SkankyGelato

“So yeah, shit da fuck up + lol ur british” Ray Finkel @ TheFinkinator0

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@Sheehuurthem @hartleythinking @EHRC @RosieDuffield1 Brick says what now?

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@julie10128 @marcusmaxum @themaddierune It is absolutely wonderful. Amanda Root is perfect.

[Ani O'Brien @aniobrien]

As a lesbian, I am so tired of this nonsense. I am tired of corporate Pride and activist Pride.

This week HelloFresh decided that the best way to celebrate Pride Month was to post jokes about preparing for anal sex and offering high-fibre recipes to help people "prep". They then doubled down with a discount code called BOTTOMSUP.

Inclusion! WOO! 🙄

The thing that frustrates me is that people like me have spent years defending gay rights against accusations that we are hypersexual, inappropriate, and incapable of ordinary family life.

That was one of the central prejudices gay people faced. For decades, opponents portrayed gay men in particular as sexually obsessed and depraved. They argued that homosexuality was all about sex rather than love, commitment, relationships and family. The fight for equal rights was partly a fight against exactly that caricature.

And now here we are. A major multinational company has decided the best way to celebrate Pride is to publicly discuss anal sex. What an achievement.

The same-sex marriage movement wasn't about sex. It was about love, commitment, and the ability to build a life with the person you love. It was about family and equality before the law.

Most gay people are not what the weirdos in the HelloFresh marketing department think we are. We go to work, pay bills, walk the dog, argue about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher, and try to build a decent life together.

You know... Normal things.

The overwhelming majority of gay people just want to be accepted and left alone. We want the same freedoms, responsibilities and opportunities as everyone else. We don't need multinational corporations making dirty jokes about us to feel "included".

What makes this even more ridiculous is that HelloFresh's core market is clearly not radical "queer" activists with blue hair and septum rings.

Their customers are overwhelmingly middle-class couples and families. Busy parents. Professionals. People with disposable income who want convenient meals after work.

How hard would it have been to make a genuinely wholesome Pride advertisement?

Two mums cooking dinner with their kids or two husbands hosting friends. A same-sex couple just making dinner together or flipping a coin to see who has to cook. A simple message acknowledging families and love. Instead they went with rectum jokes.

Somewhere along the way after the TQ+ hijacked our movement, Pride stopped being about acceptance and started being about performance. A small but influential group of activists have convinced themselves that being as shocking, vulgar and sexually explicit as possible is somehow brave and intrinsically "queer". They think boundaries of any kind are oppression including standards and decorum. They think manners are censorship.

The result is campaigns like this one and somehow people are shocked when there is backlash against us all.

I actually feel really sorry for gay men in particular because one of the oldest stigmas they have faced is the idea that they are dirty, promiscuous and defined entirely by sex. This campaign reinforces that stereotype.

If you wanted to design an advertisement that would make ordinary people roll their eyes and think Pride is ridiculous, or shield their children's eyes in horror, you would struggle to do better than this.

The irony is that HelloFresh's marketing department thinks this is progressive. It's regressive and distasteful. It takes decades of work by ordinary gay people who want to be seen as neighbours, colleagues, parents, partners and family members and reduces all of it to a crude sexual punchline.

The people who fought for our rights wanted dignity, but the people most enthusiastic about Pride today seem determined to turn it into a fetish convention with corporate sponsors.

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@K8T1144 I love how even he’s ’WTF dude?’

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@K8T1144 That’s hilarious. What a moose

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@LeonaAngelaVII What’s the difference? They’re both men dressed as women trying to access spaces for women and girls

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@jessigreerM @SamBarber1910 @jan_murray @hughlaurie @unherd And yet you seem sufficiently ruffled to misread her tweets.

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@TimD2704 @jan_murray And yet, people did read it.

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@Gompers_Stomper @jan_murray I hope life gets better for you

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@BradfemlyWalsh

[les paul junior 🍔🍺🎸🚍🐕 @lespauljunior3]

@LilyLilyMaynard @Bird_OnA_Wire @cityoflondon A violent man who in prison ate his own testicles, who calls for women to be beaten up, swimming in the women’s pond.

Well @cityoflondon I hope you’re happy with the results of your misogynist policies. It’s a disgrace.
You should be ashamed of yourselves for what you enable.

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@Jackkk ‘We should definitely let them eat cake’

[James Dreyfus @DreyfusJames]

Mr. Davies,

For a brief, fleeting 10-15 years, WE ALMOST HAD IT. The years between 1998-2012, roughly, we were very close, when no one really gave a damn either way. I remember it distinctly. An enormous shift in attitude’s & acceptance had occurred, after the horrors of being gay in the 80’s to the early-mid 90’s.

I was NOT alone in feeling this, even amongst the upper echelons of the ‘Gay Mafia’ I used to hang around with said the same.

The original aim was EQUALITY & we were, more or less, there.

Then along came identity politics, gender ideology & Que*r Theory, which screwed everything up.

Stonewall’s CEO, Ruth Hunt, said in 2014/15, & I quote, that their shift in focus was “known to be controversial, that it would be difficult, that people would LOSE by that & that herself & the staff thought THAT WAS A PRICE WORTH PAYING.” In other words, they KNEW this would receive pushback, yet were unwilling to listen or engage with those of us who had serious concerns.

A subsequent Stonewall CEO, Nancy Kelley, called lesbians “sexual racists” for not including men in their dating pool.

Michael Cashman called for those who had questions, predominantly women, about this shift to be “defecated upon” & there was “no debate” to be had.

And NOW look where we are.

Look around at the utter mess we’re in.

If you’re going to “look at yourself as an idiot”, at least be aware of WHY you might feel that way & what part you, yourself, played in it.

You cannot cheerlead & encourage an ideology that has caused so much destruction & damage, & then pretend to be flummoxed as to the reasons WHY everything has got so much worse.

Just so we’re clear…

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@sappholives83 @Quietdespairing @Glinner Ha! He’s earnt his place - thank you x

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@yoinksahoy @pill_swallow Were you doing anything to stop them or were you just happily joining in with the terf jokes and the abuse of JKR?

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@godblesstoto @sappholives83 @Glinner Ha!

It’s funny because it’s true

[SkankyGelato @FindingDore]

@mafifi0 No one cares about femininity. Why are you lying. It’s about not wanting men in women’s spaces. We don’t want them - the transvestites, the cross dressers, the confused or the chancers.
Just stay out of women’s spaces

[Jack @FFS_WhatNow]

Two condescending blokes discuss if it's OK for other blokes to use the ladies' facilities.

Don't worry, ladies. These lads are going to sort it all out for you.

[Janet Inglis @ThatAussieWoman]

Your assumption is wrong, just like your assumption that a semantic legislative magic trick can turn a man into a lesbian.
The smug self-regard of men like you who think it's funny when lesbians assert their right to be considered a discrete sexuality exclusive of all men is lip curlingly grating.
You have mistaken your ability to type out full sentences for an erudite wit. A common mistake among those whose self-regard outshines their intelligence.