The Invention of Homosexuality, Privatization of Sex, and Taylor Swift

Author's Note: I originally wrote this essay for an undergraduate queer theory course in the fall of 2020. This is the same version that I submitted for grading, but I hope to expand on this piece in the future.

Published December 12, 2022

Taylor Swift (1989-) is an American singer/songwriter who has released eight studio albums in the country, pop, and alternative genres (“Taylor Swift - Songs, Age & Life”). Since the release of her first album at the age of 16, Swift has become one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, with seven of her eight albums reaching number one on the Billboard 200 chart (Caulfield). She has also received major critical acclaim, having won 10 Grammys and countless other awards (“Taylor Swift”). Swift is known for incorporating aspects of her personal life into her songwriting, most notably in her romantic relationships. While she has only ever been confirmed to have relationships with men, a fairly significant portion of her fanbase known as the “Gaylor fandom” believe that Swift is a lesbian or a bisexual who has had relationships with women in the past. In this paper, I will use the Gaylor fandom as a case study to examine the tendency to speculate about celebrities’ sexualities and the controversy surrounding the practice within the context of the privatization of sexuality.

It is not difficult to identify queer themes in Swift’s writing; since the beginning of her career, she has included themes of forbidden love and falling in love with her best friends, which many of her fans identify as distinctly queer. Furthermore, Swift has been known to have close relationships with women that could be interpreted as romantic. The most significant of these potentially queer relationships is Swift’s relationship with American fashion model Karlie Kloss (1992-). Fans refer to this relationship, whether they interpret it as romantic or platonic, as “Kaylor.” Kaylor was born when Swift and Kloss met at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in late 2013, where Swift performed on stage with the models, including Kloss (Adams). The two began spending significant time together, which has been reported by various media outlets. According to Google Trends, searches for “Kaylor Taylor Swift” skyrocketed in September 2014. Searches for the term peak in December 2014, following the release of a video of Swift and Kloss drunkenly dancing at a The 1975 concert in which the pair appear to kiss (Boone). Immediately following “Kissgate” as the Kaylor fandom calls it, Swift performed alongside Kloss on the catwalk of the 2014 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which drew additional attention to the couple. The story was quickly addressed by Swift’s publicist and Swift herself, who tweeted “As my 25th birthday present from the media, I'd like you to stop accusing all my friends of dating me #thirsty” (qtd. in Foster). The two have been seen together less and less since the incident, which did little to quell the speculation about their relationship. Kaylor has gained recent attention with the release of Swift’s eighth studio album, folklore (2020), which features many queer themes including a love song adressing a woman (although Swift has stated that the song is from a male perspective) and a direct reference to being in the closet (Google “Kaylor Taylor Swift”)1.

While Kaylor/Gaylor may appear bizarre, it is far from unique. Queer “shipping,” a term for wanting characters in a piece of media to have a romantic relationship, has been ubiquitous across fandom spaces since before the internet (O’Neil). As of 2019, the top 20 ships on fanfiction.net were male/male ships (Sarah Z). While shipping usually refers to relationships between fictional characters, real people fiction or RPF refers to fanfiction written about actual people (“RPF”). Kaylor is most comparable to Larry Stylinson, an RPF ship of One Direction bandmates Harry Styles and Louis Tomilson which gained massive popularity beginning in mid-2012 (Davis, Google “Larry Stylinson”). Like the Kaylor fandom, Larry fans interpret the band’s work and various interactions between Styles and Tomilson as queer. Kaylor, Larry, and other RPF has been heavily criticized as an invasion of privacy. However, speculation about celebrities’ sexualities is extremely common. For example, long before people were theorizing that Swift was queer, her relationships with men were constantly scrutinized, and many of her fans continue to speculate about her current and past relationships. There appears to be a double standard regarding queer versus heterosexual RPF, as Kaylors are frequently harassed or referred to as conspiracy theorists for their interpretations of Swift’s work while straight interpretations of her music, no matter how invasive they may be, are readily accepted.

The tendency to speculate about people’s sexualities is a fairly modern invention. As queer theorist David M. Halperin explains, before the invention of the term “homosexuality” in 1892, same-sex desire was understood as an aspect of sexual inversion, which “referred to a broad range of deviant gender behavior, of which homosexual desire was only a logical but indistinct aspect.” Homosexuality, on the other hand, specifically focuses on “sexual object choice,” therefore reflecting a “major reconceptualization of the nature of human sexuality, its relation to gender, and its role in one’s social definition (34).” He explains that isolating sexuality from gender created a sexual taxonomy which placed people in exclusive binary categories characterized by the gender of one’s partners. According to Halperin, the creation of this taxonomy inspired “the multiplication of techniques for deciphering what a person’s sexual orientation ‘really’ was -- independent, that is, of beguiling appearances” (35). Therefore, the desire to speculate about a person’s sexual orientation is a modern phenomenon as the ability to classify sexuality according to sexual object choice did not exist until the nineteenth century. If Swift was not a modern celebrity, her writing and her relationships with women would be understood in a completely different way. For example, her relationship with Kloss is comparable to the eighteenth century concept of romantic friendships, which historian Lillian Faderman describes as romantic relationships which may or may not have been sexual between women who considered themselves friends.These relationships were not regarded as a form of deviant sexual behavior and were not tied to any form of queer identity. In another time, a relationship like that of Kloss and Swift between two women who have male partners but express deep love for one another, live together, and make major life decisions based on one another’s wishes would easily be interpreted as a romantic friendship. However, as modern celebrities, the pair’s interactions are inherently read as queer.

According to queer theorists Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, the personalization of sexuality had further implications for intimacy, privacy, and normativity. They explain that, according to theorist Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, as sex became increasingly associated with “an inner personal essence,” sex also became entrenched in secrecy as it was transformed into a deeply intimate act (559). Berlant and Warner argue that the privatization of sexual culture creates a sense of rightness and normalcy surrounding heterosexuality, which creates heteronormativity (554). In general, speculating about a person’s sexuality at all is considered an invasion of privacy because sex has become an intimate act which is associated with one’s personal identity. In a desire to taxonomize sexuality while maintaining privacy, people often embrace heteronormativity as they assume heterosexuality as the default. This impacts the reaction to RPF; although RPF has been heavily criticized regardless of the sexuality of the couple, a great deal of vitriol is directed toward queer RPF ships. For example, there are many blogs and Twitter accounts dedicated to making fun of Kaylor fans, and many Kaylor fans have been harassed over their interest in the couple. Yet, fans who speculate that Swift is getting married to her current boyfriend or that she is pregnant are not met with the same kind of criticism. Thus, heteronormativity clearly plays a vital role in fandoms such as Kaylor/Gaylor.

Examining the Kaylor/Gaylor fandom and reactions to it demonstrates the development of sexuality as a personal identity associated with the private sphere. On one hand, the construction of sexuality as personal identity encourages the creation of a sexual taxonomy which inspires a desire to speculate about celebrities’ sexualities. On the other hand, sexuality as personal identity places a shroud of privacy over sex which discourages speculation and reinforces heteronormativity. While Taylor Swift’s sexual identity remains a mystery, the fandom surrounding her sexuality demonstrates a complex relationship to the modern concept of sexual identity.

Notes

  1. I chose “Kaylor Taylor Swift” as a search term because searching “Kaylor” returned results before Swift and Kloss met, therefore making it unsuitable for tracking the growth of this specific fandom.

Works Cited