This Popular Booktok Creator Encourages Straight Men To Look Beyond The Sex In 'Heated Rivalry'

If you’re not living under a rock, then you’ve heard of the mega viral HBO Max series, Heated Rivalry. The show follows two closeted hockey players as they navigate professional sports pressure, family dynamics, and their irresistible magnetic force that seems to always bring them together. The show is based on the Game Changers book series by Rachel Reid.

Now, the common consensus around my friend group is that everyone loves it, but their husbands want absolutely nothing to do with it. (My husband might be the outlier here because he wouldn’t let me watch an episode without him.) Yes, this show is about gay men. Yes, there are some pretty graphic sex scenes. But why can’t men ever look beyond that and just watch a love story? I think that’s a rhetorical question, but seriously, can we let go of the homophobia and misogyny and see Heated Rivalry as a beautiful love story?

That’s what BookTok creator and anti-redpiller, Luke Bateman, speaks about in his latest video. After reading the series and watching the TV series adaptation, Bateman encourages other straight men to give the show a chance.

“This was perfection. This was so closely aligned to the book and the source material. The dialogue was the same. The emotions were the same. The transition from that sex into this awkward maladroid love was just perfect,” he swoons. “Everything I experienced with the book, I experienced with the TV show.”

He notes a memorable scene from both the show and the series, recalling, “There was that scene when Ilya speaks Russian to Shane. That was the best cinema I think I've ever seen in my life and it was even better than what I experienced in the book. It was perfection,” he says.

Then, Bateman says that, as a hetero male, the story of Heated Rivalry is actually a story for all men — gay or straight or otherwise.

“Now, as a heterosexual straight male, I just think that these stories are so important and look beneath what makes you feel uncomfortable. Go beneath the part that makes you feel uncomfortable. Go into what makes you feel uncomfortable. This is not a story about two men having sex. This is a story about love. This is a story about connection, but more importantly, this is a story that affects all men,” he says.

“The story that boys get told, that boys have to lie about who they are to fit in. That they have to other and divorce parts of themselves to belong. That they have to be lonely to be allowed to be a part of male society. That love is not available to them. That they have to hate who they are just to fit in. This was the story that we tell so many boys, not just gay boys, all men.”

“And until we learn that othering things, othering behaviors, othering people, othering sexualities externally, what that does is that divides with inner self, creates internal barriers that we build up within ourselves that create resistance. But when we build up internal barriers within ourselves, that others parts of our self and our soul, and it chips away parts of who we are, and then we don't get to live authentically as well.”

He concludes, “Accepting others is actually about accepting yourself, and that's why narratives like this are so important, and they're just so profound to the soul and profound to who we are as men. So I would implore you go into what makes you feel uncomfortable because it will change your life.”

We need more men like Bateman, encouraging that same demographic (straight white men) to be more open, accepting, and honest. That is how we fight against the redpilling of our sons. That is how we help society break down those patriarchal, toxic views of what it means to be a “man.”