Subset of Taylor Swift fans who question her sexual identity are focus of new study

LAWRENCE — The term “Swifties” provides a catchall for describing fans of megastar Taylor Swift. But her expansive fanbase can get further subdivided.

“You have the ‘OG Swifties’ or ‘Debut Swifties,’ who are fans who’ve been with her from her country music days,” said Brian Donovan, professor of sociology at the University of Kansas.

“‘Swifties of Color’ are another interesting subset of fans, as are the ‘Swifty Over 50’ group. ‘Swemos’ are Swifties who are part of the emo culture.”

Donovan is now focusing on another thriving subset in a new paper titled “The Joy of Gaylor: Sexuality Identity in the Taylor Swift Fandom.” ‘Gaylors’ embrace subversive readings of Swift’s songs and seek to compile evidence that she is secretly queer. His study explores how and why those interpretations cultivate joy, shape personal identity and build community. It appears in the Journal of Fandom Studies.

The professor has made national news for being one of the first to specifically teach about the performer via a KU class titled The Sociology of Taylor Swift. The semester’s lessons are organized to mirror her career from a breakout country musician to the best-selling pop icon of her 2023-24 Eras Tour.

The Gaylor phenomenon has proven particularly intriguing from a sociological perspective for Donovan.

“Taylor has this image of being very heterosexual. Earlier in her career, she was criticized for singing and writing too much about her boyfriends and for being overly invested in patriarchal, heteronormative romance. For fans to find queer themes in her songs — or to think she is herself queer — is quite remarkable,” he said.

What is also surprising about Gaylors is that not all identify as queer themselves. Many heterosexual fans believe in the Gaylor theory.

“Gaylors are primarily queer women. But some of the most vocal opponents of the Gaylor theories are gay men,” Donovan said.

Such theories have been around since Swift’s earliest days. Rumors surrounded the close relationship she had with a musician on her tour. This phenomenon really took hold in 2020, coinciding with the release of Swift's “Folklore” album.

The concomitant theory is that all her boyfriends are PR stunts, according to Donovan. 

“There’s also a moderate Gaylor theory that says she’s bisexual and that she did date model Karlie Kloss but now appears to be in love with (Travis) Kelce,” Donovan said.

So far, scant concrete evidence has surfaced to support any theory.

“There’s nothing definitive where you can be like, ‘OK, this is the smoking gun.’ But there is quite a bit of evidence if you squint or read it in the right way, it’s suggestive that maybe she did have a relationship with Karlie Kloss,” Donovan said.

That squinting is most fixated on a 30-second clip of Swift allegedly kissing Kloss in the balcony at a concert for the band The 1975. Gaylors refer to this as “Kissgate.”

The closest Swift has come to a definitive declaration of her sexuality appeared in a 2019 Vogue magazine article where she said, “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.”

What does Donovan believe?

“I remain agnostic about the Gaylor theory because I’m more interested in how the fans construct that instead of my own opinion,” he said.

He also concedes speculating too much on a stranger’s sexuality introduces its own set of issues.

“It’s problematic because we don’t know them, and it’s a kind of parasocial notion that we do know them as fans. Once we think we know a celebrity, then we can start making demands on them about how they should run their personal life, and we can judge them for things that are in the private realm that maybe should remain private,” said Donovan, who admits David Bowie was the focus of his own first experience with musician fandom.

A faculty member at KU since 2001, Donovan researches gender, historical sociology, U.S. cultural history and sociology of law. His books include “American Gold Digger: Marriage, Money, and the Law from the Ziegfeld Follies to Anna Nicole Smith” and “Respectability on Trial: Sex Crimes in New York City, 1900-1919.”

Ultimately, Donovan himself remains conflicted about the dichotomy between loyal fan versus obsessive fan and speculation versus intrusion.

He said, “On the one hand, some of that personal speculation can turn toxic. On the other hand, I don’t think Gaylors are harming anyone by making YouTube videos or posts on TikTok. They are simply carving out a space for themselves within a very heteronormative fandom … and I think that’s kind of cool.”