Former Division I college football player Jake Eldridge has shared that he spent so much of his sports career hiding his sexuality that the stress put him in the hospital.
Speaking to People on 27 January, he said he knew he was gay from a young age, but “football became the thing that kind of pushed everything else aside”.
Eldridge was recruited to play football in Big 10 at Rutgers University, and it wasn’t long before the weight of hiding his sexuality began to have an impact on his mental health.
“While it felt like everything I’d worked for was finally coming true, at the same time, it felt like an imprisonment – like this was my life now, and I didn’t have another option,” he said.
Things came to a head when people began speculating about his sexuality. “My roommate would come home and tell me people were asking if I was gay,” he shared. “My biggest fear wasn’t just people knowing – it was people knowing before I was ready.”
Eldridge began to worry that he would be bullied, his scholarship would be rescinded or he wouldn’t be allowed to play anymore if people found out he was gay.
As his freshman season drew to a close, he was hospitalised with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune condition, for three days, which doctors said was likely triggered by stress.
“It was the stress of being closeted,” he says. “Going in every day and faking who I am for years on end. I’d been saying for years, ‘This is making me sick.’ And then my body finally proved it.”
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“I want to take a second to talk about something that’s extremely important to me. Something important to people all over the world and especially in America right now.
“In a couple of days, I’m gonna be heading home and my heart is aching thinking about the people, the children, the families, all over America, who are being mercilessly targeted by ICE,” Lady Gaga said over the mic during a 29 January Tokyo show of her Mayhem Ball tour.
“I’m thinking about all of their pain and how their lives are being destroyed right in front of us. I’m also thinking about Minnesota and everyone back at home who is living in so much fear and searching for answers on what we all should do.
“When entire communities lose their sense of safety and belonging, it breaks something in all of us. I hope that you’ll all stand with us tonight.
“I know we’re not in America right now, but we are with our community and we love you,” she continued.
Gaga then dedicated her song “Come To Mama” to those struggling in the current climate in Minnesota, saying “We need to get back to a place of safety and peace and accountability.
“Good people shouldn’t have to fight so hard and risk their lives for well-being and respect and I hope, I hope our leaders are listening.”
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The 31-year-old queer actor also uses she/they pronouns. Brown explained that they clarified their Scream character’s pronouns amidst “so much ugliness in the world.”
Brown, known for playing the teenage Taissa Turner in the thriller Yellowjackets, stars as Mindy Meeks-Martin in the horror franchise. They joined as the Woodsboro teenager in 2022’s Scream before appearing in 2023’s Scream VI and the upcoming Scream 7.
Ahead of the film’s release, Brown shared more details about the character of Mindy. Her post sees her character wearing a trio of pins, one of which reads “she/they.”
‘Yes l’ve officially made Mindy she/they’
On their Instagram story, they posted: “idk how y’all find these things I’ve never seen but yes l’ve officially made Mindy she/ they. In the midst of so much ugliness in the world, [ice cube emoji, seemingly referring to ICE] being an obvious horror, there is a clear attack on our queer and trans community.
Jasmin Savoy Brown announces her ‘SCREAM 7’ character’s pronouns are she/they:
“I’ve officially made Mindy she/they. In the midst of so much ugliness in the world, ICE being an obvious horror, there is a clear attack on our queer and trans community… I hope it means something… pic.twitter.com/vtmE0xUw1H
“I think small on screen choices, such as a character in a major franchise wearing a pin that validates their gender as outside of the binary, matters. I hope it means something to you to see Mindy’s she/they pin on the big screen next month.”
Some Scream fans were excited at the news, but others responded to Brown’s post negatively.
“Girl whatever,” one used posted with crying emojis.
Another user posted, sarcastically: “Her: “Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay”. Anyone: “Okay. We get it.” Her: “The horror of being attacked! OH GOD!””
Many others questioned Brown’s decision to make a stand about a character’s pronouns, instead of speaking out about the fact that Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream 7 in November 2023 by production company Spyglass Media Group due to her pro-Palestinian social media posts, which they deemed antisemitic.
One critic wrote: “bringing up that ice is terrorizing queer people while working for a company that fired Melissa Barrera for speaking up about Palestine.”
The slasher film is being directed by Kevin Williamson after the original director, Christopher Landon, walked away after Melissa Barrera was fired.
