Guest Episode: Stick To Sports with Jashvina Shah **TW sexual assault**
**TW sexual assault**
During the month of August, the Burn It All Down crew is taking a break from regular weekly Tuesday episodes. In their place, you will hear an episode of a podcast hosted by a guest of Burn It All Down.
This week Jashvina Shah brings us an episode of her podcast, Stick To Sports. Recorded a year ago, in this episode Jashvina talks about what hockey culture claims to be but how it's really not that at all. **TW:** trigger warning because she talks about her sexual assault.
Follow Jashvina on Twitter at twitter.com/icehockeystick and Stick to Sports at twitter.com/sticktosports_. Her website is jashvinashah.com.
Transcript
Jessica: During this month, August 2020, the Burn It All Down crew is taking some time off to rest and retool the show. In place of our regular weekly Tuesday episodes, we are bringing you episodes from podcasts hosted by guests of Burn It All Down. We hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back soon. As always, burn on, not out.
Shireen: Hello, Jashvina.
Jashvina: Hello, Shireen!
Shireen: [laughs] How are you today?
Jashvina: Good, how are you?
Shireen: I’m great, and I’m really excited that Stick To Sports is one of the podcasts we will be highlighting in the month. I just wanted to ask you: what is your podcast about?
Jashvina: So…You sounded so Canadian there. It’s funny. [Shireen laughs] It’s kind of a hybrid between…There are times when I do interview with people, so I focus on marginalized folks who cover sports or who are fans or who work in sports, because those are the voices that we don’t often hear. Sometimes that’ll be based off a specific topic or sometimes they’ll just be general interviews, or other times I’ll pretty much just get up there and rant because sometimes…Not sometimes, a lot of times there are things that are happening and I have a lot of thoughts and they can’t all go on Twitter.
Shireen: Why did you start it? Was it in part and parcel of exactly what you said – marginalized voices and BIPOC voices are not often recognized in hockey and in sports?
Jashvina: That was definitely a key reason why I started it. I think at the time, because I wanna say I started this in ’16, ’17, so around after Trump was elected, and I was just pretty mad about all the things that were happening, and I was especially really mad about obviously people saying “stick to sports” because that whole concept is just ridiculous. At the time, you know, we had athletes choosing to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality towards Black folks; a lot of things were being misconstrued and people were just so heavily on the side of “we’re not gonna say anything” and I was just really mad about it so I was like, you know what, I have too many thoughts, I just need to start a podcast.
Shireen: So what is this particular episode about? What are people gonna hear, and when did you record this specific episode?
Jashvina: This one I recorded about a year ago but it's relevant still [laughs] and it’ll probably be relevant for a long time to come.
Shireen: Yeah. [laughs]
Jashvina: It’s one of my favorite episodes. It’s about toxic culture in hockey, you know, racism and other forms of bigotry, and how the culture of hockey perpetuates this, because I like to say that hockey is racist and people get very mad at me when I say that. But it’s systematically set up in a way in which you can’t fight racism. I stand by what I say. I’ve been around hockey for like 10 years now and I've been covering it for almost 10 years, actually. I’ve done basically all levels – I’ve done youth, juniors, college, pros. So I know the dynamics of how everything works, and hockey culture is very specific. It’s cultivated in a very specific way. This is the episode where I get into how hockey culture is, as I like to say, very incestuous, and how that’s a huge barrier in creating change and making sport actually more welcoming and supportive for everyone. Also, very timely because it’s the topic of Evan and I’s book that we’re writing.
Shireen: Congratulations on that announcement. How can people find the podcast and you online, and could you let us know where to look out for your book?
Jashvina: Now, for the book, I don’t think we have a pre-order page yet, but that’ll be out on Twitter and probably everywhere else we could post that once we do have that. And it’ll be on my website which is just my name. You can find me on Twitter @icehockeystick, very easy to remember, very on-brand. The podcast is on Soundcloud but it’s also on iTunes. It’s not on Spotify yet because I actually don’t know how to do that and I gotta figure it out. But you can find the podcast on Twitter @sticktosports_, and I’ll always tweet out new episodes from there.
Shireen: Thank you so much for sharing your work with us and our flamethrowing community.
Jashvina: Thank you for doing this, it’s really awesome.
