Farewell, Ozempic

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I’m fat and I’m newly diabetic and you’re jealous of me, because I got my hands on Ozempic.

I had no problem doing it. My doctor didn’t demand it – her exact words were “I’m of two minds” – but she wrote the prescription when I asked her to. My insurance didn’t even make me fight to get it covered. The process of getting one of the country’s most sought-after medication was utterly frictionless.

That’s where the joy ended.

Nausea is a known side effect of this kind of drug, and I cannot tolerate nausea. It panics me and gives me a sort of claustrophobia that’s hard to explain and harder to go through. I don’t want to die when I’m nauseated, but I feel very much like I’m already in hell. I know, I know, nobody enjoys nausea. This is different. This isn’t pain or discomfort, it’s terror. I treat it not with anti-nausea meds but with Xanax, assuming I can keep it down. Once the panic sets in, it blocks out all ability to function on any other level.

Still, I know I’m supposed to want the Ozempic. I’m supposed to be willing to go through any and every difficulty if it helps me lose weight. Being miserable should be preferable to being fat. I have plenty of people in my life who believe that for themselves, and likely secretly think it about me.

Turns out, I’m not one of them.

I’m one and done with Ozempic. I’m not willing to be nauseated one day out of every week, period. But beyond that, I’m not willing to spend the days after the nausea being afraid to eat. The panic did ease to a level of anxiety that I can manage – that, really, I manage in my daily life as often as not – but this time the anxiety was attached to food: I was afraid to eat. No doubt this alone would have led to some weight loss, and so I suppose I’m meant to welcome it, but please hear me when I say:

Fuck that.

Fuck sacrificing one of my five senses in the name of getting prettier, or even in the name of improving my lab results. Fuck losing a source of pleasure in a life that includes so few of them. I won’t give up chocolate or pasta or fruit or burgers.

I’m going to try to exercise more, because I want to live long enough to keep enjoying these things (and, you know, my family and friends and hobbies and whatnot). I am aware of the health issues that come with being fat, and I want to mitigate my risk. But I am done with Ozempic.

I’m grateful for it, though. Ozempic taught me that my self-esteem has advanced to the point that I’m no longer more interested in other people’s opinions of my body than I am of my own joy and comfort. I had the courage to take the chance that Ozempic wouldn’t cause me a dealbreaker of a side effect, and I care about myself to stop taking it now that I know it does. I may never love the shape of my body, but I do, finally, love myself. This miserable week has given me newfound hope for all the weeks yet to come.

Trans Rights Are Human Rights

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I support trans rights.

I intended to start with a punchier, more interesting lede – “I don’t understand transness” – but there are times when style is the enemy of substance, and this is one of those times. I don’t understand transness, and I believe that’s an important element of what I’m about to say, but it’s nowhere near as important as that first sentence. So I’ll say it again:

I support trans rights.

I support the right of trans people to obtain medical care, to go by their chosen names, to openly live as their authentic selves. I support trans athletes’ right to compete where they tell us they belong. I support trans people’s right to use whichever restrooms feel right to them. I support trans people’s right to be treated as people, period.

That said, I do not understand transness. I don’t know what it is to be told by the world that you’re a certain gender but to know that the world is wrong. To me, my gender is entirely defined by my physical being, and I honestly can’t wrap my head around any other metric. I was raised with the certainty that boys have penises and girls have vaginas; it was one of the few simple facts in a world of complications and abstractions. So no, I don’t get it. But I don’t need to get it. All I need to do is believe in the sincerity of people who experience gender differently than I do. I believe they are sincere, and I believe they understand something I don’t.

If you, like me, can’t grasp what it means to be trans, please know that our personal failures of imagination do not matter. There are plenty of things we don’t understand, but never doubt are real. I don’t know how cell phones work. I don’t know how the moon controls the tide. I don’t know how to play the cello or turn sand into a mirror. Yet somehow I’m confident that my phone call will go through, the tide will continue to go in and out, cellists can make music and sand can become glass.

It’s exactly the same with transness – I don’t know how it works, but there is overwhelming evidence that it does, that it IS. There are trans people living in the world and, despite what we were taught as children, there always have been. If you have trouble believing that some people understand their gender as separate from their genitalia, just remember that there are also people who understand advanced mathematical theorems that, at least to me, look like collections of indecipherable squiggles on a blackboard. If you’re such a mathematician, remember that there are people who can run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, and people who can carve perfectly accurate human forms out of marble. You can’t do all these things; you can’t even imagine doing all these things. But you know for a certainty that there are people who can.

You also know that it does you no harm that someone else can run fast or create great art. You might envy them, but you’ve never called for their exclusion from society. Trans people being trans are, similarly, no threat to you. Your discomfort with other people’s gender expression is broad but shallow, just like any other momentary culture shock. Give yourself a moment; you’ll adjust.

And you need to adjust. You need to get comfortable with the existence of trans people, because trans people exist whether you’re ok with it or not. Start by letting go of all the arguments against transness that are really just indictments of cisgender men. No, trans women are not trying to infiltrate bathrooms and sports for the purpose of harming cisgender women, and you don’t actually believe they are. You believe cis men are pretending to be trans women for these purposes, and for that to be a compelling argument you must assume that trans people don’t exist.

Trans people exist. They have told you they exist, over and over again. They have suffered ridicule and violence to exist, and many of them have taken their own lives when they were denied the chance to exist as they truly are. Trans women are not cisgender men who put on dresses to gain entry to ladies rooms. Cisgender men who would do that represent everything we have to fear from men, and nothing at all about women, trans or cis. As is so often the case with misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, if you look closely you’ll see that the perceived evil actually resides with straight, cisgender men engaging in deception.

