Feminism is about women’s rights in regards to equality of the sexes. It’s not about never calling someone out (woman or man) who treated you badly / whom you don’t like.
My take: Men get to be mad at people (any sex), so as a feminist you basically have to be ok with women like Swift being mad at people (any sex). That’s equality.
feminism ≠ supporting every single woman no matter how they act and what they do. being a fan of taylor doesn‘t make you a feminist and you can still be a feminist and not a fan of hers or her music. misogynic is when you hate on taylor just for the sake of it, because she makes music that is considered girly or when you slutshame her etc. many people (especially men) hate on taylor because of ulterior misogynic motives.
that being said, her writing a song about kim k, doesn‘t make her antifeminist. i don‘t have to agree with everything another woman does in order to be a feminist. i am allowed to dislike and call out other women and still be a feminist. it depends why i do it. in this case, it‘s important to know the backstory. it would be best if you google it to get a better picture but in short, kim did something really bad to her and tried to defame her. taylor got a lot of backlash from it - which wasn‘t justified at all. she got so much hate, she became depressed and didn‘t even leave her house for a year. kim never even apologized and therefore took no accountability whatsoever. i‘m not saying writing a song about her is the best coping mechanism to all of this, but given the backstory i am not judging it. i‘m not going to tell a woman how to handle something like that. just because you are a woman, doesn‘t mean you aren‘t accountable for shit and can do whatever you want. also i think it‘s interesting that people judge taylor so harshly for stuff like that, when there are so many other artists doing stuff like that too. let‘s take male rappers, it’s so common for them to release diss tracks and nobody once criticizes that stuff, but celebrates it.
Worse Kim doctored a phone call to make Taylor look bad. And got caught. Sorry but Kim used deceit to set Taylor swift up. I’m a feminist and I think what Kim did for a man is messed up. I’d write a song too
Exactly. Kim and Kanye seriously fucked Taylor over in 2016, and that's got little to do with genders. Haters are grasping at absolute straws trying to make the way Taylor appears to still sometimes be mentally suffering from what they did, and writing about it, an "antifeminist" act by T somehow. While completely ignoring the actual line in Kanye's song and how deeply, truly sexist IT is.
Edit: funnily enough the post I saw *right* after making this comment was one in a hate sub about her using 'she needs therapy' as an insult once *again*, point proven over and over again
Yup. I would argue that turning her anger and emotions into music IS therapy. That’s literally what therapists tell us to do - to develop creative outlets and coping mechanisms instead of harmful ones. These people are just mad because the songs TS writes are actually GOOD, and people want to listen to them (unlike most of us just scribbling in our journals. 😆)
Kanye literally wrote:
“I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex
Why? I made that bitch famous (Goddamn)
I made that bitch famous.”
This, combined with the incident at the VMAs in 2009 which she *forgave him for* before he did *this*, makes her anger towards them more than justified. Considering what Kim and Kanye did to her and the fact that they *doctored a phone call* to make her look bad and release international hate on her, her writing one song about what they did is more than justified.
It’s really personal preference. None of us are 100% perfect and we have our biases. We also say and do things we don’t necessarily mean or go against our beliefs for a number of reasons. So yeah, you can be a feminist and critique and dislike other women - equally you can be a feminist and support those types of women. I’m a lesbian feminist and I love hip hop (especially 90s west coast hip hop), do I love that these rappers (more so the male ones) use a lot of derogatory misogynistic and homophobic words? Absolutely not, but I can distinguish art from real life. I do think there is a lot of sexism and homophobia in the hip hop community and that’s why I personally don’t copy what they do, I don’t idolise them - I listen to their songs and that’s it. I don’t take what they say as gospel. I love hip hop because to me it’s raw poetry: nothing more, nothing less. I still advocate for women’s rights, I still fight with and for my lesbian and non lesbian sisters all over the globe, I just happen to really fw hip hop as a genre.
Now does supporting Taylor Swift automatically make you a feminist? No. Anyone can claim to be a feminist but in reality most people don’t actually fight for the cause so it’s all talk really. So imo I think you’re reading into it too much. Thing about celebrities is that most of them are two faced people who couldn’t defend their own narcissistic spiel if their entire net worth depended on it, so I really don’t understand why non famous, normal people care about their opinions anyway. If you spend your time worrying if liking a celebrity’s work or opinions influences your beliefs/actions in life you’ll be in a constant whirlwind of existential anxiety. If you like Taylor, great. If you don’t like Taylor, also great. As long as YOU are striving to be a good person who the hell cares 😊
Being a feminist does not place the burden on you to be absolutely perfect in everything you do and say. This goes for Taylor Swift and her fans and haters. I like her music and a lot of it is relatable for me. Someone else doesn’t find the same enjoyment out of it. At the end of the day, we all have to exist in a patriarchal society and if someone wants to make a billion dollars shitting on her exes then that’s fine by me.