Hi everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of Stick To Sports. I’m your host, Jashvina Shah; hopefully actually doing this consistently this time. Hockey season is actually starting, the NHL kind of moves a little faster than college hockey – obviously the NHL has pre-season and college hockey doesn’t, but I forgot that my short one(?) month vacation from hockey is now over. Anyway, today’s episode, by popular…I kind of threw this out there on Twitter, and everyone was like, yes, please! It’s about hockey culture as a whole and what it is supposed to be and what people say it is, vs what it actually is, which is kind of a broad topic and I’m not entirely sure how to break that down.
This has to do with Nate Schmidt and his suspension, this kind of came up because of what’s happening with him. I’ll link to his story and his statement, I don’t really think it’s important. I actually saw Hannah Stuart tweet something like, “Yes, the NHL cares more about this than they care about hits that are dangerous,” which is true. It reminded me of how the NHL cares more about not having players who play Fortnite excessively than they do about having people who sexually assault women in their league. So, there’s a very narrow and specific way in which hockey culture applies to society. I don’t even know if that makes sense…So, hockey culture, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is very different than any other sport.
I grew up a huge football fan, and I’m from Boston so we’re also big baseball fans, so I have closely followed at one point in my life five different sports. So that would be hockey, football – I grew up a football fan – baseball, basketball, and Formula 1. Formula 1 is not the subject of this discussion and I don’t even wanna get into Formula 1 and the issues that it has. But the point is that of all the sports I’ve followed pretty much since I was a child or a teenager, this is something that is specific to hockey, like, very specific. It’s basically that hockey values…Also, if you want a good look at this you should read Beartown if you haven’t already, it’s a great book, I love it; I don’t think I can read it again, heavy trigger warning: a lot of it is very difficult to deal with and I’ve read it twice and I can’t stomach reading it a third time based on my personal past and the trauma that I’ve gone through. But it actually is the most accurate book I’ve read about hockey and I think it does a great example of showing the double standard of hockey culture and what it’s supposed to be and how it’s portrayed but how it’s not actually what it says it is in real life.
So hockey culture is like, “everyone supports each other, we put the good of the team above us, nobody speaks out.” I’m trying to think of how it would be phrased in a positive manner in hockey. It’s pretty much like everyone’s on board, we sacrifice for each other, hockey communities’ gonna help each other out, we’re always gonna be there for each other no matter what, and once you’re a part of the hockey community you’re never left out. So that’s all not true. It’s true on a very specific, very narrow level. I’m gonna use the NHL as an example. Nate Schmidt, the whole…First of all, Nate Schmidt’s wonderful, I think everyone loves him. I’ve met him before, I interviewed him many years ago when I was still writing a book on college hockey, he’s a great guy – as far as I know him, he’s a nice guy. This doesn’t have to do with him so much as just his situation reminded me of it and kind of the NHL’s very skewed views.
So, if you’re a part of an NHL team, you matter. If you’re someone like a big star, you matter. Like, “Oh, we’re always gonna be there for you.” But if you…like, for example, if you have a drug problem, the NHL’s gonna drop you like a hot potato, and this has happened. I think this has happened with players in the past where the NHL with pretty much just wash its hands of any responsibility. So that’s one example where we’re not actually all going to support each other all the time, because hockey is a body more often than not, and the NHL is a body for sure. This is actually really common, this is not specific to the NHL, this is a common thing across the board with sports, but I think what I’m saying is specific to hockey is how very much the culture is like, you sacrifice who you are as a person for the identity of a team.
For those of you who’ve watched Miracle, which I hope all of you have – if you haven’t, you really should. Obviously I’m a BU girl so…The name on the back is a hell of a lot more important than…The logo! Sorry, I messed it up, I haven’t slept in like three weeks. The logo on the front is more important than the name on the back. There’s that infamous scene from the movie where Herb Brooks is asking everyone, “Who do you play for?” and finally Mike Eruzione, BU legend, says, “Mike Eruzione, Winthrop, Mass., USA.” So in theory that sounds great, right? Like, hey, we’re buying into this concept that’s bigger than us, we really care about it, we really want it to succeed. And it is really cool. The one thing about that time period and especially the Miracle on Ice and the one thing about sports in general that’s really awesome is kind of how it can unite communities. It unites communities in a way that’s very specific to only sports and it’s such an amazing thing to be a part of.
