently impacted by gendered power dynamics.
“Sex becomes a theatre where patriarchal power and male domination get played out through an act of penetration,” says Gagné.
Emmett Paul, a fifth-year gender and women’s studies student and teaching assistant at Dal, says, “I’m a trans person, so growing up being socialized as a woman, you read [romance], and you’re like, ‘I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m waiting for that possibility of harm, fear or trauma.’”
Stories centred around romance between two men “take that out of the equation,” according to Paul.
Despite being about gay men, some of Heated Rivalry’s appeal lies in how it depicts seemingly straight men, says Gagné.
He explains that Shane and Ilya are still portrayed in a way that relates to women’s heterosexual desires, allowing them to “indulge in the fantasy of heterosexual masculinity, but in a way that isn’t seeped in intense power, submission and objectification.”
Shane and Ilya, in the eyes of the public, are straight men who play hockey. For discretion, they use feminine pseudonyms to contact each other.
In the locker room, at the gym, watching hockey with family, ‘Jane’ and ‘Lily’ text throughout the summer, making plans for when they inevitably end up in the same city, drawing attention from nosy parents and teammates alike.
When Ilya is caught by his teammate texting ‘Jane,’ he defends himself by insisting he’s never blushed in his life.
Ilya and Shane, despite belonging to the masculine, heteronormative world of men’s professional hockey, are written to possess emotional traits not often associated with fictionalized men.
In the safety of their relationship, Shane and Ilya can let go of their heteronormative personas. With their guards down, they show vulnerability, provide emotional support and ultimately fall in love.
“It’s a form of masculinity that we don’t normally see, or that is not commonly popularized, and it’s a form of masculinity that I think a lot of straight women want in straight men,” says Paul. “It makes room for emotional vulnerability and having that ability to feel your emotions and be soft, vulnerable and fragile. Unfortunately, that’s not usually how straight men are portrayed.”
Since its release in November, Heated Rivalry’s popularity has transcended the romance genre’s frequent relegation to female audiences.
Empty Netters, a podcast hosted by two straight male hockey fans, went viral for watching and reviewing every episode of Heated Rivalry. Hudson Williams, who plays Shane on the show, said in an interview with Andy Cohen that he has received messages from professional hockey, football and basketball players confessing “semi-anonymously” that they’re still in the closet.
“It matters for all audiences that these men are coded as straight but are showing intense emotionality, nuance, sexual depth and romantic depth,” says Gagné.
Women may often be the target audience for romance stories, even when they’re about two men, but the response to Heated Rivalry proves that removing gendered hierarchies and hyper-masculinity from romantic stories appeals to broader audiences.
