# "Takes One to Know One": The Co-Construction of a Lesbian Narrative Space in Taylor Swift's Text(s)

Manon Berthier

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Manon Berthier. "Takes One to Know One": The Co-Construction of a Lesbian Narrative Space in Taylor Swift's Text(s). Participations: journal of audience and reception studies, 2025, 21 (1), p. 35-58. hal-05085121

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# ‘Takes One to Know One’: The Co-Construction of a Lesbian Narrative Space in Taylor Swift’s Text(s)

Manon Berthier

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, FRA

## Abstract

Through the case study of Taylor Swift fans, this article engages with the way fans as prod-users (re)create lesbian meanings, imageries, and intertextualities, thus enabling a ‘queering’ of the girlscape. Starting from an old question – when is a text a lesbian text? –, I aim to demonstrate how Taylor Swift fans perform lesbian readings by analysing both her songs and her star text (her image as a complex configuration of signs) and producing their own meta-text via online criticism.

The article highlights how this specific corner of fandom is a privileged space for the exploration of what the expression of non-normative desire can mean, as much as it constitutes the means of acquiring a complex set of skills that allows for the dismantling and reconstruction of seemingly heteronormative narratives through oblique, vicarious, and resistant readings. Through a reevaluation of the creative act and of so-called legitimate reading practices, and drawing from theories of appropriation, I argue that the lesbian text becomes a text determined by shared experience, and lesbian and queer fans prove to be powerful discursive and political agents.

**Keywords:** Fandom, Interpretive strategies, Lesbian culture, Lesbian lyricism, Star text, Textual poaching
Introduction<fnref n="1" />

When is a text lesbian in nature? How to recognise a lesbian text when you see one? Critics have long struggled with this question: must the author be overtly (or even covertly) lesbian? Must the work be 'thematically' lesbian, and/or contain overtly lesbian characters? What about subtext? Does content have to be politically acceptable, and according to which criteria? 'Instead of a recognizable genre, lesbian literary narrative is, in reality, a disputed form, dependent upon various interpretive strategies', Marilyn R. Farwell (1996: 4) reminds us. 'The ultimate question [...] is where and how to posit the "lesbian" in a lesbian text'; and for some critics, the reader is a locus of the lesbian in the lesbian text, if not the only one (Farwell, 1996: 7; see also Zimmerman, 1990: 14-15). Diana Collecott (1992: 103-104) calls for the reinsertion of texts in 'the contexts of actual lives', a 'revision of reading practices' and the recognition of the reader's 'crucial role in producing meaning'. Sally Munt (1992: xxi), using Roland Barthes' distinction between readerly and writerly, underlines 'lesbian culture's ability to be so *writerly*', i.e. the fact that lesbian readers are 'adept at extracting [their] own meanings, at highlighting a text's latent content, at reading "dialectically," at filling the gaps, at interpreting the narrative according to [their] introjected fictional fantasies, and at foregrounding the intertextuality of [their] identities'.

I argue that by admitting the possibility of a lesbian reading of her texts, Taylor Swift's fans dismantle seemingly heteronormative narratives through oblique, vicarious, and resistant reading practices, (re)creating lesbian meanings and intertextualities. Rooting my approach primarily in literary theory but borrowing from cultural, media, celebrities and fan studies, I aim to show how that gesture of 'queering the girlscape' can be used to open new directions for lesbian criticism as well as cultural and fan studies.

Taylor Swift as star text

The first part of this article focuses on a dual confrontation as the foundation of these oblique readings: confrontation between the writer and her readers, as well as between the star text that is Taylor Swift<fnref n="2" /> and her actual songs.

Perhaps paradoxically, Swift is often defined both by her confessional writing style and her marketing genius; by a tension between authenticity and manipulation. If the construction of a certain (illusion of) proximity between an artist and their community through emotional labour and microcelebrity tactics is certainly not specific to the American

<footnote n="1">¹ With the support of the EUR du Grand Paris FRAPP 'Francophonies – Plurilingualisms – Language Policy', Université Paris Est Créteil, under the program 'Investissements d'avenir de l'État' (ANR) with the reference ANR-18-EURE-0015.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² On stars as 'complex configuration[s] of visual, verbal and aural signs', see the seminal work of Richard Dyer (1979/1998: 34).</footnote>

<footnote>See Prins (2020) for a discussion of Swift as a polysemic star text that, at least until she came out as a supporter of the Democratic Party in October 2018, declined to explicitly claim political position and thus provided opportunities for hijacking by audiences, facilitating a white-supremacist reading for instance (on how fans negotiated her political revelation in relation to her celebrity persona, see Driessen, 2022). We could argue that Swift's strategies of neutrality and ambiguity similarly contribute to her 'hijacking' by queer audiences.</footnote>
writer, composer and performer, it is undeniably encouraged by Swift, who cultivates a
marked ‘us vs. them’ mentality.<fnref n="3" /> This privileged relationship also functions through repeated
prompts to decrypt some hidden meaning. The ‘Easter eggs’, or encrypted message carriers
created by the artist, reveal to those who prove worthy the release date or aesthetic of a
future music video, give clues as to the ‘message’ of a song or to the most recent sources of
inspiration for an album. They can be hidden on clothing and jewelry, in set designs for
photoshoots or music videos, through ‘hints in the print’ (clues left in interviews), ‘symbolism’
and her ‘love for 13s and cats’, although Swift often returns to ‘[her] original favorite way of
Easter egg dropping’: ‘encoding messages into the lyrics’ (Suskind, 2019, emphasis mine).
Swift’s fans, raised to the level of accomplices or even friends, would thus be the only ones
capable of truly understanding the meaning of her music, via both individual and collective
attempts to analyse it. This communal aspect is accentuated by Swift herself who, for
example, contrasts ‘normal music fans’ and ‘us’, or her and her fans, united in a collective
passion for paper chases and decoding messages. ‘And look,’ she states,

I think that it is perfectly reasonable for people to be normal music fans and to
have a normal relationship to music. *But* if you want to go down a rabbit hole
with us, come along. The water's great. Jump in. We're all mad here. (The
Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, YouTube, 2021)<fnref n="4" />

