Last week, The Guardian published an interview with this year’s breakout pop star Chappell Roan. Buried deep within the profile of the Missourian artist was a brief comment on why she was not planning on endorsing either Trump or Harris: “I have so many issues with our government in every way [...] There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone. There’s problems on both sides.”

You would think that anyone even vaguely familiar with Roan would have found this entirely unsurprising. This is the same woman who told the crowd at the Governor’s Ball that she had declined an invitation to perform at a White House Pride event because she didn’t want to associate herself with the Biden administration, given its failure to defend queer rights and withdraw support for Israel. It should have been abundantly clear that Roan is no Republican, and similarly obvious that she was never going to come out swinging for Harris, who has ruled out imposing an arms embargo on Israel and been wildly inconsistent when it comes to her views on trans rights.

And yet the artist has been dogged with criticism for her comments, with people on social media branding her stupid, a secret Trump supporter, and falsely claiming that she said both the Republicans and Democrats are the ‘same’. On Tuesday (September 24), Roan responded to the mounting criticism and clarified her position on TikTok. “Fuck Trump, for fucking real. But fuck some of the shit that has gone down in the Democratic Party that has failed people like me and you – and more so Palestine,” she said. “So no, I’m not going to settle for the options in front of me, and you’re not gonna make me feel bad for that.”

As aforementioned, it’s baffling to see the scale of the vitriol that has been directed towards Roan in the days since the interview was published. Her view was measured, nuanced, and totally in keeping with the other beliefs she has expressed in the past. And yet X users – mainly liberals – called her views “uneducated, lazy and reductive” and “the most cowardly uneducated and downright embarrassing thing you could possibly say about this election”.

This isn’t the first time Roan has been subject to a deluge of hostility either – people rushed to call her “ungrateful” after she asked fans to stop stalking and harassing her and similarly branded her “disgusting” after she clapped back at a photographer on the VMAs red carpet after they allegedly told her (or a member of team) to “shut the fuck up”.

What is it about Roan that seems to grate on so many people? Perhaps it’s a simple explanation, but it really does seem overwhelmingly likely that misogyny is driving much of the hate. Nothing she has said over the last few months has been particularly controversial, especially among young and left-leaning circles: when you consider what she has actually said, she’s only expressed her dissatisfaction with the two-party system, called for trans rights and Palestinian liberation, and asked for fans to stop hassling her. Granted, Roan’s delivery can, on occasion, be a little brusque – but why should she have to pretend to be a shrinking violet, if that’s not in her nature? 

So what is it, then? It seems as though the real issue for depressingly large swathes of people is that Roan is a woman comfortable with speaking her mind, without fear of coming across as abrasive or ‘difficult’. Of course, misogyny directed towards female artists like this is nothing new, and it’s an issue which will doubtless persist long after Roan’s career is over. But at least it’s cheering to think that we live in a world where we have bold artists like Roan who, for now, are refusing to make themselves more palatable to appease their critics.