If tomorrow there’s a spate of men in dresses invading ladies rooms, the solution still won’t be to annihilate trans women – the solution will be to figure out how to instill empathy in cis men. Really, empathy is almost always the solution. Trans people exist, and you don’t have to understand their transness. You just have to empathize with them as human, and treat them accordingly.

Today, that means showing not just respect, but also full-throated support. In times of oppression, quiet allyship is no allyship at all. I’ll say it here once more, and I hope my fellow cis folks will join me in declaring, clearly and without equivocation:

I support trans rights.

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God, do I not want to write this.

I guess that’s the first thing: I don’t believe in God. But being born Jewish means you’re Jewish whether or not you buy into the religious dogma. I could fully renounce my Judiasm and it wouldn’t matter – in the ways that matter most, I’d still be a Jew.

I’m neither proud nor ashamed of that, any more than I’m proud or ashamed of my eye color, but I don’t love advertising my Jewishness, either. I think a lot of us – particularly those of us who are descended from Holocaust victims – can be a little squeamish about leading with that aspect of our identities. It feels a little too much like wearing a yellow star on our chests.

And yes, my great-grandparents were murdered by Hitler. My grandparents fled Germany in time, as did my grandmother’s two brothers. She came to the US while they went to Israel, which left her, at age 18, halfway around the world from her only surviving family. This wasn’t by choice – at that moment, German Jews each went to whichever country would take them. That’s how I ended up with a whole host of cousins I’d never met: By having great-uncles who went to the only place they could go to escape the legitimately genocidal regine that has since become the Western world’s default symbol of evil.

I, as my grandmother’s granddaughter, live where I have the luxury of largely ignoring the politics of the Middle East. I do this not out of laziness but as a means of self-preservation from the cognitive dissonance that the Israel/Palestine conflict creates in my head. I do, however, understand one thing that seems to evade so many of the most outspoken people watching this catastrophe from afar: That this is not a simple case of right vs. wrong. Neither is it a situation in which one can see things from both sides, because there are far more than two sides involved: There’s Netanyahu’s government; there’s Hamas; there are the Israeli people; there are the Palestinian people; there are non-Israeli Jews; there are non-Palestinian Muslims; there are American evangelical Christians; there are politicians around the globe with their own agendas; and there’s a world of other people who feel honor-bound to pick a side.

The first two groups are the ones at the heart of the problem, but the last three are the ones – intentionally or accidentally – feeding into growing antisemitism and Islamophobia worldwide. When people start throwing the word “genocide” around – and that’s happening in two opposing directions – nuance tends to get lost. I used to think one could denounce Netanyahu or Hamas without implying complicity from the broader communities of Jews or Muslims, respectively, but I’m beginning to think maybe that’s not true. It’s certainly possible to attack the small, powerful entity without intending to encourage others to blame the entire corresponding ethnic group but, humans being what we are, I’m not sure it’s possible to actually pull it off. Encouraged by bad-faith actors in various realms, otherwise neutral people seem largely unable to separate Hamas from Islam, or Netanyahu from Judaism.

As a result, many of us non-Israeli Jews feel a little less safe every time we read our friends’ all-or-nothing pro-Palestine comments, just as I suspect many non-Palestinian Muslims feel unsafe hearing their elected officials stating their unqualified support for the Israeli state. All of this is encouraged by Netanyahu and Hamas alike, which makes it all the more infuriating. But knowing that the animus is being at least somewhat artificially induced doesn’t make the threat any less real. My Israeli family is in a lot more danger on a daily basis than I am, but I am in a lot more danger than I was a few months ago.

Some prominent American Jews are encouraging the rest of us to speak up or wear symbols that make us more visibly Jewish, but like I said, that idea has always made me feel more anxious than empowered. The idea of wearing a magen david around people who now choose to interpret it as an act of aggression is even less appealing than it was before these latest rounds of violence.

The thing is, though – I am Jewish. I am Jewish regardless of who leads the nation of Israel, and I am Jewish regardless of who is currently professing their desire to abolish that nation. Please understand that my identity is not a choice, but your politics are. If your politics lead you to celebrate the murder of Jewish civilians, you are expressing your willingness to see me murdered for the Palestinian cause. For my part, I absolutely do not celebrate the murder of Palestinians – not now and not ever.

I believe those last two sentences are going to make a lot of my pro-Israel and pro-Palestine friends and family angry, which makes me deeply, deeply sad. All I really said in those 42 words is that it’s bad to murder civilians, and a lot of people are going to take issue with that. If we can’t start by agreeing on that point, then I don’t see how we can ever agree on anything more complex, so when I’m done writing this I’m going to go back to avoiding the larger subject as much as possible. I hope someone who reads this will hesitate in the future before accusing Jews of trying to commit genocide against Muslims, or Muslims of doing the same against Jews, but I suspect most of you will continue insisting that you can talk about Netanyahu without implicating Jews, or Hamas without implicating Muslims. That absolutely should be true, but it’s not. Our words mean what people think they mean, even when that contradicts what we intend.

If you believe that your words can influence the actions of governments and other organizations thousands of miles away, I can’t say whether you’re right or wrong. I can tell you that they influence individuals, especially those closest to home. You don’t understand all the facets of Israel/Palestine – I’m sure of this, because there’s too much involved for anyone, including the people we think are in charge, to understand – but you now understand that your words matter. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.

Bridge

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I could just jerk the wheel.

