Yes,
@TallyT, we all have the right to feel how we feel and to express ourselves politely, if adamantly. I personally am not aware of either Laurence or Guillame having committed any crime. If they had, they would not be competing as athletes. What they decide regarding someone they befriended who turns out to have been accused of wrongdoing before they met him, is their own business. That person has received a form of punishment and is ostracized by some people. Still, there are people in the skating community besides Laurence & Guillaume, who privately remain friendly with Nic Soerensen. Certain skaters invited Nic to their wedding. But I don't see triggered online warriors attacking everyone who remains friendly with Soerensen. What do such attacks against FB/C solve in the first place? Who is being helped by slamming and labeling FB/C and anyone who enjoys their skating? IMO, no one is being helped. Certainly, no one who suffers from abuse is being helped by this overdone, active antagonism against FB/C. If you don't like FB/C, for whatever reason, don't watch them. Write letters to the ISU and to their federations to express your enmity.
The claims in your last passage are a complete exaggeration. No sane, decent person is in favor of abuse, nor does appreciating FB/C's tremendous ice dance talent equate to 'turning a blind eye to abuse', or to 'cheering abusers.' Gabby reportedly is saying that her book is not about Guillaume specifically. So, in what way is cheering for FB/C 'cheering for abusers'? In long-term personal relationships, disagreements and misunderstandings occur. There have been plenty of falling outs between untold numbers of people in skating. I am not taking sides on whatever happened between Gabby and Guillaume. It is sad that their creative partnership ended with such hurt feelings on both sides. At the same time, I am able to separate their estrangement from my enjoyment of their skating career and from my appreciation of FB/C's new partnership.
Every human suffers from forms of abuse, betrayal, and trauma. It is part of the human experience. How each individual copes and what they decide to do to move forward is a personal, individual journey. Regarding the sport, as I said earlier, it was possible several decades ago for USfigsk to respond in an active and beneficial way to publicly surfaced reports of abuse, chiefly coach abuses against students. In one prominent case, USfigsk turned their heads away and refused to do anything about the claim against a famous coach. As a direct result, that coach continued to abuse male students. That is why USfigsk recently had to settle out of court a lawsuit brought against them by a young man abused in the years after the initial claim by the original skater had been ignored. And yet, neither the ISU, nor USfigsk, nor other federations seem to have learned anything. That case is obviously only the tip of the iceberg of cases that might have been avoided in figure skating had concern and leadership existed instead of avoidance and denial. Now, there exists a chaotic climate of fear and silence surrounding issues of abuse in figure skating. The silence is filled with the triggered attacks and policing efforts of overly emotional social media warriors. This amounts to noisy online spaces 'filled with sound and fury signifying nothing,' and solving less than nothing.
I am on the side of truth, reason, and sensible discourse. Moreover, I watch skating and skaters not for the medals won or lost, but for the joy that the skating of these young athletes gives, and for the uplift that seeing them achieve their goals inspires. At the end of the day, we should all be concerned about managing our own lives, taking care of what we have control over, and making sincere and useful efforts to 'be the change we want to see in the world.'
