JoJo Siwa thinks she invented 'Gay Pop'
+ Myanmar's army massacred Rohingya people: Now it’s forcibly recruiting them into that same army, and why is it so hard to fuck responsibly?
Angels! How was your weekend? Mine was cute because we celebrated my Dad’s (Normy’s) 60th birthday!!! Here’s what he woke up to in the morning:
And the little mug I thrifted him as one of his presents:
He’s a simple dude, old Normy, so we spent his birthday catching up on MAFS, going for a bike ride, watching the Formula 1, and having Indian food for dinner. He said it was perfect.
And, as a gift to you, here’s the most iconic Normy lore of all time, and a story he still gets teased about to this day.
Why is it so hard to fuck responsibly?
This section is brought to you by the angels at Project Gender and their new at-home STI tests, EttieKits. To read more about EttieKits and the story behind the business, check out ettie.co.nz.
Ok so I know y’all are so used to me sharing everything about me with you here, so it shouldn’t be too jarring to hear that the other day I did my very first AT HOME SMEAR TEST and was obsessed with it. So obsessed that I literally text my Mum about it:
The next thing on my list was an STI checkup, and I literally thought to myself - ugh, this is such admin, why can’t I just do this myself too?
WELL WELL WELL, it turns out, I can. And so can YOU.
Let me introduce to you EttieKits: four single-use, at-home tests that give reliable results for chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis, and herpes-2 in less than 15 minutes.
I’m obsessed with the EttieKits for a bunch of reasons:
They’re named after Ettie Rout, Aotearoa New Zealand’s first sexual health crusader
They let us test for STIs at home (which hopefully means we can get on top of the 25,000 chlamydia cases, nearly 7,000 gonorrhoea cases, and 486 syphilis cases we had in 2022)
They were created by a women-led organisation in Aotearoa that I simply j’adore and would love us all to support
SO SYSCAHOOD, WE NEED YOU!
I don’t ask for much, but here I am, your humble newsy writer, standing in front of her readers, asking you to please get behind this amazing innovation. Right now, the kits are sent out in sets of four, but to make them more affordable we want to help them fundraise to create single test kits, making them more affordable for all of us.
You can preorder a single kit for $20, choose to do a buy one, give one option, or just donate what you can because you love the idea (like me.)
Love you angels, here’s to supporting responsible fucking xxxxx
⊹˚. ♡.𖥔 ݁ ˖ IN THE NEWS⊹˚. ♡.𖥔 ݁ ˖
Myanmar's army massacred Rohingya people: Now it’s forcibly recruiting them into that same army
If you’ve been part of the SYSCAhood for a long time, you’ll know that when I was 19 I went to Myanmar and learnt about what was happening to the Rohingya people. Not long after that, and largely because of that, I started Shit You Should Care About.
“In 2012 tens of thousands of Rohingya were driven out of mixed communities in Rakhine State, and forced to live in squalid camps. Five years later, in August 2017, 700,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, after the army launched a brutal clearance operation against them, killing and raping thousands and burning their villages. Some 600,000 of them still remain there.” BBC.
I’ve written about what’s happening in Myanmar a lot, from the fact that seven years ago their military killed thousands of Muslim Rohingya in what the UN called "textbook ethnic cleansing," the military coup in 2021, the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi, the execution of democracy activists, and today I read the sickening update that the “same army is now forcibly recruiting” these people to give their lives for them.
“From interviews with Rohingyas living in Rakhine State the BBC has learned of at least 100 of them being conscripted in recent weeks to fight for the embattled junta.
In the middle of February the camp leader came to him late at night, Mohammed said, and told him he would have to do military training. "These are army orders," he remembers him saying. "If you refuse they have threatened to harm your family."
The irony of it all is that these men - the ones who are being recruited into this army, are still denied citizenship.
If you want to know about this situation, I’d encourage you to go and read this!
☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★ ON THE WEB ☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★
JoJo Siwa thinks she invented 'Gay Pop'
Has mama never heard of King Princess?
Never did I ever think I’d be writing about JoJo Siwa in the daily newsy but stranger things have happened. To get my extremely offline angels up to speed, JoJo has gone on her own ‘Miley Cyrus’ journey (whom she says she was heavily inspired by) to re-invent her image, and according to her, invent a whole new genre of music: ‘gay pop.’ See the receipts here:
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The issue here is, JoJo of course didn’t invent gay pop, and the single she released (KARMA) is just really bad.
Anyway, if you’re actually wanting to listen to some gay pop, let me give you some recs that don’t involve JoJo Siwa:
King Princess
Chappell Roan
Reneé Rapp
FLETCHER
Tegan and Sara
MUNA
Peach PRC
Haley Kiyoko
Lady Gaga
So many of us have grown up having everything available and accessible to us all the time - which is AMAZING for so many reasons, but there is a cost to free things - even if you can’t see it.
In a world that feels more mystifying by the day, where journalists are constantly being laid off, and misinformation spreads faster than a leaked Harry Styles song, finding media that you trust, understand and actually want to read is so important.
I know you value what I do - so many of you email me saying how much you love the newsletter, thanking me for explaining topics you might not have heard of, and telling me how much it means to you that you’ve got a friend on the other side of this thing (🥺🥺🥺) If you believe in paying for the media (or the person???) you love, then please consider becoming a supporter.
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The problem with JoJo Siwas 'change' is that 1) she still looks the same but in a different colour palette , ditch the rhinestones and high ponys 2) the people who wrote her song also wrote for disney so it still has a very distinct adolescent feel and 3) there's the possibility this is all to distract from the recent article about a former member of her dance group coming out and alleging mistreatment from JoJo and her mum.
An at home smear? What sorcery is this?