Taylor Swift‘s new documentary, Miss Americana, is heavily focused on the singer’s decision to publicly support Tennessee’s Democratic candidate for Senate during the 2018 midterm election, despite never being open about her political views in the past. In the doc, Taylor argues with her dad, Scott Swift, before going public with her opinion. “This is something I know is right and I need to be on the right side of history,” Taylor says. “I just want you to read what I wrote and know this is important to me.”
Taylor’s dad admits that he’s terrified for her safety if she posts, and the now-30-year-old gets passionate about why she felt the need to take a stand against Tennessee’s Republican candidate, Marsha Blackburn. “She votes against fair pay for women,” Taylor argues, through tears. “She votes against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which is basically just protecting against domestic abuse and stalking. She thinks that you’re a gay couple or that if you even look like a gay couple, you should be allowed to be kicked out of a restaurant. It’s basic human rights. It’s right and wrong at this point. I can’t see another commercial with her disguising these policies behind the words ‘Tennessee Christian values.’ Those are not Tennessee Christian values. That’s not what we stand for. Dad, I need you to forgive me for doing this, because I’m doing it.”
She adds that she “really doesn’t care” if she gets bad press, because she’ll be standing up against a “homophobic racist.” But the decision to come forward with this statement was not one that Taylor made lightly, and came after a massive ordeal that she went through in 2017 — a sexual assault trial. The case came about because Taylor accused a Denver radio DJ, David Mueller, of groping her under her skirt while they took a photo together. David was fired after Taylor voiced her concerns, and he sued her for damages. Taylor countersued for $1, and the jury voted in her favor during a trial in Aug. 2017.
“It’s not that I want to step into [politics],” Taylor explains. “I just can’t not at this point. It’s something different in my life — something completely and unchangeably different — the sexual assault trial. No man in my organization or my family will ever understand what that was like.”
Taylor has not really spoken publicly about what she went through during that trial, but she gives fans a closer insight in Miss Americana. “I was so angry,” she admits. “I was angry that I had to be there, I was angry that this was happening to women. I was angry that people are paid to antagonize victims. I was angry that all the details had been twisted. You don’t feel any sense of victory when you win, because the process is so dehumanizing. This is with SEVEN witnesses and a photo! What happens when you get raped and it’s your word against his?”
Perhaps the most intimate moment of the documentary, though, is when Taylor finds out the results of the midterm election, and that, despite all of her outreach, Marsha still won. “I can’t believe she gets to be the first female Senator of Tennessee and she’s [Donald] Trump in a wig,” Taylor fumes. “She represents no female interests. She won by being a female applying to the kind of female that males want us to be in a horrendous 1950s world.”