Taylor Swift's Success, Explained in One Word? Whiteness.

Why pop music's biggest star owes all her fame and fortune to white feminism ... and the jealousy of others.

  
By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

When Taylor Swift - a native Pennsylvanian born to a Merill Lynch V.P. and a mutual fund marketing executive - first popped up on the country music scene in the late 2000s, I - for one - didn't expect her to go on to become the biggest crossover music star of the 21st century. Alas, the savvy businesswoman she's always been - she had advertising deals with Maybelline and Abercrombie and Fitch in middle school and was inked to a major record label at 14 - perhaps we never should of doubted her.

Swift's latest album, 1989, is one of the most successful albums of the digital download era, with more than 8 million copies sold in one year's time. With concert revenue and endorsements factored in, Forbes estimates Swift stands to make $80 million in 2015 alone. Other estimates approximate her net worth to be as high as $280 million.

As of late 2015, 1989 - so popular that a Google search produces its Wikipedia article before the Wikipedia article for 1989, the actual year - has resulted in no less than seven singles. It's no doubt a pop culture phenomenon, but per the Internet - the cyber emporium of umbrage and envy it is - Taylor's success has precious little to do with her catchy, brilliantly over-produced pop tunes and flashy music videos and deft self-marketing. Rather, Ms. Swift is little more than a beneficiary of one of contemporary society's greatest injustices, white feminism.

Ya'll know what white feminism is, don't you? Well, if not, pull a chair on up and Uncle Jimbo will tell 'ya all 'ya needs to know. Back in the late 1980s, there was this woman named Kimberle Crenshaw, who decided that traditional second wave feminism wasn't doing an adequate enough job addressing the plight of black women. So she came up with this concept called "intersectionality," which postulates that the subordination of black women cannot be fully explained or remedied unless both their inherent blackness and femaleness are considered simultaneously. The example she is most famous for includes a discrimination lawsuit filed by several General Motors workers who just so happened to be black and female; since the company hired both men and women and black people and white people, the double whammy of being African-American and porting about XX chromosomes kept them from being able to technically cry foul. All in all, it's a pretty sound theory, as far as modern-day feminist ideology is concerned. (Let's just, uh, overlook Crenshaw's other theories about white people hating O.J. for being black and not because he got away with double homicide and how Trayvon Martin's death embodied contemporary white racism, even though the guy that shot him was ... well, kinda' Hispanic.) 

All right, so what does this have to do with Taylor Swift, you may be wondering? Well, that's where the whole "white feminism" thing comes into play. Long story short, white feminism is whenever any melanin-deficient cisgender female who doesn't subscribe to an ethos of feminism that takes intersectionality into consideration. To quote a blog that features no less than eight exposed breasts as its featured image, "you are not automatically a white feminist because you are a white heterosexual woman, but you are a white feminist if your feminism is not intersectional and only benefits white cis women." Need a little bit more clarification? Well, here's another site that comes complete with a handy-dandy Venn diagram, as well as such hilarious advice for white women as "being a good ally means recognizing that sometimes your input is not needed or wanted" and "it can be very off-putting to feel attacked for a transgression that you know yourself not to be guilty of, but in the context of social justice and movement building, if you're feeling attacked, it probably means you're having your privilege challenged." [LPT: for god's sake, don't ever say any of those things to black women, though.]

Seeing as how Taylor Swift is one of the most recognizable celebrities on the planet - not to mention her statuesque frame, blazing azure eyes and blonde locks pretty much make her an Aryan Superwoman by default - it's not at all surprising that a lot of anti-white feminism rancor is tossed her way. Indeed, she's literally front and center in the header photo of a caustic article titled "The Brutal Truth Every White Feminist Needs to Hear," which touches upon the topic of intersectionality by way of ... uh, the placement of hair care products at pharmacies? After Swift took to Twitter to strike back against a needlessly antagonistic Nicki Minaj (who was being a sour sport over not getting an MTV award nominations and playing the race card like a Nintendo controller), a whiny windbag ... I mean, esteemed journalist ... over at the Independent described Taylor as "white feminism's off-beat, bambi-legged Patronus" - and even after looking up what the fuck a "Patronus" was, I still have no clue what that insult(?) is supposed to mean. That pro-Nicki/anti-Taylor sentiment is echoed in the subtly titled Blavity op-ed "Taylor Swift Just Exemplified What's Wrong with White Feminism," in which the authoress of color rails against white women for liking Amy Schumer movies and not tweeting about police brutality and transphobia enough. Heck, Swift even has drawn the ire of noted anti-feminist feminist Camille Pagli, who condemned Tay-Tay as a "an obnoxious Nazi Barbie" whose "twinkly persona is such a scary flashback to the fascist blondes who ruled the social scene during my youth."

