Natalie

Realist. Sceptic. Romantic.
Ginger 👩‍🦰
British 🇬🇧
Disillusioned 🥱

[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.

[Lin 🇫🇮 @Lfromthenorth]

Every day there is a new story about an immigrant murdering, assaulting or raping a western person.

The latest being the attempted beheading of a man in the streets of Belfast.

IDGAF IF YOU THINK I'M RACIST.

I experienced immigrant male violence, and it permanently changed my life.

The safety of western women and girls, will ALWAYS be more important to me than the "right" for violent and barbaric immigrant men to stay in Europe.

When will our leaders and lawmakers wake up????

[Nick Dampier ✝️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @Nick_Dampier1]

@ThePosieParker They need to release all the bodycam footage. There's far more than just 3 minutes.

[Richy Reay @Richy_GITC]

No, I'm not a Jew. I'm the angry cunt standing between you fuckers and them.

[Caroline Farrow @CF_Farrow]

I want to recap what actually happened at M&S, because some people seem determined to turn this into something it was not.

I went early evening because I thought the shop would be quieter. I was shopping with my teenage daughter, who is autistic and has sensory issues around clothing.

Anyone who parents a child with sensory difficulties will understand how hard clothes shopping can be. Fabric, fit, seams, tightness, waistbands, labels, texture, all of it matters. Something can look perfectly fine on the hanger and be completely unbearable once worn.

Ordering several sizes online and returning them is neither logistically nor economically feasible for us, and in any case my daughter likes to touch and see things before deciding whether she is comfortable with them. That approach simply doesn’t work for her.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, nothing would have suited me better than for my daughter to be able to try the clothes on and ensure she has enough things to see her through Summer.

That was the whole point of going to the changing rooms.

I was not looking for confrontation. I was not trying to make a political point. I was trying to make an ordinary shopping trip work for an autistic teenage girl who finds clothes difficult.

I walked into the changing area calmly and practically. My intention was to find a suitable cubicle, ideally the larger disabled one, check that it felt safe and manageable, and then encourage my daughter to follow me in.

That was the plan.

Had she been able to try the clothes on, it would have saved time, stress, uncertainty, returns, and the familiar nightmare of buying something that later turns out to be impossible for her to wear.

So the idea that I somehow wanted there to be a problem is absurd.

The changing room was supposed to be the solution.

The problem arose when my daughter became distressed by the presence of a male member of staff supervising the changing area. I had not anticipated her reaction. It was not scripted by me. I did not wind her up. I did not march in looking for a row.

She reacted. I saw her distress. I took it seriously.

And yes, I think a teenage girl, particularly an autistic teenage girl, is entitled to feel safe and comfortable in a changing-room environment.

This is not complicated. It is not about hating anyone. It is not about being difficult. It is not about “vibes” or emotional projection or whatever patronising theory people wish to attach to it online.

It is about a vulnerable young woman trying to buy clothes, and finding that the space provided did not feel safe or appropriate to her.

Parents of autistic children spend a lot of time trying to prepare, adapt, reassure, smooth things over, and make ordinary life manageable. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

On this occasion, it didn’t.

But I will not apologise for taking my daughter’s distress seriously. Or believing that M&S should change their policy.

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

If it weren’t for 𝕏, nobody would have heard the name Henry Nowak!

[Rosie Duffield MP @RosieDuffield1]

@HelenWebberley You are a straight woman. How dare you lecture a young lesbian that she shouldn't get to choose only same-sex partners? You may believe that men with penises who wear dresses magically transform, but telling lesbians they are wrong if they disagree is pure homophobia.

[Angie Jones @angijones]

Stating the very obvious here but we want to get it trending..
#IStandWithSallGrover

[esskayultra @esskayultra]

@DanniBrener It's a phenomenon know as "Schrodinger's Trans" in which women's spaces, sports, language, etc is so irrelevant and unimportant that women shouldn't mind giving them up while simultaneously being so consequential and necessary that men will die if they can't have them.

[Yossi BenYakar @YossiBenYakar]

Top British attorney Natasha Hausdorff stunned the audience by completely destroying the Palestinian narrative about the conflict. The truth the world refuses to accept:

Palestine never existed as a sovereign Arab state.
The British Mandate of Palestine was a British territory taken from the defeated Ottoman Empire after 1917. Jews lived continuously in the Holy Land for centuries — long before modern Zionism. They were the majority in Jerusalem under Ottoman rule. Jews legally bought desert land (including the area that became Tel Aviv) and turned it into thriving cities and kibbutzim. Not a single Arab was displaced by these purchases.

The Arabs rejected the 1947 UN partition plan and launched war to destroy the newborn Jewish state. They lost. During that war, Arab armies ordered local Arabs to flee so they could “push the Jews into the sea.” Many did exactly that.

Israel has never committed genocide. It has fought for survival against repeated attempts to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s regime are the real obstacles to peace in the Middle East.

The historical facts are clear. The propaganda is not.

Share this. The truth needs to be heard.

[Ben🕊️ @2BJDJ]

Very Important Message!!

Do NOT, and I repeat do not buy plants treated with Neonicotinoids. Bees take the pollen back to the hive and feed it to the brood.

This is a number one cause of the colony collapse. It's important to NOT buy these plants!

Make sure to share this post!

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

Please feel free to share these posts making basic points.

[Arsen Ostrovsky @Ostrov_A]

This is one of the most jaw-dropping, chilling interviews I have seen. Watch this Rabbi from London, respond to question about the terror stabbing in Golders Green!

[Warren Kinsella @kinsellawarren]

That only took three years

[horse @horsetwting]

clip clop clip clop clip clop!
nEIGHHHHhhh
huff huff
clip clop clip clop

[Danny Morris @DannyMMorris]

A sign of the times, quite literally. As spotted on a kosher food shop in London.

[Steven Barrett @SBarrettBar]

At this time, I want to make it crystal clear

I stand with British Jews.

[Restore Britain @RestoreBritain]

Rupert stood up in Parliament today and spoke for millions of British women who feel intimidated by the increasing number of foreign male gangs plaguing our streets.

What did other MPs do?

Jeer him. Insult him. Attack him.

Restore Britain will protect British women.