He’s not the first to notice this idea running through Swift’s lyrics, though others have been more charitable in their description of it. As Michelle Goldberg explained in an op-ed in The New York Times, Taylor Swift caters to a “huge underserved market for entertainment that takes the feelings of women and girls seriously.” To conservatives, this means that Swift is feeding into the reactionary feminist politics of her listeners. Hemingway’s argument is essentially that when women publicly discuss their personal experiences with men, it is the pure product of man-hating and attracts, or even creates, so-called man-hating listeners.
This gets at the root of how conservatives view Swift—it’s a somewhat paradoxical demonstration of political influence, in which Swift reflects the ideas and temperament of her fans while simultaneously demonstrating the ability to conduct her audience along similar lines. It’s not just that Swift is popular, it’s that she seemingly directs and determines the worldview of a large swath of young people, and they, perhaps, influence hers in return.
Swift doesn’t actually act at the urging of her devotees all that often, but conservatives don’t care to make that distinction. The not-so-political Swift is a political lightning rod that could summon power at any time—even at a football game. The Twitter storm launched by Swift’s appearance at the Kansas City Chiefs game gets to the heart of why she is like catnip to conservatives looking to complain. It’s not because she is rich, famous, and beautiful—it’s because of her vast influence over a younger demographic that conservatives have famously struggled to attract or exert an influence upon themselves.