As caustic and condemnatory as those editorials were, they all pale in comparison to an Everyday Feminism post titled "5 Ways Taylor Swift Exemplifies White Feminism - And Why That's a Problem" (apparently, headline writing has never been these types of bloggers' fortes), which denounces T.S. for all of the following:

• Appropriating "black culture" and objectifying women of color in the music video for "Shake It Off" - not that African American women would ever adapt artifacts of Anglo-Saxon culture or degrade other women of color in their music.
• Trivializing female on male domestic violence in "Blank Space" - alas, the authoress remains mum on real life intimate partner violence, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only impacts a good 600,000 more men than women in the U.S. each year.
• Having too many white people in the video for "Bad Blood" - which prominently features Kendrick Lamar, Selena Gomez and Zendaya, among others. The authoress also rails against Taylor for hanging out with too many good looking white women ("I don't trust fellow white people when their only friends are other white people," the penwoman states) and, because no one can ever win, responding to accusations of white feminism by bringing more black people with her on tour.
• Glamorizing colonialism with "Wildest Dreams" - because goddamn her for not bringing up the plight of indigenous peoples in a music video paying homage to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. By that same token, should we criticize Ja Rule and Ashanti for not bringing up the enslavement of Italians by African conquerors in their nod to Grease, and condemn Sean Kingston for trivializing the subject of suicide (which disproportionately impacts whites and Asians in the United States?)

Unable to find anything objectionable in the video for "Style," the authoress instead attacks Taylor for only sleeping with, and I quote "straight, cis, able-bodied, fit, middle-to-upper class, white dude[s]." Because nothing says feminism, I suppose, quite like telling another woman what she needs to stick in her vagina. Bonus hypocrisy points: from the looks of it, the writer in question isn't dating a homosexual, transgender, wheelchair-bound, morbidly obese, impoverished, melaninated woman, either. 

If all of this self-righteous vehemence directed towards Taylor seems more than a little suspicious to you, it should. Granted, she did grow up wealthy and was groomed by mega-conglomerates to sell merchandise by the truckload, but you can also say the very same thing about Beyonce and Ariana Grande. Despite the accusations of chauvinism and racism, Swift's lyrics can hardly be considered offensive - her breathy-but-still-PG-rated entendres in "Wildest Dreams" are about as explicit as her music gets. Meanwhile, Azealia Banks and Rihanna have no problems tossing out the terms "bitch" and "nigga" ad nausem in such delightful, women-celebrating tunes as "Hood Bitch," and"Bitch Better Have My Money," while Taylor's number one "victim" Nicki Minaj croons such heartwarming lyrics as "look at ya'll bitch ass niggas, stop lyin' on your dick ass niggas" ... and sometimes, at private concerts for Angolan dictators, to boot. 

Whereas any number of pop and hip-hop starlets nowadays "twerk" in front of pre-teen audiences (periodically showing up at awards shows with their breasts exposed, in some cases), Swift's sexualization is limited to a bare midriff and her trademark ruby pout (and yes, there are indeed individuals out there who feel as if Taylor's iconic red lip look somehow smacks of racism.) And if Taylor's sappy break-up ballads regent of pungent heteronormativity, what to make of the oeuvre of Missy Elliot, whose catalog is glutted with such horrifically straight lyrics as "if you got a big dick, let me search it',"small dick, get no chicks" and "swing that dick in my direction, i'll be out of control?"

