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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Taylor Swift is neither Jewish nor a Zoomer, but you're correct: every single one of her songs is about exactly this.

This is not even a remotely accurate characterization of her lyrical content.

If you're tied up about it specifically needing to be about the sex act itself, sure.

That doesn't not make every Taylor Swift song the PG-rated version of that.

The specific claim was "men are bad at sex and women are better off pleasuring themselves", so that seems pretty constrained to the sex act itself. Broadening it to "general dissatisfaction with men" seems like goalpost-moving.

“What if she’s actually hating this right now? And she’s going to tell her friends or social media followers how bad it was later?”

Yeah, I have no idea why that expectation would be related at all to the collective consciousness or male willingness to unironically commit to a woman considering most of the popular media is all about celebrating women doing literally this.

seems like goalpost-moving

If sex and relationships had nothing to do with each other, maybe.

No, she literally has a ton of songs that are not about break-ups, not about disappointment or angst about a former partner, etc. This idea that all of her songs are breakup songs is nothing but a meme, assisted by the fact that she’s, well, had a lot of breakups in her personal life. It’s not hard to look up her lyrics, though, and a large chunk of them are actually something close to the polar opposite of what you’re suggesting.

This idea that all of her songs are breakup songs is

what you're naturally going to converge on if you turn on any random Spotify playlist. It's not so much a meme as it is what actually gets played; I have no problem admitting that not all country songs are some variation of the guy's wife/dog/truck leaving him, but it's most of what actually makes it onto the airwaves.

Huh? Literally some of her biggest hits are not breakup songs. “You Belong With Me”. “Mine”. “Love Story”. “Shake It Off”. “Delicate”. “Wildest Dreams”. “End Game”. “Lavender Haze”. “Fearless”. “Anti-Hero”. All of these are either very sincere love songs, or about something other than relationships entirely.

And considering your list contains literally every Taylor Swift song I know the name of, I for one have no fucking idea what Sin is talking about.

I'm pretty sure if you do a statistical analysis of the primary themes of Taylor Swift singles discography the majority are not breakup songs. But she has produced a huge amount of stuff that gets played on Hot 100 type radio/streaming, so it's easy to forget some. For example "I Knew You Were Trouble" and "All Too Well" are explicitly breakup songs about "bad" former lovers. They both got substantial air play and feature in the Eras Tour set-list. The set-list is a bit over three hours so the statement:

you'll usually hear one within the hour

is probably true. Assuming the set list is representative of what gets played on a all Taylor all the time stream, and I have forgotten at least one of her breakup songs.