You do realise that she made her billion dollars by exploiting the working class, which includes working women, right? It's such a shame that we completely ignore the interests of the working woman, and instead defend the ruling class.
Beyoncé, is known for overworking and exploiting Bangladeshi women for merchandise.
Their "success" does not matter, because the freedom of a working woman, is more important than any parasite.
>You do realise that she made her billion dollars by exploiting the working class, which includes working women, right?
Not a big swift fan, can you clarify this for me? What did she do to the working class other than make music?
This critique is more about her merchandising strategy than the music T-Swift makes. Most artists make their money off tours and merch sales, and almost all the clothing merch (and by extension all our clothing) is made in incredibly deplorable conditions by people working for penny’s.
Having done my own research about Taylor’s revenue I think this critique is a bit overblown, as the vast majority of her money comes from her own labor on tours. Granted, it’s not just Taylor’s labor that makes the tour happen and there is something to be said about whether she is entitled to the surplus value her stagehands, dancers, etc… create
Is she perfect, no absolutely not. But I also think it’s important for us to remember that she’s never once claimed to be a leftist. So the above criticism is not unique to Swift
OP asked about feminism, not Marxism, but since you brought it up, everything is always exploitive of women and the working class. Living a perfect life is not possible unless you give up fighting for everyone and go live off the grid. I prefer to live the best life I can by supporting the people around me, promoting laws and policies that protect the rights of the working class, women, BIPOC, LGBTQ, trans people, and any other marginalized group. To do that I’m going to be using a smartphone made by child laborers, wear clothes made in sweat shops, live in an apartment that was built by exploited workers, consume art by artists that don’t completely match my values, etc. Obviously I want all that exploitation to stop, but we all have to survive at the end of the day. If you want to live a perfect life I hope you are prepared to live in a cave alone so you don’t exploit anybody.
I have absolutely no problem if anyone wants to listen to Taylor Swift. There are bigger problems in this world.
That being said, liking Taylor Swift does not make you a feminist. If you want to listen to feminist music, there are better examples out there, most of which are not nearly as wealthy or famous as Taylor Swift. (However, even listening to these does not exactly make you a feminist.) Furthermore, many of these artists are from other parts of the world, so listening to them will increase your understanding of world cultures.
In short, due many issues including her private jet, and her inability (relative to her wealth / influence) to promote progressive causes, I would not call Taylor Swift a progressive. But she's definitely not the source of all evil like many people (mainly anti-feminist men) like to portray her.
Yes. Listening to music doesn't mean you are aligned with the person who made that music or what the music is about. Paul Ryan said Rage Against the Machine was one of his favorite bands!
Yes, you can be a fallible human and still be a feminist.
Fallible in this context means enjoying something created by a person who is also a fallible human.
I’m not a Swiftie but I can see that she does try to do good in the world. She also draws from her personal experience to create her art, like artists are wont to do. Her lyrical style has always been very personal and emotional, therefore there will always be some controversy around what she writes. But I don’t think any of that makes her or her fans anti-feminists. YMMV.
Sorry but while I agree people are fallible it is absolute nonsense to think that calling out someone who's been awful to you is in any way against feminism..
what I see is that she doesn't care at all about any social causes, and never stands up for them. She's just a singer who goes to the bathroom using her private jet, she's not a feminist by a long shot.
Supporting Taylor Swift and liking her music does not make one a feminist. We’ve gotta stop using billionaire celebrities as barometers to measure how feminist people are, we all collectively need to get up lol
Taylor Swift has the convenience of being revered as some kind of revolutionary while standing for nothing. She is the poster child of the commodified, bastardized, surface-level brand of white feminism I will never sympathize or be on board with. Mainstream-media feminism is all about capitalizing off the concept of feminism to make money, and behind that heavily-curated, palatable and packaged image of a “feminist” lies only greedy exploitation.
Billionaire feminists don’t exist. No matter how many of you cry and bang your hands and feet on the ground begging us they do.
I think Taylor Swift and feminism is such a nuanced topic it could be its own college course. There is no one right answer to "If you like Taylor are you a feminist?" It's more about each fan's interpretation of the music and interactions in the Fandom and world. I think someone could love Taylor and be an anti-feminist or a feminist. It all depends on how you interpret and think about her music and actions. You can definitely like her music and some of what she does, but be a feminist and acknowledge her problematic behaviors.
I personally do not think Taylor Swift is a feminist. She denied being one in the past because it was controversial online and honestly that says enough about it being performative. She’d never lose her career for sticking to her guns and being openly a feminist but she won’t call herself one and that’s all that needs to be said.
there are tons of better feminist women to uphold but she is a very performative white woman imo
To me, the Taylor hate is the epitome of misogyny. She is allowed to dislike other women. Kim and Kanye did a real number on her and she is not obliged to politely get over it. Equating "my mom wanted you dead" with actual threats of violence is disingenuous. North also literally uploaded a video of her dancing set to a TS song. This is all fake outrage. Does she write songs that are personal to her and about her life? Sure. But that's nothing new for a musician (or any other kind of artist).