Of course, one can't help but detect just a smidge of hypocrisy in the anti-Taylor bandwagon ... and really, the anti-white feminist movement as a collective. Indeed, as inadvertently demonstrated by self-described "vegan anti-racist changemaker" Aph Ko, many black feminists who have subsumed themselves into the blogosphere echo-chamber are doing precisely the same thing they are mercilessly decrying white feminists for doing - namely, co-opting and appropriating the philosophical frameworks forged by people who hail from different ethno-racial backgrounds and adhering to a strict, tribalistic Tao that not only encourages in-group conformity - to the point it almost borders on ideological self-segregation - but absolutely demands it. 

"White feminists use theories and perspectives from women of color (and even imagery) to seem as though they're being diverse," Ko oh-so-ironically cries, "but effectively, only really care about their own experiences as well as propping up their own voices." (And if that isn't a clear-cut example of the pot calling the kettle ... itself ... I don't know what is.)

For anti-white-feminist types (many of whom, oh-so ironically, only view whites as worthwhile "allies" when they have paid a public penance and dedicated themselves and their resources to aiding and abetting their initiatives and furthering their self-serving agendas), Taylor is about as easy a target as one can imagine. She's omnipresent, her media image is about as spotless as they come, she's been named the most charitable celebrity in Hollywood three years in a row and she's idolized by millions of girls the world over. She's successful, she's a world-class self promoter and she doesn't have to use sex appeal to sell concert tickets. The only thing more lily white than her complexion, it seems, is her reputation - and its not like other women would ever be envious, resentful and obsessive over that, right?

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The Marginalization of the Heterosexual, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Male?

Are the relatively recent cries of oppression just a bunch of bellyaching, or is there actually a granule of truth to the majority’s accusations of persecution?

The future, it appears, doesn’t look to good for Caucasian males.

According to United States Census Bureau projections, the total percentage of white people in the U.S. in 2060 will be just 43 percent -- making white people a plural “minority” for the first time in the country since white folks killed off all the Indians way back when.

According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, the birth rates for males in the U.S. have dropped considerably over the last 40 years, with 104.6 male births being born for every 100 girls born in the U.S. in 2001. However, in 1970, the ratio was 105.5-to-100, and among white births? The ratio dropped from 105.9-to-104.7 over the same time frame.

Those 2060 Census projections tell us that the male to female birth ratio will remain locked at 104.7-to-100 for the next 45 or so years, but at the same time, the contemporary ratio of males to females in the U.S., ages 18-to-65 right now is just 98.9 men for every 100 women. And looking at retirement-age statistics, things get even worse: regarding the nation’s current 65-and-older population, there’s just 77 men for every 100 women in the U.S.

From 2010 to 2100, the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts that the male-to-female gap will close just marginally, with the ratio predicted to increase from 97-to-100 in 2010 to about 99-to-100 by the dawn of the 22nd century. The wildcard here is the average life expectancy, which from 2010 to 2100, is supposed to jump from 81.3 to 90.8 for females, while expectancies for males are projected to increase from 76.2 to just 85.7. Coupled with a seemingly slight increase in the net production rate (the number of females born per woman is predicted to increase from 1.00 to 1.02), and you have yourselves a fairly unavoidable predicament: whatever shape America’s future takes, it’s one that’s pretty much guaranteed to have less males in it.

On the global level, UN predictions have the United States population swelling to about 400 million or so in 2100. Besides Russia and France, it’s the only country with a sizable Caucasian population to make the list of most populous countries by the time the 22nd century kicks off -- while mass population increases are predicted throughout Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, overall population totals in Europe and the Americas are expected to bottom out, and hard.

No doubt reading the proverbial scrawling on the wall, some of the more extreme-minded white folks out there have begun to pitch fits about this all-but-inevitable demographical switch-up, resulting in the explosion of both men’s rights (or “anti-misandry”) organizations and pseudo white nationalists groups over the course of what seems to be just a few years…heck, maybe even the last few months, for that matter.

