Column: Megan Thee Stallion was right. But she's one of too many women who aren't believed
Erika D. Smith
Sat, December 24, 2022
Megan Thee Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete, arrives at court to testify in the trial of Tory Lanez on Dec. 13 in Los Angeles. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Women are waiting — especially Black women.
For an apology. For remorse. For some humility. Hell, for even a modicum of self-awareness.
But I'm not holding my breath for any of that.
On Friday, a jury convicted Tory Lanez, a Canadian rapper whose real name is Daystar Peterson, of assault and gun charges in the Hollywood Hills shooting of fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion, whose real name is Megan Pete.
The verdict comes more than two years after Stallion told police that Lanez attacked her during an argument that started while riding in an SUV along Nichols Canyon Road. When she asked to get out, he shot at her feet — apparently shouting, “Dance, b—!”
The injuries were so bad that she needed surgery to remove bullet fragments from her left heel.
The victim in this case has always been clear. And yet, you wouldn't know that from the misogynistic mess that dominated headlines and social media before and during the trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“This whole story has not been about the shooting," Stallion testified earlier this month. "It’s only been about who I been having sex with.”
Indeed, in hopes of clearing Lanez's name, defense attorneys tried to pin the shooting on another Black woman, trotting out a lame, male-ego-affirming argument about the two women getting into a fight because they were attracted to the same man — their client.
Even more awful was Lanez himself, who released a whole album — which wasn't his most popular, but wasn't a flop either — about how he was being framed for shooting Stallion and insinuating that she had lied about the whole ordeal.
“How the f— you get shot in your foot," he rapped, "don’t hit no bones or tendons?”
And rather than push back, the response from the broader hip-hop community ranged from conspicuous silence to outright agreement. Just last month, Drake rapped on his new song with 21 Savage: "This b— lie about getting shot but she still a stallion."
Supporters rally in support of Megan Thee Stallion outside the courthouse where Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete, testified in the trial of rapper Tory Lanez on Dec. 13 in Los Angeles.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
This is exactly why #BelieveBlackWomen and #ProtectBlackWomen were trending on Twitter after the verdict. Stallion long ago pointed out how neither tends to happen.
"I was recently the victim of an act of violence by a man. After a party, I was shot twice as I walked away from him. We were not in a relationship. Truthfully, I was shocked that I ended up in that place," she wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times in late 2020.
"My initial silence about what happened was out of fear for myself and my friends. Even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment. The way people have publicly questioned and debated whether I played a role in my own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what happened were, unfortunately, warranted."
On Friday, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón praised Stallion's "incredible courage" for testifying, despite "repeated and grotesque attacks" on her character.
“Women, especially Black women, are afraid to report crimes like assault and sexual violence because they are too often not believed," he said in a statement, which alluded to the women who testified against rapist Harvey Weinstein. "This trial, for the second time this month highlighted the numerous ways that our society must do better for women.”
Even in California, women, particularly Black and queer women, are among the most vulnerable. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the female jail population has increased six-fold since 1970 — twice as much as the male population.
And there's a short line between women who are incarcerated and women who are victims.
Often, Black women end up behind bars because of some combination of poverty, addiction and being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man.
So, I'll remind you again about Lanez's attorneys' craven strategy to convince the jury that Stallion's former best friend, Kelsey Harris, was really the shooter.
That didn't work, obviously. Lanez now faces more than 20 years in prison.
But a conviction doesn't necessarily mean that Stallion will receive the apologies she is due, much less see some of that remorse, humility and self-awareness I mentioned. The legion of influencers who have made endless excuses for Tory Lanez were mighty quiet on Friday.
Except for Lanez's father. In the minutes after the verdict was read and Superior Court Judge David Herriford set a sentencing hearing for late January, he jumped up from his seat in the courtroom and started yelling at prosecutors.
“This wicked system!” he said, my colleagues James Queally and Jonah Valdez reported. “You are wicked! You know exactly what you did!”
Outside, after sheriff’s deputies had escorted him and other relatives from the courtroom, Lanez's father continued ranting, cursing the record label Roc Nation for supposedly rigging the trial and promising a comeuppance from on high.
“It’s not over! It is NOT over," he shouted. "God does not lose!”
Or maybe this isn't about God.
