I have zero investment in Taylor Swift’s sexual orientation. I am neither a Gaylor nor Straightlor, Bilor nor Panlor. She is one of those famous people the authenticity of whose relationships naturally draws skepticism. Beyond having clocked which of the men the press refers to as her boyfriends are worth a second thought (Harry Styles and that football player; less so the scruffy and problematic British one) I have not been keeping track. I am not a Swiftie, more like someone with neutral-to-positive feelings about this massively famous individual who I’m sure cares what I think.
Point being, if I had a less than rapturous response to Anna Marks’s lengthy essay about Taylor Swift’s maybe-possible-secret-coded queerness, it is not because I require Swift to be heterosexual. I do not require this of people generally, and I have my own pantheon of straight-women icons more obscure than Swift (but who wouldn’t qualify as more obscure?), fictional ones, mainly, and for this you will have to wait for the book.
I have spent too much time in Jewish community media not to know that it is 100% normal for members of minority groups to delight at the possibility that a star is one of our own. And there’s an extra wishful-thinking aspect when it comes to sexual orientation, for fans with a crush and a distorted sense of what is and isn’t possible even with an A-list celebrity whose orientation would make you a candidate.
But I ask: Why is it “performance art” when Swift is with a man, but the real deal when she has her hair dyed the colors of the bisexual flag? (I’d be curious who, even among bisexuals, readily knows which colors are on the bisexual flag?)
“On April 26, Lesbian Visibility Day, Ms. Swift released the album’s lead single, “ME!,” in which she sings about self-love and self-acceptance.” I ask you, how many honest to goodness out lesbians are aware, when April 26th rolls around, that it is Lesbian Visibility day. The whole thing seems like a reach.
Oh and Taylor Swift wears rainbows. You know who’s really into rainbows? Gender-conforming young girls. Do you know who’s really into Taylor Swift? Again, this doesn’t make her not secretly gayer than gay, but it’s not what would, on Shetland, conclude the case.
The line between performative allyship and Actual Queerness is faint to the point of meaninglessless. If Swift once had a sex thought about another woman, or once felt herself not 100% womanly, then she is suddenly A Queer not An Ally, even if none of this queerness has any implications for how she presents herself or who she has sexual or romantic relationships with?
I know, gatekeeping is wrong, but isn’t it relevant whether the form of queerness one is imagining Swift secretly belongs to is one that would or would not lead to her being shunned in society? Someone straight enough to always have opposite-sex partners, cis enough to present as such in all contexts, but who is not 100% straight as well as 100% cis (a category that might well not include many people at all) is a very different sort of person than a Rock Hudson.
It would be weird if a megastar in 2023 or recent years didn’t offer a bit of what’s derisively termed queerbaiting. We’re no longer in an era when is-she-or-isn’t-she ended careers, but rather in one where it’s taken as a truism that female sexuality is fluid and with-it young people are post-boundaries. The nod to possible queerness is a requisite part of being a youth-oriented mainstream American celebrity.
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