Fandom, however, is not simply a community or participative culture centred around
the consumption of a media object. As Dajches and Stevens Aubrey (2022: 257) remind us,
fandom is also often considered ‘a “discourse of resistance”’ (Sandvoss, 2005: 11), or a space
for marginalized voices to engage with popular media texts in subversive ways’. ‘[T]hese
subcultures rescript mainstream media to include marginalized experiences’ (Dajches and
Stevens Aubrey, 2022: 257), and the two researchers thus became engaged, through the
example offered by the reception of the album *folklore*, in the way that ‘LGBQ+ Swifties
perform oppositional readings of the lyrics [...] with the intention to create narratives that fit
within LGBQ+ experiences and ultimately counter the dominant social order that promotes
compulsory heterosexuality’ (Dajches and Stevens Aubrey, 2022: 257). Indeed, while her
reputation as a serial dater obsessed with her ex-boyfriends inclines the public to perceive
her as a paradigm of (white, bourgeois) heterosexuality, many lesbian and queer fans
interpret her music through a queer lens. The resistant readings are facilitated by Swift’s
repeated injunctions to decipher her music and lyrics, and whether they match the artist’s
intention or not,<fnref n="5" /> these readings are more broadly embedded in the internal dynamics of
fandom related to the interpretation of Swift herself, or rather, Taylor Swift as *star text*.
Fogarty and Arnold (2021: 2) highlight that ‘to “know” Taylor Swift is the prize of the

<footnote n="3">³ See Fogarty and Arnold (2021) for an overview of Swift's persona; Wilkinson (2019) on her star text transitions through the prism of 'zaniness'; McNutt (2020) on her 'performative intimacy' and paratextual strategies. For a broader approach to celebrity and authenticity, see Franssen (2019).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ For certain fans, these few sentences alone constitute an Easter egg, via the reference to her song 'Wonderland' and therefore to the supposed romance between Swift and the American actress Dianna Agron, an identified *Alice in Wonderland* fan (@whatiwillsay, 2021).</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Prins (2020: 146) argues that the ease with which the appropriation of Swift can be done shows that the impact of social media on star texts 'must be understood specifically in terms of a loss of agency of the culture industries constructing these star texts': 'celebrities like Taylor Swift have to grapple with this lack of control as audiences explore the digital possibilities offered to them'.</footnote>
pleasurable, unpaid labour of her fans, who believe they have sleuthed to find her authentic, oh-so *unposed* truth'. This 'labour' is part of what makes these fans prod-users, i.e., both users and producers, engaged in collaborative content production and modding. It is also worth noting that attempts to decrypt the supposed, hidden biographical meaning of texts serve to justify the interpretation of a lesbian subtext to the same extent that this lesbian subtext justifies, in turn, a reading of the artist herself as non-heterosexual.<fnref n="6" />

The release and (non) promotion of the album *reputation* in 2017 mark a turning point in Swift's control over her own narrative and the way her fans receive it, notably in terms of the possibility of lesbian readings.<fnref n="7" /> In view of her refusal to comment on the album and with close to no paratext, the songs must speak for themselves, but Gaylors still retain information from the CD booklet introduction: Swift is sure that all theories regarding men who supposedly inspired her songs will be incorrect, and attracts attention to that which is not visible in the press or on social media.<fnref n="8" /> The theories continue to multiply, particularly on *Tumblr*,<fnref n="9" /> in the form of 'master posts' sometimes contradictory but constantly added on to (e.g., @svnhshineswift, 2018). In May 2018, *Tumblr* user @buylookwhatyoumademedo releases the Google Slide 'Reputation' is about Karlie Kloss. A comprehensive guide to the gayest album of 2017', a work of art that now carries a nearly mythical standing within the fandom.

The lyrics are not the only items to be scrutinised. Album covers, CD booklets, videos, performances, setlists, social networks, interviews, blurry photos, clothes, photoshoots, friends, family and acquaintances, collaborators, etc. are not left out. Fans infinitely re-use, refine and develop 'Gaylor proofs' – so-called evidence that Swift has had intimate relationships with several women – from previous eras. Sometimes these 'proofs' stem from evermore elaborate timelines: see for example @swiftgronmasterpost (2020) regarding the relationship between Swift and Dianna Agron, which is supposed to have fed the albums *Red*

<footnote n="6">⁶ Regardless of the term used (lesbian, bisexual, queer, gay, sapphic, wlw, etc.), Gaylors generally agree that it is not a matter of placing a label on Swift's sexuality. For the purpose of this article, I will use the adjective 'non-heterosexual' when referring to a possible positioning of the artist, and 'lesbian' to talk about the readings of her texts, which I assume as a political choice to counter centuries of invisibilisation or euphemisation of the identities and imageries at stake. 'Gaylors' is the self-designation for fans who think that Swift is not heterosexual and/or that her texts can be interpreted through the lens of a certain 'queerness', including their own sometimes.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Brown (2022: 299) adds that this moment 'marked a dramatic shift in her musical self-presentation' also in terms of sexuality, with 'lyrics that render sex in specific detail' and her songwriting becoming 'more inclusive of different sexual subjectivities' (in the following album, 'religion's in your lips [...] the altar is my hips' has thus become a fan favourite, especially among Gaylors, see @meanlore, 2022).</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ 'When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the *men* they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each *incorrect* theory, because it's 2017 and *if you didn't see a picture of it, it couldn't have happened right?*' (emphasis mine).</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ The format of this microblogging platform makes it a preferred space for discussion, historicisation and archiving of cultural phenomena. When referring to the gay theories produced by One Direction fans as early as 2010, Tiffany (2022: 175-178) writes: 'Twitter was accustomed to academic and theoretical discussions of media, and was ready to play with the premise that famous people might also be read as texts. It was a place for piling up images until they revealed some kind of significance [...]. At the time, the heteronormativity of mainstream media was a major topic of discussion on Twitter across most fandoms'. 'Several studies of young people's media preferences in the mid 2010s have found that LGBTQ youth were more likely to use Twitter regularly', Pruett (2020: 196) notes.</footnote>
and 1989; the Kaylor Welcome Center (2018) dedicated to Swift and Karlie Kloss, an American supermodel who is said to have inspired certain songs from 1989 and most of the subsequent albums; or the 'Gaylor Swift Masterpost 2.0' (@allcatsarebabes, 2019b). Some users put their skills to work for the community, juxtaposing photos – mostly of Swift and Kloss – and song excerpts, aiming for maximum argumentative effectiveness (@kaylorkerfuffle, 2020a).