A sequel to Scream VI, Scream 7 is set to follow Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) building a new life for herself. Then a new Ghostface killer begins to target her daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). Sidney decides once and for all she must face her past and put an end to the killings.
A representative told Out that the pair are “amicably filing for divorce”, adding that they remain committed to co-parenting their four-year-old daughter.
Wiley and Morelli met while working on Netflix show Orange Is the New Black, where Wiley starred as inmate Poussey Washington.
Morelli has previously said writing for the show helped her come to terms with her sexuality, having previously been married to a man.
Gay journalist Don Lemon has been arrested in connection with attending and reporting on a protest in Minnesota.
Lemon (59) was arrested late Thursday (29 January) night on charges that he violated federal law. The journalist, who previously worked for CNN, said he was reporting when he entered the Cities Church, a Christian church in St Paul, Minnesota, on 18 January.
He said he attended to observe a protest against the immigration crackdown in the area, which has seen Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, killed by federal immigration agents.
However, protestors interrupted a service at the church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out”.
The chant resulted in the Trump administration charging eight people, including Lemon, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.
A magistrates judge approved the charges against three people, rejecting the evidence against Lemon and the others as insufficient.
The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the judge to issue additional warrants, a request that was denied.
Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has vowed to fight the charges.
Don Lemon (Red Table Talk/Facebook)
He said in a statement, as per The New York Times: “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”
Lemon is set to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday morning. It’s thought that he will challenge the prosecution’s case by arguing that he was covering the event as a journalist, not protesting.
Lemon is an independent journalist who has his own YouTube show.
In an interview with Scripps News Lemon opened up about his public feud with rapper, and Trump’s “number one fan”, Nicki Minaj.
On 19 January, “Super Bass” rapper Minaj referred to the former CNN news anchor as “DON ‘C*** SUCKIN’ LEMON” in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after the journalist reported on the protest against ICE at Cities Church.
Minaj added that she wanted “thug” Lemon “in jail” as she believed “he would never do that to any other religion”. She shared the post alongside an image of Chucky the doll wearing a wig.
At the time, Lemon responded by saying Minaj was out of her “depth”. He doubled down on those comments and told Scripps News: “So I said, why do African Americans support her, why do gay people support her, members of the LGBTQ community support her? You shouldn’t because she’s a homophobe and she’s a racist. She’s racist, I believe, against Black Americans.”
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Heated Rivalry took over Ottawa on the Prime Time 2026 red carpet on January 29, where Canadian PM Mark Carney met actor Hudson Williams.
Carney grinned as he pulled on a jacket inspired by the now-iconic Team Canada fleece from the series and joked with Williams, who plays one of the show’s closeted pro hockey players, asking him to “do the leg thing” for photos.
Trans journalist Amelia Hansford explains why she has as a right to use Hampstead Heath’s women-only ponds.
I’m planning to go to Hampstead Ponds next week. I’ve bought myself a wetsuit and one of those far-too-tight Neoprene caps, and I’m going to brave the late January cold to take a dip in Kenwood Ladies’ Pond; the heath’s women-only bathing pond.
I’m not hugely passionate about pond bathing; I get incredibly cold swimming outdoors – my post-swim shivers could help power a small dam – and I am certainly no prize-winning swimmer. However, I feel it’s something I need, for myself and my womanhood, particularly after Sex Matters tried and failed to stop me and all trans women from doing so.
The incessant bickering by the ‘gender-critical’ crowd has raged on for nearly a decade. It first began in 2019 after the City of London Corporation (CoLC) confirmed trans women had as much a right to use Kenwood Ladies’ Pond as anyone else, cisgender, intersex, or otherwise.
The gate outside Kenwood Ladies’ Pond in Hampstead Heath. (DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images)
Now, I want to be incredibly crystal clear – the CoLC’s confirmation was just that, a confirmation. It did not retract from previous policy, nor was it a knee-jerk reaction to ideological pressure as some have suggested. Trans women have used the ponds since they first opened, nothing has ever told them they can’t.
Over the next few years, Kenwood Ladies’ Pond – or, more specifically, the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond Association (KLPA) – became a battleground between women who simply wanted to go bathing as they always had, and those who insisted that trans women must be excluded. A who’s who of gender-critical naysayers began filling seats at KLPA meetings, regularly interrupting to tout their fallacious beliefs that trans women are a scourge and a danger to women – you know, unless you look at the evidence.