So it is really cool, and it is really cool that hockey has that kind of community-based culture, and it’s a small roster so it’s more than other sports. It’s a very solid, a very tight-knit community. Even if you go to things like a college hockey game vs college football game, obviously one is a lot smaller than the other, there’s more opportunity to bond. We are a very small community and that’s part of where this comes from. But again, there are negative aspects that come with “sacrifice your identity for the good of the whole,” because you cannot be who you are, truly, as a person, to be accepted into hockey. You have to be a very specific type of person. I know I’ve kind of talked about this, I don’t belong in hockey. I’m not white, not a man. I don’t belong there. I can be there and people will accept me there, but they’ll only accept pieces of me, they’ll only accept me if I kind of live up to the ‘model minority’ myth.
People love you if you’re reporting on them and writing stuff and you’re always there, they’re chatty, but if god forbid something happens and I go to them it’s just a brick wall. I’m accepted to the point of the idea of me, but not me in reality, because me in reality is someone who’s subject to a lot of sexual harassment. I’ve been sexually assaulted, I’ve come close to being sexually assaulted in hockey-based situations. I get sexually harassed regularly, I’m always pretty much distilled down to my looks. I’ve been subject to a lot of racist crap that’s happened, whether it’s been actually outward racism or more underneath the surface racism. But those parts of me, the part of me that kind of deals with that stuff isn’t really accepted. I’m okay and I can fit in, but if I leave that part of me behind. And that’s the problem with “leave your identity at the door for the good of the organization” or, again, for what they perceive is the good of the organization.
See, this is why it’s a really complicated thing to talk about. There’s so many different facets, and I hope that kind of explains one portion of it. On that note actually, the idea of “we’ll help each other and we’re there for each other” – that’s not really true. It’s true, again, up to a certain point, and then it stops. So if you’re having drug problems, if you follow any of Dan Carcillo’s work – which I hope you do if you’re suffering from any mental health problems; if you’re suffering from racism – thank you USA Hockey for hiring someone who called his player the n-word! If you’re suffering from sexism or sexual assault, especially if you’re a survivor of sexual assault or domestic violence, hockey’s not gonna be there for you, it’s not gonna help you. I can tell you this on a personal level because at least two of those things, the racism…Three of them: the racism, the sexism, the sexual assault, I have gone to people for. At best they’ll give me a one word answer, at medium they’ll ignore it and try to not talk about it, at worst they’ll outright shun me.
So that’s happened, all those three things have happened. I’m lucky that there are a few people who are supportive, there are still some good people in hockey who mean the world to me, and I think those people pretty much know who they are. I mean that, there are people who work in hockey and work for teams and former college hockey players that I know are good people and that I can talk to about this, and then I have a lot of friends within the realm of fans and media, so that’s good. I’m really glad I have that. But overall on the whole it's just not gonna be there for you. Hockey will say, “We care about everyone, we’re inclusive, blah blah blah, hockey’s for everyone,” but in reality they’re really not. It’s really easy to see these kinds of double standards where, again, the NHL cares more about players playing Fortnite than they do about players who’ve been accused of sexual assault. I think on a person level it's really aggravating
It’s one thing to know that there are issues, but it’s another thing when the sport is constantly trying to say like, “We’re really great,” you know? “We build great character, we do this, we do that…” To a certain extent yes, I think there are some positives, but also the culture as a whole is really bad and it produces a lot of negatives things within that culture. There’s a constant pushback because people are always saying, “Hockey’s so great, it’s so this, it’s so that,” and it’s really not as great as everyone says it is. When you keep saying, “This is great, it teaches great values,” you’re ignoring the horrible values that it teaches, and by ignoring them you’re not fixing them. So for example, a horrible value that hockey tends to have is that we don’t respect women. And hockey because it’s primarily a privileged white sport, we don’t have exposure to people of color, we don’t treat them well, we don’t treat people who are LGBTQIA+ well, because they don’t.