On one side of the fence (and on opposite sides of the Atlantic), an expected reaction to the biological decline of whites has been nativist movements in the U.S. (where groups like VDARE declare that Hispanic immigrants and African-Americans of supposed lesser intelligence are destined to burn U.S. culture to the ground) and continental alliances like “Stop the Islamification of Europe”, who are convinced that Caucasian genes are soon to be extinct due to dwindling European birthrates in conjunction with mass Muslim immigration. To be fair, organizations of the like have been fairly visible for quite some time, but it hasn’t been until fairly recently that said organizations have taken up this deathly serious, pseudo-genetic jihad against absolutely unstoppable statistical realities.

Of course, it’s quite difficult to talk about white males without also talking about two of the utmost “qualifiers” for Anglo-Saxon-hood -- those being heterosexuality and Protestantism. Needless to say, quite a number of miffed, hyper-heterosexual, hyper non-Catholic honks have taken to the Internets in protest, accusing the proliferation of the “homosexual” and “atheist” agendas as global endeavors to eradicate “whiteness” from the face of the Earth.

With that in mind, it’s a little hard to see where all of this “persecution” is supposedly taking place: currently, homosexuals across the “gay spectrum” -- meaning, ostensibly, everyone from “barsexual” college girls that occasionally French kiss one another to post-op transsexual Ultimate fighters -- make up less than 4 percent of the national populace. By comparison, an estimated 30 percent of Americans -- including a whopping 42 percent of U.S. males  -- have suffered from alcoholism at some point in their lives, while about 3.5 percent of the U.S. population, a sum tantamount to the nation’s estimated LGBTQI populace, are purported to suffered from some form of PTSD. Despite representing a good 96 percent of the entire national population, however, this hasn’t prevented a great number of extinction-threatened white men from claiming to be victims of some nefarious plan to “homosexualize” American culture.

Even Protestants (*) -- in 2008, representing a plurality of the total American populace -- claim to be objects of persecution in this, the waning days of supposed white male superiority. This, despite projections from the Pew Research Center that assert that the number of Christians in the US is expected to INCREASE from about 250 million right now to an assumed 329 million in 2050 (and making things really interesting? The same forecast predicts China -- yes, that China -- to have the world’s second highest per capita Christian population by the midpoint of the 21st century.)

(*) Why Protestants instead of just Christians, in general? Primarily because larger throngs of non-Caucasians are Catholic rather than Protestant - indeed, outside of every predominantly Anglo-Saxon country on Earth (which is most of them), it’s pretty much a guarantee that if someone’s Christian, they’re going to be one of the Catholic denomination (or some other nationalist orthodoxy which doesn't really resemble Protestantism at all.)

In the face of such a perceived decline in global power (let us not forget that most of the world’s most powerful conglomerates are still owned by white men, and perhaps the white man’s “greatest” cultural imposition -- the English language -- remains the international lingua franca of business and politics) it’s not surprising that so many frightened white folks take refuge in these extremist ideologies. Indeed, this perceived “diminishment” of Caucasian influence has led some -- including Anders Breivik -- to retaliate with extremely deadly force. Alas, while many culturally threatened white men turn to pseudo (and sometimes, just straight-up) racist causes and organizations to quell the pain of their own envisioned downfall, others have instead been drawn to what can only be called a horrifically misguided rejoinder to feminism.

The Men’s Rights Movement isn’t necessarily a new thing -- according to the world’s most reliable source of information, it’s been a fairly sizable cause since at least the 1970s -- but it hasn’t been until recently, as in, the last five or so years, that the cultural spotlight has been focused on the matter.

Now, we're not saying that Jimmy Buffet should contact his lawyers are anything, but...

With organizational monikers like “A Voice For Men,” “The Men’s Rights Association” and “The National Center for Men,” thousands of wannabe Al Bundys have congregated together, establishing what is, in essence, their own chapters of the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood. And unlike the protagonists of “Married…with Children,” the supporters of such organizations treat their cause as a serious political matter, tackling hard-hitting issues like domestic abuse laws and paternal guardian rights with the sort of gruff self-righteousness that would surely make Gloria Steinham envious. Well, probably more furious than envious, but whatever.

