Required Reading & Viewing For Newbie Kaylors/Gaylors 🌈

#bettyisgay

‘kay i guess it’s time to share my interpretation of betty bc the straights are causing a ruckus. james is not a boy and james did not cheat. james is a teenage lesbian whomst is secretly in love with her best friend, betty. (obviously the angsty secret feelings are hella mutual) james is too scared to shoot her shot with betty, but they’re really starting to connect and they’re on the brink of something romantic. then the dance rolls around. james shows up with her high heels on cobblestone, psyching herself up to ask betty to dance, to make a move. but then she sees betty dancing with some guy and, understandably, she’s hurt and heartbroken. she leaves the dance feeling the embarrassment and hopelessness of being in love with a girl who you think has chosen a dumb boy over you. as she’s walking home, her friend “august” pulls up and offers james a ride and a talk. they bond over james’s failed crush on betty and become really close really fast. “those days turned into nights” implies that the intentions weren’t originally romantic, but when you’re gay and young and trying to bury feelings for a girl who likes someone else…..things happen, you know i mean? days do indeed turn into nights. when betty hears - from inez, the untrustworthy dramastarter who actually has a heart of gold in there somewhere - that james is gettin it on with august, she’s now feeling how james was at the dance. james is ghosting her and there’s this huge misunderstanding. it’s an acutely sapphic mess. james daydreaming about apologizing to betty is literally as gay as it gets. “would you kiss me on the porch in front of all your stupid friends?!” is saying, will you love me enough to be brave? to proudly be with me, even though it might mean losing some homophobic, small minded people you’re close to?

james isn’t saying “betty, i cheated on you, lol sry…wanna makeout?” it’s james saying “betty, i love you. for a long time i was scared of that and of telling you how i felt. i hurt you with my dishonesty and my silence. i made you question our relationship and yourself because i didn’t have the courage to tell you this before. i’m sorry that i spent the summer with another girl. i thought i could make those feelings go away, but you can’t seem to stop taking my breath away. will you please give me a second chance? this time i’ll be braver. i swear it, betty. but if i ruined it forever, if you need to tell me to go f*ck myself…i’ll respect that, too.”

or at least that’s my take on it.

“What must it be like to grow up that beautiful, with your hair falling into place like dominos?”

ah yes, I too say those things about ~men~ all the time

To your J*e anons

Look, you don’t even have to be a Kaylor to realize that their relationship is not real and that J*e is merely a beard. You don’t have to believe in Taylor and Karlie or even Taylor herself being anything other than straight.

Because their timeline just doesn’t add up and will never do no matter how much you try.

I can’t believe that YOU believe she met J*e at the met while she was still with Calvin yet had her eyes on J*e the whole night while dancing with Tom and eventually dumbing Calvin to date Tom and travel with him all around the world. But ohhh yeah she had a crush on J*e all along. Why didn’t she leave Calvin for J*e? Why didn’t she dance with him? It would’ve made much more sense. But she didn’t, because the three of them are/were her beards/PR and he wasn’t on the map or wasn’t a good choice at the time. I can’t believe a woman could have her eyes on two men at one night and simply be in love with them both? She had Tom to distract the media from the awful drama that was going on and the WHOLE world knows that. You are just naive or probably still too young to understand that Taylor isn’t an angel and the world isn’t all colors and roses. People have lie and cheat sometimes to save themselves.

She didn’t even bother write about Calvin/Tom (except getaway car) which is unlike her nature because she always writes about her feelings, but she didn’t, you know why? Because they were NOT real relationships. They were NOT real breakups. Because she was/is in a stable relationship already. She didn’t have it in herself to write things she didn’t feel, and it was so easy for her to link J*e to Rep. She actually brought him in the first place to write those love songs and link them to any “guy”, because people are gonna question those love songs while she just had supposedly two awful breakups.

She plans her albums two years in advance, but she can’t predict meeting someone and falling in love and writing songs like Delicate/Dress/So It Goes a year or two years before she met him.