I don't want to do it
but
until the bridge melts back into the land
I'm completely
consumingly
aware that I
could.
I could jerk the wheel 
and justlikethat

I
would
plummet

trapped in the driver's seat,
passively rushing downward
toward water
or fire
makes no difference which.

Just one quick
                                            slide
of my hands 
and everything
would end
forever.

It's such hard work
to keep the car straight
when I'm so aware of
howcloseitistotheedge
and my fingers ache
and my chest tightens
and the buzzing in my ears grows louder and Louder and L O U D E R

And then I'm across.

I still can't rest 
(miles to go)
but at least I can
flex my ankles and wrists
and feel the earth
solid and stable
beneath my wheels.
If I crash now it will be
a mistake
not
a choice.
The choice lies behind me,
and ahead.

Nourishment

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Nobody thrives when they’re starving.

A certain amount of ambition is good, even necessary, but ambition without limits means a life unfulfilled. It means never being able to enjoy your own success. It means never believing you’ve had success at all.

If you insist on always staying hungry you will never truly experience anything but hunger. That emptiness in your belly will crowd out everything else.

We’re taught to value persistence and endless hard work, as though being unsatisfied is in and of itself noble. It’s a toxic lesson. Comfort is not a sin, and there comes a point when you have to give up on unattainable goals or resign yourself to always feeling like a failure. Some dreams won’t come true no matter how much time and effort you put in; some will, but will disappoint you when the reality doesn’t match the fantasy. It’s OK to let those dreams go – it’s more than OK, it’s healthy. It’s wise.

I will always have an anxiety disorder. No amount of hope or work or self-belief can change that. But I can live with my mental illness and find ways not to punish myself for having it. I can let go of the ambitions I’ll never be able to realize. I can redefine success for myself, away from career or marriage or parenthood and toward being a good friend, aunt and sister and helping people in my various communities. By adjusting my worldview to accomodate my specific abilities and disabilities, I give myself the chance to be both productive and happy. I give myself purpose rather than ambition and allow myself to be nourished by what I do rather than hungering for one arbitrary goal after another.

If I look like a failure, it’s only because you’re judging me based on your expectations of yourself. I’m learning to measure myself differently now, valuing the things I do over the things I lack. Only I can gauge my own mind, my own limits. Refusing to strive for horizons I know I cannot reach isn’t lazy or weak; it’s the only way not to go to my grave never having known peace.

There is no virtue in starving to death with a full plate in front of you. We need to stop demanding that of each other and of ourselves.

Let’s Talk: Mental Health Threads From Years Past

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Since I’m not using the corporate hashtag anymore, I figured instead of writing something new (which I’m not in the mood for, honestly) I’d post the content of my previous threads here, where they’re free from any outside affiliations. Aside from some minor reformatting and the removal of the hashtag, what follows is the exact text of my Twitter threads from each Let’s Talk day of the past four years.

2018

The worst part of mental illness is my enduring doubt that I really have it. Maybe everyone dreads leaving the house in the morning, and I’m the only one too lazy to push through it. Maybe I cling to the idea of mental illness to cover for my own weakness.

Saying this out loud, particularly in a place where I know I have enemies, is scary and painful. But at least half of my personal struggle is with the idea that my “mental illness” is actually just a character flaw.

Nobody else has said this about me – not my doctors, not my family, not even my old employers. But how could they really know what’s in my head? How do they know I’m not hiding behind a diagnosis?

All of this makes “You’re not alone” a double-edged sword for me: I know mental illness is real, but I also know other people apparently experience something similar to what I experience, yet are far higher-functioning. What does that say about me?

Anyway, I need to go out for a while, but that’s my biggest stumbling block – worrying that I’m not sick enough, that if I allow myself to be happy in my current state then that means I’m just a worthless mooch. That’s what I’m sitting with these days.

I believe that I’m sick, I just don’t know if I believe I’m truly as debilitated as I feel. Sometimes I’m tempted – and I have no intention of doing this, no need for alarm – to self-harm just to lend legitimacy to my illness.

If I did myself a little physical harm then there would be clear evidence of poor health – I would prove to myself and everyone else that it’s real. I won’t do it. I don’t need to add problems to my problems. But the idea does cross my mind now and then.

I gave up on true adulthood a long time ago. I gave up dating, trying to get and keep a full-time job, even considering having a child. I stopped trying for any of those things and I feel guilty about it every day. I exist, period. I’m ballast.

That’s why I keep tilting at the damn NHL windmill and why I never shut up about mental health on here – I’m trying to be something more than dead weight. I’m trying to justify my continued existence. I don’t do it because I’m tough, I do it because I’m desperate.

Anyway, that’s my story. I talked. For the rest of the night, I’m here to listen.

2019

Since it’s Let’s Talk day, let’s talk about the current state of my mental health.

I want to start by saying that overall, it’s pretty good. I’m not struggling or suffering right now. But every time I start to feel a little bit healthy, I beat myself up for not being more productive as an adult in society.

I don’t have a full-time job or children to raise and it’s been a long time since I’ve engaged in any activism, so I feel like I’m not doing anything to justify my oxygen consumption.

Here it’s important to note that I AM NOT SUICIDAL. I am not contemplating self-harm. Decades of treatment have helped me truly eliminate any urges in that area, period.

But that doesn’t mean I’m happy with who I am or how I function – or, often, don’t function. So even on my healthiest days, I am still not quite right. That, unfortunately, is the nature of chronic illness.