Swift's image, decidedly heterosexual in the public sphere and media, is not neglected either. The inconsistencies between the songs' words and the official narrative concerning Swift's private life are ruthlessly tracked down and constitute as much proof as 'something's not right', indirectly serving to legitimise the non-heterosexual reading (@namegoesup, 2019; @all-my-possessions, 2020b). Regular reminders of the manifestations of homophobia in the media and artistic spheres punctuate these reflections: Swift would not be the first artist closeted and silenced, which would make the lesbian nature of her work problematic but also justifies its reading as coded lesbian texts. Notably, concepts well-known to LGBTI communities such as bearding<fnref n="10" /> or the glass closet<fnref n="11" /> are called upon to remind us that Taylor Swift's visible heterosexuality<fnref n="12" /> could very likely be a façade – so as to protect her private life and/or obey certain supposed clauses in her various contracts, such as those imposed upon many celebrities up to this day. If *reputation* enabled the explosion of Gaylor theories, two years later *Lover* rekindled the flame of rumours regarding a coming out, to the point that the press latched on to the interpretation as well (see the selection offered in @kaylorevidence, 2019). As detailed in the 150 slides Google Slide presentation 'Lover As A Coming Out: The Conspiracy (Truth)' (@aweedlia, 2021), among the elements retained by fans are the announcement of the video release for 'ME!' on April 26th, i.e., International Lesbian Visibility Day, captioned by Swift on her social media with 'Me! Out now!'; as well as the affirmation 'gay pride [...] makes me me' in her documentary *Miss Americana*<fnref n="13" /> (dir. Lana Wilson, US, 2020) or her surprise performance at the Stonewall Inn during Pride month in 2019. A defining moment was the music video for 'You Need To Calm Down' which became a hotly debated topic, from the endorsement of an explicit allyship to, perhaps more visibly, accusations of rainbow capitalism and contempt for class (Hubbs, 2019; McDermott, 2019; Levin, 2020). The consensus amongst Gaylors is that the conflict surrounding the property of her first six albums' masters (Bruner, 2021) constrained Swift that year to change her plans regarding a potential coming out, and thus to maintain her glass closet (@aweedlia, 2021: slides 83-92).

Because she is so scrutinised, all of Swift's actions and gestures, all of her (non) standpoints on political issues are constantly commented upon. In fact, the links she maintains with LGBTI communities have been discussed by the general public, scholars and those primarily concerned for many years. To cite a few examples: her first appearance on *Saturday Night Live* (Hogan, 2009); the single 'Mean' whose music video met some of the fans' gay reading (Iannacci, 2010); or the explicit celebration of 1989 ('you can want who you want / boys and boys and girls and girls') put in parallel with other pop 'equality anthems' (D'Addario, 2014). Eric Smialek (2021: 101) considers the artist's transition 'from benevolence

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ See for example @all-my-possessions (2017) or the keyword #bearding on @tswiftisgay's blog.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ See for example @timequangle (2019e), who juxtaposes images and texts about or from Swift with excerpts from theoretical texts such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's (1990) *Epistemology of the Closet*.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Although she has never explicitly defined herself as such, and neither she nor her team has ever spoken out against the rumours regarding her relationships with other women (an argument used in @redpaintedgolden, 2019).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ '[...] dancers, cats, gay pride, people in country western boots [...] everything that makes me me' (c. 46m).</footnote>
to activism' started with her political coming out in 2018, followed by her 2019 petition in favour of the Equality Act and the music video for 'YNTCD'. Speaking to the suspicion that weighs on her allyship, Smialek (2021: 110-111) quickly dismisses accusations of queerbaiting, in addition to the possibility of Swift's non-heterosexuality ('speculative rumours about symbolism', 'conspiracy theorising'). On the other hand, Gaylors never stop recording instances of Swift's self-inclusion in the community that she publicly defended at that time. All while discussing the notion of allyship (@femmetay, 2019b; @original-cypher, 2019), they particularly note the use of first-person plural pronouns when she speaks of pride or rights to defend and acquire (@a-crook-who-was-caught, 2021; @iwanthermidnightz, 2022), in addition to the equivalence she established between her 'confessionnal songwriting' and the 'bravery' required for coming out when introducing the song 'Delicate' during Pride month 2018 (@all-my-possessions, 2020a). In short, Swift cannot be guilty of rainbow capitalism or of queerbaiting because she is *not* an ally (@qomheart, 2021).

One of the recurring debates between Gaylors and Hetlors<fnref n="14" /> is whether or not speculation about Swift's sexual orientation is ethical. It has been argued that Swift has been 'gay signalling' for years, i.e., 'communicating [...] through symbols and imagery to let others know that yes, I am like you, I am one of you, without having to explicitly say the words', and that it would therefore be more disrespectful to ignore this aspect of her life (@timequangle, 2019a). Debates can at times be quite violent – bullying, homophobia (@iguesthisismenow, 2019) –, and so the precautionary language used by certain Gaylors is not surprising, be it to characterise Swift's sexuality ('I am not claiming to know Taylor personally. I'm also not here to label her sexuality for her– she could be bi, lesbian, asexual, questioning, she might even identify as straight! That's not our business!'), to situate their speech ('Disclaimer: everything listed here is my personal opinion & speculation!') or to legitimatise its very existence ('If y'all can speculate these songs are about men, I'm allowed to speculate they're about a woman!').<fnref n="15" />

## (Re)creating lesbian meanings and imageries, or the fans' meta-text

If the lesbian readings – of the songs, of the artist herself – can thus be rationalised by setting them against Swift's star text, they are also and more importantly elaborated from a textual analysis and through the construction of a powerful collective imagery. Queer people, literature and art aficionados, or even researchers all come together and convene a wide variety of disciplines (literature, linguistics, history, musicology, sociology, cultural studies) and concepts (narrative, fiction, queer coding, gay signalling, etc.), intersecting theoretical, cultural and activist references. Their analyses can be thematic, stylistic, linear, intertextual and/or trans-media. They perform what Henry Jenkins (1992/2013: 229, 18), drawing from the work of Michel de Certeau, theorised as fans' textual poaching, 'transforming "borrowed materials" from mass culture into new texts' and 'reworking them as the basis for their own cultural creations and social interactions' – in this case it can go as far as solely juxtaposing

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Another term of fandom slang (blend of 'heterosexual' and the singer's name) used by Gaylors to qualify those who oppose their theories.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Quotes taken from the second slide of the Google Slide presentation 'Reputation is about Karlie Kloss' (@buylookwhatyoumademedo, 2018).</footnote>
excerpts considered to be 'too gay' to require an explanation (see the *Twitter* account @gaylorlyricsbot or posts like @bettys-cardigan143, 2020; @lizardl0ver43, 2020).