Maybe Lanez is just guilty. And maybe it's time, once and for all, that we believe and protect Black women.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
This is exactly why #BelieveBlackWomen and #ProtectBlackWomen were trending on Twitter after the verdict. Stallion long ago pointed out how neither tends to happen.
"I was recently the victim of an act of violence by a man. After a party, I was shot twice as I walked away from him. We were not in a relationship. Truthfully, I was shocked that I ended up in that place," she wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times in late 2020.
"My initial silence about what happened was out of fear for myself and my friends. Even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment. The way people have publicly questioned and debated whether I played a role in my own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what happened were, unfortunately, warranted."
On Friday, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón praised Stallion's "incredible courage" for testifying, despite "repeated and grotesque attacks" on her character.
“Women, especially Black women, are afraid to report crimes like assault and sexual violence because they are too often not believed," he said in a statement, which alluded to the women who testified against rapist Harvey Weinstein. "This trial, for the second time this month highlighted the numerous ways that our society must do better for women.”
Even in California, women, particularly Black and queer women, are among the most vulnerable. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the female jail population has increased six-fold since 1970 — twice as much as the male population.
And there's a short line between women who are incarcerated and women who are victims.
Often, Black women end up behind bars because of some combination of poverty, addiction and being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man.
So, I'll remind you again about Lanez's attorneys' craven strategy to convince the jury that Stallion's former best friend, Kelsey Harris, was really the shooter.
That didn't work, obviously. Lanez now faces more than 20 years in prison.
But a conviction doesn't necessarily mean that Stallion will receive the apologies she is due, much less see some of that remorse, humility and self-awareness I mentioned. The legion of influencers who have made endless excuses for Tory Lanez were mighty quiet on Friday.
Except for Lanez's father. In the minutes after the verdict was read and Superior Court Judge David Herriford set a sentencing hearing for late January, he jumped up from his seat in the courtroom and started yelling at prosecutors.
“This wicked system!” he said, my colleagues James Queally and Jonah Valdez reported. “You are wicked! You know exactly what you did!”
Outside, after sheriff’s deputies had escorted him and other relatives from the courtroom, Lanez's father continued ranting, cursing the record label Roc Nation for supposedly rigging the trial and promising a comeuppance from on high.
“It’s not over! It is NOT over," he shouted. "God does not lose!”
Or maybe this isn't about God.
Maybe Lanez is just guilty. And maybe it's time, once and for all, that we believe and protect Black women.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
First, Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion. But even more violence came in the years after, with a cascade of threats, vitriol, and textbook 'misogynoir' harassment
Taiyler Simone Mitchell
Fri, December 23, 2022
Megan Thee Stallion testified Tuesday in Tory Lanez's Los Angeles trial on rape charges.
The lasting pain
Megan hadn't exactly seen the worst of it during the shooting itself, which left her with gunshot wounds and dozens of bullet fragments to both of her feet that she said still bring her pain, the doctor who operated on her that day testified. Instead, in the months and years that followed, she described in a tweet feeling "real life hurt and traumatized." She testified that she suffered depression and watched her career — which had propelled even further into mainstream rap with the spring release of "Savage" — take a hit from accusing Lanez of shooting her.
"This situation has only been worse for me and it has only made him more famous," Megan testified last Tuesday. "This has messed up my whole life."
Despite posting-then-deleting pictures of her injuries online, Lanez supporters — including fellow Canadian rapper and Degrassi star Drake — have accused her of never being shot.
She's been targeted online by some disturbingly cruel Lanez supporters that say he should have killed her instead.
Megan testified about the heartbreaking result of the attacks last Tuesday.
"I don't feel like I want to be on this Earth," she said. "I wish he would have just shot and killed me if I knew I would have to go through this torture."
Textbook 'misogynoir'
The violence against Megan, and the reaction from Lanez supporters in the years that followed, has reignited a larger conversation about "misogynoir," a term coined by acclaimed feminist author Moya Bailey in 2010 defined as a specific type of misogyny, the hatred of women, that Black women experience.
"We've seen people really rallying to Tory's defense in ways that we haven't seen in the case of Megan," Bailey told Insider.
Much of the criticism of Megan is loaded with sexist undertones. During the trial, Lanez's defense lawyer George Mgdesyan painted a narrative of jealousy between Megan and Harris and accused Megan of sleeping around with multiple celebrities that Harris had been intimate with. And, indicative of the way Megan's sex life has been under a microscope over the last two years, a fan outside of the courthouse on day four of the trial had shouted at Lanez as he walked to his car: "How many times did you have sex with Megan?"
