The Mask Comes Off: Taylor Swift, SJW
10th October 2018
The Other McCain does a deep dive.
In case you don’t pay attention to trends in “intersectional” Third Wave feminism, there is no betrayal of the cause more heinous than “white feminism.” Miss Swift was denounced as “problematic” for practicing “a feminism that assumes white (cis, straight, able-bodied, thin, middle-to-upper class) women as the default, actively avoiding critical analysis on any axis other than gender.” Miss Swift was guilty of permitting herself to be “sexualized by the male gaze,” Everyday Feminist writer Melissa Fabello complained, adding that the chart-topping singer’s “ivory tower fantasy worlds aren’t doing much to push back against systemic oppression — which, like, is what feminists are supposed to do.” Not only that, but Miss Swift’s video for her song “Wildest Dreams” was condemned as celebrating “the colonization of Africa, through the eyes of the colonizer.” Elsewhere, Miss Swift was branded “the poster child for white feminism” by Vanderbilt University’s Muna Ikedionwu, and derided by Danielle Jenkins for not “challenging the white heteronormative patriarchal system in which we live.”
Never mind the clever tunes and catchy lyrics. In the Age of Wokeness, pop singers are expected to change the world, and Miss Swift wasn’t radical enough to please the Gender Studies crowd. When identity politics and “critical theory” are the raging obsession, what’s a pretty blonde supposed to do? The liberal media dogpiled her with weird headlines: “White Supremacists Call Taylor Swift An Aryan Goddess” (NPR, May 2016) and “It’s Time for Taylor Swift to Denounce Her Neo-Nazi Admirers” (Daily Beast, August 2017). This was crazy, but everything’s gone crazy lately, what with screeching feminist mobs running around the Capitol and trying to claw their way into the Supreme Court.