Taylor, are you drunk?
No, you are.

“You’re on your own, kid” Words by Taylor Swift, art by me :)

ig: @ine8s​

I love your analyzes and your blog. think is a bit offensive the way you demand support for Taylor when she uses queerbaiting as mkt tool only to deny it 15 days later when the money from attention, GP, pink money and general swifties was made. Now she wants the country radio so james is straight. Taylor is a unique case of closeted because she wants to be in and out to profit from both sides. Taylor plans to be cruel and has nothing to with her coming out. I NOW country radio didn't ask for it

I understand that you are frustrated and you have every right to your feelings (yes, even to your offence). I would point out, however, that:

I do not “demand” anything. It is absolutely your prerogative to withhold your “support” financially (you do not have to purchase her music or her merchandise) or as a “fan” (you do not have to participate in her fandom online or at all). I would only ask that if you choose to stay, you consider that “coming out” is contingent not only on an individual’s personal safety and security, but often also on their psychological readiness. This is not only for Taylor’s benefit, but also for the benefit of anyone who is closeted. The only person anyone owes it to to come out is themselves - at their own convenience and only if they believe it to be in their best interest. No one is obliged to come out - ever. We should not be expected to make exceptions of ourselves in order either to correct the ignorance of a society that presumes straight is default or to satisfy other people’s curiosity.

There is an inherent contradiction in your claim that Taylor is both “queerbaiting” and “closeted.” If she is part of the LGBTQ+ community, she is unable to “queerbait” by definition. I will concede the possibility that I am wrong - perhaps she is not “closeted”- but considering that she has never confirmed her sexuality publicly, it is important (again also for the benefit of anyone who actually is in the closet) not to assume in the absence of any clear indiction to the contrary that she is therefore straight. Besides reinforcing the notion that queerness is necessarily performative - in order to be queer you must first announce that you are - as if the closet itself and the process of coming out aren’t first and foremost inventions of the cishetero-patriarchy and we couldn’t exist authentically without them (is Queen Latifah who has a wife and child somehow less queer because she hasn’t stated that she is?), the logical extension of your argument otherwise is that only people who are publicly out ought be allowed to identify themselves with queer culture. This would effectively be to exclude LGBTQ+ people from their own community. It is also antithetical to the stated aims of that community - the acronym LGBTQ+ has historically included anyone in the closet who wises to align themselves with the community without also outing themselves under the umbrella “ally.” As such, it is wrong to assume that all publicly identified allies are straight (or cis).

Whether or not country radio asked for it (and you don’t know for a fact) is almost irrelevant. It is still conservative and it still operates according to certain conventions that apply even without them being consciously articulated. As someone who started their career in country music, I can only assume that Taylor is well aware of these codes of conduct whether they are tacit or not (and, even if times are changing, it is not a stretch to imagine that her previous experiences of homophobia in that industry will have shaped her expectations of it in the present.)  

What she said in no way detracts from our ability to read the song as queer. That she wrote it from the perspective of a seventeen year old boy does not alter the fact that, when the song is performed, it is performed by Taylor, who is a woman singing about/to another woman. This is what most people’s first impressions will be and that by itself is significant. She also immediately followed up her explanation by stating that the protagonists (James, Inez and Betty) were named after her “friends’ kids.” As the lyrics themselves are, therefore, ambiguously gendered - if the actual James is (as far as anyone knows) not a boy, then fictional James isn’t automatically a boy either - I object to the claim that James is necessarily “straight” in consequence. 

Finally, I am not saying that you cannot be critical. But, if you have to fault Taylor for something in this case, let it be her failure consistently to acknowledge that her actions (negatively) affect her LGBTQ+ fans as well as herself. She is allowed to panic or to react instinctively and impulsively to something she has been conditioned to regard as a threat. However, it is imperative that her own internalised homophobia (?) should not be a pretext for homophobic attacks by her fans. 

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