It has seemed that, ever since the release of her widely anticipated album “The Tortured Poets Department,” Taylor Swift has gone out of her way to alienate the conservatives and Christians in her fanbase.
Between the anti-Christian sentiments expressed in several of her new songs and a mysterious new trademark filing, it would appear that move was deliberate on the part of the pop star.
The entertainment site TMZ reported Monday that Swift, through her TAS Rights Management company, filed a trademark application last week for something called “Female Rage: the Musical.”
The filing included some hints as to the singer’s intentions, the trademark giving her the right to turn the phrase into video recordings, musical recordings and, presumably, all manner of merchandise.
Still, most would find it an odd phrase. What does it mean?
A video of women engaging in “rage rituals” — where they screamed, pounded the ground and broke sticks — went viral on social media last week.
Women are signing up for rage rituals as a way to release suppressed emotions and reconnect with themselves. https://t.co/JhOoscMb4s pic.twitter.com/7OK82LfybU
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) May 10, 2024
Is that what Swift was referencing?
The pop star used the phrase in a social media post on Sunday.
Swift explained that the X post was “dedicated to the new Tortured Poets section of the Eras Tour (aka Female Rage The Musical!),” and expressed her gratitude that she was able to share the revamped version of her show for the first time in Paris.
This post is dedicated to the new Tortured Poets section of the Eras Tour (aka Female Rage The Musical!) and everyone who made these memories so magical. To my crew, fellow performers, and band who worked tirelessly in their break to concoct this surprise for you – but mostly for… pic.twitter.com/WYkOmH9tm6
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) May 12, 2024
Now, it was unclear what she planned to do with this trademark.
TMZ speculated it was a move by Swift to prevent either unauthorized fans or vultures from capitalizing on her new catchphrase, but it might have had as much of an ideological purpose as a practical one.
For one, “female rage” has been floating around radical left-wing circles for years, with several recent self-pitying think pieces picking up on the phrase’s increasing internet prevalence.
Her Campus, for instance, devoted an April 2023 article to explaining the meaning, saying it was “an ancestral and inherited response to the struggles, oppressions, and wrongdoings that women have been subjected to.”
Meaning it’s the feminist version of “white people need to pay black people reparations because of century-old crimes.”
Is Taylor Swift a negative influence on America’s youth?
According to the website for college women, “feminine rage” is quiet, seething, passive-aggressive even, and a justified response to the evils of men then and now (such as husbands not reading their wives’ minds when their spouses feel overwhelmed with housework).
Her Campus noted that it is unhealthy to let anger silently fester, but it fell right back into identity politics by claiming that since this rage is “generational,” today’s young women need to be the generation that “breaks the silence” and talks ad nauseam about it.
The left has long described the expression of female rage as “empowering,” claiming that women have been belittled for their rage for centuries while men have been “honored.”
This could be what Swift was trying to capitalize on in her tour and trademark filing.
There, of course, are a few fundamental problems with this.
For one, men who could not control their anger have rightly been seen as a dangerous force in society — historically, it has been stoicism in men that has been honored, not rage.
If any “male rage” has been honored, it was the controlled, righteous anger needed to correct an injustice, as with Christ chasing the money-changers out of the temple.
For another, the Bible warns against unrighteous anger and rage.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians described the “works of the flesh,” which include “fits of anger” as well as “enmity, strife, jealousy,” and Paul’s letter to the Colossians instructed his recipients to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you,” including “anger, wrath, and malice.”
Christians should not celebrate or talk ceaselessly about their rage and the supposed generational wrongs done against their gender or race.
Instead, they should “put to death” within themselves that kind of excessive, destructive, self-centered rage.
By adding the “female” element to this destructive impulse, Swift was promoting a feminist mindset that sought to subvert God’s creative order as described in Genesis.
It might seem as if Swift was trying to co-opt a trendy phrase for her monetary benefit, but this trendy phrase was emblematic of a damaging, and un-Christian, far-left ideology.
By now it should be abundantly clear to Christians that Taylor Swift and the worldview she promotes are a negative influence on those seeking to live a godly life.
Her new “Female Rage” angle, elevating a destructive impulse on an intersectional pedestal, is just one more example of this.
