Opinion: Everyone’s hot and bothered for ‘Heated Rivalry.’ And that’s a good thing.

Women watch the "Heated Rivalry" romance unfold. Art by Basil Allen.

Over the past few months, “Heated Rivalry” fever has swept the nation. The HBO show focuses on the sexual, and later romantic, relationship between two professional hockey players, Ilya Rosanov and Shane Hollander. Unfortunately for everyone, the real heated rivalry was not playing out on the ice, it was happening online. 

This conversation was inevitable, considering the show centered sex, queerness and worst of all, queer sex. This backlash only compounded when the show’s creator, Jacob Tierney, revealed that the show’s primary audience was women. While many found the show’s female fan base to be leering and fetishistic (and admittedly, some fans were), this reaction neglected to recognize the complex reasons many women feel so drawn to queer male stories. Not only did the show provide many people a safe space to indulge in their desire, it proved that queer, complicated and graphic stories deserve a place onscreen. 

I thought I’d be able to avoid this discourse, considering the show didn’t pique my interest. I don’t know about hockey. I don’t care about hockey. To me, a Stanley Cup is just a water bottle for TJ Maxx moms, so I didn’t think “Heated Rivalry” would have any place in my life. However, after a lot of encouragement from my friends, I acquiesced and ended up in my best friend’s basement, watching soft-core gay porn with a group of five other women. 

Initially, I disliked the show. I found the show’s near constant use of time jumps in the first few episodes to be disconcerting, the dialogue to be poorly written, and the characters to be stiff and unlikable. I felt alienated, realizing that others liked the characters because of just how stiff they were. And yet, over the course of the series, I changed my mind completely. I grew to love Ilya’s confidence, even his downright rudeness, especially when paired with the measured but undeniably awkward Shane. I found their banter, corny as it was, heartwarming. Despite myself, I was a fan. 

My experience — watching the show with a group of women — is not unique. Women are no strangers to the male/male romance space. Some of the first fanfiction, which imagined a relationship between Captain Kirk and Spock from Star Trek, was written and distributed by female fans. And for as long as women have been fantasizing about gay male relationships, they’ve been critiqued for it. 

Many members of the queer community feel it is fetishistic, analogous to the popularity of lesbian porn with straight male viewers. By placing a marginalized community at the center of a sexual fantasy, it serves to further dehumanize and other them. When the content is written by people outside of the community, it can flatten the nuances of queer relationships, reducing one man purely to the feminine role and one to the masculine role in order to recreate a patriarchal, straight dynamic. 

While these criticisms are reasonable, this discourse often overlooks the many queer women who enjoy gay male romance. It disregards that the power differential between women and queer men is very different than that of straight men and queer women. Even romance content catered towards women often features their violence and objectification, so it can be refreshing to consume content that avoids these issues entirely. 

As Lucy Neville, author of a book about women’s relationship with gay male erotica, says, “Erotic stories that focus exclusively on men sidestep the kind of gendered power imbalances that structure intimacy between men and women, both in fiction and in real life.” Many women have stated that they appreciate seeing masculinity without the toxicity, content that shows intensity need not come at the expense of consent, and most simply, when you’re attracted to men, two times the men means two times the potential for attraction. Admittedly, even this defense can detract from the challenges of the gay male dating scene, but it makes clear that the desires and intentions of these women are not as sinister as many believe. 

In an ideal world, women would not have to forsake heterosexuality to envision romance where their desire is not contextualized by the confines of patriarchy. Yet, even in this world, many women may still gravitate towards media that centers queer men. An attempt to avoid misogyny doesn't have to be the only explanation for their preference. Yearning is often separate from identity. People’s fantasies will always diverge from their reality, and that is not inherently fetishistic. People deserve a space to explore their sexuality without the constant confines of labels and to explore their desires for masculinity and femininity, both in their partners and in themselves. To advocate for a world where exploration is limited by labels and binaires is a very reductive way to conceptualize sexuality. 

“Heated Rivalry,” in its most essential distillation, is a rejection of these antiquated conceptions of sexuality. The show, from the very beginning, places sex at the center of its romance. Sex is often seen as the culmination of a slow burn, a reward for being chaste and well-behaved. Stories start with emotional closeness, and sex follows. In “Heated Rivalry,” the relationship starts with sex; it is the emotional closeness that follows. Not only does this rebuff traditional norms around relationships, it’s unique in the current media landscape. According to a 2024 analysis conducted by The Ringer, sex is becoming less common on screen. 

Many attribute this phenomenon to the “puriteens,” a supposed cadre of sexually conservative young people, who oppose everything from casual sex to kink at pride to sex on screen. While the impact of this group is vastly overstated online, it’s true that many young people said that sex is unnecessary in most shows and movies, at least according to a UCLA poll. Talker Research also reported that 43% percent of Gen Z participants said they turn a movie off once they hit a sex scene. 

This is reasonable to a certain extent, as many members of Gen Z are still in their relatively early teens, and as such, may feel uncomfortable with depictions of sex. However, it appears that even people outside of that age range increasingly believe that sex is a distraction from plot. 

“Heated Rivalry” turns this notion on its head, proving over and over just how important sex can be as a component of a larger narrative. Sex is a part of romance; it’s a part of how many people connect and communicate. It’s a part of life, so of course it deserves to be a part of stories. Especially for something as taboo as queer sex, it’s groundbreaking that the show has received such mainstream acclaim and popularity. It undermines the claim that queer stories have to be squeaky clean and wholesome to be accepted. 

Both the relationship and the sex depicted in “Heated Rivalry” are complicated and messy, but the show doesn’t have to hide that fact to be heartwarming and widely beloved. The show isn’t wildly subversive — it still features two conventionally masculine and attractive men who appear to end up in a monogamous relationship — but it provides a glimpse of a sexier, more playful future, one where everyone is a little more free to puck around and find out.