The MensRights subreddit  -- populated, as of May 2013, with almost 70,000 subscribed readers -- teems with vein-popping declarations of reverse gender discrimination.

“Female Teachers Give Male Pupils Lower Marks, Claims Study” reads one post.

“Norway’s first female admiral was hired illegally,” reads another.

“Lauryn Hill gets 3 months for failing to file taxes. Wesley Snipes got 3 years,” reads yet another.

On a “fact sheet” posted on the same forum, a number of examples of “male discrimination” are listed. Among other tidbits, the frequenters of the site note the following as “proof” that gender inequality is a reality, only tilted against those with penises:

- Circumcising male babies “against their will” is illegal, while female circumcision remains illegal. (Note how the language makes no clear distinction between the forced genital mutilation of women and the common medical practice of removing a day old infant’s foreskin.)

- Female-owned businesses receive free money from the government, simply because they are owned by females (as verified by a Reason Magazine op-ed, far and away the least biased news source in the history of humanity.)

- The majority of homeless are men. (No doubt due to some mysterious, international cabal of men-haters, and having nothing at all to do with the poor, individual decision-making of said homeless individuals.)

Of course, these organizations say nary a damn thing about the pay wage gap, which in case you haven’t heard, favors men by a ludicrous margin. Nor do these organizations bring up the fact that a majority of Fortune 500 companies are owned by males (almost exclusively of the Caucasoid variety, I might add), and that while women represent a clear majority in the total U.S. population, females only account for about 38 percent of the 113th Congress.

Now, do these men’s rights advocates have some basis in their accusation of legal and educational practice discrepancies among the sexes? Well, seeing as how 59 percent of graduate students in America are female, and that mothers receive primary custody anywhere from 66 percent to 88 percent of the time in U.S. divorce hearings, I think it’s stupid to say that they’re not onto something. That said, if there is such a pervasive bias against men in American culture in general, than how come men, despite being a statistical minority, still maintain almost utter control of the nation’s economic and political institutions?

...and I will give you one guess as to which major cable news website this little exchange comes from...

In that, you start seeing the fundamental absurdity of the “discriminated man” theory. Granted, there may be some institutional peculiarities at play, but by and large, social power is still vested, almost exclusively, in the hands of males in the United States. The same can very much be said of Christians, white people and heterosexuals -- together, a quartet of allegedly persecuted majorities that claim to be marginalized by those that are actually marginalized as peoples.

Even in the midst of all those afore-mentioned demographical changes that are almost certain to occur over the next 100 years or so in the States, the status quo doesn’t seem like it will be getting any less status or quo than it is right now. Unless the combined minorities of America form some sort of militantly anti-whitey voting bloc between now and 2050, it seems very unlikely that Caucasian Americans will lose any of their grip on national economic and political power over the 21st century. While there may be less men than women, and more non-whites than there used to, it’s not really a sure bet that this demographical change will effectively result in more women in “minority” populations obtaining political or cultural power. In fact, through the global expansion of Christianity and English, it’s quite likely that Anglo-Saxon Protestants could actually increase their worldwide, geopolitical clout over the next decade: whatever perceived cultural power the supposedly oppressed white man may lose in a hypothetical “Eurabia” or “Aztlan,” the WASP would almost certainly make up for with a heightened cultural presence in Asia and, irony of ironies, central-Africa.

Realistically, outside of a few, comparatively minor legal policies and institutional practices (which in no way, shape or form seem to have any profound influence on the gender dynamics of social power in the U.S.), there can hardly be considered a systemic oppression of males in America, at all. Rather, most of the cries of “male persecution” are nothing more than the piping of radicalized losers, who attempt to mask their own social ineptitude under ridiculous, synthetic causes such as “involuntary celibacy” or “reverse racism.”

There’s something to be said of a peoples that can be a geographical, economic and social majority -- with utmost control of a nation’s cultural institutions, to boot -- and still claim to be a marginalized population.

And whatever that “something to be said” is? I assure you…it’s probably not worth wasting your time to hear.

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