Hockey’s a very toxically masculine white privileged male sport and it’s bad. It’s really bad. I know people might say, “Oh, you didn’t play, blah blah blah…” Whatever. I’ve been covering the sport for a long time, I’ve been a beat reporter for two different college hockey teams, I know a lot of stuff, like, a lot of stuff. Hockey and college hockey as a whole is a really small community and a lot of us know a lot of stuff. I do know what I'm talking about and it’s kind of annoying when people are like, “You don’t know…” I know pretty well. I’m one of two women of color, I believe, who cover men’s hockey. I wanna say it’s only me and Sunaya, I can’t think of anyone else off the top of my head. [sighs] So, I don’t even know if that explains anything, honestly. I’m just ranting.
The thing is, I don’t know how to explain except that I’m throwing out examples. I keep thinking about this but it’s a huge topic, it’s so broad, there’s so many different aspects to it, and I don’t know how to distill it into…I did broadcast, I was in radio for four years, but I’m still a much better writer than I am a speaker. I still adlib things, like, I’m the kind of person who will never read an instruction manual, I’ll kind of just do it and figure out how it works and go from there. This topic is just so big, it’s so tough. But I guess if we wanna go back to Nate Schmidt, we’re gonna punish him for the whatever banned substance that we found in his system…I think there’s just an unwillingness to be understanding in situations where hockey should be understanding, and a willingness to be understanding to the wrong party in situations where they shouldn’t be, is a good way to say it, but there’s just so many double standards. Who hockey’s gonna support, who hockey’s gonna be there for, they’re not the same thing, you know? Because if you get hurt, if you have a physical injury, yeah, hockey will support you. If you have a mental injury they’re not as likely, if you’re a victim of racial abuse or sexual assault it’s even more unlikely they’re gonna support you.
I’m lucky that I have a few people I know in hockey who will support me, but outside of that…I’m gonna use this as an example even though I really don’t want to. When I was sexually assaulted it was November…The funny thing is, I was supposed to actually be at Penn State and I stayed in New York instead because I was like, oh, I’ve covered hockey for the past five years, I need to have a social life again, so I’m gonna stay here and I’m gonna spend Halloween here and it's gonna be fun. Then the night that I was supposed to drive to Penn State, instead I stayed in New York, I was sexually assaulted. I don’t wanna talk about what happened, I’m not interested in that, but what I do wanna talk about is the aftermath and the effects and what it does to you. After it happened…I’m not gonna talk about that now, but those are the things of things that I’m interested in talking to people about.
But after that happened I didn’t wanna leave my apartment ever again, but also Ohio State was at UConn the next weekend and I wanted to go, so I wanted to go cover hockey and be at the rink but I also really didn’t want to because hockey is not kind to victims of sexual assault at all, and I don’t even need to go into examples of that because I think it’s more than well documented. That was really hard for me because I felt that that was a piece of myself that no one’s going to accept, like, they don’t accept the fact that I’m brown, they don’t accept the fact that I’m a woman, they don’t accept that now this is another part of who I am. It’s not my identity, but it’s a part of who I am now and it will be for the rest of my life, and that’s really difficult because part of the reason I love hockey so much is because of the community and it’s really hard when you know that community doesn’t want you to be there and that they don’t want you to be safe.
I know there are a lot of people who are like, oh, that’s not true. But it is. I know a lot about victims of sexual assault and what they go through, and I didn’t go to the police because I knew there was no point, I knew I had no case. I didn’t have health insurance at that time; the only way for me to get therapy was if I underwent a rape kit and I chose not to do that because I couldn’t deal with it, and no one could go with me, my mom couldn’t come with me, and I was just not gonna sit in the hospital by myself. I didn’t wanna go through it and we kind of made the decision together that we’re just gonna put it in the past. I know how all this works, I’m very familiar with what to do, and because I know a lot about how sports treats victims of sexual assault, even if I didn’t tell anyone I still didn’t feel welcome.
I love hockey and I love BU hockey probably more than anything in the world still, no matter what, and just feeling like there’s already such a big distance between me and hockey because of racism and sexism and all this stuff…This just put up another wall, and this was the one I didn’t think I could get through this time, and that was really hard. I finally told a few people in hockey right before I was supposed to go cover a tournament which was, by the way, a terrible mistake. I’m a journalist, I cover hockey, so my mindset is “you're gonna keep going unless you’re dead,” like, that’s what it is and it’s horribly toxic. I don’t even wanna get started on that topic. So I was gonna go cover the tournament because it’s my job, I wasn't not gonna go even though I wasn’t okay. I mean, I’m still really not okay, but this was a month after it happened and I was losing my mind. It ended up with me crying in bathrooms at like 5 different rinks, I was having really bad panic attacks, it was not good.
