I was in the 2013 San Jose Sharks holiday video. Antti Niemi was holding up an aloe vera plant claimed to be a cactus. I don’t know how I ended up here.
This is a grievance I air constantly, not just on the day of Festivus.
It is not a shock to anyone who knows me that I am constantly at odds with hockey. I worked for the San Jose Sharks, the team I grew up rooting for, when I was in college. That season was also when I experienced the worst trauma at the hands of two different abusers, one being in hockey and the other being adjacent at the time. That was also when I went through a very public harassment case that led to a Yahoo! Sports writer being dismissed. There’s still more from that season I’ve never spoken about publicly.
I used to be proud of working for the Sharks and being in a Sharks holiday video. I loved referencing Slappy in high school and early in college. I got to a point, however, where I started out throwing anything I collected while I worked for the team.
It is harder to stay away from hockey when everyone I know is talking about Heated Rivalry, which I won’t watch because I don’t need to go back. I haven’t been able to continue watching Shoresy for the same reason, despite enjoying the show a lot. It feels like a relapse for me — I have struggled with substance use disorder, but I have been sober from alcohol and I haven’t been in risk of relapsing; hockey, on the other hand? I get back into the space for even a split second, I feel like I have fallen down a hole and I am stuck at square one. Staying away from hockey, for me, has been harder than staying away from alcohol.
The rest of this post below is what I had written in my buttondown newsletter a few months ago. I could try to write something new, but I think it still accurately captures how I feel about the sport and the industry and why I’m staying away. I wrote in it how this feels like a blog I constantly write and revise often, and it painfully is, because trauma has a way of doing that. I don’t see myself giving up writing about this, though, because it does inform my day-to-day life, no matter how much I wish it didn’t. But boy oh boy do I have grievances.
I lost my hockey career over a decade ago, being pushed out of the industry for daring to name my harasser — something that was well documented at the time. My name was attached to it and while the tweets are gone, I still have the screenshots of the harassment tucked away in a cloud folder with backups just in case I need it. For whatever it may be.
I tried entering the industry again at one point, going the analytics route, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. I would constantly get flashbacks to the trauma I endured because of the sport and decided to do my version of quiet quitting — quitting without saying a word. The Irish goodbye of quitting.
It’s not a secret I worked for the Sharks, or that they were the team I rooted for growing up. When my second hometown of Las Vegas got its own NHL team, I contemplated ditching the Sharks for a while instead of having two teams, but it was hard, because I cared so much before. Hundreds of therapy sessions later, I realized I needed a clean break from the Sharks because I couldn’t help but associate my trauma with my time there. I decided to become a Vegas Golden Knights fan completely and say “that’s my hometown team.” Words that ended up meaning more to me as I reconnected with the hometown I didn’t really return to for almost 15 years.
But even calling myself a Golden Knights fan doesn’t mean I’m returning. I paid attention very casually last season, mostly through scoreboard watching. The sport itself is still an open wound for me. Through the endless news items about sexual assault trials and bullshit victim blaming commentary, I can’t wade through it without remembering the treatment I received.
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I think a lot about a Sports Illustrated column I came across much later after it was published. A hockey writer had her thoughts included in this Richard Deitch column — thoughts about the harassment in hockey. Thoughts that deliberately excluded me.
With three male hockey reporters and bloggers fired in four months for social media harassment, sexism in hockey journalism is a culture problem that goes way beyond the poor choices of a few.
The creepy Twitter messages sent by Adrian Dater, Steve Lepore and Harrison Mooney to various female fans and bloggers highlight that women in hockey are treated as a novelty. In the NHL, women are more likely to be ice girls than analysts, online we’re avatars instead of fans.
My harasser was named here. I was not named below.
Maria Camacho and Toni McIntyre exposing Dater's and Lepore’s unprofessional actions is a huge stride for women in hockey. Their willingness to publicly call these men out unfortunately opened them up to more personal attacks, but more importantly showed that harassment is not, and never will be, acceptable. Hopefully, more women will feel empowered to speak out about their own harassment and their right to be hockey fans.
It’s a fucked up feeling of rejection that’s gaslit me into thinking that I did something wrong. That I did something in a way that wasn’t following whatever protocol it is to name sexual harassment.
Logically, I know it’s the result of former friends launching a campaign against me at the time: “believe all survivors but don’t believe Jen.” I had hunches that was what was happening and I had it confirmed years later.
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I never wanted to leave hockey at the time. I wanted to keep blogging. There was just no way for me to stay in the hockey community I had made without the people who I thought were my friends not wanting to show friendship. I got more harassment as a result of actually choosing to speak up. It’s hard to forget which now prominent hockey writers made jokes about me, or which ones hated that I said the quiet part out loud.
I feel like this is a blog I write and revise often, with more details trickling in whenever I remember it. Whenever hockey season starts back up again and I cannot stand to be around it. Whenever these memories enter my mind against my will because that’s how C-PTSD works.
It says even more that the landscape of hockey hasn’t changed since all of this first happened, and may only be getting worse.
What I’m consuming to assume that hockey isn’t real
Dawes - “Christmas Tree in the Window”
I’m a sucker for sad ass Christmas songs.Bleachers - “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call”
Do you know how mad I am about this one? Jack Antonoff is one of my parasocial enemies. I’m upset he’s made a good sad ass Christmas song. God damn it, man.Make Some Noise
I originally intended to become a comedy writer, going so far as to do comedy camp at Second City LA when I was 17. I got told by my music improv teacher that I “had promise.” I derailed all of that for a career in journalism. I still love consuming good comedy and improv and Make Some Noise is some of the best dang improv around these days. Ross Bryant’s fake commercial for the McDonald’s MacBeth lives in my mind.A lot of academic labor economics articles
I dropped out of policy school and still find new ways to be unable to stop being studious. Which would explain how I studied English, journalism, and economics in college. I am also a journalist of the belief that I should be well versed in what I report on, so to the books it is.Rob Reiner films
The man was a legend. Celebrity deaths don’t usually get to me, save for when space wife Carrie Fisher passed, but this one really got to me. He’s done so much outside of film, too, that you can tell he’s a real one. (He’s the reason First 5 exists in California! That’s something that hasn’t left my mind knowing the success and importance of that program.) May he and his wife Michele rest in peace.