All of this leads to Saturday, 23 August 2025; Sex Matters, a controversial charity and prominent player in the gender-critical world, announces it has petitioned the High Court, in a lawsuit against the CoLC, to legally prevent trans women from using Kenwood Ladies’ Pond.
I’m not going to bore you with a timeline leading up to the judgment – all there is to tell is that Sex Matters brought a case so deeply-rooted in its own ideological presumptions about equality law, the trans community, and reality, that the only reasonable outcome would have been, and indeed was, dismissal.
You see, Sex Matters, like most ‘gender-critical’ groups, likes to believe it is a voice for women. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of engaging with them knows this well. Their rhetoric, branding – even the X chromosome featured in their logo – are indicative of this belief that it is a women’s rights organisation above all else.
The problem is that, in this and so many other cases, it wasn’t the voice of women.
I and the rest of the PinkNews team covered this story incredibly closely. I worked with amazing journalists like Sophie Perry and Chantelle Billson who, like I, wanted to report on developments with gravitas and journalistic integrity. I firmly believe we succeeded in that endeavour.
What we saw was years-worth of failures by fringe trans-exclusionary outsiders fruitlessly pleading to women they saw as allies, in a community that so many of them didn’t belong, to believe them that trans women are somehow the biggest threat to fourth-wave feminism in the modern era. They invaded a women’s space and poisoned it with their ideology.
Both the CoLC and KLPC have held votes on this matter – one in 2023, 2024 and another this week as part of a consultation that is due to conclude in the near future. Every time, members overwhelmingly voted that they want to keep the pond trans-inclusive.
As this went on, I began to form a strange personal relationship with Kenwood Ladies’ Pond. I’ve never been there – hell, I’ve never been to Hampstead Heath – my aforementioned reluctance to bathe outdoors would have, in any other world, kept me from going. As I learned about its history I developed this unique, unexpected bond with it.
A photo from 1935 of women covered in snow preparing to dive into Kenwood Ladies’ Pool. (Getty)
Kenwood Ladies’ Bathing Pond first officially opened to the public in the 1920s. Originally a private estate dating back to the 17th century, it became a popular public attraction after the 1st Earl of Iveagh bought and donated it to the nation in the 1927. It was taken over by the City of London in 2003.
In that time, it has become more than a single-sex bathing pond – it’s a sanctuary. It’s a place for women, secluded from the work-a-day world of London and the prying eyes of men, to submerge themselves in brisk solace, protecting them from a world that continues to oppress and kill them. It’s a portal to another world where patriarchy is fiction and women are just people.
For so long, I felt subconsciously forbidden from identifying with this. Yes, I am a woman – I don’t doubt that for a second – but I cannot help but feel like an outsider when writing about Kenwood, even now. Some might criticise me for that, but I think it’s foolish to ignore the deep ostracisation trans women feel living under political systems that speak about us, without us, as though we’re a problem to be dealt with.
But you know what? I’ve had it. I’m not letting this deeply-unpopular rhetoric plague my self-esteem any more. How dare Sex Matters try to deny me my womanhood. How dare they try to separate me from my history. How absolutely dare they let their disgust of people like me trick them into believing they have more of a right to these spaces than I do. While we’re at it, how dare Keir Starmer’s government take them seriously as though their beliefs aren’t built on misinformation.
Sex Matters are the outsiders here, not as women and not even as rightful patrons of Kenwood, but as compassionate human beings. Their supporters stood in meetings, wearing embarrassing copies of the pond’s ‘Women Only’ sign around their necks, pitching their beliefs to a crowd whose only interest in their speeches was the time at which they ended.
I’m going to swim in Kenwood Ladies’ Pond, as the women whose pain I share have done before me. I will feel the cold water against my skin, look up at the cloudy winter sky, and temporarily free myself of these patriarchal chains. For a brief moment, I will forget the trauma I have faced as a woman; the sexual assaults against me, the opportunities that I was denied, the men who took and abused my femininity like so many others.
When I do, despite every single disgusting lie that bigots spout about my community in the misguided name of feminism, no one will get hurt.
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