I was at Milton for Flood Marr and Catherine, one of my friends, Catherine Bogart, who I love, had to…I texted her, I was like, I can’t do this. She was like, “Do you want me to call you?” and I was like, yes, but if you call me I’m gonna start crying in the middle of this gym – because I was staying in the gym because it was warm there, during intermission. A lot of people from hockey – scouts, coaches, college coaches that I know – were at that rink, and I don’t wanna be crying in front of them, that would be a little weird and nobody that I was really close to was there, so that would be really weird. I was just losing my mind. But before then, because I knew it was gonna be hard for me to be on the road for five days in an environment that I didn’t think would accept me, or that I knew wouldn’t accept me; I told a few people, and I actually told someone while I was having a panic attack, I was actually crying in the rink. I was like, I don’t know what to do because this is the last one. If I get cut off from BU hockey I’m not gonna make it. I know that, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about BU hockey before, like I’m completely cut off from it, and that was really hard. But that's just what it is.
I digress, I didn’t mean to talk about all of this, but the point is it’s just really crappy, I guess, is the point, because I know a lot of people don’t care and a lot of people aren’t willing to talk about it and a lot of people aren’t willing to help or change things, and that’s really hard because for me that was the moment, that right there was the thing that did it. Going back or going forward to the Comm Ave Classic, when they had Casey DeSmith on their roster I was really upset, especially because, I dunno, it’s Walter Brown, it’s my home, you know? I broadcasted my first game there, and that’s usually an event that I go to where I can actually feel loved and supported and not like I’m a total outsider. They did take him off the roster but part of what I said in my email is that this is part of the reason why I didn’t think I could tell anybody what happened to me.
After that, after the event, I overheard someone not really happy with me asking them to take Casey DeSmith off the roster. That was really hard for me because I was really personal and I admitted something that…I talk a lot about being sexually assaulted, but it’s different when you talk about something on social media and when you tell somebody personally, it’s a lot harder. I don’t like talking about it, because it’s not something I wanna share with people and it’s not something that I wanna keep thinking of. To hear that was really disappointing and really hard and a lot “okay, you’re not gonna support me, that’s great.” Anyway, I guess the point of that is hockey culture is really not for people who are minorities and it’s not really as great as everyone claims it is, and it’s not really as supportive as everyone says it is. If you’re a part of hockey culture, I mean, if you’re a part of hockey you’re not always gonna get the support of everybody. I know people are gonna hate me saying that but’s true.
I deal with this year after year and…I don’t know. People are still gonna hate me even if I don't say anything so at this point it doesn’t really make sense to not say anything. I’m really really not a fan of what happened, I’m not a fan of how hockey deals with a lot of things, but I really hate the fact that hockey thinks it’s great and it’s better than everyone else and that it's got this wonderful warm culture when it really doesn't becase…It just doens’t. I don’t really know what else to say. I did wanna do an episode about the Whitecaps and their whole…Lord, it’s the same thing over and over again. Until people are willing to take an inward look at themselves and at their sport and be honest…The problem is people think that they’re always right and they're not willing to listen and they’re not willing to learn, and they also just think that people are overreacting.
My reaction to this myth was completely valid, and my response was – thanks to Laura for editing it – was very polite, it was very eloquent, and just to be met with that response is really really disheartening, I think, to hear people say stuff like that. It’s disappointing. As long as that keeps happening, hockey's never gonna change, and that's the worst part because I think there are a lot of great things about the sport. I'm not quitting…I think about it a lot, obviously I have in the past couple of years, but I’m not leaving because I love covering college hockey. Ultimately at the end of the day that matters most to me. I do have a lot of really good friends from hockey, there are really great people, and I’m indebted to BU hockey and will be for the rest of my life because without that program I don’t think that I'd be able to function, honestly. Even now there’s a deep darkness, I guess…I don't know if ‘darkness’ is the right word to use after something like that happens to you, like, after you get sexually assaulted or you go through something really traumatic, and every time I’ve gone through something – because I’ve gone through two really traumatic things in the past four years – and anytime something like that happens it’s like you lose yourself, you lose who you are, and I think the only thing that kept me who I am is the fact that I love BU hockey so much, and I can leave anything else behind but I can't leave that program behind and never will.