2020

OK, let’s get into it. This year I’m going to focus on some of the things I’ve found to be absent or nearly absent in the Let’s Talk conversation over the years (or at least what I see of the conversation).

1. It’s true that mental illness is more common than people realize, but the fact that you’re not alone doesn’t mean your own experience isn’t unique. You do not have to live up to the abilities/achievements of other people with your diagnosis.

2. If you INTENTIONALLY hurt one or more people WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT then that’s on you, not your mental illness. Unless your mental illness is the kind that causes full-on breaks with reality, you have agency.

2. continued: Mental illness might have a profound affect on your life, your thinking and yes, the people around you. But “mentally ill” is not the same thing as “mean” or (in the vast majority of cases) “violent.” You still get to be you on the most basic level.

2. continued some more: When people say their mental illness doesn’t define them, this is what it really means – that mental illness might define many of your days, but it doesn’t define your fundamental self. You’re every bit as human as a healthy person.

3. If you’re sincerely wondering whether your mental illness is limiting you or whether you’re just lazy, it’s almost certainly the former. Actual lazy people aren’t critically introspective about their laziness.

4. Psychiatric meds are a crutch in exactly the same way a literal crutch is a crutch. Meds are crutches, wheelchairs, glasses, pacemakers, hearing aids. They’re medicine in the same way any other medicine is medicine. End of fucking story.

5. Just because you have a mental illness doesn’t mean you’re required to be anyone else’s sounding board or armchair therapist. Try to be kind about it, but don’t feel obligated. There are plenty of other places for people to seek help if you’re not up for it.

6. Some people aren’t going to understand how your mental illness affects your ability to function “normally.” First, it’s not fair or realistic to expect them to intuit your specific limitations – if you want them to understand, you have to tell them.

6. continued: Second, some people are either unable or unwilling to grasp the everyday reality of your mental illness, even if you explain it to them. If you’ve been truthful about it and they still cannot or will not accept it then that’s their failing, not yours.

I might add more, I might not. If you’re interested in my particular experience w/MI, it’s all over my feed & the blog linked in my bio. Holler if you want specific links, but I feel like I’ve talked incessantly about my own stuff. Today I make room for others.

Some will, rightly, call for action beyond words & hashtags today. If you can do more, pls do. If you can’t, you can’t. If all you can give are words & hashtags, that’s a lot; if you can’t give them, that’s OK. Sometimes you can’t give, you just need to receive.

2021

For this year’s Let’s Talk I want to delve a bit into the “Mental illness is no different than diabetes or heart disease” trope.

The greatest value in this analogy is that it allows mentally healthy people to understand mental illness as ILLNESS & makes them less inclined to dismiss the struggles of the mentally ill. Emphasizing the chemical aspects of the illness makes it seem more ‘real.’

That’s no small thing. It helps make the abstract more tangible & gives mentally healthy people an accessible frame of reference. Depression isn’t sadness, it’s sickness. It has known scientific causes & often responds to chemical interventions (i.e. medication).

This framing can also help mentally ill people ease up on themselves by removing the sense of self-blame that so often comes with mental illness. Now and then I make someone – either a loved one or a therapist – reassure me that I’m actually #SickNotWeak.

There’s a reason @heylandsberg chose that name for his mental illness initiative. We all need to be reminded that just bc the illness is in our heads doesn’t mean the illness is ‘all in our heads.’ My brain malfunctions just like a diabetic’s pancreas malfunctions.

The problem: Mental illness isn’t diabetes or heart disease or anything you can see in labs or x-rays. It has a chemical component but not an easily measurable one. And while many diseases have straightforward treatments, mental health treatment is rarely uniform.

(It’s important here to note that “mental illness” describes a huge range of diseases, some more measurable than others and some more reliably treatable than others. Most often, though, mental illness is characterized in part by its unquantifiable nature.)

The danger in forcing the square peg of mental illness into the round hole of other physical illness is that if we get too attached to the analogy then it’s almost guaranteed to fall apart in a potentially harmful way.

At some point we’re going to have to confront the fact that you can’t simply prick your finger and find out if your bipolar disorder is under control. A deeply depressed person can’t be pulled out of despondency by a defibrillator.

If we’re too attached to the diabetes analogy then the more abstract characteristics of mental illness can redouble our self-doubt. And if our loved ones are too attached to it then they might start demanding visible evidence that nobody will ever be able to provide.

The point: Mental illness IS physical illness, but it doesn’t act the way we expect physical illness to act. Use the diabetes parallel when you need to, but don’t lose sight of the ways in which mental illness differs from other illnesses.

Don’t demand – & don’t let anyone else demand – proof that simply doesn’t exist. Be kind to yourself. Or, if you can’t, then think of it as being kind to the rest of us with mental illness & then add yourself to the group. Your illness is every bit as real as ours.

Statement from Kevin Epp of Titan Sports Management regarding Jake Virtanen (annotated version)

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[CW for sexual assault and character attacks against the accuser]

Yesterday a number of hockey journalists chose to tweet out screenshots of a statement from Kevin Epp, the agent for Jake Virtanen. The document is as self-serving as any corporate press release or ad campaign, but for whatever reason these journalists shared it without comment or context, so I’m providing some of that here. What follows is Epp’s letter (in regular print) with annotations (in italics) from me and Broadscast co-host Samantha Chang, a Vancouver-based lawyer. As you read this you’ll see that in the service of painting Virtanen as the real victim, Epp keeps pushing three highly irresponsible and corrosive ideas:

1. The accuser is only after Virtanen’s money.

2. You should support Virtanen because he’s a professional athlete.

3. Anonymity = Absence of credibility.

Remember that this is a calculated tactic to poison you against Virtanen’s accuser and note how often he hits those themes in the statement below.