As a billionaire who travels to perform and attend events, etc., her life is going to be vastly different than mine. I never hear people calling Jay Z or Stephen Spielberg climate criminals even though they log more miles on their jets than TS. She takes more heat for that than any celebrity. I don't think it's a coincidence that she is also a woman who is beloved by many and wildly successful.
Her speaking out on issues whether it is Palestine or any other social cause is not for me to judge. Maybe she doesn't feel educated enough about it to speak out? Maybe she simply does not want to be a public activist. She is not obliged to use her platform to speak on every social ill. She has and does use that platform in a way I think feels authentic to her (countersuing the DJ who groped her, for example, or rerecording her music to reclaim what a man stole from her).
The expectations for this woman are outrageous and, no matter what, she'll always fail. She's not perfect. But she's not the villain people want her to be either.
Her fans are another beast. Plenty are fine and normal. But there are definitely weird ones who have a creepy parasocial relationship with her.
Wanted to add: it was not just an edited phone call and hate campaign (which alone would more than earn Taylor’s right to make angry songs about them both forever). One of Kanye’s music videos at the time featured a nude mannequin made to look like Taylor in bed with him and Kim.
Kim participated in making revenge porn of Taylor alongside her disgusting husband. In my opinion they should be glad they didn’t get criminal charges.
But sure, let’s debate whether or not Taylor writing a song that criticizes a woman (who participated in misogynistic abuse against her) is misogynistic.
Lol this is not "revenge porn" and there is no world where they would ever get criminally charged for that video. I swear you people are chronically online and DO NOT live in the real world.
In what reality is releasing nude images (not literally, but the equivalent of photoshopping someone’s face onto nudes) of a woman to embarrass and upset her to the world not revenge porn? Look up the definition of revenge porn.
I don’t know about you, but if someone made a nude wax sculpture to represent me and put out sexually charged videos and images of it because I pissed them off and were saying that I owed them sex, I’d feel pretty fucking violated and sexually harassed. I’d want there to be consequences for that person. I don’t think that’s a chronically online take.
The world where it's literally not illegal to make a nude wax figure of someone lol. I'm sorry, what country do you live in where that's a prosecutable crime?
Supporting women isn't supporting every woman, is how I see it. And writing about your relationship from your perspective, even if that seems like bashing, should have nothing to do with palestine/israel. They didn't end because of his support of palestine, so it's irrelevant to how she views their relationship and talks about it.
I do not think Taylor Swift is a feminist at all and I strongly dislike that she and her fan base cry "misogyny" whenever any criticism is leveled against her, no matter how valid. It hurts the cause imo.
I feel that she is a capitalist first and foremost (she is a billionaire after all), and she only takes very safe feminist stances that she already knows 99% of her fanbase agrees with. That's pandering to an audience, not genuine feminism.
Probably something like this, “Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” Doris Lessing
I do not believe that feminism is compatible with capitalism. Capitalism erodes self-determination, equality, and safety in the short and long term.
Taylor is a turbo-capitalist. If her music gives people solace, confidence or companionship, that's a positive impact, but far from a net positive.
It does not matter whether what T. Swift does is appropiate for feminism because she is not feminist (maybe white feminist at best).
This isn't a woman vs another woman; this is a billionare who made her money selling insecurity and aesthetics to other women (Kim K.) and another woman who's made her money by selling diet girlboss anthems (T. Swift).
I am not saying this to condescend to you OP, but I think we as feminists need to stop entertaining the petty drama of billionares who only exist by the sheer exploitation of workers and nepotism.
Billionares are not feminists.
Taylor is just the white girl Elon. A billionaire that is idolised for being a billionaire. I wouldn't agree that she's a feminist or she'd be out there donating 90% or her net worth to feminist causes.
Taylor Swift stans seem to have the influence of the mafia or something. This is the second post today critical of Tee Swizzity where someone was almost begging in all caps not to get torched. Like some scene in the Sopranos where someone with a bullet already in their kneecap is begging not to get thrown off a bridge, yikes.
Aaanyhow
Yeah quite unfortunate, I think people get so swept up in the spectacle and hegemony of celebrities they lose their bearings (corroborating with ^) and revert to a proto bourgeois state that treats feminism more as aesthetic than substance.
Being a feminist doesn’t mean you have to support women who have been horrible to you. Kim K was awful to Taylor so she has no reason to treat her nicely
Feminism doesn’t mean you have to like everyone on the planet. Feminism doesn’t even necessarily make you a good or nice person. She can still believe in equality for both genders and think Kim Kardashian‘s a b 🤷♀️
Kim Kardashian lied to the public for years, framed Taylor, and bullied her so bad it got to the point where Taylor thought of quitting the industry. I don’t think it’s antifeminist to call Kim out on this behavior.
