Taylor Swift rebukes Netflix over 'deeply sexist' joke about her love life

Taylor Swift has criticised the Netflix sitcom Ginny & Georgia for making a “deeply sexist” joke about her dating history.

In a scene where the mother and daughter characters argue about relationship, Ginny tells her mother: “You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.”

Swift’s fans responded angrily and made the hashtag #RESPECTTAYLORSWIFT trend on Twitter over the weekend.

Yesterday, Swift chimed in: “Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY.”

The pop star also chided Netflix for broadcasting the joke after she had partnered with the streaming platform for her 2020 documentary Miss Americana. “This outfit doesn’t look cute on you,” she tweeted. “Happy Women’s History Month I guess.”

Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY. Also, @netflix after Miss Americana this outfit doesn’t look cute on you ???? Happy Women’s History Month I guess pic.twitter.com/2X0jEOXIWp

Neither Netflix nor the crew of Ginny & Georgia has responded to Swift’s tweet. Antonia Gentry, who plays Ginny, has received harassment from Swift fans on Instagram.

Swift’s transition from country star to mainstream pop star in the early 2010s brought with it mass tabloid coverage of her relationships. She sometimes played with this intrigue, sowing clues in the liner notes to her albums to covertly inform fans of the subjects of her songs.

By the time she released 1989 in 2014, fevered speculation over its presumed subject, Harry Styles, prompted Swift to begin denouncing the “sexist” obsession with her love life.

“You’re going to have people who are going to say, ‘Oh, you know, like, she just writes songs about her ex-boyfriends’,” she said on the Australian radio show Jules, Merrick and Sophie that year. “And I think frankly that’s a very sexist angle to take. No one says that about Ed Sheeran. No one says that about Bruno Mars. They’re all writing songs about their exes, their current girlfriends, their love life, and no one raises the red flag there.”

Swift’s outspokenness on the issue dovetailed with her steady embrace of feminist ideals, having distanced herself from the movement in her younger years. Her 2019 single The Man speculated on how her love life and professional achievements would be contextualised if she were male: “I would be complex / I would be cool / They’d say I played the field before I found someone to commit to,” she sang.

Swift has been dating actor Joe Alwyn – recently confirmed to star in the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends – for around four years.

The pop star is in the process of rerecording her first six albums to regain control over her catalogue after the master recordings were bought and resold by music mogul Scooter Braun, a deal that she said “stripped me of my life’s work”.