———————————

I would like to speak out on behalf of my client, Jake Virtanen, regarding the extremely difficult situation he has been dealing with.

Right off the bat this is not a rape case but a burden for Jake to bear. The framing of sexual assault as a problem with devastating consequences solely for the accused is a tried and true way of establishing suspicion toward anyone who reports abuse. 

Four years ago, Jake had consensual physical relations with a woman. There were no drugs or alcohol involved. He is adamant that absolutely nothing improper occurred and denies in the strongest possible terms any suggestion that this was non-consensual.

This is the he-said-she-said part, and Virtanen has the right to tell his side as much as his accuser has the right to tell hers. It’s pro forma – when was the last time an allegation of abuse came out and the accused DIDN’T respond this way? He has the right to say it but you need not give it any weight whatsoever.

Sexual assault is a very serious and harmful problem, and being accused of this, even without any criminal charges being laid, has devastating consequences. What is unusual and troubling about this situation is how these events have been unfolding.

If you think being accused has devastating consequences just wait until you hear about the consequences of coming forward as a victim of assault, let alone of the assault itself.

Note that Epp leaves out a crucial word in this paragraph: The phrase “without any criminal charges being laid” should be followed by “yet.” The police investigation is ongoing, as Epp will note later.

Beyond that, the phrase “even without any criminal charges being laid” is clearly intended to undermine the plaintiff’s credibility. It implies that absent criminal charges, such allegations ought not be believed. This is regressive and simply untrue: Even the courts recognize that the justice system, particularly the criminal justice system, is woefully inadequate at handling sexual assault cases. There’s a more detailed explanation of that included at the end of this post.

The first time that Jake heard about these allegations was through anonymous social-media postings. At that time, Jake was playing for the Vancouver Canucks organization, who also became aware of the allegations through social media. As you can imagine, the allegations have negatively impacted his ability to play hockey.

Either Virtanen is actually innocent, in which case he’d have been blindsided no matter how he first learned about the allegations, or he’s guilty, in which case he already knew the content of the allegations, he just didn’t expect anyone else to ever learn about them. If he had been made aware ahead of time, no doubt Epp would have painted that as an attempted shakedown.

This is the first of three times Epp will mention the affect of the allegations on Virtanen’s career. That’s completely irrelevant to the supposed purpose of the statement, but it does serve to remind people that they like athletes, want to continue to like athletes and want those athletes to perform at the highest possible level. The implication is that the accuser has not only endangered a promising young man’s future, but also has endangered your ability to enjoy hockey to the fullest.

Also have to give a quick shout-out to “as you can imagine,” which is a direct mention of the most powerful tool in the sexual abuser’s PR kit: Misdirection of (primarily men’s) empathy. After all, you are a good man who can’t imagine assaulting someone, but you can certainly imagine being falsely accused by someone trying to get her hands on your money. Who are you going to believe?

Following the anonymous social posts, a lawsuit was started seeking to recover money from Jake. This was before the complainant, to my understanding, even spoke with the police. In fact, a media spokesperson from the Vancouver Police Department indicated on May 5 that the police had reached out to the complainant, rather than the other way around, having learned about the allegations through media coverage. From what I have been told about the process, all of this is highly unusual.

First and foremost, Epp’s “understanding” is wrong. According to The Province’s Patrick Johnston, the accuser spoke with Vancouver police more than a week before she brought the civil suit. Either Epp is ignorant of the facts of the case or he’s purposely telling an outright lie.

Now on to our first mention of money. Epp plainly portrays the accuser as a gold-digger who came forward purely for profit. He neglects to mention that the only legal action available to her is a civil suit, since in Canada criminal cases are filed at the Crown’s – not the victim’s – discretion (the system is substantially the same in the US). He also insinuates that the accuser isn’t cooperating with police or that she only ever wanted to bring this to civil court, and there’s no evidence that either of those things are true. It is true that she didn’t immediately come forward. We can’t know why that is, but we do know that victims often get smeared in exactly the way Epp is smearing Virtanen’s accuser and not everyone is prepared to sign up for that.

Adding to the situation, having brought her civil lawsuit seeking money, someone leaked documents to the media on two different occasions. Both counts are in direct violation of a court sealing order. We have asked certain members of the media whether it was the complainant who leaked information about the case, but the media have declined to indicate their source. The reporters were almost certainly unaware of the court’s sealing order.

Here Epp throws in an ‘I’m just asking the question’-style sidelong allegation that the accuser has been leaking sealed documents, a theory which he immediately notes he has been unable to substantiate. Is this a sleazy attempt to mislead the public? I don’t know – I’m just asking the question. We also see Epp trying to walk the line between stirring outrage at a supposed information leak and staying in the good graces of the journalists who received this press release. He ends up insinuating that reporters are being used as pawns by Virtanen’s accuser, which is ironic given that in putting out this press release Epp attempts to use reporters as human megaphones for his barely veiled attacks on the accuser’s character.

We also have another reminder that civil suits involve money, a fact which is neither in dispute nor indicative of the validity of the allegations.

While Jake has respectfully adhered to the court orders restricting the release of information, the allegations that have been put forward anonymously have made their way out to the media quite deliberately. Those anonymous allegations have had far-reaching consequences for Jake, his family, and potentially for his career.