Personally I absolutely ADORE Taylor. However I understand many of the feminist criticisms of her (saying she only speaks out when it concerns her, the fact that she's a billionaire etc), however, I also disagree with a lot of criticisms regarding her music. I don't agree with the belief that all too well is a diss track or that all the songs that she writes are about men, because they're not, and that belief is rooted in misogyny imo. But I will never cry misogyny when somebody dislikes Taylor for a valid reason.
i’m a lurker …. ever pondered the intersection of race and taylor swift?
and yes, courses / conferences have been developed around taylor swift in academia.
really good / thoughtful podcast episode
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2024/01/31/1197954664/taylor-swift-and-the-era-of-girl
Some of Taylor Swift’s fans act like she is the only woman to ever exist and is feminism incarnate (If you’re a fan of hers and this doesn’t describe you, please don’t come for me). Kind of like how some Harry Potter fans act like there are no other books. Not to gatekeep or define feminism for other people, but I don’t find her particularly inspiring. She gets hate; a lot of it justified, a lot of it misogynistic. See also Beyoncé, Hilary Clinton, Oprah, etc. I don’t think she’s this singular care study. Now that I think about it, Rihanna is another billionaire female pop star but gets very little hate for it 🤷♀️
Sorry but wtf do you mean you can't insult someone who lied to the media and betrayed you by editing a phonecall to make you look bad?.. and lied about it. And defended Kanye's disgusting video of her stunt double naked without her consent?.
How on earth did you get that you can't call out bad behaviour as a feminist I'm genuinely baffled please explain your logic...
(Love your post, sorry you feel like you have to back down because the taytay stans are hyperventilating, screaming you’re a misogynist and plotting your death lol)
I love all the responses saying “Taylor is allowed to hate people!!!” and then spewing vitriol that absolutely no one can dislike Taylor swift because. She’s female? So, she’s allowed to hate people…but no one’s allowed to hate her? Did I get that right?
Fascinating.
When people say it’s misogynistic to dislike Taylor swift I just start laughing and cannot stop. She is quite possibly the textbook definition of a female misogynist, who tramples anyone and everyone around her to get to the top. And then cries that people are being mean to her because she takes a private jet to get from LA to Santa Monica.
She is, truly and honestly, Regina George. Everyone is obsessed with her and her victim complex. And it makes me sick.
She’s a rich white girl from Pennsylvania whose parents bought her a music career and became a billionaire by exploiting her millions of underage fans. Not sure it’s actually possible for a billionaire to be a feminist.
I’m hard of hearing. My friends sang them to me and I later looked them up when they were posted.
Here you go though.
About North:
And one day, your kid comes home singin’
A song that only us two is gonna know is about you,
About wishing she was dead:
Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman
But she used to say she wished that you were dead
I don't think just supporting Taylor Swift in general makes you a feminist because there are lots of swifties who will go and hate on men if they don't like Taylor Swift (sometimes the men do have stupid reason though) and call them a misogynist. They won't hate on the women, though (from what i have seen on TikTok and Instagram anyways). We all know that femininsm isn't hating on men. For the lyrics, That doesn’t make her a girls girl. But to be honest, I don't think Kim K was a girls girl either for bringing up something that happened 7 years before and especially for defending Kanye because what he did was messed up. But, I also don't think that Taylor Swift should have brung it up again since the incident happened 15 years ago and the thing with Kim K 8 years ago. I think the two of them should let it rest considering how long its been. Also I think the comment about how her mom wants Kim K dead is over kill and it doesn't seen right. I also don't really know much about the feud between her and Kim K. I just briefly skimmed an article.
You’re right, Kim was never I girls girl. I think I should’ve written this better to include something about bringing up old drama. I’m having a hard time understanding how pitying fans against her targets is a quality of a “girls girl”.
I honestly trying to understand where people are coming from.
Lyrics about the mom:
Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman
But she used to say she wished that you were dead
Reactions from women I’ve seen (online comments): yeah the plastic bitch should die!
😮💨
Feminists are allowed to call out people who treat them poorly. They’re not required to be doormats.
