Taylor Swift, Matty Healy and a lot of bad blood
Weird coincidence alert! Taylor Swift recently released a collaboration with rapper Ice Spice on a remix of her Midnights track Karma. That’s a big deal for two reasons: 1) Ice Spice is going to be the first Black woman to feature on a Swift song; 2) Matty Healy, the frontman of the band the 1975 and the man that Swift is rumoured to be dating, laughed at some racist jokes about the Bronx rapper on a recent podcast. It’s leading a lot of people to ask: is the Swift/Ice Spice collaboration a calculated attempt at damage control? Is this a cynical PR move? Or is the convenient timing just a fluke?
It’s impossible to say for sure. What is clear is that Swift’s army of passionate fans are less than thrilled about the megastar’s rumoured romance with Healy, who has cultivated an “edgelord” persona and always seems to be battling one controversy or another. The Ice Spice episode is in the headlines now because of the connection to Swift, but it actually happened back in January when Healy appeared on a podcast called The Adam Friedland Show and mentioned that he tried to message the rapper on Instagram. The two hosts of the show, Friedland and Nick Mullen – who are famous for starting a podcast called Cum Town which is full of “ironic” bigotry – then had a good little giggle while they called the rapper an “Inuit spice girl”, “a fucking Eskimo or something” and a “chubby Chinese lady” (Ice Spice is Nigerian and Dominican). They also did racist impersonations of various different accents while Healy laughs along. Healy later said he was “kind of a bit sorry” if he upset Ice Spice during the podcast. Which is really very big of the guy.
Healy didn’t just laugh along at some offensive jokes once: he has a long history of making problematic statements. It’s possible that some of those statements – such as the time he told the Guardian that he’d never date Swift because it would be “emasculating” – were taken out of context and unfairly interpreted, but many of his “jokes” are extremely hard to excuse. On the same podcast where he mocked Ice Spice, for example, Friedland casually joked about how a friend of Healy’s once walked in on the musician watching porn on Ghetto Gaggers, a porn site that features women of colour being degraded and humiliated. “[It] literally was Ghetto Gaggers on the TV – somebody just getting, like, brutalized,” Healy laughs. Hilarious! They also joked about women’s periods and the moon controlling menstrual cycles. The episode was eventually pulled from Spotify and Apple following backlash.
That backlash is now growing and fans are asking Swift to directly address the controversy under the hashtag #SpeakUpNow. “[Healy] has been involved in acts and controversies that deeply trouble us,” one viral open letter tweeted by a fan reads. “While individuals have the right to make their own choices and form relationships, we believe that it is essential for those in the public eye to take a stand against discrimination and hold themselves and their associates accountable.”
One the hand, it’s a bit worrying how invested some of Swift’s fans are in her personal life: Healy and Swift, let’s remember, are not officially an item – they’ve just been spotted together a few times. On the other hand, the fans who are demanding that she address Healy’s offensive comments have a point. Swift has never pretended to be an activist and rarely makes any sort of political statement. Nor is she responsible for the past actions of whoever she happens to be seen canoodling in public with. Still, there’s no getting around the fact that Swift is incredibly influential and who she aligns herself with matters. Swift has the right to remain silent on Healy’s past but her fans also have the right to judge her for it.
Indiana doctor fined for discussing 10-year-old’s abortion
Remember that horrifying story last year about a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and had to leave her state to get a legal abortion? Remember how rightwingers and Republican politicians’ immediate reaction to the story was to yell about it being fake news? When the story was proven to be true, they changed tack and started threatening Dr Caitlin Bernard, the source for the original Indianapolis Star story, with disciplinary action for violating patient privacy laws. This week the Indiana state medical board ruled that Bernard will not lose her license but will have to pay $3,000 in fines and receive a letter of reprimand. It seems clear that Indiana is trying to make an example of Bernard and to stop other healthcare professionals from speaking up about what Bernard described as the “real-world impacts of the laws of this country”.
Ex-guard charged with 95 counts of sexual abuse in California women’s prison
Allegations against Gregory Rodriguez date back more than 10 years. “If one officer is getting away with this for more than a decade, he is backed up by other officers and by the system,” Colby Lenz, an advocate with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, told the Guardian. “This is not just one bad apple.
Is Martha Stewart, 81, being on the cover of Sports Illustrated a feminist triumph?
Not exactly, says Nancy Jo Sales. “Our sense of whether women continue to be sexually attractive as they age is so heavily influenced by the entertainment, beauty and fashion industries … that I don’t know if we’re always in full possession of our own feelings about it.”
Taliban restrictions on women a ‘crime against humanity’
In a joint report, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists have said the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls amount to gender persecution, which is defined as a crime against humanity by the international criminal court.
Meet Britain’s ‘dullest woman’
Rachel Williamson crochets creative postbox toppers and was named Anorak of the Year 2021.
Uber’s diversity chief on leave after ‘Don’t Call Me Karen’ panels
A lot to parse in this story.
The week in pawtriarchy
A wild black bear broke into a Connecticut bakery and made off with 60 cupcakes and some coconut cake. Nobody was hurt during the sugar-based burglary but one imagines the bear may have had a bit of a tummy ache.