Epp wants Virtanen to get points for obeying a court order, and that’s not how this works. Calling Virtanen’s behavior “respectful” and dropping a mention of his family are calculated efforts by Epp to make Virtanen seem like the good guy, all while Epp continues to leverage the accuser’s anonymity to portray her as a shadowy mastermind orchestrating information leaks. And don’t forget Jake’s career! As a professional athlete! Who you are invested in as a fan of his team, his league or even just his sport!

As this case gets addressed through the police investigation and civil court process, this could be determined as an attempt to destroy a person’s reputation in the press before the ordinary processes could run their course, or an attempt to obtain financial compensation from a high-profile athlete.

More irony, as this paragraph describes the aim of Epp’s press release to a tee, apart from the re-reiterated allegation of gold-digging. It takes some kind of nerve to preemptively defame someone by accusing her of trying to preemptively defame your client, but Epp apparently has no problem doing just that. Remember: He’s not just claiming his client is innocent, he’s also accusing the woman in question of attempted extortion. It’s repugnant and it’s an all too common tactic in these sorts of cases.

But what has happened so far puts Jake in a difficult position. As he adheres to and cooperates with the Vancouver Police investigation, he is restricted by the court’s sealing order, which he continues to respect.

This is just redundant.

It is important to emphasize that Jake has not been charged with any crime. As things stand, he is under investigation, and an investigation is entirely appropriate where this sort of serious allegation is put forward. The only case that has made its way into the court system is the civil lawsuit seeking payment of money from Jake, which he is responding to. There have been no criminal charges against Jake.

Epp neglected that word again. Jake has not been charged with any crime YET. There have been no criminal charges against Jake YET.

Epp did not, however, neglect to throw in one more mention of Jake’s money.

Jake is looking forward to putting this matter to rest and focusing on his career, continuing to play the game he loves.

And one more mention of Virtanen’s career. Epp is trying to manipulate the public, the press and probably law enforcement, and the only bright side is that he’s insultingly obvious about it. The press release is cynical, dishonest and based on the toxic trope that rich, famous men don’t commit sexual assault, they just innocently fall for conniving women. If this is the only way he can serve his client then either he’s the wrong person for the job or his client has no legitimate defense. Either way, journalists shouldn’t share this statement without pointing out its many sins, lest they become unwitting cogs in Virtanen’s PR machine.

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Huge thanks to Samantha for all her help, and especially for providing this context as to why it makes sense to default to believing accusers in sexual assault cases:

West Coast LEAF, amongst many others, is a non-profit organization which has been recognized as an intervenor by the Supreme Court of Canada and lower courts on multiple occasions.  LEAF has prepared a thorough law reform report (http://www.westcoastleaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/West-Coast-Leaf-dismantling-web-final.pdf) which explains the many barriers to justice which victims of sexual assault face. As cited at page 4 of the report, per Statistics Canada, only about 5% of sexual assaults are reported to police and only 11% of the cases that are reported eventually lead to conviction.

That only 11% lead to conviction does not mean that those were false accusations; it speaks to the institutional and structural barriers in moving these investigations and prosecutions forward. The LEAF report thoroughly outlines each of the various factors that are barriers to reporting sexual assault. These barriers (many of which we can characterize as foundational rape myths) have been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada, including as follows:

  • In R v. Seaboyer, [1991] 2 SCR 577, L’Heureux-Dube J. noted that rape myths are commonly the tools used to select out cases not worthy of further attention, and that whether or not police use these beliefs consciously or unconsciously, it is clear that very few cases that come to the attention of the police are classified as founded. Actual sociological studies have concluded “police have in their minds an image of the ideal rape victim and the ideal rape case”, which they use to filter out what cases get pursued and what cases do not.
  • More recently in R v. Barton, 2019 SCC 33, Moldaver J (widely considered one of Canada’s foremost experts in criminal law and constitutional law) started his reasons as follows:

“We live in a time where myths, stereotypes, and sexual violence against women[1] — particularly Indigenous women and sex workers — are tragically common. Our society has yet to come to grips with just how deep-rooted these issues truly are and just how devastating their consequences can be. Without a doubt, eliminating myths, stereotypes, and sexual violence against women is one of the more pressing challenges we face as a society. While serious efforts are being made by a range of actors to address and remedy these failings both within the criminal justice system and throughout Canadian society more broadly, this case attests to the fact that more needs to be done. Put simply, we can — and must — do better.”

Logan Mailloux and The Message

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[cw: This post discusses abuse and harassment, sometimes in detail.]

It’s about the men.

Every time a hockey player assaults or harasses a woman and walks away scot-free or nearly scot-free, we object by talking about the message it sends to women. That’s important. Of course it is. But it’s only half the story, and in the long run it’s the less important half.

The message that matters most isn’t the one received by female fans or even the victim herself — it’s the one that goes out to men and boys.

Male players, coaches, fans, team employees, casual observers — the team in question tells all of them that what that player did wasn’t really all that bad. It’s an eyeroll at everyone who has a problem with his actions and a reassuring pat on the shoulder to anyone who has hurt a woman in the past or might in the future. It’s really not all that bad. Everyone makes mistakes. Some people will be angry but don’t worry, you can overcome the adversity of having to deal with that. We’re your team and we’ve got your back.

That’s the message the Chicago Blackhawks sent men and boys when Patrick Kane was faced rape charges and the team gave him a platform to call his accuser a liar. It’s the message the Toronto Maple Leafs sent men and boys when Auston Matthews and his buddies tried to enter a lone woman’s car in a deserted parking garage in the middle of the night because they thought it would be funny to see how she responded to a threat to her safety. It’s the message the NHL sends to men and boys fans every time it honors Bobby Hull, who has a well-documented history of beating his wife. It’s the message the NHL sends to men and boys every time it declines to discipline an abuser. It’s the message the NHL and the Canadiens sent to men and boys when Montreal drafted Logan Mailloux, who distributed explicit photos of a former sexual partner without her permission, in the first round of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft.

