Swifties everywhere rejoiced when, out of the blue this week, Taylor Swift announced she was engaged to Travis Kelce.
After humble beginnings with a dream and a friendship bracelet, fans watched their romance blossom throughout the Eras Tour.
The floral engagement, echoing imagery used in her Lover era, was a welcome announcement for most who had anticipated wedding bells in the couple’s future.
However, as the rest of the world celebrated, one niche corner of the Swiftie fandom spiralled.
Known as ‘gaylors’, this faction of fans is dedicated to the conspiracy theory that Taylor, 35, is secretly queer and fake dating Travis, 35.
Despite her very public dating history and her own dismissals of any rumours, gaylors won’t be convinced otherwise.
Taylor’s allyship, particularly during her Lover album, was taken as confirmation, and since then, the theory has grown like a weed within the fandom.
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Every lyric, image, and interview is dissected on a subreddit, with gaylors concluding she’s using forgotten queer signalling (that the songwriter is likely unaware of).
Speculating on anyone’s sexuality is inappropriate — celebrity or not — and can result in public outing, as we sadly saw with Heartstopper’s Kit Connor.
While the small faction usually gets ignored by other Swifties, their bizarre response to what is undeniably good news for Taylor has sparked ridicule online.
‘Wonder how all the gaylors are doing,’ wrote musicstruggles1 on X before following up with screenshots and adding ‘not well, it seems.’
One screenshot quickly went viral, showing a Reddit user dramatically claiming this news was ‘worse than their granddad dying’.
Another said Taylor’s engagement dress was ‘giving cage or bars’, adding there was ‘zero per cent chance these visuals weren’t carefully planned out’.
This idea that the upcoming nuptials are a ‘jail’ for the Shake It Off hitmaker was repeated by other gaylors.
‘I’ve been sitting on this for a couple of hours now and I’m squarely in the performance art camp,’ shared someone else.
‘Not to be dramatic but my breathing has been near-panic attack levels for two hours,’ said another gaylor in a screeshot posted by evermorgs.
They continued: ‘I know all the logical reasons why this is fine, whether she’s bi and really loves him or is doing performance art or whatever. But ugh. It’s just knocked me a little today.’
Kateawaycar posted a screenshot with the caption ‘the gaylors are losing it’ which showed someone insisting the engagement ring wasn’t from Travis at all.
The post read: ‘I mean, TECHNICALLY…. she didn’t say SHE was getting married. Just that some gym teacher somewhere was marrying an English teacher.
‘For all we know, she just wanted an excuse to wear the actual wedding ring she got from her actual wife.’
Many have convinced themselves that this is a ‘lavender marriage’ constructed by their respective industries to protect their public personas.
‘How have gaylors come to the decision that travis is gay as well? 😭’ Passengernessa wrote on X.
JMayer121 shared: ‘Travis being closeted is really funny because it’s totally unnecessary to the Gaylor theory. Taylor apparently can’t come out, so she gets a beard. And also he just happens to be gay too, I guess.’
The announcement even prompted some to accuse Taylor of ‘queer-baiting’, a term used when TV shows hint that a character is gay but never act upon it.
The main GaylorSwift subreddit has been locked down by admins after it was ‘infiltrated by hetlors’, a term for Swifties outside of the conspiracy.
For the most part, fans congratulated Taylor and Travis — including those who believe she is not straight but still interested in men.
This obsession, largely coming from women within the LGBTQ+ community, has not gone unnoticed by the So High School hitmaker.
In her 1989 (Taylor’s Version) prologue, she wrote: ‘I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth. And my female friendships.
‘If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalise or sexualise that, right? I would learn later on, that people could and people would.’
In her podcast interview with Travis, she also added that Easter eggs are never about her personal life, a subtle push for fans of all types to stop analysing her lyrics in such obsessive depth.
Hopefully, for the Grammy winner’s sake, her engagement will finally put an end to this conspiracy theory and the tired speculation about her love life.
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