Mgdesyan did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Blogs like NoJumper and hip hop news commentators like Milagro Gramz and DJ Akademiks have contributed to a culture of misinformation surrounding the trial by centering baseless theories and regurgitating misogynistic takes, NBC News reporters Kat Tenbarge and Char Adams reported Wednesday.
NoJumper, a hip-hop podcast hosted by Adam Grandmaison with more than 1.1 million followers, erroneously tweeted that Lanez was found not guilty on all counts the day before the verdict was actually established. Other outlets and commentators followed suit — including Say Cheese, which has 513.4k Twitter followers, and Gossip of the City, which has 182.8k Twitter followers — speaking to an overeagerness to share unverified information.
NoJumper, Gramz, Gossip of the City, and Say Cheese did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comments. DJ Akademiks was not immediately reachable for comment.
Megan said during her testimony last Tuesday that "this story is not about the shooting — just about who I'm having sex with."
"The process that is happening in terms of bringing in her sexual history is very much evident of misogynoir," Bailey added. "As somebody who has survived something harmful, we are still focused on Megan's behavior and how that precipitated or should be taken into account when violence was done to her. And so this is a classic tactic to victim blame, to slut shame, and divert attention from the person who caused harm to the person who was harmed."
Megan Thee Stallion spoke openly about the shooting in public on Instagram live.
Layers of violence
The trial also offers a disturbing example of the violence against Black women, which occurs at rates disproportionately higher than their non-Black counterparts. Four in ten Black women have experienced intimate partner violence, and are markedly more likely to be killed by someone they know than white women, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Prosecutors last Tuesday showed Megan and the court screenshots of violent remarks people posted about her online.
"I see these tweets and Instagram posts every day," Megan testified, describing comments like "'Oh, that bitch should have got shot in the head…Too much twerk.' or 'Who care, she fucked everybody, she should have been shot.'"
"It's stunning to me that the victim of a shooting would receive this kind of reaction from anybody," Megan's attorney Alex Spiro told Insider. "You have to ask yourself if a Caucasian actress was slapped in Hollywood, the backlash that would come out for her assailant and the support that would engulf her would be nationwide. And yet here we have an African American woman who is shot, of all things, and it's not that universal level of outpour of support. And we have to ask ourselves why is that? And what does that say about our culture in our society?"
Those who believe Megan falsely accused Lanez of the shooting point to her early mischaracterization of the shooting, when she told police that she stepped on glass.
But her reasons for lying were deeply rooted in the systemic violence against the Black community, she testified.
She testified that she initially lied about the source of her wounds out of distrust of the police, adding that the incident occurred at the height of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, following the death of George Floyd.
"First of all in the Black community, in my community, it's not really acceptable to be cooperating with police officers," she said on the stand last Tuesday. "I felt if I said this man had shot me, they might shoot first and ask questions later.
"I don't feel safe in the car," she said, but "I don't feel safe with the police."
Megan Thee Stallion testified Tuesday in Tory Lanez's trial on assault charges.
Even the most famous are ignored
One of the most disheartening products of the incident wasn't the clamor over the shooting but the silence that came after Megan accused Lanez, wrote Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah reported in 2020.
"When Black women make music, everyone listens. When we dance, the world wants to move like us," Attiah wrote. "But Megan Thee Stallion's plight is a reminder that when Black women scream for help and cry in pain and even show our gory wounds to the public, the same people who love to dance to our rhythms, rarely, if ever, come to our rescue."
Bailey told Insider that she doesn't believe the criminal justice system, or Lanez being sentenced to prison, will "actually help address the harm that he caused Megan." Rather, she says, self-transformation and Lanez admitting "his culpability" would be a step in the right direction.
Even with Lanez's conviction, the cycle of misogynoir against Megan will likely persist, as it does on a minimized scale for the non-super-star Black woman.
"If these celebrity Black women who have a lot of social clout are still dealing with misogynoir in terms of how they're treated and how people are responding to harm that has been caused to them," Bailey added, "I think we should really consider what that means for Black women who aren't famous and just how they must be coping with misogynoir in their day-to-day lives."
Taiyler Simone Mitchell
Fri, December 23, 2022
Megan Thee Stallion testified Tuesday in Tory Lanez's Los Angeles trial on rape charges.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Tory Lanez was convicted Friday in the shooting of Megan The Stallion after an argument in 2020.
