Thread by @lakrasil

This Saturday evening I want to talk with you about @taylorswift13, sexual gender-bending, and the evolution of masculine sexuality.

An extremely conserved male mammal sexual thing is the flehmen response: the male mammal curls back his upper lip and inhales through the mouth, directing smells to the vomeronasal organ near the roof of the mouth to evaluate pheromones and decide whether or not he wants to bang.

(Customarily when a horselady sees a sexy horseman she should lift up her tail and pee, in order that the gentlemammalman can sexily smell her sexy urine and check if she's sexily ovulating.)

The flehmen response is a perfectly natural thing for a male mammal to do when he's turned on. It looks like this:

Let's have some more pictures:

Big cats do it.

Domestic cats do it too.

Tapirs look really graceful doing it.

SEXUAL.

We don't have a vomeronasal organ, but humans, in particular male rock stars, make a sexy sexual facial expression that is extremely reminiscent of a flehmen.

Here's Billy Idol doing it (a liiiiiittle sexier than tapirs):

and Elvis:

This is extremely interesting, and for more on this and other extremely interesting topics you should read Zoobiquity by Dr. Natterson-Horowitz, whom I teach with/for at Harvard this semester and because of whom awareness of flehmen entered my experience of the human condition.

But this is not the meat (pun intended) of the story—

Fellow swifties might have noticed the same one-sided sneer appearing frequently in the music videos and imagery for the Reputation album.

Sometimes it's very, very overt—

Sometimes it's subtle (and marvellously sexy)—

And it's definitely intentional. It does not appear in her earlier work (I checked—not a terrible way to spend a Saturday evening).

Taylor's use of the flehmen this era, especially given her trial preceding it, is very meaningful to me.

Like Taylor, I present as very feminine but am in relatively large proportion masculine in personality. I don't like to think of femininity and masculinity as a duality, as two separate parts, or as somehow in conflict—I think they work well together—

—but it is something that comes up a lot since I, also like Taylor, am building a career in a male-dominated field. And, like Taylor (and most women), I've had some less than ideal experiences with men and with male sexuality.

Taylor's always written about sex, but the Reputation era is the first time she's been blatantly sexual. I deeply appreciate that her foray into open sexuality is concurrent with the appearance of her flehmen sneer.

Whether or not she's doing it on purpose, the imagery of this album includes, again and again, evolutionarily conserved expressions of masculine sexuality, presented as a coherent and powerful part of her sexuality, no conflict with femininity whatsoever.

I find this very powerful. The music and imagery this era has been all about dualities and balance: peace and anger, privacy and vulnerability, self and perception of self. Her experience of masculinity and male anger is a big part of each, as is perception of female sexuality.

I think that is part of why I found and continue to find Reputation so cathartic. @taylorswift13 claiming male sexuality in her art is a powerful and inspiring reaction to sexual assault.

It's not just Taylor, by the way. Nicki does it a lot (it's omnipresent in the Anaconda video; watch for it)

So does Miley—

And Kesha—

And Madonna, Beyoncé, Fergie, and P!nk

Cardi B makes it a core part of her brand

—including a scene with both her and a big cat showing a facial expression that, while perhaps not a flehmen, looks a whole lot like it to the untrained human eye.

Anyway, hopefully we'll see more flehmen sneers from Taylor when the video for IDSB comes out soon (sooooon?) :)

So there you go: female pop stars reclaiming the flehmen and taking masculine rock star sexuality for their own.

And that is the tea.

Life update: Taylor Swift delivering quality flehmen at the #AMAs tonight