In recent years, ‘betty’ has perhaps been the song which provoked the biggest controversy, in turn illustrating the variety of interpretations that can coexist around a single text. In this song, teenage ‘James’ declares their love to ‘Betty’ after ‘Inez’ starts spreading rumours about them, and the three names are borrowed from Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ daughters, suggesting young sapphic lovers. This interpretation is defended tooth and nail in the face of heterosexualising readings (@youfuckingegg, 2020), and the song has been re-inserted into an intertextual network within Swift’s discography.<fnref n="16" /> The press seized on it in turn (Kircher, 2020), and more broadly, journalists as well as researchers have been interested in the reception of the two sister-records *folklore* and *evermore* (Romano, 2020), inscribing them in the continuity of the women’s-music movement of the 1970s (Geffen, 2021) and underlining the ‘tradition of girlhood intimacy that [their] queer subtext – or text – celebrates and defends’ (Harris and Burt, 2020).

Girlhood intimacy, the blurring of friendship and love, and mutual understanding of a certain sameness or kinship<fnref n="17" /> constitute some of the common threads identified as queer themes by fans.<fnref n="18" /> Feminine friendships (@tender-swift, 2019b) are read as an echo of centuries of euphemising lesbian relationships (@iwanthermidnightz, 2019; @femmetay, 2019c), and the apparent obsession for childhood is framed as a queer specificity (@timequangle, 2020a). The lyrical reiteration that Swift’s best friend is also her ‘lover’ is interpreted as an obvious reference to Karlie Kloss, whose friendship was largely publicised and commented on between 2013 and 2016 (@femmetay, 2019d; @gaylorsoftwitter, 2022a). Shifts between identification and desire (Sedgwick, 1990: 159), the motif of the mirror and effects of symmetry (Albert, 2005: 197-221) – *topoï* for homosexual lyricism – are implicit behind the thematisation of recognition and revelation. It manifests itself in many ways: literally (‘I’m a mirrorball / I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight’), the lover as the only person capable of seeing the truth (‘even in my worst lies you saw the truth in me’, ‘you’ve been callin’ my bluff on all my usual tricks’) while at the same time enabling self-knowledge (‘nothing made sense ‘till the time I saw your face’, ‘I woke up just in time / now I wake up by your side’, ‘now I’m wide awake’<fnref n="19" />), the difficulty to identify the other’s sexuality (‘the lingering question kept me up / 2AM, who do you love?’, ‘if you’ve got a girlfriend, I’m jealous of her / but if you’re single that’s honestly worse’), mutual understanding (‘takes one to know one’, ‘you knew the password so I let you in the door’, ‘I know what you know’), reflection (‘my magician [...] your illusionist’, ‘there’s an ache in you / put there by the ache’

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ See @alittlebi-furious, 2020; @femmetay, 2020b, 2020c; @iwanthermidnightz, 2020a.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ In contrast to the tension built around opposition and ‘otherness’ that characterises traditional (heterosexual) narratives, whether they be romantic or not (Farwell, 1996: 15, 39-41, 110-111).</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ See ‘the 13 queer tropes of Taylor Swift’ identified by @somanysigns-somanytimes (2020), who presents themself as an ‘academic’, or the seventy pages analysis on ‘Queer Themes in Taylor Swift’s Music’ by @Allengirl (2022), supplemented by the contributions of other Gaylors on *Reddit*.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ ‘The experience of loving a woman is, for the narrative voice, *the* experience of awakening, the revelation of an unknown, unsuspected world which, once glimpsed, can never be ignored’, Marks (1979: 361-362) summarises as she evokes the emergence of a lesbian literature authored by women. @gaylorswiftie (2019) also parallels ‘now I’m wide awake’ from the song ‘Daylight’ with two scenes from lesbian TV show *Killing Eve* (BBC America, 2018-2022) and film *Carol* (dir. Todd Haynes, UK/US, 2015), captioning ‘#gay revelations is the same’.</footnote>
in me') and sameness ('you're a cowboy like me', 'I wanna be defined by the things that I love [...] I just think that you are what you love').

Other recurring themes foster the creation of (crypto) lesbian imagery. Self-imposed, legal, or religious prohibition, secrecy, the motif of fleeing and the need to play a role often intersect; they are, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990: 144) reminds us, elements that frequently colour queer sentimentality and identity construction. This near omnipresence of secrecy (@ohgaylor, 2021c; @midsummerknife, 2022; @iwanthermidnightz, 2020b) brings up a rhetorical question: 'literally WHAT white cishet couple EVER' could lead to lyrics such as 'I love you ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard... I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you' (@timequangle, 2019d)? Why does Taylor Swift, ""Heterosexual" Cis White Woman', sing 'about secret love/love the world would hate/loving someone solely in secret in songs about her Cis Het White Boy "Lovers"' (@allcatsarebabes, 2019a)? 'It still floors me that people genuinely think a woman so obsessed with running/hiding/secrets/no one understanding her love would be straight', one fan concludes (@nicollekidman, 2022).

