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Miley Cyrus needs to get her facts straight

Huddle around homosexuals, I have great news! Turns out you don’t need to be gay after all. There are some wonderful people of the opposite sex out there, you just haven’t found them yet.

This “advice” is brought to you by actor-singer Miley Cyrus who is currently having a heterosexual dalliance with a man called Cody Simpson, who has very blonde hair and is a God amongst the tweens. Last Sunday Cyrus and Simpson giggled together on Instagram Live while Cyrus shared some relationship advice.

“Don’t give up,” Cyrus told her audience. “You don’t have to be gay, there are good people with dicks out there, you just gotta find them. You just gotta find a dick that’s not a dick, you know what I mean?”

Cyrus continued this eloquent train of thought: “I always thought I had to be gay, because I just thought all guys are evil, but that’s not true,” she said. “There are good people out there that just happen to have dicks. I’ve only ever met one, and he’s on this live.”

If you don’t know much about Cyrus’s personal life because you have far better things to do with your own life, a quick recap: the star used to be married to Liam Hemsworth and then briefly dated Kaitlynn Carter before shacking up with Simpson. Despite largely dating men, Cyrus has been very vocal about the fact she is “pansexual” and “genderqueer”, so her flippant comments came as a shock to many. Pretty much every single queer person out there has been told that their sexuality is just a phase, or they haven’t found the right person to be heterosexual with yet; hearing those damaging misconceptions repeated by a celebrity who has made much of her own queerness is hugely disappointing. Also disappointing is the fact that Cyrus’s comments about “evil men” propagate the idea that lesbians are man-haters who “choose” to be gay because they can’t stand dudes.

Following a backlash, Cyrus went on Instagram again to clarify the matter. “I was talking shit about sucky guys, but let me be clear, YOU don’t CHOOSE your sexuality,” she wrote. “You are born as you are. It has always been my priority to protect the LGBTQ community I am part of.”

Sorry Cyrus, but I think you need to do a little better than that. Calling yourself “pansexual” or “genderqueer” does not give you carte blanche to repeat damaging stereotypes about the queer community. You don’t get to use queerness as an exotic PR platform one day and then turn around and treat homosexuality as the losers’ option the next. Cyrus may brush off her comments as a joke but excuse me if I don’t find anything particularly funny about a couple in a heterosexual relationship giggling over the woman’s gay past like it is a hilarious phase. Cyrus has an enormous platform and a young fan base; what she says matters. Particularly during a time when LGBTQ hate crime is on the rise. You don’t choose your sexuality as she belatedly pointed out. But you do choose to be a moron.

Harvey Weinstein’s staggering lack of shame

If you need any more evidence that “cancel culture” is complete nonsense let me refer you to Weinstein’s Wednesday night out. The disgraced producer, who clearly doesn’t have any sense of shame whatsoever, turned up at a stand-up night for young artists at a Manhattan bar – when some brave women called him out they were booed and ejected from the bar. Once again women are punished for speaking out while powerful men seem to think they can do whatever they like.

Sexist ‘ladies menu’ banned

La Rosa Nautica, a super-fancy restaurant in Peru, is being fined for giving women menus without prices on them. (This is something old-fashioned restaurants do when a male-female couple comes to dine; it assumes that the man will pay and the little lady will not want to worry her sweet head about the cost.) “These small things may seem harmless,” one official responsible for fining the restaurant explained. “But at the end of the day they are the basis of a chauvinistic construct reinforcing differences between men and women.”

PSA: stalking isn’t romantic

“A lovesick German teenager outdid Shakespeare’s Romeo by scaling a 4m (13ft) prison wall and climbing up to his ex-girlfriend’s barred window,” the BBC reports. What that sentence should actually say is “rejected man doesn’t let prison walls stop him from stalking his ex”. This shouldn’t need to be said but stalking is not romantic. The media needs to stop pushing the idea that men shouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

FTC cracks down on ‘stalkerware’ apps for first time

The number of people who have discovered spyware on their devices has risen by at least 35% in the past year, according to Kaspersky, a cybsersecurity firm. Stalkerware apps (sometimes called “spouseware”) are used to secretly monitor digital activity and can be used by controlling and abusive partners. This week the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) barred a US company from selling stalkerware apps; a good first step towards battling a rapidly escalating problem.

Lebanese ‘kick queen’: what happened next?

Last week’s newsletter featured a video of Malak Alaywe, a badass Lebanese protester, kicking an armed bodyguard. A few readers have written in wondering what happened next. Happily, it seems that Alaywe, who has been dubbed the “kick queen”, is thriving. She got married on Wednesday and celebrated on the streets of Beirut with protesters. (By the way, if you haven’t seen the “baby shark” protest video, you must.)

Modern Love has an old-fashioned problem

The New York Times’s popular Modern Love column has been turned into an Amazon Prime series. The series does not feature a single woman of colour.

New beetle species named after Greta Thunberg

The tiny beetle, which has no eyes or wings, is being named “Nelloptodes gretae” in honour of the teenage climate activist. I’m sure she is thrilled.