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Can someone tell me about this? what was it he said or did?
Ilia Malinin and sensitivity training
- Thread starter ElSoteroLoco
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- Dec 11, 2017
Christine Brennan from USA Today Sports did a story on it...
Ilia Malinin stirs tensions over perception of male figure skaters with his comment
Recent comments by Ilia Malinin show the conversation around the sexuality and perceptions of men in figure skating isn't likely to end anytime soon.
www.usatoday.com
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I rather we move on and be excited that in a week from now, he'll be skating on Stars on Ice.Christine Brennan from USA Today Sports did a story on it...
Ilia Malinin stirs tensions over perception of male figure skaters with his comment
Recent comments by Ilia Malinin show the conversation around the sexuality and perceptions of men in figure skating isn't likely to end anytime soon.
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So it's finally caught up with him? Although I doubt a little bit of sensitivity training is going to help with the attitude that must have led him to make these comments. It's what they always do with problematic people. A bit of sensitivity training and then half a year later they 'slip up' again.
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I don't think that's a fair assumption. Ilia is young, was thrust into the spotlight rather quickly because of his athletic ability, and it's not a fan's place to judge when we don't know all the facts. He made a mistake, he apologized and he's doing something about it. I prefer to "wait and see" and not condemn him before he has a chance to "grow!"
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First off, the question that was asked to him was inappropriate! It clearly threw him off , and he still gets nervous while doing interviews. He's young! People need to stop being so sensitive and grow some backbone! 
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Well, we can at least agree that sensitivity training is a joke. Absolutely useless. These "learning opportunities" aggravate way more people than they impact positively. My workplace has almost uncountable training sessions for sexual harassment, for example. Click-click-click and they're done, but they still piss me off. As a grown man in my workplace, I hardly need quarterly online click-abouts featuring cartoon characters to know not to sexually harass a woman. If other grown men don't know this, then the corrective action is immediate firing.
The primary value of sensitivity training is to serve as a "get out of jail card" or a "don't blame us, we provided training" excuse in the event of a lawsuit.
The real story is that Ilia is being punished, made to sit in the corner. Depending on one's point of view, this is justified or not. I happen to think "not" but reasonable opinions can vary.
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This might be off-topic, but at my last workplace, it wasn't cartoon character, they were different shapes with big eyes, eyelashes, bows, etc.
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I love that Boitano is standing up for Ilia and Nathan: āI said the same kinds of things when I was their age ā and I was gay. So if we had had Instagram Live back then, I mean, who knows what I would have said?ā - Brian Boitano
We all say dumb things that we have to apologize for. Especially when we are young and still processing mixed messages from our national culture, our family culture, and our own developing minds. It's a point of friction where nobody, especially someone so young, should be pushed into a defensive corner. I'm sorry for Ilia that he had to go through this so publicly, but really hope he can come to a genuinely comfortable feeling of his own expression on the ice and refining his performance quality - understanding that there is nothing inherently gay or straight about skating components - rather than just feeling, 'this is how I need to be seen if I want to win.'
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The right music and moves can definitely help elevate performances for him. I LOVE the Billie Jean program he did. I know that some don't like the cover, and they're entitled to their opinion on that, but I feel like it was RIGHT for him. I have so many ideas for SP/FP for him. Includes MCR and the Halo theme song for ideas.
I'm glad he's getting support from other skaters. And believe me, I have said stuff at 18-19 that I CRINGE now looking back. Wanting to curl up into a ball and hide thinking about some stuff. But that's a part of growing up. And that's what's going to happen to him. No one is perfect in saying the right things or doing the right things all the time. But we change and grow. I'm happy on how I've grown and changed up to now, at almost 28 years old. Hopefully Ilia within the next few years will think the same on himself.
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Wow, the support for Ilia here is big. I'm not someone who wants to drag a young guy around on social media because he said things he shouldn't have said, I'm far from perfect myself, but I would have hoped that at least the same amount of empathy that you guys have for Ilia you would have for the skaters he disparaged. "stop being so sensitive and grow some backbone" and stuff like that is definitely not the right reply to me.
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Yes. He is young. Yes, no need to hold a grudge over this comment as far as I am concerned, a gay man. This being said, he should know better... many kids his age and even younger are more respectful of others and much better educated about topics of gender and identity. However, saying that his components would get higher if he were gay is ridiculous. I would invite him to watch programs of Shoma, Patrick and Kurt for starters. It definitely says a lot more about what he thinks of the sport and it does make me sad. If he needs a sensitivity training, it would be about being sensitive to the music, to the details of his choreo, sensitive to his body position and so on.. That may get him higher scores... nothing to do with whom he fancies or not.
So very true. Yet what worries me is a tendency here to see him as a victim while in fact his remarks were a dig at very concrete skaters who have been very kind to him from their side and whose names are now dragged along all the SNMs along with his. They are the true innocent victims here and I give them the right to decide for themselves if they want to hold a grudge or not, and how they judge this whole incident and perceive his intentions. None of us can decide it for them and we should not even try. This is mainly between him and these other skaters. It is to them that he should most of all apologize, not to the federation or - with all due respect - fans. The latter is just PR and business, nothing more.
I just hope he did.
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It was an IG live. He didn't need to answer the question. And he repeated the answer twice.First off, the question that was asked to him was inappropriate! It clearly threw him off , and he still gets nervous while doing interviews. He's young! People need to stop being so sensitive and grow some backbone!
And first of all, he himself picked the question to answer it. Twice.
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