Finally, on a more structural level perhaps, the masculine perspective best synthesised in the form 'I love her (he said)' (@barbie2023, 2021) has long been a fan favourite. The difficulty as a woman to position oneself as a lyrical subject within a fundamentally masculine literary tradition, let alone to express a lesbian desire (Schultz, 1999; Farwell, 1996: 111), thus finds two types of answers in Swift's discography. The first is the crafting of a homosexual viewpoint as universal (Wittig, 1983), here via an encoding of the meaning, the fans then having the responsibility to identify the lesbian trait or signal and reconstruct the message *a posteriori*. The second is the adoption of a male position, either in an almost literal manner – the songs 'The Man' and 'cowboy like me' or the lyrical subject evoking their muse in 'the lakes' are perhaps the clearest examples<fnref n="20" /> – or, alternatively, by usurping a male voice. The latter strategy enables the simultaneous verbalisation and distancing of desire for a/nother woman. If other occurrences of this 'narrative device' are often reused with an air of amused tenderness by Gaylors (@badcode, 2019; @everythingeeverywhereallatonce, 2020b), 'betty' again offers a particularly pertinent example. For instance, student of literature @honeywhen (see @Complex-Refuse5418, 2022) summoned the knowledge she acquired during her education and used her reading of René Girard's triangular desire and of a Walt Whitman poem in order to propose her own queer analysis of the song. The approach is, and this is rare enough with 'betty' to be underlined, that of a male lyrical subject: 'Taylor is singing about kissing a girl and James as a male voice is not the subject, but a defensive model so she can safely desire the object [Betty]'. This since-deleted publication from 2020 contributed to others and two years later, members of the 'GaylorSwift' community on *Reddit* established intertextuality between 'betty' and other artists' songs perceived as functioning based on the same model ('Girl Crush' by Little Big Town, 'Jolene' by Dolly Parton), as well as other examples from Swift's discography.

<footnote n="20">²⁰ The paratext proposed by the artist herself constitutes a new way of justifying lesbian readings from the position of a male enunciation. In her *Spotify Storyline* for 'The Man', Swift asks: 'If I had been a man instead of a woman and I had lived my life exactly the same way, what would people have said about me?' In the song, another question arises, 'what's it like to brag about [...] getting bitches and models?', interpreted as a confession that she does, in fact, get girls, and abundantly commented with as much excitement as amusement (@zorrxchicle, 2019).</footnote>

<footnote>On the poet's muse as a male and heterosexual paradigm in Western literature, see Farwell (1988: 106-107).</footnote>
From a grammatical point of view, fans document the frequency of songs that oppose one or more male subjects and an ungendered ‘you’ (e.g., ‘cause all the boys and their expensive car [...] never took me quite where you do’, see also @gaylorsoftwitter, 2021a), and create diagrams showing the distribution and evolution of pronoun types over the course of Swift’s career (@all-my-possessions, 2020c) in addition to detailed analyses of the ‘direct conflict between the obviously male “he” and the more ambiguously gendered “you” which [facilitates] an understanding of that contrast as specifically between the male and female’ (@all-my-possessions, 2015). They also note that Swift is an unreliable narrator and suggest that she must be (gay-)signalling:

> [in ‘the last great american dynasty’] Taylor wrote the line about Rebekah dying a dog green, knowing full well it was actually a cat, in order to show that she’s not afraid to change small details to blur the bigger picture. This can be applied to her use of a ‘boy’s’ name in Betty and male pronouns in various songs throughout her career. (@alittlebi-furious, 2020)

Gaylors archive with reverence videos and performances during which Swift replaced male pronouns with their female equivalents (@dirtytaylorswift, 2014; @angelgayswift, 2019; @kaleid-tay-scope, 2019). They also take noted interest in the break in the rhyming scheme of ‘The Very First Night’, remarking that ‘her’ would be audibly expected and therefore more appropriate than ‘you’: ‘didn’t read the note on the polaroid picture / they don’t know how much i miss her you [...] no one knows about the words that we whispered / no one knows how much i miss her you’ (@snowonthebeachmp3, 2021). Fans question the apparent mistake – interestingly enough, Bertha Harris, one of the earliest lesbian novelists in the United States, claimed that ‘if in a woman writer’s work a sentence refuses to do what it is supposed to do [...] the result is innately lesbian literature’ (cited in Smith, 1978: 23). Because the song contains many other elements considered to be thematically lesbian (a love that ‘breaks the status quo’, the emphasis being placed yet again on secrecy, see @trixicbean, 2021), it quickly found its audience. In the days following its release, fans proposed a ‘fixed’ ‘Gaylor version’, re-done to include the ‘right’ pronoun in Swift’s voice, first on TikTok (@awfaulhabe, 2021; 290,000 interactions) then on YouTube (I, YouTube, 2021; 99,000 views).

All in all, Gaylors acquire and display multiple sets of skills<fnref n="21" /> to ‘recognize’ or rather (re)construct elements which amount to what Bonnie Zimmerman (1990: 6) synthesis when discussing lesbian writers who relied upon codes and subterfuge to express lesbian desire and evade censure: ‘By suppressing pronouns, changing the gender of characters, inventing a cryptic language for sexuality, or hinting obliquely at relationships between women, these writers could tell, but not quite tell, lesbian stories’.

## Intertextual parallels: a continuum of lesbian culture

Another particularly productive mechanism of those fan dynamics consists of inscribing Taylor Swift within a lesbian literary and artistic tradition. The comparative analysis is indeed not limited to texts from her discography but also combined with the collective search for a

<footnote n="21">²¹ On fans as expert listeners, see Galloway (2023).</footnote>
‘lesbian intertextuality’ (Marks, 1979), which mostly consists in drawing parallels between
several works considered to belong to the same canon or imagery.<fnref n="22" />

As for many feminist and/or lesbian writers (Gubar, 1984), Sappho’s counter-example
to the silencing of women’s literature *and* lesbian desire serves as a starting point for the
affirmation of this lesbian tradition. When *folklore* was released, the song ‘seven’ was
immediately read as a response to one of the Greek poetess’ most famous fragment.
‘Someone will remember us / I say / even in another time’ (trans. Anne Carson) finds itself
reconfigured as ‘and just like a folk song / our love will be passed on [...] passed down like folk
songs / our love lasts so long’ (@alwaysxyou, 2020). The song is compared to the production
(@nicollekidman, 2020) and the thematic similarities of Swift’s adolescent compositions,
some of which were never released (@gaylorism, 2020), and is paralleled both with the
childhood of queer fans themselves and the experience of other young lesbian lovers that
‘Mary’s Song’ represents in the fanon (@kaylorkerfuffle, 2020b). Despite the reference to
Swift’s native Pennsylvania, ‘seven’ also evokes a nearly mythical and literally ‘folkloric’
temporal elsewhere; the idyllic memory of a feminine togetherness already threatened by a
masculine presence (‘your dad is always mad and that must be why’) associated to the
imagery of the closet and the need to flee (‘and I think you should come live with me / and
we can be pirates / then you won’t have to cry / or hide in the closet’). The imploring ‘please
picture me in the weeds / before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously / any time I
wanted’ resonates with Elaine Marks’ (1979: 362) affirmation that the image of Sappho
enabled her successors to ‘imagine a world before the domestication of women, before the
deliberate taming of her sexuality and her language’, or that of Susan Gubar (1984: 47) for
whom the rediscovery of this ancient figure – perhaps perceptible here behind the choice of
childhood as a spatio-temporal frame – harbours ‘the promise of excavating a long-lost
ecstatic lyricism that inscribes female desire as the ancient source of song’. The thematisation
of loss (‘are there still beautiful things?’, ‘and though I can’t recall your face’, ‘I used to…’)
resonates with other allusions made by Swift to lost or even unspeakable loves (‘if you and I
are a story that never gets told’, ‘you know the greatest films of all time were never made [...] you know the greatest loves of all time are over now’, ‘all of my heroes die all alone’, ‘and you understand now / why they lost their minds and fought the wars / and why I’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words’). As for the aquatic metaphors that span her
discography, they could also be read as another sapphic echo, particularly the insular imagery
of these lines in *folklore’s* sister-record, *evermore*: ‘my waves meet your shore / ever and evermore’.

