‘Real person Slash’ imagines queer relationships between celebrities, and whole sub-fandoms emerge around queer ships of real people.
With Taylor Swift pulling in over half-a-million audience members on her Australian tour, we’ve been thinking a lot about fans. In this series, our academics dive into fan cultures: how they developed, how they operate, and how they shape the world today.
This genre is controversial within fandoms because it involves people with actual sexualities/identities. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than among the debates in the Taylor Swift fandom. Kloss and Swift’s public displays dimmed from public view over several years. Kloss married her long-time partner Joshua Kushner in 2018, and they have since had two children together. In light of this, most fans no longer believe Kaylor “is real”, aka, they believe that Kloss and Swift broke up at some point, or were never together.
Many within the Gaylor fandom are also queer, though importantly – and unlike other queer spaces in the real world – you do not have to identify or explain your own sexuality to be part of the fandom. While for the mainstream, Swift is the canonical “All-American” straight woman, Kaylors/Gaylors suggest an alternative reality.
But what about the ethics? There is some evidence that fan speculation about sexuality is genuinely taxing on celebrities. In his recent memoir Pageboy Elliot Page reflects on the pain caused by conjecture about his sexuality in the public eye before he was ready to come out.
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