The eruption of indignation from the pop star Taylor Swift’s camarilla over a New York Times op-ed speculating on her possible queerness demonstrates that the singer is squarely in her “Reputations” era — and she’s “got some big enemies.”

The icon’s ire — a possible clue to her deadpan reaction to a joke at her expense at the Golden Globes on Sunday night — appears to have been aroused by a piece called “Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do,” by Anna Marks, an editor of the Gray Lady. The essay, a 5,000-word megilla, borrows its headline from one of Ms. Swift’s songs, detects an “affinity for queer identity,” and ventures that her lyrics and outfits “suggest to queer people that she is one of us.”

Ms. Marks temporizes, musing that “even if it is only her audience who points at rainbows, reading Ms. Swift’s work as queer is still worthwhile” because it uncovers the “Sapphic possibility” submerged in the anthems that have become something like sacred scripture for millions of people. “Swiftian wordplay,” Ms. Marks asserts, keeps the “possibility of queerness” alive. 

Ms. Marks, while allowing that her speculations could be construed as “salacious and gossip-fueled,” nevertheless imagines a future where “Ms. Swift’s grandniece donates her diaries to some academic library, for scholars to pore over,” and there — possibly — someone discovering that she loved women, long after her “bones have turned to dust and fragments of her songs float away on memory’s summer breeze.” 

Ms. Marks speculates that lyrics like “bet I could still melt your world; argumentative, antithetical dream girl” suggest a sexuality at odds with the parade of high-profile boyfriends — a partial list includes Joe Jonas, Harry Styles, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Calvin Harris, Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, and now a burly pass catcher for the Kansas City Chiefs, Travis Kelce — who have accompanied Ms. Swift during her time in the limelight.

While the artist has long signaled her political support for liberal causes — the song “Me!” comes to mind — and called her concerts a “safe space” for gay fans, she has also taken an increasingly strident tone in response to suggestions that she is more than an ally for what she describes as a “community that I’m not a part of.” Denials  have not deterred the development of a “Gaylor” theory of Ms. Swift, whereby subterranean clues in her lyrics tell a story of a submerged sexuality. 

In a prologue to the release in October of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” Ms. Swift reflected that “if I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that — right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.” The reference is to an interlude when she “swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships.”

Much of the speculation around Ms. Swift’s sexuality has centered on her friendship — now sundered — with the supermodel Karli Kloss, who is married to the investor Joshua Kushner. A photograph from 2014 is thought by some to show the two kissing, an interpretation that gained enough currency for a representative of Ms. Swift to say in a statement that “it’s sad that on the day it’s announced Taylor has three Grammy nominations for ‘Shake It Off,’ I have to shake off this crap.” 

Ms. Swift’s umbrage at the Times appears unlikely to result in legal action. That is because in 2021 a New York court ruled that falsely accusing someone of being gay is no longer defamation per se, or the kind of statement that is so noxious that it is not required to show damages. While Ms. Swift could still sue, she would have to show that Ms. Marks materially harmed her Kublai Khan-esque fortune. The Times piece does not mention Ms. Kloss or any other hypothetical amorous interest, a possible litigation hedge.   

This is not the first time in recent years when the Times’s opinion pages have sparked high-profile outrage. Vice President Palin’s defamation suit — which centers on a 2017 editorial that appeared to link her to a mass shooting — against the paper is now before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which seems to be taking its sweet time, the litigants be damned. A district court judge found that her case did not meet the Supreme Court’s forbidding standard for such claims.

Ms. Marks is particularly skeptical of Ms. Swift’s romance with Mr. Kelce, wondering if her “extracurricular activities involving a certain football star” — that’s Mr. Kelce — is “performance art for entertainment’s sake.” The dig at the Golden Globes was in reference to that romance, and it does not require a close reading to discern that the lack of a smile telegraphs that she is in no mood to laugh at the scrutinies of stardom.