The two albums are not placed under the sole *aegis* of Sappho, but also under that of
another lesbian poet: Emily Dickinson. Swift’s fans immediately noted the correspondence
between the American writer’s birthdate and the announcement of *evermore’s* release on
December 10th, and read the title of the album and the conclusion of its eponymous song as
a potential nod to the poem ‘One Sister have I in our house’.<fnref n="23" /> They also noticed the double
reference to the 1830s and the imagery of the ‘pioneer woman’ as the inspiration for certain
visuals (@femmetay, 2020d). The song ‘ivy’ in particular is read as reminiscent of the

<footnote n="22">²² Publications like this, originating from Tumblr, typically take the form of a patchwork of citations and visuals, as shown for example by a composition on the 'garden gate' mentioned in the song 'Cruel Summer' which juxtaposes Swift and LGB artists such as Oscar Wilde, Jeanette Winterson or Hayley Kyoko (@femmetay, 2020a).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Of which the last verse, dedicated to her sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, is 'Sue - forevermore!'</footnote>
relationship between Emily and Susan, via its allusions to some of Dickinson's privileged themes (death, spirits, solitude, nature<fnref n="24" />) and the description of a secret and adulterous relationship between the married lyrical 'I' and the new occurrence of an ungendered 'you' (@snoopysfriendwoodstock, 2020). This theory was corroborated when Swift agreed for the song to be used in the first erotic scene of the third season of *Dickinson* (Apple TV+, 2019-2021) (@iwanthermidnightz, 2021; Lewis, 2021).

Regarding aesthetics, comparisons to Céline Sciamma's *Portrait d'une jeune fille en feu* (FRA, 2015) are also frequent (@gaylorsoftwitter' 2021b; @phoebesbridgers, 2020), while the song 'cowboy like me' calls for a plural link to the gay classic *Brokeback Mountain* (dir. Ang Lee, US, 2005) (@manicpixeedream, 2020; @ohgaylor, 2021b) and two lesbian country songs, 'If She Ever Leaves Me' by the band The Highwomen (@timequangle, 2020c) and 'Cowboy' by Allison Ponthier (@ohgaylor, 2022). The album *Lover*, released the previous year, has also been paralleled with other major lesbian cultural references – although still belonging to a very white imagery.<fnref n="25" /> A character from the 'You Need To Calm Down' video, who bikes alone surrounded by oranges, has been interpreted in relation to Jeanette Winterson's *Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit* (@femmetay, 2019a; @kaleidoscopesanddreams, 2020), while the sun metaphors in a variety of songs have reminded some fans of the encouragement to come out formulated by Sara Bareilles' 'Brave' anthem (@timequangle, 2019f). The starting point of 'It's Nice to Have a Friend' has been linked to the romantic encounter scene of the film *Carol* (@heavenlykloss, 2019), and a certain number of songs are still read as parallels to Taylor Jenkins Reid's contemporary success *The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo* (@inlovewithtoomanypeople, 2018; @timequangle, 2019c; @lessonincanvases, 2019).

These readings and recompositions gradually erase the boundary between Swift's work and that of famous lesbian and queer artists, tracing a continuum of lesbian culture. The lesbian imagery is equally built around signs that go beyond the artistic framework but also participate in Gaylors' anchoring of Swift within a shared culture. By summoning both their own experiences as lesbian, bi, queer people, as well as historical and cultural communitarian references, fans decrypt what they perceive as the queer coding of texts while simultaneously co-constructing this encoding. @daisyswift3 (2021) thus takes the observation that 'Taylor said she likes to put a spin on common expressions to give them a different meaning' as a starting point for looking at two instances of (possible) gay slang aimed at camouflaging a discussion of sexuality from the eyes of heterosexual people: the song 'dorothea', which evokes the young love of an ungendered lyrical subject for a woman, could therefore be a reference to the expression 'friend of Dorothy'<fnref n="26" />; while the (dropping) hairpins mentioned twice in 'right where you left me' could constitute a sign of queer recognition. Lyrics such as 'too in love to think straight' or 'a crooked love in a straight line down' are also often interpreted through the lens of queer wordplay. 'She's trying so hard to tell y'all but y'all won't listen', this fan asserts, illustrating their conviction via a publication by Swift confessing her love for the debut album of girl in red, lesbian icon of indie pop, juxtaposed with a

<footnote n="24">²⁴ The vegetal comparison has also been linked to an excerpt from the lesbian classic *The Price of Salt* by Patricia Highsmith (@godofsmallthings, 2021).</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ On the limitations of lesbian musical imageries, notably regarding race, see Madden (2021); on the whiteness of lesbian canons, see for instance Allen (2024).</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ @timequangle (2020d) comments on the pronunciation of 'Dorothyyy (ah!)'.</footnote>
screenshot reminding us that in our time, to ask a woman if she listens to girl in red translates to subtly asking her to confirm her sexual orientation.<fnref n="27" />

