I'll tell you exactly what they're mad at, and exactly why they're mad at it.

I've been paying close attention in recent weeks to what the angry dudes (and yes, it's definitely primarily dudes) are actually saying about this. And I'm not talking about the few that claim that this is some kind of democrat/Biden/NFL/Pfizer/Big science/DeepState conspiracy to rig the election against Trump. They're not mad that Taylor is dating Travis. They're not mad that she likes football or is supporting her boyfriend. They're not mad that she's at the games. I mean some of them might be mad at these things, but this isn't the primary driver at all.

The one thing that all the complaints have in common with each other, that every upset man on the internet specifically mentions and brings up every time he talks about it—the one thing that gets them the most—is having to actually SEE her. It's how much the NFL is choosing to SHOW her. Show her enjoying the game, show her supporting her boyfriend.

It's the air time.

And they hate the NFL showing her for exactly the same reason that the NFL loves showing her. They know why the NFL is doing it. And it pisses them off. And it's not just that the NFL is trying to grow its audience. They don't resent the NFL trying to grow its audience. Their problem is specifically with the target audience that the NFL is using Taylor to try to appeal to.

NFL football is one of the few remaining broadly popular predominantly male and predominantly masculine spaces in our culture. Even among sports. It has by far the smallest female fan base, and this is largely due to the fact that, in contrast to most other sports, girls grow up with almost no experience playing it or envisioning themselves playing it. It's a sport played by boys and men and pretty much only boys and men. And what exceptions there are to this essentially function as proof of the rule.

And no, this isn't about not wanting any girls or women to like football. It's not about that at all. Which is not to say that there isn't some serious good old-fashioned patriarchal sexism involved here. There absolutely is.

From time immemorial and right up to the present moment, one of the most socially acceptable things, across all cultural and political and demographic and ideological spectrums, to show contempt toward is things that girls love. Not everything that every girl likes. But things that are culturally encoded as things that are primarily and predominantly loved by young women. Teenage girls and young women. These are the things that it is socially acceptable to show contempt for. The music they like, the clothes they like, the way they talk, the things they eat and drink, the shows they like, the celebrities they like, the activities they like, the books they like.

Everybody does this, but the people who do it most are boys and men when they are trying to appear sufficiently masculine to other boys and men. And even trying to feel sufficiently masculine to themselves. These are important forms of masculine performance and male bonding. Rallying around male centric spaces and male centric cultural forms, and showing dismissive contempt for female centric analogs.

The men who are mad about this aren't mad that the NFL is trying to massively grow its audience. They're mad that the NFL is trying to do this primarily by taking opportunistic advantage of an entry point that means that their effort is directed primarily at young women. Because that point of entry is the person, the persona, the cultural phenomenon that they most associate with and see as the most vivid stereotype of something that primarily young women like. They're not upset that some girls will start liking football. They're not even upset that their own daughters and wives are paying more attention to football. They're upset that the NFL is trying to turn a refuge of masculine energy into a thing that is primarily liked by girls. They see Taylor as the epitome of cultural feminine energy and feminized taste and they see the NFL trying to use Taylor to turn football into something that virtually all girls and women like, rather than a handful of acceptable exceptions. They're not worried that showing some other player's wife or mother or girlfriend is going to change football, feminize football as a cultural phenomenon.

And no, the NFL is not trying to actually feminize football. They are trying to universalize it and they are trying to tap into the biggest demographic that they have failed to tap into for so many generations—a demographic whose consumer habits, despite being so often ridiculed by mostly middle-aged men, has been in the driver's seat of culture and cultural change for generations—in order to turn football into a thing that lots of girls love, even if it's not a thing that only girls love. The angry men are so blinded by their certainty that Taylor Swift is a phenomenon whose only relevant popularity is with girls that they can't help but see this as something that threatens to turn their mojo dojo casa house into a Barbie beach house.

And frankly, if you're this kind of man, it's got to make you feel deeply deeply insecure to be reminded a dozen or so times a game that there is a woman out there who is so powerful that she's capable of doing and being this (and whose cultural gravity is grounded in something other than looking and acting like a cheerleader, which is what girls at football games cheering are supposed to look and act like—they definitely don't mind seeing those women on TV). One individual single (in both senses) woman who is in this regard more powerful than the entire NFL itself. Who is capable of exercising this power without even trying to. Who could potentially have this effect just by being shown on TV cheering for a couple of seconds a dozen or so times a game.