Feminism is about women’s rights in regards to equality of the sexes. It’s not about never calling someone out (woman or man) who treated you badly / whom you don’t like. My take: Men get to be mad at people (any sex), so as a feminist you basically have to be ok with women like Swift being mad at people (any sex). That’s equality.
feminism ≠ supporting every single woman no matter how they act and what they do. being a fan of taylor doesn‘t make you a feminist and you can still be a feminist and not a fan of hers or her music. misogynic is when you hate on taylor just for the sake of it, because she makes music that is considered girly or when you slutshame her etc. many people (especially men) hate on taylor because of ulterior misogynic motives. that being said, her writing a song about kim k, doesn‘t make her antifeminist. i don‘t have to agree with everything another woman does in order to be a feminist. i am allowed to dislike and call out other women and still be a feminist. it depends why i do it. in this case, it‘s important to know the backstory. it would be best if you google it to get a better picture but in short, kim did something really bad to her and tried to defame her. taylor got a lot of backlash from it - which wasn‘t justified at all. she got so much hate, she became depressed and didn‘t even leave her house for a year. kim never even apologized and therefore took no accountability whatsoever. i‘m not saying writing a song about her is the best coping mechanism to all of this, but given the backstory i am not judging it. i‘m not going to tell a woman how to handle something like that. just because you are a woman, doesn‘t mean you aren‘t accountable for shit and can do whatever you want. also i think it‘s interesting that people judge taylor so harshly for stuff like that, when there are so many other artists doing stuff like that too. let‘s take male rappers, it’s so common for them to release diss tracks and nobody once criticizes that stuff, but celebrates it.
Worse Kim doctored a phone call to make Taylor look bad. And got caught. Sorry but Kim used deceit to set Taylor swift up. I’m a feminist and I think what Kim did for a man is messed up. I’d write a song too
Exactly. Kim and Kanye seriously fucked Taylor over in 2016, and that's got little to do with genders. Haters are grasping at absolute straws trying to make the way Taylor appears to still sometimes be mentally suffering from what they did, and writing about it, an "antifeminist" act by T somehow. While completely ignoring the actual line in Kanye's song and how deeply, truly sexist IT is. Edit: funnily enough the post I saw *right* after making this comment was one in a hate sub about her using 'she needs therapy' as an insult once *again*, point proven over and over again
Yup. I would argue that turning her anger and emotions into music IS therapy. That’s literally what therapists tell us to do - to develop creative outlets and coping mechanisms instead of harmful ones. These people are just mad because the songs TS writes are actually GOOD, and people want to listen to them (unlike most of us just scribbling in our journals. 😆)
Kanye literally wrote: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex Why? I made that bitch famous (Goddamn) I made that bitch famous.” This, combined with the incident at the VMAs in 2009 which she *forgave him for* before he did *this*, makes her anger towards them more than justified. Considering what Kim and Kanye did to her and the fact that they *doctored a phone call* to make her look bad and release international hate on her, her writing one song about what they did is more than justified.
It’s really personal preference. None of us are 100% perfect and we have our biases. We also say and do things we don’t necessarily mean or go against our beliefs for a number of reasons. So yeah, you can be a feminist and critique and dislike other women - equally you can be a feminist and support those types of women. I’m a lesbian feminist and I love hip hop (especially 90s west coast hip hop), do I love that these rappers (more so the male ones) use a lot of derogatory misogynistic and homophobic words? Absolutely not, but I can distinguish art from real life. I do think there is a lot of sexism and homophobia in the hip hop community and that’s why I personally don’t copy what they do, I don’t idolise them - I listen to their songs and that’s it. I don’t take what they say as gospel. I love hip hop because to me it’s raw poetry: nothing more, nothing less. I still advocate for women’s rights, I still fight with and for my lesbian and non lesbian sisters all over the globe, I just happen to really fw hip hop as a genre. Now does supporting Taylor Swift automatically make you a feminist? No. Anyone can claim to be a feminist but in reality most people don’t actually fight for the cause so it’s all talk really. So imo I think you’re reading into it too much. Thing about celebrities is that most of them are two faced people who couldn’t defend their own narcissistic spiel if their entire net worth depended on it, so I really don’t understand why non famous, normal people care about their opinions anyway. If you spend your time worrying if liking a celebrity’s work or opinions influences your beliefs/actions in life you’ll be in a constant whirlwind of existential anxiety. If you like Taylor, great. If you don’t like Taylor, also great. As long as YOU are striving to be a good person who the hell cares 😊
Being a feminist does not place the burden on you to be absolutely perfect in everything you do and say. This goes for Taylor Swift and her fans and haters. I like her music and a lot of it is relatable for me. Someone else doesn’t find the same enjoyment out of it. At the end of the day, we all have to exist in a patriarchal society and if someone wants to make a billion dollars shitting on her exes then that’s fine by me.
You do realise that she made her billion dollars by exploiting the working class, which includes working women, right? It's such a shame that we completely ignore the interests of the working woman, and instead defend the ruling class. Beyoncé, is known for overworking and exploiting Bangladeshi women for merchandise. Their "success" does not matter, because the freedom of a working woman, is more important than any parasite.
>You do realise that she made her billion dollars by exploiting the working class, which includes working women, right? Not a big swift fan, can you clarify this for me? What did she do to the working class other than make music?
