Taylor Swift and Anti-Gay Bullying

Taylor Swift. Lots of people love her. Others can’t stand her. At Duke, I was surprised to find guys in my freshman dorm listening to her while they sat in the hallway [an aside: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with guys listening to Taylor Swift…or any other artist. And I recognize that my “surprise” might imply some sort of gender binary and norm…but I think it’s more a reflection of the masculinity construct that existed at my high school/in my home community]. Me? I sometimes listen to her when I’m doing work. Which is what I was doing before deciding to write this post.

There’s probably a lot that I, as a feminist and member of the LGBTQA community, could criticize about her songs. As an outspoken member of both of those communities, there’s a lot to criticize about a lot of songs by a lot of artists. And I could probably find things she does well, too. But right now, I only want to be critical about one thing, and that is a line in “Picture to Burn.”

“State the obvious, I didn’t get my perfect fantasy/I realized you love yourself more than you could ever love me/So go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy/That’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay”

I was surprised when I first listened to the song and heard those words. In the context in which those words are presented, I can come up with two scenarios for the characters in her song.

1) Her ex-boyfriend is gay and she’s going to out him in revenge. I obviously don’t have to explain to the readers of the blog why outing someone is inappropriate and incredibly hurtful. In this case, though, the song justifies her outing her ex-boyfriend, sending the message that it's okay (at least under some circumstances) to out someone.

2) She’s going to spread an untrue rumor to hurt him. This scenario implies that being gay is “bad” (cause, um, you typically don’t spread nice/flattering rumors about people you don’t like/your ex-boyfriend). It perpetuates the negative connotation of being gay. More than that though, it normalizes anti-gay bullying of non gay-identified people [aside #2: I don’t think anti-gay bullying of anyone is okay…gay-identified or not. I chose to highlight the non-gay-identified part, though, because in this scenario her ex-boyfriend isn’t actually gay]. Anti-gay bullying doesn't just hurt LGBT-identified individuals. It doesn't just hurt individuals who are silently questioning their sexuality. Nor does it solely affect individuals who have gay friends or family. The fact of the matter is that being called gay or another homophobic slur is the worst insult an elementary school-, middle school-, or high school-aged kid can be called. A 2005 survey by GLSEN found that the second most frequent reason kids are bullied is because of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. Even if peers don't actually think that another student is gay, homophobic language is still likely to be used to degrade another student. Last April, 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover commit suicide after being bullied with anti-gay slurs for months. The point is: anti-gay bullying is harmful to anybody who bullies target, it is pervasive, and it hurts.

A third possibility: Maybe I’m way over analyzing this all (it’s been known to happen).

I don’t know that I have anything really intelligent to say about it, other than "this is bad" (which doesn't count as "really intelligent" in my book). And maybe nobody else listens to her so you don’t really care about what she says in her songs (though I would argue that as a community we need to take issue with it even if she isn't the most played song on your ipod because pop culture themes penetrate the rest of society).

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this, though, is that when I went to look up the lyrics to confirm what I heard (I’ve been known to hear weird things that don’t exist), I saw that a few websites list different lyrics that exclude the gay line. Is this indicative of a “clean” version? Which then seemingly admits that she understood why what she says in that line is problematic. Yet she still included them.

Thoughts?