Many of us fans have been saying this for years and some hockey journalists have gotten close to it over time, but Arpon Basu really nailed it in his column about the Mailloux pick:

“But the hockey side is not what’s important here. It is the societal side, the responsibility side, the decency side that is of the utmost importance.

“Because there is that young woman in Sweden. There are also many young women who adore this team. But perhaps most importantly, there are many young men, or men in general, who love this team. And to send all of them a message that what Mailloux openly admits to doing is acceptable to the organization just because he is good at hockey is just about the worst possible message this organization can send.”

Basu’s words come as close to hitting the target as any I’ve seen from a hockey journalist, but he misses on one point: The message isn’t just that the Canadiens gave Mailloux a pass because he’s good at hockey; it’s that passes are available for crimes like these. Montreal offered one to Mailloux because he’s good at hockey, yes, but general manager Marc Bergevin personally extended that pass because, in his own words, “it’s a young man that made a terrible mistake. Again, he’s 17 years old and he’s willing and understands and is remorseful.”

He cites Mailloux’s age. He calls the crime for which that 17-year-old was convicted “a mistake.” He gives Mailloux credit for understanding that, according to the victim, he has yet to demonstrate and remorse that, according to the victim, he has yet to express to her. Those excuses have nothing to do with his status as a hockey player; they would apply to anyone in a similar position. Young male fans hear that. They internalize it. The Montreal Canadiens give you permission to criminally violate a woman’s privacy as long as you’re young and you issue a statement after the fact.

Hockey culture permits this at every level, a situation that, in the absence of active reinforcement, might begin to wilt organically as society grows more progressive. But men like Bergevin won’t allow that. Men like Bergevin — and there are many of them — give it water and sunlight and nurture it with every excuse they make for continuing to accept the abuse of women as not really that big a deal.

The victim matters. Female fans matter. But if we want to protect potential future victims and make hockey more welcoming to future female fans then we have to start by sending a different message to men and boys: Abuse really is that big a deal, and we’re not issuing any more passes.

Matthews-For-Byng Voters Reflect on Their Selection

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In retrospect, the 2019-20 Lady Byng was a near-perfect test case.

First, the award itself: The Byng carries an official description — “given to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability” — that makes no mention of it being reserved exclusively for on-ice performance. It is also considered to be one of the lesser NHL awards, which means it seldom gets much attention or creates any kind of stir. And, of course, the whole idea is to reward good character, i.e. “gentlemanly conduct.”

Second, the timing: In the spring of 2019 Auston Matthews did something very ungentlemanly, not to mention illegal, when he and some friends drunkenly approached a woman alone in her car in a deserted parking garage at 2am and attempted to open her locked door because they thought it would be “funny” to see how she responded. There’s a lot more to the incident and its aftermath, which you can read about in Katie Strang’s extensive piece for The Athletic or, if you’re stopped by the paywall, in this Sporting News piece by Tommy McArdle. News of this incident broke days before the 2019 preseason began and made a mid-sized splash. Then the 2019-20 season (mostly) happened and Matthews recorded 80 points and just eight minutes in the penalty box — numbers which made him a strong Lady Byng candidate by the stats-based standard that usually guides the people — i.e. members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association — who vote on this otherwise amorphous award.

If you wanted to know whether hockey journalists care at all about the off-ice behavior of the players they cover, the 2019-20 Lady Byng voting was about as close as you were likely to get to a real answer. And the answer we got, at least initially, was horribly disappointing.

Matthews received 21 first-place votes for the Lady Byng trophy, and a total of 107 out of 170 voters had him somewhere on their five-man ballot. That means well over half the voters either didn’t take into account Matthews’s off-ice incident at all or considered it but didn’t think it should disqualify him from consideration for an award for “gentlemanly conduct.” Out of a combination of curiosity and plain anger, I got on Twitter and asked the 21 people who put Matthews atop their ballots about that choice.

Honestly, I didn’t expect more than one or two people to respond, and I assumed those responses would likely be curt and simply assert the (erroneous) belief that the Lady Byng is officially designated as a purely an on-ice award and thus off-ice behavior is irrelevant. Instead, 16 of the 21 voters have responded to date, and every single one of those responses has been, at a minimum, very respectful. Even more remarkable is how many voters said they regretted their selection and/or intend to adjust their criteria in future years.

Some observers grew frustrated as journalist after journalist admitted to having given their vote very little thought, and that’s absolutely a fair criticism. My concern was different: I don’t think this particular choice should have required very much thought, because I believe Matthews’s name alone should have immediately brought to mind his off-ice actions. It shouldn’t be possible, even when one’s mind is on statistics and on-ice skills, to simply forget about his gross mistreatment of a stranger just over a year earlier. That’s where I find my disappointment in how this vote went down and also where I find my hope that this might be a pivot point for the future.

Almost nobody dodged the question, and more voters than not said that they plan to take off-ice misbehavior into account going forward. That’s a huge philosophical shift within a group of people who wield a lot of influence over how fans see the hockey world. It’s also a sign that these journalists are becoming more actively aware of the kinds of role models — and the Lady Byng absolutely sets forth its winner as a role model – they want to elevate.

