Taylor Swift Addresses Bisexual Rumors in ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ Prologue

Taylor Swift just dropped her “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” with a message to fans in the prologue.

Swift released the original album in 2014 when she was 24, so the prologue had her reflecting on that era of her life.

Swift writes that at the time, she wanted to reinvent herself while silencing the voices “that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman.”

She explained, “You see — in the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming — the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy-crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt.”

Taylor continued, “It became clear to me that for me, there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so, I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era.”

She thought, “If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that, right?”

Swift added, “I would learn later on that people could and people would,” likely referring to the bisexual rumors about herself and women from her squad at the time, like Karlie Kloss.

Later, she added, “Maybe a girl who surrounds herself with female friends in adulthood is making up for a lack of them in childhood (not starting a tyrannical hot girl cult).”