In the years since the shooting, Megan was harassed with violent and sexist comments and threats.
The case showed the dangerous depths of "misogynoir," the scholar who coined the term told Insider.
When Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion took the stand last week in the Los Angeles District Attorney's successful case against Canadian rapper Tory Lanez, she was a powerful presence in a deep purple suit and red-bottom pumps, poised as one could be considering the circumstances.
But as the three-time Grammy winner began testifying, her voice almost immediately broke and her emotions began to flow. In the two years since the traumatic shooting, the 27-year-old, whose birth name is Megan Pete, has endured relentless harassment, sexist accusations, and even death threats.
Megan has inadvertently become one of the most recognizable faces in the campaign to #ProtectBlackWomen, a call all too familiar for her Black female peers who regularly experience violence compounded by more violence, one feminist scholar told Insider.
Near the start of the trial, Megan brought the jury back to the early morning hours of July 12, 2020, when the "Tina Snow" artist left a small gathering at Kylie Jenner's house with Lanez, Lanez's driver, and Megan's ex-best friend Kelsey Harris. She testified last week that in the heat of an argument about his musical abilities, Lanez shot at her feet as she was walking away from the car.
On Friday, Lanez, whose birth name is Daystar Peterson, was found guilty on all three of the charges brought on by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office in October 2020 and in December 2022: assault with a semiautomatic handgun, carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
He denied shooting Megan and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He faces up to 22 years in prison and possible deportation to Canada, where he was born. The trial began on December 12, 2022, more than two years after the day of the shooting.
Tory Lanez was convicted Friday in the shooting of Megan The Stallion after an argument in 2020.
In the years since the shooting, Megan was harassed with violent and sexist comments and threats.
The case showed the dangerous depths of "misogynoir," the scholar who coined the term told Insider.
When Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion took the stand last week in the Los Angeles District Attorney's successful case against Canadian rapper Tory Lanez, she was a powerful presence in a deep purple suit and red-bottom pumps, poised as one could be considering the circumstances.
But as the three-time Grammy winner began testifying, her voice almost immediately broke and her emotions began to flow. In the two years since the traumatic shooting, the 27-year-old, whose birth name is Megan Pete, has endured relentless harassment, sexist accusations, and even death threats.
Megan has inadvertently become one of the most recognizable faces in the campaign to #ProtectBlackWomen, a call all too familiar for her Black female peers who regularly experience violence compounded by more violence, one feminist scholar told Insider.
Near the start of the trial, Megan brought the jury back to the early morning hours of July 12, 2020, when the "Tina Snow" artist left a small gathering at Kylie Jenner's house with Lanez, Lanez's driver, and Megan's ex-best friend Kelsey Harris. She testified last week that in the heat of an argument about his musical abilities, Lanez shot at her feet as she was walking away from the car.
On Friday, Lanez, whose birth name is Daystar Peterson, was found guilty on all three of the charges brought on by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office in October 2020 and in December 2022: assault with a semiautomatic handgun, carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
He denied shooting Megan and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He faces up to 22 years in prison and possible deportation to Canada, where he was born. The trial began on December 12, 2022, more than two years after the day of the shooting.
The lasting pain
Megan hadn't exactly seen the worst of it during the shooting itself, which left her with gunshot wounds and dozens of bullet fragments to both of her feet that she said still bring her pain, the doctor who operated on her that day testified. Instead, in the months and years that followed, she described in a tweet feeling "real life hurt and traumatized." She testified that she suffered depression and watched her career — which had propelled even further into mainstream rap with the spring release of "Savage" — take a hit from accusing Lanez of shooting her.
"This situation has only been worse for me and it has only made him more famous," Megan testified last Tuesday. "This has messed up my whole life."
Despite posting-then-deleting pictures of her injuries online, Lanez supporters — including fellow Canadian rapper and Degrassi star Drake — have accused her of never being shot.
She's been targeted online by some disturbingly cruel Lanez supporters that say he should have killed her instead.
Megan testified about the heartbreaking result of the attacks last Tuesday.
"I don't feel like I want to be on this Earth," she said. "I wish he would have just shot and killed me if I knew I would have to go through this torture."
