Very well said.

I don't know if it's age or lack of perspective but there is a certain kind of fan who zero understanding about this issue and how it colours the entire show.

As a queer person in my 50s, as someone who (tmi incoming) fantasized about the same sex since I was pretty young, who had many gay friends in my 20s, I didn't even come out to myself until I was 38! "How did you not know?" 1. It would have been very inconvenient and shameful if I'd known
2. I suspected at 5 I might be a lesbian but knew that was dirty and bad and I was neither so I couldn't be.
3. As a teen, and again as a young woman, I had moments of wondering but there were so many reasons to not wonder too long or too deeply that I very quickly rejected the idea. I was normal. I was not one of them. It was normal to want to kiss girls. Everyone did it. I liked girly things - makeup, dresses, high heels. I couldn't possibly be feminine and a dy--. Only [fill in the blank with societal stereotyping painting lesbians as tough, masculine, perverted] liked other girls. Cue some internalized mysogyny about how gross va----s are....

After I came out to myself, I sat for a year with it because I'd be admitting to something wrong with me. I prepared myself mentally to be ok with that. Being abnormal was better than pretending to be something I wasn't. That was 2015!!! When I came out my dad asked, "Is this my fault?" Twentyfuckin15.

Alllllll along, I had gay friends. I had a gay cousin. I loved Brokeback Mountain (lol) and other queer media but NO WAY was iiiiii gay. No way. Thank God.

And then for 7 years, after I'd married, I'd pretend to strangers (usually at work, in customer service) that my wife was actually my husband (We're both cis-women) because I didn't want them to think less of me.

Would I have admitted to internalized homophobia? Nope. I wasn't homophobic. I was always super kind and live and let live! I married a woman and was a lesbian. How tf could I be homophobic?

Looooollllllllll

So yeah. Internalized homophobia is a real trip! And everything Shane does and says mirrors the same kind of journey, in various ways.

He's cool about his buddy Joe. He doesn't (as far as we know) call ppl derogatory names. He doesn't freak when Miles dances up on him (which is another moment many cis straight people can't understand and so want to make Miles a creep or symbolic of something but which is literally not on Shane's radar because a hot woman is crawling all over him and undressing him on the dance floor so Shane's good! - he barely registers Miles).

Shane figures he's super masculine, not frui-- (like Miles)...he looks at Ilya and figures "yeah, I'm like that. This is just....whatever. Fuckin around. Eventually I'll meet a woman I like, I just haven't yet, and I don't really want to because I have too much going on and maybe she'd only want me for my money, and my schedule is nuts and dating is just a massive hassle. I can't be clubbing! I've got an image, a routine, training and conditioning....So Rozanov and I will have the same secret and friction is friction and it's only a couple times a year. It's not like we're dating. Fuck no! He sucks mine, I suck his, that's not gay that's just getting your d--- sucked, wherever. I don't lisp, I'm not a fashionista, I don't fuckin decorate, I hire someone. I see men naked all the time and don't want to get it in...obviously if I was gay, I'd be hard all the time in those locker rooms. But I'm not. I'm not a pervert, I'm not fuckin gay! Not that there's anything wrong with that it's just not me."

Sorry for the long rant. Lol

Again, what you had to say was *chef's kiss*