The motif of the closet and its camouflage symbolism is also studied in detail, in its most literal textual manifestations ('you won't have to [...] hide in the closet', 'the skeletons in both our closets / plotted hard to fuck this up') as well as visual (@chickawah23, 2021); and implicit in wordplay ('I guess it's the price I paid for seven years in Heaven' points to the closet via an allusion to the game 'seven minutes in heaven', @gaylorsoftwitter, 2022b), variations on cages (@timequangle, 2019b) and metaphors for coming out ('I've got a hundred thrown out speeches I almost said to you', 'can you see right through me', 'writing letters addressed to the fire', 'my best laid plans', see @ohgaylor, 2021a). The symbolic rainbow is also located in the texts ('the rest of the world was black and white / but we were in screaming color', 'but one of these things is not like the others / like a rainbow with all of the colors / baby doll when it comes to a lover', 'I once believed love would be black and white / but it's golden', 'you showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else') as well as in the Swiftian aesthetic, especially under the guise of the bisexual flag: the phrase 'gave me the blues and then purple-pink skies', the wig worn by Swift in the 'You Need To Calm Down' video (@tswiftisgay 2020), the set for that of 'Lover' (@tender-swift, 2019a) or in the background of performances for 'Dress' during the Reputation Tour – performances dedicated to Loie Fuller, legendary lesbian performance artist and choreographer (@femmetay, 2018).

## Toward a renewed 'lesbian narrative space'

The logic is simple: because Swift's writing talents no longer need to be proven, and because she often voices encouragements to not settle for a superficial reading, everything *could* be a symbol and sign. 'I would actually argue it's more disrespectful, and dismissive of her talent', 'a disservice to her genius and her lyrical prowess', 'to not see and believe her queerness', asserts TikTok user @swiftieplanntika (2022). We thus come back to Sedgwick's (1990: 156) reflections on camp:

> the moment at which a consumer of culture makes the wild surmise, "What if whoever made this was gay too? [...] And what if, furthermore, others whom I don't know or recognize can see it from the same 'perverse' angle?"

Of course, this also raises the issue of (the authority of) interpretive communities: as Stanley Fish (1980: 327) provocatively puts it, 'interpretation is not the art of construing but the art of constructing. Interpreters do not decode poems; they make them' through the interpretive strategies they set in motion. Or to put it another way, fans are able to unveil lesbian meanings in Taylor Swift's star text and songs because they expect and want to find them.

There are multiple factors behind this desire, as the question of the lesbian readings of Swift's songs, while primarily textual, is also profoundly related to experience. Fan objects are highly important in the construction of self and of one's ideological evolution – for teens and

<footnote n="27">²⁷ See also the way that @transforming-hufflepuff-deactiv (2020) establishes an equivalence between the lyrics 'you taught me a secret language I can't speak with anyone else' and 'queer people communicating with each other through coded language and symbols because we can't say it out loud'.</footnote>
young adults in particular – as Dajches and Stevens Aubrey (2022: 255-256) remind us in their study on the influence of fandom on sexual identity development and fluidity acceptance among Taylor Swift fans. The interactive nature of these dynamics is undoubtedly part of what makes it worthwhile for those who take part in them. The consumption and discussion of these texts and images enable fans to build connections and form community in a virtual space, between themselves and to a certain extent with the artist herself. The productive readings discussed in this article are definitely rooted in a collaborative process, as the texts themselves are partially dialogic: ‘Swift creates purposeful space in her own narrative for fans to insert themselves and plug in their understanding of her star text, further aligning herself and the fan in a sort of metafandom’, she encourages a ‘new type of fan identity, allowing fans to become part of her story while ultimately telling stories about themselves’ (Rossman, 2022). The individual and collective undertaking involved here allows for a sense of agency connected to notions of self-identity and experience, and turns the distanced text into an immediate experience, fashioning it so that it fits (although not necessarily mirrors) the fans’ own experiences.

Fandom provides a space within which fans can articulate both what they are ‘struggling against and what they are struggling for; its cultural products articulate the fans’ frustration with their everyday life as well as their fascination with representations that pose alternatives’ (Jenkins, 1992/2013: 289). I argue that this specific corner of fandom offers a privileged space for the exploration of what the expression of non-normative desire can mean, as much as it constitutes the proof and the means of acquiring a cultural literacy that allows for the dismantling and reconstruction of ostensibly non-lesbian material through oblique, vicarious, and resistant readings (see for instance Hall, 1973/1980). Within the paradigm of what Elizabeth Ellcessor (2012: 66) identifies as a ‘star text of connection’, ‘formed through complicated interactions of media platforms, texts, audiences, and industries, facilitated by digital and social media’, the lesbian text is a text determined by shared experience, or as Farwell (1988: 112) puts it when discussing the ‘lesbian literary imagination’, ‘a network of relationships among author, reader, text, and even literary foremothers’.

This phenomenon exceeds Swift herself: according to Zimmerman (1990: 14-16), lesbian literature functions as ‘a *mythology* for the lesbian community, one that can be both inspirational and stifling’. A tool for survival, it is read ‘in order to affirm lesbian existence’ but also ‘an identity and belief system waiting for [any woman that comes out] should she choose to embrace it’. The reading practices discussed in this article allow lesbian and queer fans to conceptualise their own identity, one of the reasons that drive some Gaylors to prefer Swift’s music to that of out lesbian artists:

> there's a queerness in taylor's music but it's so subtle and you can only find it if you listen to her songs through a different lens. this queer-coding feels so comforting because we ourselves do it every day. knowing that a certain group of people has their own interpretation of songs is so validating. (@thatsmymaam, 2022)

Their reconstruction of a lesbian culture is also – maybe more importantly – a way for them to see themselves as a group with a history and a sense of actuality. What is more, at the same time as they are queering their fan object (a star text and actual texts that are widely received as heterosexual, if not normative), these fans, whether queer themselves or not,
engage in a queering of the ‘girlscape’ in the sense that (like others before them!<fnref n="28" />) they appropriate it to centre queer experiences, imageries and works of art. Another aspect of this queering of the ‘girlscape’ is the way they manage to confront the wider fandom with these reflections: indeed, it is now difficult to take part in online conversations about Taylor Swift and the materials she continues to release without ‘Gaylorism’ being brought up one way or another. Although admittedly, these conversations are still not devoid of resentment and, sometimes, homophobia, they do remain a space for thinking about sexuality and developing critical skills. While the bulk of this research was done in 2023, these dynamics show no sign of stopping: the ‘GaylorSwift’ sub-Reddit is still gaining members for instance, 49,000 in early 2025.

