Let’s call the abuse of Taylor Swift what it really is – a hate crime against women

It doesn’t matter what your thoughts are on the artist’s latest relationship, writes Olivia Petter – we should not be talking about women this way in 2023

Taylor Swift enjoys the game, and then endures a torrent of misogynistic abuse (Getty)

Of all the women in the public eye, Taylor Swift is one that people love to hate. Maybe it’s because she’s inordinately successful – her Eras tour is likely to be the highest-grossing tour of all time with an estimated $1.4bn in revenue. It could be because she’s incredibly talented – have you listened to the lyrics on her Folklore album? Maybe it’s because she’s exceptionally beautiful – that hair! Those eyes! That smile!

Or... perhaps it’s just that she’s a woman.

As a long-term, die-hard Swifty (this is what us Swift fans call ourselves), I have often wondered what it is about my favourite golden girl with the voice of an angry angel and the brain of an Ivy League English professor that riles people up quite so much.

Anyone who has seen her Miss Americana documentary for Netflix from 2020 will know that the 33-year-old has long been the subject of internet bile, with critics attacking everything from her vocals and the way she dresses, to her weight and the men she’s dated.

In the latest spate of hatred against Swift, it seems to be the latter that is causing the issue. You see, following a breakup with her long-term boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, and a rather surprising (though short-lived) fling with 1975 frontman Matty Healy, Swift has a new man in her life: Travis Kelce. The American football player is considered one of the best athletes in the game, and Swift has already made a handful of notable appearances at some of his big games.

Most recently, Swift was seen attending the Kansas City Chiefs-New York Jets game to watch Kelce play, alongside a close friend, Blake Lively, and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds. Following the game, though, Barstool Sports personalities Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Eric “PFT Commenter” Sollenberger – hosts of the popular Pardon My Take podcast – decided to weigh in on Swift’s presence with a series of sexist comments, calling her “bad for football” and making lewd jokes about “Taylor Swift’s vagina." 

Elsewhere in the podcast, Katz admitted that he’d accept Swift’s presence at Chiefs games if she and Kelce were to “release a sex video”, as he described what crude details the video would need to include for him to accept the rumoured relationship. 

It’s a hideous series of comments to read in full. Here is one of the most successful women in the world being reduced to nothing but a sex object by two male sports fans. It’s textbook misogyny: what better way to minimise a powerful woman than by talking about her sex life, or making references to her genitals? We’ve seen it before, and I’m sure we’ll see it again – but hasn’t Swift had to deal with enough of this already?

For years, critics fixated on her love life, often neglecting to mention her music at all in long reads about who she was rumoured to be dating at the time. She is a woman that has, for far too long, been defined by the men in her life. At least by those without the common sense to actually listen to her music and show her even a modicum of respect as an artist. 

Enough is enough. As the actor Rachel Zegler put it in a tweet, “You will never see people speaking this way about a man. That goes for a lot of different scenarios. We do not pick apart men’s attitudes and relationships the way we do women’s and it’s not always just men who speak this way about us. Women can and do, too. It sucks.”

It’s 2023; this sort of language should not be tolerated, let alone broadcast on a popular podcast. However, when it is, we should recognise it for what it is: hate speech spouted by men who are threatened by successful women, and therefore feel compelled to sexualise them in order to preserve their flimsy, fragile egos. How sad for them.