Culture change happens slowly and maybe I’m bringing too much optimism to this (it’s 2020 and I’m a little starved for hope, so can you blame me?), but I truly believe that this is a meaningful step in the right direction. And it’s a step that only the Lady Byng — the runt of the NHL awards — could have brought us.

Below, find tweets from the voters who replied publicly, presented in the order in which I received them. Under that I’ll include excepts from direct messages I received. The voters who have yet to respond are Sam Carchidi, Joshua Clipperton and Seth Rorabaugh. Patrick Lalime and Patrick Sharp also voted for Matthews for the Byng, but neither is a frequent Twitter user so it’s likely they never saw the question.

Here are quotes from voters who chose to DM their replies to me. All are shared with permission:

Ray Ferraro of TSN: “I looked at the award and equated it as I always have to penalty minutes v production on the ice. I did not look with a more open, larger vision. 100% my fault and sloppy by me. This is my mistake.” Ferraro also said he appreciated getting a “boot in the pants” on the subject, as it affords him an opportunity to learn and grow.

Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald: “Melissa, I simply based my vote on his on-ice decorum. Your question is fair, though.”

Darren Dreger of TSN: “Given the charges against Matthews were dismissed, it may have made it easier for those of us who voted for him to conveniently judge his on-ice conduct only. Your questioning on this matter is fair and I will absolutely do a better job in the future of thoroughly analyzing the individual candidates I have identified as worthy of the Lady Byng.” (Dreger also touched on the issue during a radio spot in Montreal. The relevant portion begins at the 13:38 mark.)

The remaining person who responded via DM — David Poulin of TSN — asked that his reply be kept confidential. I will say only that he was very polite and respectful.

Stop. Listen. Learn. Do better.

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It’s time to unlearn a couple things.

To be an ally to a marginalized group, you first have to get out of your own way. That means turning off the part of your brain that cares less about reality than theory, which is a hallmark of privilege. We tend to have two seemingly benign but truly harmful conversational habits:

Devil’s Advocate

Yes, we know that very few things in this world are simple. In any given case there are countless variables that could affect the outcome. But when both anecdotes and statistics keep leading to the same conclusion, you can drop the academic exercise and look at the big picture. And when people tell you about their own experiences, LISTEN. This isn’t theory to them, it’s their actual lives. Unless you have a concrete reason to disbelieve the individual person, don’t give in to the temptation to come up with reasons why their account must be misleading or incomplete. You’re not comfortable with the whole concept of pervasive bigotry because it seems foreign to you. Understood. You need to get comfortable with it, though, because it’s real. Picking apart every incident for possible fissures is not just not helpful but actively harmful.

Example 1: You read statistics about how underrepresented BIPOC are in executive positions but you insist it’s because of socioeconomics, not race. First, you’re not a scholar in this area. Your instinctive reaction serves only to distract from the real issue in favor of centering a theory that allows you to believe racism isn’t really that big of a problem. Second those two things are intrinsically linked anyway. But by now you’ve derailed the original conversation – about the difficulties BIPOC face in the workplace – and replaced it with a topic more palatable to you. I’ve been guilty of this exact derailment myself in the past. I can’t take those mistakes back, but I’m doing what I can to never repeat the behavior again: Stop, listen, learn and do better.

Example 2: A series of women tell you that they get treated better by men online when they create accounts using traditionally male names than when they use their real names. You counter that the tone of the posts were probably different between the two accounts; that the names might also carry other differences that would affect people’s reactions (such as religious or ethnic connotations); that if different people interacted with the two accounts then it’s really not fair to compare; and on and on and on.

You can come up with all the alternate theories you like, but all you’re really doing is tacitly accusing these women of being liars, foolish or paranoid. We know our own experiences far better than you do, and certainly more accurately than your imagination can reconfigure them.

Stop. Listen. Learn. Do better.

Slippery Slope

We’re dealing with an array of almost unimaginable problems right now; it’s certainly appealing to mentally skip ahead to a future where things feel more ‘normal’ and norms snap back into place. The trouble is, that’s a fantasy. We have to deal with where we ARE, not where we might eventually be. The house is on fire. Stealing a nearby hose might set a bad precedent, but not doing it allows real people to burn right now. Slippery slope arguments almost always favor maintaining the status quo over trying to change things for the better – i.e., they’re designed to stop potential abuses by instead preserving the abuses already in place.

Example 1: Is there a possible danger in vastly reducing our police forces? Maybe. But that possible danger has to take a backseat to the real danger that police pose right now to marginalized communities. Corrupt, racist, transphobic, homophobic and otherwise power-drunk police departments are here now and they’re killing people and ruining lives. They need to be stopped, period. We can’t abdicate the responsibility to fix this crisis by spinning tales about other, unproven crises we could face if we do.

Stop. Listen. Learn. Do better.

Example 2: “If we allow trans women to use women’s restrooms, how will we stop any man who wants to victimize women from putting on a dress and gaining access?” Never mind the ridiculousness of the idea that men who victimize women wouldn’t just barge into the ladies room anyway, or that there’s some kind of sanctity to public bathrooms; the bigger issue is that this argument boils down to punishing trans women because of the possibility of future bad behavior by cis men. Sit for a moment with how perverse that is.

Stop. Listen. Learn. Do better.

These aren’t the only ways we fail as allies, but in my experience they’re very common and they usually result in someone from the marginalized community spending time and emotional resources trying to explain reality to a unreceptive, unrepentant would-be debate club captain. The first step in being an ally is not making life more difficult for the people you’re supposed to be supporting. We all have to check the thought patterns and behavior our privilege has helped create. This is as good a place as any to start.