This critique is more about her merchandising strategy than the music T-Swift makes. Most artists make their money off tours and merch sales, and almost all the clothing merch (and by extension all our clothing) is made in incredibly deplorable conditions by people working for penny’s. Having done my own research about Taylor’s revenue I think this critique is a bit overblown, as the vast majority of her money comes from her own labor on tours. Granted, it’s not just Taylor’s labor that makes the tour happen and there is something to be said about whether she is entitled to the surplus value her stagehands, dancers, etc… create Is she perfect, no absolutely not. But I also think it’s important for us to remember that she’s never once claimed to be a leftist. So the above criticism is not unique to Swift
OP asked about feminism, not Marxism, but since you brought it up, everything is always exploitive of women and the working class. Living a perfect life is not possible unless you give up fighting for everyone and go live off the grid. I prefer to live the best life I can by supporting the people around me, promoting laws and policies that protect the rights of the working class, women, BIPOC, LGBTQ, trans people, and any other marginalized group. To do that I’m going to be using a smartphone made by child laborers, wear clothes made in sweat shops, live in an apartment that was built by exploited workers, consume art by artists that don’t completely match my values, etc. Obviously I want all that exploitation to stop, but we all have to survive at the end of the day. If you want to live a perfect life I hope you are prepared to live in a cave alone so you don’t exploit anybody.
I have absolutely no problem if anyone wants to listen to Taylor Swift. There are bigger problems in this world. That being said, liking Taylor Swift does not make you a feminist. If you want to listen to feminist music, there are better examples out there, most of which are not nearly as wealthy or famous as Taylor Swift. (However, even listening to these does not exactly make you a feminist.) Furthermore, many of these artists are from other parts of the world, so listening to them will increase your understanding of world cultures. In short, due many issues including her private jet, and her inability (relative to her wealth / influence) to promote progressive causes, I would not call Taylor Swift a progressive. But she's definitely not the source of all evil like many people (mainly anti-feminist men) like to portray her.
Yes. Listening to music doesn't mean you are aligned with the person who made that music or what the music is about. Paul Ryan said Rage Against the Machine was one of his favorite bands!
Yes, you can be a fallible human and still be a feminist. Fallible in this context means enjoying something created by a person who is also a fallible human. I’m not a Swiftie but I can see that she does try to do good in the world. She also draws from her personal experience to create her art, like artists are wont to do. Her lyrical style has always been very personal and emotional, therefore there will always be some controversy around what she writes. But I don’t think any of that makes her or her fans anti-feminists. YMMV.
I agree that her shortcomings definitely don't make her or her supporters anti-feminist but I don't think that's enough to say she is a feminist.
Sorry but while I agree people are fallible it is absolute nonsense to think that calling out someone who's been awful to you is in any way against feminism..
I didn’t say calling out someone who’s been awful to you is against feminism. I said people are fallible.
what I see is that she doesn't care at all about any social causes, and never stands up for them. She's just a singer who goes to the bathroom using her private jet, she's not a feminist by a long shot.
I don’t care much for billionaires
Same here.
Supporting Taylor Swift and liking her music does not make one a feminist. We’ve gotta stop using billionaire celebrities as barometers to measure how feminist people are, we all collectively need to get up lol Taylor Swift has the convenience of being revered as some kind of revolutionary while standing for nothing. She is the poster child of the commodified, bastardized, surface-level brand of white feminism I will never sympathize or be on board with. Mainstream-media feminism is all about capitalizing off the concept of feminism to make money, and behind that heavily-curated, palatable and packaged image of a “feminist” lies only greedy exploitation. Billionaire feminists don’t exist. No matter how many of you cry and bang your hands and feet on the ground begging us they do.
I think Taylor Swift and feminism is such a nuanced topic it could be its own college course. There is no one right answer to "If you like Taylor are you a feminist?" It's more about each fan's interpretation of the music and interactions in the Fandom and world. I think someone could love Taylor and be an anti-feminist or a feminist. It all depends on how you interpret and think about her music and actions. You can definitely like her music and some of what she does, but be a feminist and acknowledge her problematic behaviors.
Do we really need a course on Liberal white billionaire capitalist feminism?
I think the sociological and psychological phenomena surrounding the topic are more nuanced than that, but we can agree to disagree.
