There are moments in queer cultural history when something breaks containment.
A film.
A series.
A book.
Heated Rivalry is a Canadian-produced television adaptation for Crave, based on the wildly popular Game Changers series of hockey-romance novels by Rachel Reid. Since the first book’s release in 2019, the series has sold well over one million copies worldwide, becoming a breakout phenomenon in queer romance and sports fiction. The show draws especially from the fan-favorite novel Heated Rivalry, which centers on the slow-burn, high-voltage relationship between rival NHL stars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, with teammate Scott Hunter playing a key role in the emotional and social ecosystem around them.
Suddenly, everyone is watching. Talking. Posting clips. Writing think-pieces. Falling in love with characters who—just a decade or two earlier—would never have made it onto mainstream screens at all.
For an older gay man like me, Heated Rivalry doesn’t just feel like a hit streaming series. It feels like the latest chapter in a long lineage of cultural earthquakes: That Certain Summer, Consenting Adult, Queer as Folk (both versions), Brokeback Mountain. These are the moments when gay stories suddenly crossed from subculture into mass consciousness.
Only now, in the era of streaming virality, the machinery is faster—and louder.
Within weeks, the leads of Heated Rivalry—Connor Storrie, Hudson Wiliams, and François Arnaud—were everywhere: late-night TV, social feeds, magazine covers. Hudson Williams said in a clip from a TV interview that real-life closeted gay male athletes from hockey, football, basketball, etc. were privately reaching out to him via semi-anonymous online messages and thanking him for doing the show. And these actors have joined a growing group of extremely popular and in-demand openly gay male actors—Jonathan Bailey, Cooper Koch, and others—who are now fully mainstream sex symbols.
That alone would have seemed unimaginable not that long ago.
Still, this moment isn’t just about visibility. It’s also about who is watching, why, and at what cost.
When Gay Love Becomes “Mommy Porn”
One of the most striking aspects of the Heated Rivalry phenomenon isn’t simply its popularity—it’s who much of the fandom is.
A massive portion of the audience is straight women who love M/M romance the way a previous generation devoured Fifty Shades of Grey. Critics once called that “mommy porn”—fantasy eroticism that let straight women indulge desire without confronting the messiness of real heterosexual relationships.
Now we’re seeing something similar, except the fantasy vehicle is gay male intimacy.
Two impossibly beautiful men.
Elite athletes.
Secret love.
Grand gestures.
Perfect bodies.
Minimal mention of safer sex.
No awkward realities of gay male intimacy.
No aging. No illness. No stigma. No bureaucracy. No Grindr burnout.
So it isn’t gay men’s lives being consumed. Instead, it’s gay men’s fantasy version being consumed.
And that matters.
Fantasy vs. Reality: What’s Missing on Screen
To be fair, Heated Rivalry does something important that many erotic narratives don’t: it consistently depicts consent. Even Ilya Rozanov—the deliberately swaggering, emotionally armored, sometimes outright asshole-ish character played by Connor Storrie—is shown asking for consent in most sexual encounters.
That matters, because it models something real and healthy.
What’s missing is everything else gay men learned the hard way.
There’s no meaningful depiction of PrEP conversations.
No testing talk.
No negotiation.
No sexual hygiene realities—douching, preparation, embarrassment, awkwardness.
The director has defended these omissions ferociously, insisting the series is romance, not a documentary. And he’s right—it isn’t a documentary.
However, fantasy becomes dangerous when it becomes the dominant story about who we are.
Young gay men are still growing up in a world where coming out can cost family, safety, housing, even their lives. And suddenly the most visible image of gay love is two flawless hockey stars kissing on championship ice.
Moving? Absolutely.
Representative? Hardly.
Admiration, Fetishization, and Cultural Appropriation
There’s a conversation our culture already knows how to have.
If a straight man writes erotic fiction about lesbians, we ask about power and gaze. If a white writer attempts to portray “the Black experience,” we demand accountability.
So we should ask the same questions here.
What does it mean when straight women become the primary consumers of romanticized gay male intimacy?
Is it admiration?
Is it projection?
Is it fetishization?
Is it appropriation?
The answer may be: sometimes all of the above.
Because when women fantasize about gay men, they are not fantasizing about being us. Instead, they are fantasizing about watching us.
That distinction matters.
Casting, Identity, and Who Gets to Tell Whose Stories
Connor Storrie is American.
Ilya Rozanov is Russian.
Storrie prepared meticulously—an impressively authentic accent, serious cultural study, even delivering a lengthy monologue in Russian. And yet the question lingers: should an American play a Russian? In another context, we would ask that without hesitation.
Likewise: should a straight actor play a gay man?
Should a cis actor play a trans character?
These aren’t theoretical debates anymore. They’re the politics of representation.
In the books—though not yet in the show—Hudson Williams’ character is on the autism spectrum, a layer that disappears on screen. So another familiar question emerges: which identities are deemed too complicated for mass consumption?
Then there’s race and oppression:
- Shane Hollander, a biracial character, adds racial reality to a genre that often defaults to white fantasy.
- One character receives full parental acceptance—still heartbreakingly rare.
- Another faces brutal repression as a gay man in Russia—where being out can mean danger, exile, or worse.
The series does not erase oppression. Still, it packages it inside romance—softening its edges for consumption.
That is exactly where the tension lives.
Why This Moment Still Feels So Good
And yet—I refuse to flatten this.
That scene where Scott Hunter kisses Kip on the ice after winning the Stanley Cup?
I cried.
Not because it’s realistic.
But because it’s reparative fantasy.
