There is a sadness in this world.

i wasn’t going to say anything because i really just think the whole thing is dumb and i don’t care, but i guess i will say that what bothers me is how this fits into the bigger picture of which things she chooses to respond to and ~use her platform for~ or whatever.

it just feels like really frequently when there are huge social issues that become part of the national conversation, people will defend her not using her platform to say anything because she “doesn’t want to dilute the power of her voice” or whatever, so that when she does say things they are really impactful. which is like.. okay, i can understand wanting to throw your whole weight behind a few political issues that you can really push for instead of just blindly and superficially posting about everything, and yeah i guess it makes sense that you would start with things that you have firsthand personal experience with, but she kind of undermines the argument about not diluting her voice or only wanting to use her platform for the most important and impactful issues when she responds at an 11 any time there’s any slight against her—not even necessarily women broadly speaking, but her specifically.

like she’s not an Extremely Online celebrity who regularly interacts with people publicly outside of highly choreographed album promotion, she hasn’t been for years, which is great and i genuinely think that’s healthier for everyone involved. but the thing is that consequently everything she does say takes on more weight (which is, as i said, kind of the point according to people who defend her choice to not speak up on certain things). if someone who is online all the time and comments on everything is like “oh this joke about me was misogynistic and not funny yikes,” that’s different than taylor framing it with almost the same level of gravitas as she uses for her statements about huge structural social and political issues.

and yes i do understand that these kind of comments are part of a misogynistic culture etc etc and i agree it was a cheap joke that wasn’t funny at all, i agree that comedy that hinges on women’s appearance or dating life is generally bad, but to act like this is just about Women’s History Month and defending all hard working women, and not about the fact that the joke was about her specifically… hm.

plus the fact that she mentioned @/netflix and miss americana—like i guess you could argue that was meant to be like oh i’d hoped that we’d moved past this kind of cheap misogynistic humor as a society, but it really did feel like she was leveraging the huge amount of influence she has as a brand to say that because she gave her big documentary to their streaming platform when she could have chosen to go anywhere with it, nothing they produce in the future is allowed to joke about her or mention her in anything less than an unambiguously positive light ever again. and given the fact that she has also worked with disney+, hulu, and amazon, she has the same kind leverage at all those other places too. so. hm.