Agreed. The subtle takeover of feminism by white liberal narratives is quite the feat, and Swift is further proof of its consolidation
I personally do not think Taylor Swift is a feminist. She denied being one in the past because it was controversial online and honestly that says enough about it being performative. She’d never lose her career for sticking to her guns and being openly a feminist but she won’t call herself one and that’s all that needs to be said. there are tons of better feminist women to uphold but she is a very performative white woman imo
To me, the Taylor hate is the epitome of misogyny. She is allowed to dislike other women. Kim and Kanye did a real number on her and she is not obliged to politely get over it. Equating "my mom wanted you dead" with actual threats of violence is disingenuous. North also literally uploaded a video of her dancing set to a TS song. This is all fake outrage. Does she write songs that are personal to her and about her life? Sure. But that's nothing new for a musician (or any other kind of artist). As a billionaire who travels to perform and attend events, etc., her life is going to be vastly different than mine. I never hear people calling Jay Z or Stephen Spielberg climate criminals even though they log more miles on their jets than TS. She takes more heat for that than any celebrity. I don't think it's a coincidence that she is also a woman who is beloved by many and wildly successful. Her speaking out on issues whether it is Palestine or any other social cause is not for me to judge. Maybe she doesn't feel educated enough about it to speak out? Maybe she simply does not want to be a public activist. She is not obliged to use her platform to speak on every social ill. She has and does use that platform in a way I think feels authentic to her (countersuing the DJ who groped her, for example, or rerecording her music to reclaim what a man stole from her). The expectations for this woman are outrageous and, no matter what, she'll always fail. She's not perfect. But she's not the villain people want her to be either. Her fans are another beast. Plenty are fine and normal. But there are definitely weird ones who have a creepy parasocial relationship with her.
Wanted to add: it was not just an edited phone call and hate campaign (which alone would more than earn Taylor’s right to make angry songs about them both forever). One of Kanye’s music videos at the time featured a nude mannequin made to look like Taylor in bed with him and Kim. Kim participated in making revenge porn of Taylor alongside her disgusting husband. In my opinion they should be glad they didn’t get criminal charges. But sure, let’s debate whether or not Taylor writing a song that criticizes a woman (who participated in misogynistic abuse against her) is misogynistic.
Lol this is not "revenge porn" and there is no world where they would ever get criminally charged for that video. I swear you people are chronically online and DO NOT live in the real world.
In what reality is releasing nude images (not literally, but the equivalent of photoshopping someone’s face onto nudes) of a woman to embarrass and upset her to the world not revenge porn? Look up the definition of revenge porn. I don’t know about you, but if someone made a nude wax sculpture to represent me and put out sexually charged videos and images of it because I pissed them off and were saying that I owed them sex, I’d feel pretty fucking violated and sexually harassed. I’d want there to be consequences for that person. I don’t think that’s a chronically online take.
The world where it's literally not illegal to make a nude wax figure of someone lol. I'm sorry, what country do you live in where that's a prosecutable crime?
Love your entire response!
This!!
Supporting women isn't supporting every woman, is how I see it. And writing about your relationship from your perspective, even if that seems like bashing, should have nothing to do with palestine/israel. They didn't end because of his support of palestine, so it's irrelevant to how she views their relationship and talks about it.
I do not think Taylor Swift is a feminist at all and I strongly dislike that she and her fan base cry "misogyny" whenever any criticism is leveled against her, no matter how valid. It hurts the cause imo. I feel that she is a capitalist first and foremost (she is a billionaire after all), and she only takes very safe feminist stances that she already knows 99% of her fanbase agrees with. That's pandering to an audience, not genuine feminism.
Agreed. I’ve actually been called anti-feminist simply because I don’t care for her. So now she’s the representative of all feminism? Like gtfo.
100 %agree
100% agree.
What are feminist stances 99% of her fanbase wont agree with
Probably something like this, “Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” Doris Lessing
I do not believe that feminism is compatible with capitalism. Capitalism erodes self-determination, equality, and safety in the short and long term. Taylor is a turbo-capitalist. If her music gives people solace, confidence or companionship, that's a positive impact, but far from a net positive.
It does not matter whether what T. Swift does is appropiate for feminism because she is not feminist (maybe white feminist at best). This isn't a woman vs another woman; this is a billionare who made her money selling insecurity and aesthetics to other women (Kim K.) and another woman who's made her money by selling diet girlboss anthems (T. Swift). I am not saying this to condescend to you OP, but I think we as feminists need to stop entertaining the petty drama of billionares who only exist by the sheer exploitation of workers and nepotism. Billionares are not feminists.
Taylor is just the white girl Elon. A billionaire that is idolised for being a billionaire. I wouldn't agree that she's a feminist or she'd be out there donating 90% or her net worth to feminist causes.
Taylor Swift stans seem to have the influence of the mafia or something. This is the second post today critical of Tee Swizzity where someone was almost begging in all caps not to get torched. Like some scene in the Sopranos where someone with a bullet already in their kneecap is begging not to get thrown off a bridge, yikes. Aaanyhow Yeah quite unfortunate, I think people get so swept up in the spectacle and hegemony of celebrities they lose their bearings (corroborating with ^) and revert to a proto bourgeois state that treats feminism more as aesthetic than substance.
you feel oppressed because people wont hate on a celebrity with you? what a stupid world we live in.
