can everyone just leave the gaylors alone

Welcome to (the somewhat inadvertent) Taylor Swift Week at Out of Your League! And by that I mean I happen to have three Swift-related missives ready for you all so I decided to group them together and make a week of it. New issues will hit your inboxes Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I don't mean for this to become a Gaylor newsletter, nor do I intend to become a Taylor Swift reporter (Bryan West already got that job and I was interviewed for this New York Times piece about it). However, I have learned a lot in my time lurking in and reporting on the Gaylor community as a whole. Part of my motivation for beginning to write reported features on Gaylorism and the community that has sprung out of it was to correct a lot of misinformation.

If you were to read the majority of mainstream media coverage of Gaylors, you would think they were crazy (which is itself a homophobic trope but I digress). You would probably see them as delusional. You might think of them as something akin to Qanon. You might even think that they dish out as much harassment as they are subjected to (a (false) idea put forth by coverage of a study that was conducted). Most of this criticism of Gaylors comes from straight or mainstream culture.

But there's another misconception about Gaylors that I see floating around the internet that comes from the queer community. It's the idea that Gaylors are obsessed with a woman who is at best, not out, and at worst, actively queerbaiting. That Gaylors are so desperate for representation that they project queerness onto a huge (straight) pop star rather than seeking out and supporting openly queer artists. That that, in itself, is a form of internalized homophobia.

This was an idea I saw gaining traction on Twitter recently after the Prologue to 1989 (Taylor's Version) was leaked prior to the album drop. Mainstream Swifties and queer people who look down on Swift fans both seemed to relish the chance to kick Gaylors while they were down, almost gleefully. It got so bad that a lot of Gaylors actually had to lock their accounts. And to be honest, I find the criticism levied at Gaylors by queers to be as dismissive as the criticism that comes from the cishets.

(For those of you who are not deep in the Swiftverse, all you really need to know about the Prologue is that some of the lines in it were used to levy harassment at Gaylors, as people claimed that Swift explicitly condemned the speculation that she had dated her female friends (for the record, she also explicitly condemned the speculation that she had dated her male friends, too). There was also a line in the Prologue about "planting the seeds of allyship" that some interpreted as an assertion of her position as an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, rather than a member of it. If you're interested in what I think, this thread gets the closest to where I stand on the whole thing, as does maybe this TikTok. I also think it's more a condemnation of shipping in general and not a condemnation of queer readings of her lyrics. Ok I'm done now).

Why I feel the need to defend a bunch of queer Gen Z Taylor Swift fans on the internet, I don't know, but here I am. Maybe it's because my Virgo moon/Sagittarius Mercury cannot handle when people are wrong about something and I just can't help myself. I must correct them. And this idea that Gaylors don't listen to openly queer artists is just laughable. Because I've been an observer of Gaylor content for years now and I have watched these creators make tons of queer Taylor Swift content, yes. But I've also watched them descend into Chappell Roan fangirlies. I've watched them thirst over Renee Rapp and obsess over MUNA. I've seen them plan group outings to see boygenius and give academic presentations on the music of Fletcher and other sapphic singers, including Janelle Monae. They love Hayley Kiyoko and girl in red. When I attended Camp Gaylore and they had a queer prom, most of the music consisted of songs by the artists I just listed.

Not only that, many Gaylors discovered these artists because of Swift. Whether or not Swift is queer herself, her support of openly queer female artists is long and well-documented. She brought Tegan and Sara out as surprise guests on the Red Tour in 2013. "I think that this album is one my favorites of all time," Swift said before introducing the musicians. On the Reputation Tour in 2018, she performed "Curious" with Hayley Kiyoko, someone she has called one of her "favorite" musicians on multiple occasions (and who she has performed with more than once and also featured in her music video for "You Need to Calm Down").

Swift has collaborated with Phoebe Bridgers, as well as having her as one of the openers on her Eras Tour. Other openers included girl in red (someone else whose music Swift has fawned over) and MUNA. At her Grammys party this year, Fletcher was in attendance and so was King Princess and Hayley Kiyoko and MUNA (and, of course, noted "fan of gay women" Jack Antonoff).

All of this is to say that I definitely think it's fair to criticize Swift for potentially queerbaiting (especially in light of whatever she is trying to say with this 1989 (TV) prologue). It's also fair to interrogate the ways in which her career is as big as it is while potentially being in the closet, while artists who do come out fail to see the kind of success she has—how do they feel about the optics of her support, especially if they know she may be queer herself? These are all good questions to be asking.

But to dismiss Gaylors at-large as self-hating queers who won't listen to actual queer music isn't just incorrect, it's insulting. It ignores the real, tangible support the Gaylor community gives to openly queer artists, both online and through buying their music and merch and tickets to their shows. It implies that an artist is only worth listening to from a queer lens if they come out publicly. And it erases the ways that being fans of Swift's music has exposed them to artists from their own community that they can extend their support to.

In summary, can people maybe leave Gaylors alone?

Preview image via caitlin dumlao

Taylor Swift has been one of my special interests for a while now. Here are some other things I’ve written: