How dare Taylor Swift not die a childless cat lady?!

Feminists upset over Swift’s “trad” album and the fact that she is "aligned" with her fiancé

I’m going to come right out of the gate here and make it clear that I really don’t know very much about Taylor Swift.

I’m fairly certain I was already married with children when she rose to fame, and I’ve never been a big fan of contemporary music.

I’ve watched the culture argue about and melt down over her and her every move for years, from the very safe distance of a dorky homeschool mom who doesn’t know who most of the people on the Billboard charts are, let alone if the Billboard charts are even still a thing.

However, my ears definitely pricked up when I heard that Swift, who recently became engaged to NFL star Travis Kelce, has angered feminists for lyrics that some are interpreting as “trad.”

And you know what?

I can see why.

According to The Daily Wire, feminist influencer Little Debbie recently railed against the pop star for “aligning” herself with her own fiancé, who, as a football player, works for “one of the most racist and problematic industries in our country,” which has sent Taylor “creeping [her] way down the conservative pipeline.”

(Tell me you haven’t seen conservatives react to a Super Bowl halftime show in 15 years without telling me.)

This is hilarious hysteria, for sure.

However, as an anti-feminist who is constantly gaslit by feminists who insist that their ideology is “just about equality,” I can’t help but feel vindicated by the fact that Little Debbie points to Taylor’s pro-marriage lyrics as further proof that she’s gone “trad.”

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"The right to choose" vs. trad wives

In the song, “Eldest Daughter” on Swift’s new album, Life of a Showgirl, the pop star sings, “When I said I don’t believe in marriage, that was a lie.”

Remember, this is a woman who not long ago was bragging about being a “childless cat lady,” so this certainly looks like a dramatic about-face to many.

You see, in many a feminist’s mind, a woman can’t change her position on marriage without making a very pointed statement about all women. Because attitudes toward marriage are, whether anyone likes it or not, inextricably linked to ideology in today’s cultural climate.

Let’s review what some of the most influential feminists have said about marriage:

Mary Wollstonecraft, known as the “first feminist,” described wives as being “as much a man’s property as his horse, or his ass… she has nothing she can call her own.” (The Wrongs of Woman, 1798)

Simone de Beauvoir, arguably the most important feminist of the 20th century, described marriage as “obscene in principle insofar as it transforms into rights and duties those mutual relations which should be founded on a spontaneous urge.” (The Second Sex, 1949)

Journalist and activist Julie Bindle wrote in 2016 that, “Marriage is an institution that has curtailed women’s freedom for centuries … It can never be a feminist act.”

Again, in a world where owning the fact that you’re unmarried is decidedly political, owning the fact that you’re happy to be getting married is just as political.

To be clear, from where I stand, it does not appear that Taylor Swift has gone “trad,” by any real stretch of the imagination beyond simply not caring what critics think that she’s looking forward to the married life.

Remember, her “childless cat lady” comment was how she signed her endorsement of Kamala Harris for president and was a dig at now-Vice President J.D. Vance.

I don’t care if you listen to Taylor Swift or not; I will leave that up to you to decide. I trust your judgment and don’t judge you if you enjoy her music despite her open support for values that I personally reject (I believe in nuance).

What I do care about, however, is honesty. While many feminists may claim to still support marriage and believe only in basic civil equality for men and women, this has never been the full breadth of impact of the movement.

It is impossible to try to equalize the positions of men and women in society without drastically altering our view of the institution of marriage, which is defined by the uniting of one man and one woman, and literally nothing else.

Feminism, a movement seeking the civil, economic, and social equality of the sexes, can never comfortably coexist with traditional marriage, nor has it ever wanted to.

Taylor Swift is free to believe things that exist outside of someone else’s box for how she should view the world, but as long as she’s happy to marry her NFL player husband, she’s going to be rejecting the most impactful form of modern feminism.