Why are we speculating about Taylor Swift's sexuality?

Taylor Swift is in the news yet again — and it's worth talking about.

Last week, the New York Times published a lengthy op-ed written by Anna Marks. In the nearly 5,000 word article, she theorises about Swift's sexuality, wondering if many of the references in Swift's music is actually alluding to her being bisexual.

Mark's opinion isn't new. There is a whole subset of Taylor Swift fans who believe Swift is queer and has written about her relationships with women in her songs.

Swift herself has not responded to the op-ed, but CNN reported that people close to her are not happy with it.

Cultural critics Sarah-Tai Black, Niko Stratis and Cassie Cao join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack the backlash to the controversial op-ed. 

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: The point of this conversation isn't to speculate. That's not what we're going to do. It's actually to ask if the New York Times piece was speculating or maybe doing something else. There was something about this piece that rubbed a lot of critics the wrong way. Niko, I'll start with you on this one. You read this piece, what was your reaction?

Niko: First of all, I'm coming to this as a queer person and as a trans woman. This is where my opinion on this comes from. And also, I want to make it extremely clear that there is nothing wrong with Taylor potentially being queer.

A lot of it goes beyond speculating or wondering or doing a queer reading of Taylor, and starts doing this red string on a bulletin board and taking all these conspiracy theories. [She's] connecting all these ideas and being like, "Well, look at this dress and look at these words." And it's like a wilful reading of the lyrics to support a point. And it goes beyond a queer reading and gets into this kind of distasteful, "Well, this is what I'm seeing here and this is the truth, and this is what she's trying to say." Is she or is this what you want her to say? Those are two different things and it never really solidifies that. This feels conspiracy theory-like more than anything. 

Elamin: I'd like to think that in 2024, a lot of us get why outing people who haven't made their sexuality public is considered to be a really big no-no. Anna Marks, the writer of this op-ed, wrote this quote: "Every time an artist signals queerness and that transmission falls on deaf ears, that signal dies. Recognising the possibility of queerness while being conscious of the difference between possibility and certainty, keeps that signal alive." Sarah-Tai, does that defence make sense to you at all? 

Sarah-Tai: It's like sincerely reclaiming bisexual lighting instead of letting it be a fun thing that we do in private and not in an op-ed for the New York Times. 

This idea of playfully reading queer subtext from cultural products — cultural figures being confused as actual queer content — as actual queer artistry is truly so dumb.

Elamin: Cassie, real quick, I mentioned that people are musing about the sexuality of their favourite artists or picking apart song lyrics for clues. That's not anything new. Do you see this op-ed being anything different than that?

Cassie: Not really, I think what's actually really upsetting about this whole thing was that it's such an obvious clickbait rage economy strategy that highlights how out of touch the New York Times is. How they think that now, getting the clicks and getting the rage and getting the views is to antagonise these public figures. 

They don't understand that actually, the relationship the fan base has with the person that they like is so much more personal. They're not interested in digging through [a public figure's] personal life and violating their privacy. That's no longer the type of parasocial relationships that we have anymore in these types of fandoms.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender