If I Was a Man

When your chosen family are grifters...what's that like?

You’ve asked for it and I’ve delivered, subscriber! Below is the story of how I was conned by trans members of a small-town cult, why I left an academic position moments after getting tenure, and what I was thinking on the other side of a mini identity crisis — all interwoven with a gender-based analysis of Taylor Swift’s musical career! In this house, we take the term “braided essay” very seriously.

Me as a man and Taylor Swift as The Man.

Due to its length and memoiristic content, this essay is previewed below and available to paid subscribers in its entirety. The time and hard work I put into The Cosmic Cheeto is made possible by support from readers like you, so I hope you’ll consider either upgrading to a paid subscription or gifting a subscription to another reader. I also hope you’ll check out Salukis on Swift: The Anthology, a collection of writings on Taylor Swift by members of the extended SIU-Carbondale community — the essay below will be among them. Order link soon to come!

Concept art for Salukis on Swift: The Anthology by Elyse Hickey

If I Was a Man

I. Naming Conventions // Easter Eggs

That Andrea Swift chose the name Taylor for her daughter because of its gender neutral quality is a fact as layered with hidden meaning and irony as a Taylor Swift song. Andrea didn’t want potential employers to be put off by an instantly female-coded name, a smart and practical choice from a woman who’d spent her fair share of time in the corporate world and was no doubt familiar with its sexism. But an odd choice, too, at least from where we’re standing in 2025. Can you imagine Taylor Swift, a singer-songwriter less canonical than canon-defining, applying for a job somewhere? Reporting to some stressed-out middle manager via a company email? Some payroll coughing up $3,534 before taxes per month to SWIFT, TAYLOR A?

You have to admit it’s a bit laughable to think about, right? Just as laughable as it is to certain parties – here I’ll link to an essay of mine on Swift-objection and the Serious Male Novelist – to think that Taylor Swift has achieved a voice-of-a-generation ubiquity similar to that of The Beatles. Though “laughable” is maybe the wrong word. “Infuriating” is probably better. But it can’t be! I can already hear the Swift-objector’s hoarse cry of disbelief. The Beatles were making music about real things, like war and LSD and beating your woman until you get better all the time! And Taylor Swift sings about…what? Men she’s dated?

Here's another interesting fact about Taylor Swift’s name: she was named for James Taylor, whose music both Scott and Andrea Swift love. James Taylor wrote “You Can Close Your Eyes” about Joni Mitchell, with whom he was briefly involved in the early 70s. He wrote “Fanfare” and “Nobody But You” about his turbulent marriage to Carly Simon. Among the male singer-songwriters of his generation, Taylor’s hardly alone in this: Paul Simon wrote “Hearts and Bones” about his on-again off-again relationship with Carrie Fisher, Bruce Springsteen wrote “Tunnel of Love” about the dissolution of his marriage to Julianne Phillips, David Bowie wrote “Letter to Hermione” about his heartbreak over Hermione Farthingale. Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan wrote variously about Suze Rotolo, Joan Baez, Edie Sedgwick and Sara Lownds, including songs like “Positively 4^th Street” and “Just Like a Woman,” which sound like the kind of vituperative poetry an incel might pen right before committing an act of stochastic violence if he had access to a tarot deck and the concept of metaphor.

Consider this: Taylor Swift was given the gender-neutral name of a male singer-songwriter to avoid the sexism of the job application process, a process to which she would never have to submit because she’d become a multi-platinum singer-songwriter in her own right, an artist whose career – its creativity, its decades-long comet tail – would not only eclipse the boomer’s she was named for but be received as an unparalleled feat of female storytelling, and in some particularly hysterical cases, a kind of existential threat to maleness itself.

How’s that for irony? If these were the liner notes to my debut album, I’d be sure that each track elaborates on what I’ve written above, explores every avenue of co(s)mic possibility, trundles up and down the Escherian staircase-maze of meaning. And I’d be a fool not to deploy the witchiest possible numerology: Tracks 5 (“Me As a Boy” and 8 (“Oh Boy (She’s Done It Now)”) are the only ones containing the words “boy,” and they add up to 13, which is Taylor Swift’s favorite number as well as a bonus track titled “Work in a Man’s World,” which contains the lyric wreck my plans, that’s my man. If you’re really in the weeds like me, you’ll know those lyrics refer not just to “Willow,” whose dancing witch remix Taylor Swift released on her 31^st birthday, but to me – or rather to whom I became – on my own 31^st birthday: Rafael. That is to say, a man who wrecked my own plans.

I feel forever seen by whomever made this meme!

II. A Mind Like an Aston Martin Abandoned in a Ditch

I can say with certainty that I will never be asked to pose in a gauzy dressing gown for Vogue or a massive pair of parachute pants for Rolling Stone, though even if by some bizarre – and, let’s be real, kind of destabilizing[1] – coincidence I was, I can promise you that the glossy profile-writing journalist would not ask: “Why did you leave one of those rare and ultra-coveted academic jobs teaching creative writing mere moments after getting tenure?”

But, okay, let’s pretend for a second that I’m the kind of person -- a Taylor Swift kind of person – who gets asked invasive questions on the record after being photographed wearing a $1,500 Givenchy turtleneck, and that this question was for whatever reason a matter of pressing concern. And let’s say that I do not demur, do not ask for ten and scamper away, tears smudging my makeup. Being a Taylor Swift kind of person, I must be 1) accustomed to hyper-scrutiny and voyeurism masquerading as journalistic integrity and “enthusiasm”; and 2) wary of taking the demurring option, because to demur would negatively impact the brand that now sustains the material and emotional wellbeing of far more people than just myself. I have done something strange and unpredictable – i.e. worrisome, or worse, cancelable – and I owe my shareholders an explanation.

“Well, it’s sort of hard to explain, right?” I’d begin unsatisfyingly. And then, of course, I’d try to explain.[2] It certainly wasn’t the students – especially not the ones at the place where I taught: a winning and brilliant group by all counts. Nor was it the many brave, smart and funny fellow educators whom I still call friends. Nor was it what I was teaching, which was how to write fiction and sometimes nonfiction.

“There are some games that you’re destined to lose before you even start playing them,” I’d venture, at which the journalist would nod uncomprehendingly. “I realize that sounds more like an arcane song lyric than an answer to your question. Let me put it simply.”