Taylor Swift sent a ho hum little tweet about how "proud" she was of all the women who marched on Saturday - instead of marching herself. And she got absolutely ripped apart for it, in a new trend of TSwift Terrorizing that has become prominent in many of the Internet's feminist corners.
Our generation is all about "receipts" these days. Considering that half of everything that dribbles from our new president's mouth is a lie, I'd say we're lucky that the Internet is an endless database of clap-back material. If you don't keep your word, you'll be found out - we're all more accountable than ever. If you claim to support social issues, but don't show up when it matters, you'll become one with The Enemy, regardless of how nice your 'protest tweet' was.
I can't defend TSwift here, because why should I? It is lame that she didn't march. Yeah, it is. It's lame. I've never been on the anti-TSwift train and I won't get on it now. But she's done things like this that have alienated or disappointed her young female fan base before, and she should know better. She wants to consider herself a voice for our generation, well, showing up to the stuff our entire generation shows up for just seems fair.
But at the same time, to police someone's non-action like that makes me pretty uncomfortable. Our constant online presence makes our every move trackable. Only the paranoid or inflatedly self-involved actually believe they're being tracked by the government. But in reality, we are tracking the movements, the doings and now, non-doings, of celebrities. And that's a little cringe-worthy, if you believe - as all the young women who marched ought to - in an inalienable right to privacy.
It's interesting to see that the two screenshots are from Twitter. Though I don't regularly check gossip sites, I truly don't need them when I have my Twitter timeline to inform me who to hate. It's a community that fosters some of the most ridiculous content, as Earl Sweatshirt put it during an interview with Pitchfork "Sometimes Twitter makes me wanna fucking kill myself". But other times, I'm able to see notable activists like Shaun King (@ShaunKing) and Deray (@deray) inspire people to organize and to not be blinded by White mainstream media, even thought they're on a mainstream platforms. The great thing about Twitter is that you can follow accounts like @dog_rates that literally rate dogs on a very inconsistent scale of 1-10, while simultaneously being in the loop of what celebrity did what, and find that someone has already perfectly put into words how you feel in 140 characters or less with pictures included!
ReplyDeleteIn this case, the online backlash to Taylor Swift's Women's March tweet doesn't seem so disproportionate or unwarranted when we take into consideration the multiplicity of forces feeding into it. For many, Taylor Swift has installed herself as the virtual figurehead of "white feminism," the practice of feminism which assumes the priorities and needs of white women as the default and evades critical analysis on any axis other than gender identity. Her brand of feminism has been one that opportunistically asserts that feminists are simply working women who have a tight "squad" of female friends, not one that encourages a deeper examination of institutional sexism or intersectional issues. A prime example of her tone-deaf tendencies was her Twitter feud with Nicki Minaj in July 2015, in which she accused Minaj of "[pitting] women against each other" and derailed Minaj's commentary on the intersection of race and gender in VMA music video nominations.
ReplyDeleteWhen it came to the Women's March, much of the conversation in planning and programming centered around whether it—and the ascendant women's movement rising up to resist the Trump administration—would successfully prioritize the unique issues facing women of color. The election confronted countless white feminists with the reality that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. Suddenly, rallying cries insisting that "we're all the same" seem to ring hollow. In this context, Taylor Swift's tweet exemplifies exactly the type of mainstream, marketplace feminism that expresses "solidarity" without taking substantive action, co-opting social justice for individual gain. In a Twitter climate prone to promoting hashtags like #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, it's not surprising T. Swifty got a swift kick in the butt for her decision to weigh in superficially on the March.
True all of that :-)
DeleteAnd loved that the Women's March was organized by 3 women of color!
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