“With love and hope,” Taylor Swift signed her endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, “Childless Cat Lady.”
Most of the global star’s Instagram post praising the Democratic presidential nominee and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, was thoughtful and earnest. She thoughtfully laid out her frustrations with Donald Trump for falsely claiming she backed him, writing immediately after Tuesday night’s debate, “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.” Swift heralded Harris as “a steady-handed, gifted leader,” and lauded Walz for “standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.” She included information for her young fans on registering to vote. The General Services Administration announced that more than 337,000 visitors followed Swift’s link to Vote.gov as of 2 pm the day after the debate.
The cheek only came at the end of Swift’s endorsement, with a pithy “childless cat lady” callback. Well, that and Swift’s photo of her hugging one of her enviably adorable cats.
For the few who remain blissfully ignorant of what Swift was referencing, it’s a swipe at Donald Trump‘s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. At this point, it’s impossible to keep track of how many clips have been unearthed of Vance raving about how much he hates and fears childless women, who, in typical MAGA projection, he calls “miserable” and “sociopathic.” Vance has insisted such women hate children and that shaming them is necessary to set them straight. (In reality, childless women support pro-family policies more and are happier than the average voter.) With her signature, Swift trolled Vance and all the sad MAGA men who want to believe calling women “cat ladies” is fresh humor.
In contrast, Swift reclaiming the term “childless cat lady” was a sick burn. She deftly mocked what scares and enrages MAGA men most: women who don’t care what they think.
Despite Trump’s prediction that “she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” Swift is going to do her thing, write the music she wants, date the men she likes, and live her life as she sees fit. If men don’t like it, well, too bad. They can cry about it online, and boy, they never seem to stop. But their lame insults don’t matter to her.
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Obviously, the MAGA fury isn’t really about Swift, who is just one person. She’s a symbol of a much larger social change. There are metrics we can use to gauge women’s liberation, from the closing of the gender pay gap to increased levels of female education to later marriage and motherhood ages. Swift, however, puts a face to the shifting social dynamics between men and women that these tangible gains have allowed. Simply put, millions of women have been liberated from having to care what stupid men think of them — and boy, are a lot of men mad about it.
Vance’s compatriot in the club of wealthy men who can’t seem to overcome the stench of sexual insecurity, Elon Musk, made himself the avatar of this impotent MAGA rage. Having purchased Twitter for $44 billion just so people would have to look at his tweets, the Tesla CEO used the platform to sexually harass Swift for having an opinion. He tweeted in response to her Harris endorsement, “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”
It’s painful to give this pathetic trolling any attention, but necessary because it so perfectly illustrates a crucial point. Musk embodies what is often called “toxic masculinity.” As his tweet demonstrates, it’s often too pitiable to warrant a word as powerful as “toxic.” Other Trump supporters, like podcaster Dave Rubin, resorted to the more familiar right-wing fearmongering: “It’s like, Taylor Swift, you are a young, pretty girl. Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do to young, pretty girls? It ain’t pretty.”
There’s a flailing quality to this behavior of men lashing out because they can’t force women to care what they think. Swift will almost surely wrinkle her nose and say, “ew,” of course. But so will most other women.
It wasn’t always this way. Even those a mere decade older than Swift can remember how much it was drilled into female heads that we should care for nothing more than male opinion, often with little discernment over what man was offering the opinion. If a man, any man, deigned to render judgment on your looks, your behavior, your waist size, your lifestyle, or the tenor of your voice, there was an expectation that you, as a woman, were to take his opinion seriously. Women’s magazines were an endless stream of articles about what men supposedly “liked” and strategies to mold yourself into that form. Men in prestigious publications and TV programs were empowered to offer their behavioral prescriptions for all womankind, and women were expected to apologize for their failure to please the male gaze.
The moment I could feel that tide shifting was probably the Great Vocal Fry Wars of 2013. It started with the standard practice of men opining in public that women, as a group, are Doing It Wrong and must change immediately. Vocal fry is a normal vocal affectation — used by both men and women — where you drop your voice for emphasis. (NPR’s Ira Glass does it a lot.) In the 90s, women were castigated for pitching voices “too” high for emphasis. In the 2000s, however, many women went low, instead. Men got mad about that, too. They yelled on social media. They wrote angry emails. They even did podcasts calling women who used low registers for emphasis “repulsive.”
With her signature, Swift trolled Vance and all the sad MAGA men who want to believe calling women “cat ladies” is fresh humor.
Instead of simply bowing their heads and begging for forgiveness, young women revolted. They pointed out, correctly, that they were previously forbidden from going high and now they aren’t allowed to go low. They noted that there is no way a woman can talk that won’t draw male ire. They concluded that these men don’t want women talking at all. And a mass consensus among women began to grow: No one should care what men think. Talk how you like, and stop worrying about the opinions of random men.
The 2010s had many examples, such as the “Man Repeller” fashion blog that refused to incorporate the male gaze into its analysis of clothing trends. Or Gamergate, an online harassment campaign that exploded as male video game fans raged about women not obeying male dictates on who to sleep with, what games to like, or how to do their jobs. Words like “mansplaining” were developed to mock pushy men. Women grew more comfortable keeping their own counsel. Some men grew more comfortable with just leaving women alone. Taylor Swift’s success owes much to this major social shift, which created more space for female fans to like what they like, regardless of male opinion. Even the #MeToo movement is a part of this, as women started to feel safer talking about sexual abuse and harassment, without fear of being told by men that they were “asking for it.”
The “cat lady” discourse reflects this profound, if immeasurable, change. Vance and his bitter male comrades keep reaching for the term “cat lady” because they have a lingering memory of when that phrase had power. But nowadays, it says more about the man flinging it than the woman being so labeled. The image of a lonely spinster comforting herself with cats has been replaced with, well, Taylor Swift: a sexy and successful woman who has cats because she likes them and because no man can tell her otherwise. And it makes MAGA men fume.
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