These reappropriations are part of the same gesture of both reception and creation: as Sedgwick (1990: 156) puts it, ‘the sensibility of camp-recognition always sees that it is dealing in reader relations and in projective fantasy (projective though not infrequently true) about the spaces and practices of cultural production’, ‘it acknowledges [...] that its perceptions are necessarily also creations’. Via different interpretive strategies, Swift’s fans reconstruct or fabricate new relationships between gender and subjectivity,<fnref n="29" /> sometimes with striking and humorous reflexivity.<fnref n="30" /> While Myles McNutt (2020: 86-88) discusses Swift’s relationship with feminism and highlights its limitations – her lack of intersectional perspective, silences, half-measures, inconsistency – and therefore its failure to impart real change, we might argue that political resistance is located in her fans – if only by virtue of their not having such a necessarily supportive relationship to the industry in which she operates. It might sound absurd to those used to equating popularity with progressive politics or even political relevance – Swift has been named *Time’s* 2023 Person of the Year. But I suggest we revisit and expand Farwell’s (1996: 61-62) theorisation of a lesbian narrative space as the subversion of the gendered structure of narrative by the breaking up of male bonding, the revision of the asymmetrical structural patterns of active agent and passive object, and the effect of these changes on the movement and thematics of the traditional narrative. Farwell’s (1996: 15, 62) interest is on the narrative categories or elements in which subjectivity is posited, such as narrator, narratee, protagonist, focaliser and closure; I argue that now more than ever we cannot do without the actual reader as a textual agent. Jenkins (1992/2013: 23) famously conceptualised fans as ‘textual poachers’, ‘active producers and manipulators of meanings’. Picking up Farwell’s (1996: 16-17) revision of Alicia Ostriker’s famous title, *Stealing the Language*, we might consider that Swift’s lesbian and queer fans steal the narrative, thus becoming powerful discursive and political agents.

If it were necessary to specify, the analysis proposed here obviously does not aim to put
any label on Taylor Swift’s sexuality. It is undeniable that her queer fans find in her texts an
echo of their own experience and the necessary material for lesbian readings of her music
and image, but Swift’s potential non-heterosexuality is only one possible explanation among
others. The phenomenon studied here of the co-construction of a lesbian space seems to me
to be productive, whatever its roots, for lesbian and queer studies, cultural studies and in
particular for fan studies – if only because it challenges the heteronormative representation

<footnote n="28">²⁸ On the One Direction fandom for example, see McCann and Southerton (2019).</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ For instance, as claimed by Twitter user @butchorpheus (2021) in reference to the song 'King of My Heart', 'calling a man the king of your body and soul as a woman is very weird and patriarchal but calling your girlfriend your king is very subversive and sexy'.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Thus, a well-known meme with the text 'looking for homoerotic subtext and if I cannot find it, I will create it' is re-used in a tweet captioned 'me listening to taylor swift's music' (@mitskillme, 2019).</footnote>
of the monolithic figure that would be ‘The Fangirl’, and that of pop fans as mindless
consumers. This being said, if Swift was ever to publicly position herself on a queer spectrum,
a rereading of this ‘poetics of closeting’ would undoubtedly be in order.

Biographical Note

Manon Berthier is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the Department of Literature, CERC research unit, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, France.

Contact: manon.berthier83@gmail.com

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Zimmerman, B (1990), *The Safe Sea of Women. Lesbian Fiction, 1969-1989*, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

## Audio-visual references

*Brokeback Mountain*, dir. Ang Lee, US, 2005.

*Carol*, dir. Todd Haynes, UK/US, 2015.

*Dickinson*, Apple TV+, 2019-2021.
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@kaleid-tay-scope (2019), ‘she can make me a drink’ in *Tumbler*. https://www.tumbler.com/kaleid-tay-scope/184403765765/she [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@kaleidoscopesanddreams (2020), ‘some thoughts about orange girl from yntcd’ in *Tumbler*. https://www.tumbler.com/all-my- possessions/190934042629/kaleidoscopesanddreams-some-thoughts-about [accessed: 13 May 2025].

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@kaylorkerfuffle (2020a), ‘When you see them back to back like this’ in *Tumbler*. https://www.tumbler.com/kaylorkerfuffle/622039304597848065/kaylor-kerfuffle [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@kaylorkerfuffle (2020b), ‘why are we all sleeping on “seven”’ in *Tumbler*. https://www.tumbler.com/kaylorkerfuffle/624856542407196672/jokingly-im-sorry- but-why-are-we-all-sleeping [accessed: 13 May 2025].

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@original-cypher (2019), 'A PR professional just explained to me why they believe Taylor Swift is queer' in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/original-cypher/186327327530/a-pr-professional-just-explained-to-me-why-they* [accessed: 13 May 2025].

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@tender-swift (2019b), ‘taylor swift + falling in love with her best friend’ in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/tender-swift/187248656091/taylor-swift-falling-in-love-with-her-best [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@thatsmymaam (2022), ‘i’ve been wanting to put this into words for so long’ in *Twitter*. https://twitter.com/thatsmymaam/status/1489427779854733312 [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@transforming-hufflepuff-deactiv (2020), ‘Thinking about how…’ in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/all-my-possessions/629986783306956800 [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@trixicbean (2021), ‘the very first night feels very fruity’ in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/trixicbean/667722270022778881/a-analysis [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@tswiftisgay (2020), ‘Taylor + the bisexual flag’ in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/tswiftisgay/630631281055645696/taylor-the-bisexual-flag [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@whatiwillsay (2021), ‘never forget that wonderland exists’ in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/whatiwillsay/642370842676822017/never-forget-that-wonderland-exists [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@youfuckingegg (2020), ‘i’m just like really embarrassed for everyone on my dash referring to james as “he”’ in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/youfuckingegg/624830454464430080/im-just-like-really-embarrassed-for-everyone-on [accessed: 13 May 2025].

@zorrxchicle (2019), ‘oh so if a man has sex with lots of women he’s cool and a player, but if I DO IT suddenly I’m a lesbian??’ in *Tumblr*. https://www.tumblr.com/zorrxchicle/187232602951 [accessed: 13 May 2025].