We are living in a time of relentless anti-LGBTQ news:
- Kash Patel, under his watch at the FBI, overseeing the quiet marginalization and targeting of gay male agents—echoing the shameful history of J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, whose FBI destroyed gay men’s lives through exposure and intimidation.
- Donald Trump, who campaigned in 2024 claiming he would “protect” LGBTQ people—then banned trans service members and stripped them of pensions.
- Donald Trump Jr., publicly claiming that all mass shootings in America are perpetrated by trans people—dangerous, defamatory lies that endanger both the T and the LGB.
- Kristi Noem, as Homeland Security Secretary, defying a court order while immigrants were flown to CECOT prison in El Salvador—where detainees were raped and subjected to anti-gay abuse by guards.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., installed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, spreading vaccine denialism that eerily echoes government indifference during the AIDS crisis.
- Dr. Mehmet Oz, now head of CMS—an openly anti-gay figure in charge of healthcare policy.
- Ron DeSantis, ordering the destruction of rainbow crosswalks across Florida—followed by other Republican officials nationwide erasing LGBTQ visibility.
In times like these, romantic stories are not frivolous. They are psychological shelter.
As I wrote in Gay Men and Gym Crushes: Cherish Your Romantic Notions, gay men need our romantic notions—not because we’re naive, but because hope itself becomes resistance.
https://gaytherapyla.com/gay-men-and-gym-crushes-cherish-your-romantic-notions/
So yes—Heated Rivalry feels like oxygen in a suffocating climate.
At the same time, that doesn’t cancel the concerns. It just makes them more complicated.
Safe Spaces, Spectators, and the Bachelorette Party Problem
Gay men have seen this before.
Straight women didn’t just start loving gay romance—they also started showing up in gay bars, Pride events, and queer spaces. Sometimes as allies. Sometimes as tourists. Sometimes as invaders.
Bachelorette parties.
Spectatorship.
Gawking disguised as admiration.
When fandom consumes gay men as aesthetic objects, the danger is that we become performers in our own lives—entertainment for people who may not stand with us when our rights are under attack.
As I wrote in Gay Men and the Need for Safe Spaces of Our Own, visibility without boundaries becomes erosion.
https://gaytherapyla.com/gay-men-and-the-need-for-safe-spaces-of-our-own/
And here’s the uncomfortable question:
How many of the straight women who adore Heated Rivalry also vote for politicians who strip LGBTQ rights?
Is there overlap between HR fandom and Trump voters?
We don’t know. But pretending the question is rude doesn’t make it irrelevant.
Because allyship is not proven by streaming habits. It’s proven at the ballot box.
So… Is Heated Rivalry Good or Bad for Gay Men?
The honest answer is: both.
It is good that:
- Gay love stories are mainstream favorites.
- Openly gay actors like Jonathan Bailey, Cooper Koch, Matt Bomer, Luke Evans, Luke McFarlane, and François Arnaud are sex symbols without apology.
- Intimacy between men is no longer coded as tragedy.
- Young queer kids see romance—not just survival.
It is dangerous that:
- Our lives become fantasy commodities.
- Our struggles are glossed over.
- Our intimacy is consumed without accountability.
- Our political reality is disconnected from our cultural consumption.
This is the paradox of visibility in unequal times:
Being seen does not always mean being protected.
What Should the Aftermath Be?
Here’s what I hope comes next:
- More gay men telling our own stories
Not just fantasy—but aging, illness, class, race, grief, ordinary love. - More accountability from fandom
If you love our stories, fight for our rights. - More nuance in celebration
We can enjoy romance and critique dynamics. - More protection of queer space
Visibility should not mean erasure of boundaries. - More honesty about fantasy
Let romance be romance—just don’t confuse it with reality.
Final Thought
I don’t want less gay romance on screen.
I want more truth alongside it.
I want fantasy that heals—but doesn’t replace reality.
I want admiration that leads to advocacy.
I want visibility that doesn’t come at the cost of dignity.
Heated Rivalry isn’t just a love story.
It’s a mirror—showing us how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go.
The question isn’t whether gay men should enjoy it.
Of course we should.
The question is what we do after the credits roll.
Invitation to the Reader
If this piece stirred something in you—whether excitement, discomfort, anger, or a complicated mix of all three—you’re not alone. Cultural moments like Heated Rivalry don’t just entertain us; they surface old wounds, unmet hopes, and deep questions about visibility, belonging, and what gay men are “allowed” to want in a world that still resists our full humanity. You don’t have to resolve those reactions on your own. Sometimes the most meaningful work happens not in the comment section, but in thoughtful conversation—where your feelings get taken seriously instead of reduced to hot takes.
A Gentle Next Step
If this moment in culture has left you thinking about your own relationships, identity, or the tension between fantasy and real life, you may find it helpful to talk with someone who understands gay men’s emotional landscape from the inside.
However you engage—through reflection, conversation, or support—what matters is that gay men don’t have to navigate this cultural moment alone.
Call/text 310-339-5778 for more information, or for your 15-minute consultation to see if what you need – and what I provide – are a good match.
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If this topic resonates, you’re not alone — and this is exactly the kind of work I do with men who want real, practical change, not just insight. I help clients turn understanding into action — improving confidence, relationships, and quality of life in a thoughtful, sex-positive, and affirming therapy space.
About the author
Ken Howard, LCSW, CST is a psychotherapist and AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist with over 30 years of experience working almost exclusively with gay men. A former USC faculty member, he is also the host of The Gay Therapy LA Podcast, where he explores the psychology, relationships, and inner lives of gay men — and he brings that same depth and practicality into his work with clients through therapy (CA) and coaching (worldwide) via telehealth.