When Consent Culture Becomes a Hockey Heckle

The Carolina Hurricanes may have captured the Stanley Cup, but one of the most discussed stories of the six-game final concerned not what happened on the ice, but what was shouted from the stands. 

Sports fans have long attempted to rattle opposing team members using distracting gestures, childish nicknames, personal attacks, and, at their worst, discriminatory slurs. 

So it's not surprising that during the Stanley Cup Finals, some fans targeted Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Carter Hart, one of five former members of Canada's 2018 World Junior hockey team who were acquitted in a high-profile sexual assault case in 2025. Instead of a traditional insult, however, opposing fans chanted "No means no," a feminist slogan popularized to challenge rape myths and affirm the importance of sexual consent. 

In this context, however, the chant does not reflect a commitment to consent culture, survivor solidarity, or meaningful accountability.

It’s an act of crass opportunism. It appropriates hard-fought feminist gains for strategic heckling. 

Let's be honest. It is no coincidence that the loudest proponents of "No Means No" in the arena were fans of the opposing team. The purpose was not to raise anyone's consciousness. It was to psyche out a star goalie. It was to help their team hoist a giant silver punch bowl. 

That said, as a feminist hockey fan, I understand why some might find the chants satisfying. Complainants in sexual assault cases are often subjected to public judgment and online misogyny. It can be gratifying when the stones are being thrown the other way. It can also be encouraging to see feminist ideas become sufficiently mainstream to enter trash-talking lingo.

But public shaming is not the same thing as social change.

The chant reduces a cultural problem to a single individual. Whatever one thinks about Hart or the verdict, sexual violence is not simply a problem of a few “predators” lurking in sports or broader society. As feminists have long argued, to get at the roots of sexual violence, systemic change must accompany individual accountability. 

Consider that for years, Hockey Canada maintained a fund dedicated to settling claims of sexual misconduct and abuse, including allegations that later became the subject of the criminal proceedings involving Hart. The very existence of such a reserve suggests that allegations of sexual misconduct were not being treated as a problem requiring proactive action to prevent future incidents, but as a recurring liability for which resources had to be set aside. 

There is also the problem of scapegoating. Decades of scholarship have explored how sports culture, celebrity status, financial interests, and institutional silence can shield athletes from accountability for sexual misconduct. Focusing on one player allows the rest of us, including fans, to imagine ourselves outside the problem. 

And finally, the chant is oddly misplaced. "No Means No" emerged in response to a long social and legal history in which a woman's refusal was discounted, ignored, or treated as part of a courtship ritual. The slogan challenged the idea that a woman had to physically resist, repeatedly object, or prove her unwillingness before her "no" would be respected. 

Though the slogan remains important, we now recognize that meaningful consent cannot be determined without paying attention to the broader context.  

That is part of what made the case involving Hart and the other players so thorny. "No Means No" was never really the issue. It was about how to understand consent in a complex situation involving unequal power, vulnerability, impairment, and competing interpretations. 

Of course, screaming: "Consent cannot be reduced to the presence or absence of a verbal ‘no’!" would make a terrible taunt.

Which is why a feminist catchphrase should not be misused to score cheap points.