I’m still transitioning off Substack. My preference is to have people on Patreon rather than Buttondown or Mailchimp or whatever because I’m already set up on Patreon and have some cool rewards for paying readers. The downside to shifting to Patreon is that I cannot add you as a patron myself. You have to sign up, even if it’s just at the free level (which I support fully!).
So that’s why I keep reminding you to sign up for my Patreon.
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TL;DR: Please sign up for my Patreon, but even if you don’t, I’ll be sure you keep receiving these emails until you forcibly stop me.
Although it pains me to admit it, I am still thinking about this weird obsession with Taylor Swift's private sexual relationships. It's not because I care about TSwift's private life myself — I truly don't, aside from generally hoping that she is happy — but rather an obsession with the obsession with her private life. A meta obsession, if you will.
Because the thing I find confusing is honestly... this is not the 1980s, friends. We do not have a shortage of out queer musicians. Lady Gaga is out. Janelle Monáe is out. Hayley Kiyoko is out. Lil Nas X is out. Sam Smith is out. Kim Petras is out. I know all those names and I'm terrible at keeping up with musicians. Which I feel very confident that this is not some issue of a queer musician shortage, a desperate need for role models, etc. (I mean yes, I suppose you could make the argument that none of them are "at Taylor's level," but also, can you? This is a serious question. I truly don't know how to rank that shit.)
Regardless: It is undeniable that we are long past the era of Ani and Elton and some whispered rumors about celebs still too timid to come out.
(Girl in Red are lesbians, right? Or is it just that Gen Z lesbians like them? I must confess I am not with it enough to know, whenever someone mentions them I think of that ancient song "Lady in Red," which a Russian babysitter once asked me to transcribe the lyrics to. Anyway.)
I have a theory about the obsession, and I have to say that it's not a particularly flattering one. I think there is, shall we say, a thrill of the chase. A desire to have the thing that is just out of reach. Taylor's purported queerness is of interest, not because it matters if Taylor is queer or not, but because Taylor insists she is not queer. It is a desire to believe there is some flagging, some secret code; a desire to believe that Taylor wants to come out but can't, that if it weren't for [insert whatever barrier there is here], Taylor could be her fully developed, happy queer self.
And maybe that's true. Maybe!
But — and this is an important but — the reason I find that fixation with a supposed secret queerness is because I fully, 100% believe that if Taylor were ever publicly queer, so many of the people desperate to see her come out would eventually turn on her.
And the reason I think that is, well, look at how virtually every out bi female celebrity gets treated by the queer community. Look at Lady Gaga, for fuck's sake. Look at Ani DiFranco.
The sad reality is that many people are far more in love with the theoretical queerness of potentially closeted women than they are with the fully realized queerness of out bi women. And it makes sense, honestly: as long as Taylor publicly insists she is straight, she can never disrupt the fantasy you might have of her secret queer life. You can pair her with whatever female friends you see her in photos with; you can fantasize about all the ways her queerness is just like yours, or like that of the girls you want to fuck.
The second Taylor (or whomever) comes out, however, she's a fully realized human. A person with agency, someone in control of her own queerness. The choices she makes may not align with the ones that you map out for her in your head; she may even — gasp! — continue to date and or even marry men, despite a professed attraction to women as well. She is no longer your dress up doll. She is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode in disappointment.
That's my theory, anyway.
There is no shortage of out queer pop stars. There are plenty of enthusiastically queer musicians making enthusiastically queer music (again, hello, Lil Nas X and Janelle Monáe???). I think it is worth asking why so many people would rather mull over the mythical queerness of the Swifts and Styleses of the world rather than support and embrace the fully realized queerness of openly LGBTQ artists.
Then again, if we did honestly interrogate that, many of us might not like the answers we came back with.
Thank you for writing this! I've often wondered if the meta obsession with Taylor's fictional queerness also has something to do with closeted (white) queer folks trying to attain proximity to Taylor's position as the best-loved white woman celebrity in America right now? Like they can bypass their own perceive grotesqueness being queer if a white woman as well beloved as Taylor can be "secretly" queer and still welcomed eagerly into white society? The weird white queers are experiencing a sort of removal from the mainstream, thanks to all these fascists, that hasn't been a thing maybe since the AIDS era so this whole "is Taylor secretly queer" feels like a reaction to how white queers specifically are being publicly and politically reviled.
'(I mean yes, I suppose you could make the argument that none of them are "at Taylor's level," but also, can you? This is a serious question. I truly don't know how to rank that shit.)'
I think it's fair to say that currently there are zero other pop stars, and few other cultural figures in general, "at Taylor's level," but that's also one of those things where you have to just accept it.
I agree there is something about the chase going on here. And I also agree that her coming out would only add something else for people to press her on and add new standards for her to fail to live up to. As you mentioned, there are so many openly queer celebrities now, even in formerly conservative genres like country music, that people's obsession with the status of This Specific Woman feel so weird.
(And as I mentioned in another comment, Swift herself may not even know how she feels about women, it's not always the easiest thing to suss out one's own queerness, I can offer my own mostly-straight self as exhibit a. One's own relationship with one's sexuality is something that evolves over your entire life, especially if you are queer. Swift deserves privacy and time to figure herself out if she wants to.)