i've refrained from bitching about Taylor Swift being given Time POY cover as one of the "Silence Breakers," but I gotta say a few things quick...(and none of this invalidates her perspective or experience, but rather seeks to consider why she is being heralded when others aren't. and those are important critical questions/conversations) that said, Taylor has built her career out of racist silence. After the Kanye interruption, Taylor refused to speak about the issue and turned it into a career builder -- white girl in peril against a black man. she has yet to put that racist white woman silence to bed and continues to profit off it for this brand new "Reputation" era. she's built her career out of being a victim -- not a survivor, but a victim. and that's significant because it draws on racist scripts to denounce claims leveled against her. instead of "breaking the silence" around white supremacy and the alt-right and the way they were utilizing and hyping her music, she chose to try to sue and intimidate writers pointing out her silence rather than just denounce white supremacy. she's constantly used power and legal action to attempt to silence anyone that tries to criticize her for valid reason -- all opinion based. she exerts her power to silence others, as white women have been wont to do.
she went through something and sued the person that groped her and won and only asked for $1 settlement, which proved an important point. but she did so as a way to launch her new album. which is suspect. anyway, Taylor Swift has a long, long history of using silence to protect her white womanhood in insidious ways -- or use silence to weaponize her white womanhood for capitalism and against others in racist ways. including Taylor Swift in this movement/moment just feels super disingenuous and fake. even within the category of white women, Kesha has been fighting for her life for years over this & released a powerful manifesto this year. still Time chooses boring-ass Taylor.
i don't think Taylor is lying about what happened to her. but i also think she might be using it for other purposes. those two things can both be true. and i know FIRST - believe women. i do. but history has also taught us that white women have used that default belief to protect themselves and get others killed or maligned. in this pseudo-hypothetical context, those things matter too. if we're not gonna investigate the layers and context of things like this, then Taylor Swift again gets to be the aryan princess that can do no wrong and we're stuck in the violent white supremacist politics of the past (and present). And she's the ultimate "silence breaker"
(i need to log off. i'm too cynical tonight -- it's still true though.)