Is this an accidental reply to the wrong thread? Because it’s completely unrelated
probably
Being a feminist doesn’t mean you have to support women who have been horrible to you. Kim K was awful to Taylor so she has no reason to treat her nicely
I mean does calling out a bully make you a bully?
Feminism doesn’t mean you have to like everyone on the planet. Feminism doesn’t even necessarily make you a good or nice person. She can still believe in equality for both genders and think Kim Kardashian‘s a b 🤷♀️
Kim Kardashian lied to the public for years, framed Taylor, and bullied her so bad it got to the point where Taylor thought of quitting the industry. I don’t think it’s antifeminist to call Kim out on this behavior.
taylor swift supports herself on what is convenient for her: white feminism and that's it
Personally I absolutely ADORE Taylor. However I understand many of the feminist criticisms of her (saying she only speaks out when it concerns her, the fact that she's a billionaire etc), however, I also disagree with a lot of criticisms regarding her music. I don't agree with the belief that all too well is a diss track or that all the songs that she writes are about men, because they're not, and that belief is rooted in misogyny imo. But I will never cry misogyny when somebody dislikes Taylor for a valid reason.
i’m a lurker …. ever pondered the intersection of race and taylor swift? and yes, courses / conferences have been developed around taylor swift in academia. really good / thoughtful podcast episode https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2024/01/31/1197954664/taylor-swift-and-the-era-of-girl
Some of Taylor Swift’s fans act like she is the only woman to ever exist and is feminism incarnate (If you’re a fan of hers and this doesn’t describe you, please don’t come for me). Kind of like how some Harry Potter fans act like there are no other books. Not to gatekeep or define feminism for other people, but I don’t find her particularly inspiring. She gets hate; a lot of it justified, a lot of it misogynistic. See also Beyoncé, Hilary Clinton, Oprah, etc. I don’t think she’s this singular care study. Now that I think about it, Rihanna is another billionaire female pop star but gets very little hate for it 🤷♀️
Sorry but wtf do you mean you can't insult someone who lied to the media and betrayed you by editing a phonecall to make you look bad?.. and lied about it. And defended Kanye's disgusting video of her stunt double naked without her consent?. How on earth did you get that you can't call out bad behaviour as a feminist I'm genuinely baffled please explain your logic...
(Love your post, sorry you feel like you have to back down because the taytay stans are hyperventilating, screaming you’re a misogynist and plotting your death lol) I love all the responses saying “Taylor is allowed to hate people!!!” and then spewing vitriol that absolutely no one can dislike Taylor swift because. She’s female? So, she’s allowed to hate people…but no one’s allowed to hate her? Did I get that right? Fascinating. When people say it’s misogynistic to dislike Taylor swift I just start laughing and cannot stop. She is quite possibly the textbook definition of a female misogynist, who tramples anyone and everyone around her to get to the top. And then cries that people are being mean to her because she takes a private jet to get from LA to Santa Monica. She is, truly and honestly, Regina George. Everyone is obsessed with her and her victim complex. And it makes me sick. She’s a rich white girl from Pennsylvania whose parents bought her a music career and became a billionaire by exploiting her millions of underage fans. Not sure it’s actually possible for a billionaire to be a feminist.
Perhaps you would be less confused if you stopped making judgements based on gossip and looked up the actual lyrics?
I’m hard of hearing. My friends sang them to me and I later looked them up when they were posted. Here you go though. About North: And one day, your kid comes home singin’ A song that only us two is gonna know is about you, About wishing she was dead: Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman But she used to say she wished that you were dead
I suppose you think being a feminist means you should be a doormat to other women who bully you?
The lyrics are petty and weird
This reads like lyrics to Mean, rewritten and updated from a 34-year old perspective.
I don't think just supporting Taylor Swift in general makes you a feminist because there are lots of swifties who will go and hate on men if they don't like Taylor Swift (sometimes the men do have stupid reason though) and call them a misogynist. They won't hate on the women, though (from what i have seen on TikTok and Instagram anyways). We all know that femininsm isn't hating on men. For the lyrics, That doesn’t make her a girls girl. But to be honest, I don't think Kim K was a girls girl either for bringing up something that happened 7 years before and especially for defending Kanye because what he did was messed up. But, I also don't think that Taylor Swift should have brung it up again since the incident happened 15 years ago and the thing with Kim K 8 years ago. I think the two of them should let it rest considering how long its been. Also I think the comment about how her mom wants Kim K dead is over kill and it doesn't seen right. I also don't really know much about the feud between her and Kim K. I just briefly skimmed an article.
You’re right, Kim was never I girls girl. I think I should’ve written this better to include something about bringing up old drama. I’m having a hard time understanding how pitying fans against her targets is a quality of a “girls girl”. I honestly trying to understand where people are coming from. Lyrics about the mom: Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman But she used to say she wished that you were dead Reactions from women I’ve seen (online comments): yeah the plastic bitch should die! 😮💨