Taylor Swift Now Supports Queer People, But Her Messaging Needs Some Work

Taylor Swift has seemingly caused the gay apocalypse this week, with queer people running through the streets, banging pots and pans, and clashing over their feelings about her new music video, “You Need to Calm Down,” which dropped Monday. The video is the latest rainbow-painted moment in Swift’s new Lover era and features strong pro-gay messaging, including numerous cameos from LGBTQ+ stars like the Queer Eye Fab 5, Laverne Cox, Billy Porter, Ellen DeGeneres, and Hayley Kiyoko. At the end of the clip, Swift has a message urging fans to sign a petition demanding Senate support on the Equality Act.

Discourse over the video among queer people is, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag. Some fans are thrilled to have such a major pop act use her platform to effect potential change. Others feel that Swift isn’t reading the room; that a heterosexual-identifying person saying, “This is how you do gay rights, bitch,” feels silly in 2019. Especially since Swift was criticized heavily for being apolitical her entire career—even when the country could have used her voice in 2016. I understand how words like exploitative and opportunistic are making their way into discussions about the new video, and about Swift's sudden, aggressive LGBTQ+ support (see also Swift's surprising gay fans with a performance at Stonewall).

Then there’s the suggestion that Swift has been baiting fans with intimations that she, herself, is coming out, which is all Internet hearsay at this point. Theories about Swift’s alleged queerness have always existed—speculation goes back as far as 2008, with rumors about Swift and her fiddle player, Emily Poe, being romantically involved. There’s also an entire corner of the internet that believes Swift and her former best friend, Karlie Kloss, were actually dating. Shit really hit the fan, though, in April when rumors about Swift's planning a coming-out announcement tore through Twitter like a lesbian natural disaster. Seemingly everyone on gay Twitter was talking about it:

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