So I’m really indebted to hockey for a lot of the things it gave to me because it originally was the only home that I had, I mean, I grew up a Boston transplant in New Jersey, like, the Devils were the only thing I had and when I became a hockey fan my life changed because they were local and I had them and I didn't feel like I didn't belong anymore. I still maintain that, I think that there are really good things about hockey, but there are a lot of really bad things. So when you say stuff like “hockey's really great, everyone supports each other, we’re this one big family, it’s all for the team,” you're ignoring the bad stuff that comes with that, specifically “check your identity at the door, we're all for the team, no one rocks the boat.” That’s another hockey thing – you can’t rock the boat or you’ll get kicked out, you’ll get pushed overboard.
Sorry, this is a really depressing episode. I really didn’t mean it to be this depressing so I’m sorry. [laughs] I dunno, people wanted me to say stuff so I tried saying things but I don’t know if it made sense and it’s always all over the place but I made a few points; hopefully they’re easy, not too difficult to understand. The point I want people to take away from this is that hockey culture is really a big double standard, if you’re not a straight white man it’s really not gonna help you at all, the people who champion hockey as being really great are part of the reason why it can’t change to actually be great. I don't want people to be like, “hockey’s so great, everyone supports each other,” because more likely than not you’re not gonna be supportive if you’re coming from a position like I am, so I don’t want people to go there expecting to get support. Like I mentioned before I very clearly knew after what happened to me that I couldn’t go to anybody there, and that's really disappointing because I love BU hockey so much. Eventually I did tell three people in hockey, three people who are actually all BU hockey people, of course.
So I’m lucky I have that but overall I just felt really uncomfortable being in hockey, like, really uncomfortable, just because when you know someone won't support you if they know what you're going through…I don’t know how to describe it. Because I’ve dealt with racism before and I’ve felt uncomfortable in situations like…Sexual harassment – a very close incident of sexual assault from a reporter is why I stopped covering the NHL, why I stopped covering the Devils, like, that was it, I just walked away. I’ve been uncomfortable before, but this was different, like…I really don’t know how to describe it. Anyway, I don't have anything else to say. I hope that you enjoyed some of this, if not I'm really sorry. I don't think anything I talk about on these podcasts are enjoyable, they’re all super depressing topics!
On a positive note…Do I have any positive notes…? No, I don’t. Well, I actually have to rewrite one of my novels, which is also pretty depressing because my life is just difficult. Anyway…Being a brown female in hockey has been very hard. So, yeah. But I'm writing another book that's actually fun to write and not really sad so I’m excited about that. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. As always, you can subscribe to my newsletter which i'm gonna start doing again, sorry, I'm working all the time, I’m very tired. So yeah, that’ll do it for this episode. You can follow me on Twitter @icehockeystick and follow the podcast @sticktosports_. You can tweet at me; please don’t be mean, I will block you because I just don’t deal with that in my life anymore. Constructive criticism is fine but please don’t…I dunno, people like to get in my mentions trying to argue with me, like, I’m not gonna argue with you about whether or not hockey is supportive of sexual assault victims! That’s not even a question, I’ll just block you now.
So yeah. Questions, concerns, comments, topics you want to be discussed, mailbag options, please tweet them at me. You can email the podcast but I don’t know the email off the top of my head. If it sounds like it’s really disoriented I am really disoriented, like, my life is pretty much…The past year has just been wicked. I don’t even know how to describe it. The only positive is that now I have a bed and a desk in my apartment and we have working gas, because a year ago I didn’t have those things. Yeah, it's been cool. Anyway, yeah. I will talk to all you guys – sorry – I will talk to all of you next week. You can’t say guys, that’s important. I messed up so I’m gonna keep this in so people know you can't say guys, just a gender-neutral inclusive term. So I hope all of you have a good week, or Labor Day….Sorry, I don’t get to celebrate Labor Day, I don’t get to celebrate any holidays. I hope you all have a wonderful week and I’ll catch up with you all next week.