Textbook 'misogynoir'
The violence against Megan, and the reaction from Lanez supporters in the years that followed, has reignited a larger conversation about "misogynoir," a term coined by acclaimed feminist author Moya Bailey in 2010 defined as a specific type of misogyny, the hatred of women, that Black women experience.
"We've seen people really rallying to Tory's defense in ways that we haven't seen in the case of Megan," Bailey told Insider.
Much of the criticism of Megan is loaded with sexist undertones. During the trial, Lanez's defense lawyer George Mgdesyan painted a narrative of jealousy between Megan and Harris and accused Megan of sleeping around with multiple celebrities that Harris had been intimate with. And, indicative of the way Megan's sex life has been under a microscope over the last two years, a fan outside of the courthouse on day four of the trial had shouted at Lanez as he walked to his car: "How many times did you have sex with Megan?"
Mgdesyan did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Blogs like NoJumper and hip hop news commentators like Milagro Gramz and DJ Akademiks have contributed to a culture of misinformation surrounding the trial by centering baseless theories and regurgitating misogynistic takes, NBC News reporters Kat Tenbarge and Char Adams reported Wednesday.
NoJumper, a hip-hop podcast hosted by Adam Grandmaison with more than 1.1 million followers, erroneously tweeted that Lanez was found not guilty on all counts the day before the verdict was actually established. Other outlets and commentators followed suit — including Say Cheese, which has 513.4k Twitter followers, and Gossip of the City, which has 182.8k Twitter followers — speaking to an overeagerness to share unverified information.
NoJumper, Gramz, Gossip of the City, and Say Cheese did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comments. DJ Akademiks was not immediately reachable for comment.
Megan said during her testimony last Tuesday that "this story is not about the shooting — just about who I'm having sex with."
"The process that is happening in terms of bringing in her sexual history is very much evident of misogynoir," Bailey added. "As somebody who has survived something harmful, we are still focused on Megan's behavior and how that precipitated or should be taken into account when violence was done to her. And so this is a classic tactic to victim blame, to slut shame, and divert attention from the person who caused harm to the person who was harmed."
Megan Thee Stallion spoke openly about the shooting in public on Instagram live.
Denise Truscello/Getty Images for iHeartRadio/y Joseph Okpako/WireImage
Layers of violence
The trial also offers a disturbing example of the violence against Black women, which occurs at rates disproportionately higher than their non-Black counterparts. Four in ten Black women have experienced intimate partner violence, and are markedly more likely to be killed by someone they know than white women, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Prosecutors last Tuesday showed Megan and the court screenshots of violent remarks people posted about her online.
"I see these tweets and Instagram posts every day," Megan testified, describing comments like "'Oh, that bitch should have got shot in the head…Too much twerk.' or 'Who care, she fucked everybody, she should have been shot.'"
"It's stunning to me that the victim of a shooting would receive this kind of reaction from anybody," Megan's attorney Alex Spiro told Insider. "You have to ask yourself if a Caucasian actress was slapped in Hollywood, the backlash that would come out for her assailant and the support that would engulf her would be nationwide. And yet here we have an African American woman who is shot, of all things, and it's not that universal level of outpour of support. And we have to ask ourselves why is that? And what does that say about our culture in our society?"
Those who believe Megan falsely accused Lanez of the shooting point to her early mischaracterization of the shooting, when she told police that she stepped on glass.
But her reasons for lying were deeply rooted in the systemic violence against the Black community, she testified.
She testified that she initially lied about the source of her wounds out of distrust of the police, adding that the incident occurred at the height of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, following the death of George Floyd.
"First of all in the Black community, in my community, it's not really acceptable to be cooperating with police officers," she said on the stand last Tuesday. "I felt if I said this man had shot me, they might shoot first and ask questions later.
"I don't feel safe in the car," she said, but "I don't feel safe with the police."
Megan Thee Stallion testified Tuesday in Tory Lanez's trial on assault charges.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Even the most famous are ignored
One of the most disheartening products of the incident wasn't the clamor over the shooting but the silence that came after Megan accused Lanez, wrote Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah reported in 2020.
"When Black women make music, everyone listens. When we dance, the world wants to move like us," Attiah wrote. "But Megan Thee Stallion's plight is a reminder that when Black women scream for help and cry in pain and even show our gory wounds to the public, the same people who love to dance to our rhythms, rarely, if ever, come to our rescue."
Bailey told Insider that she doesn't believe the criminal justice system, or Lanez being sentenced to prison, will "actually help address the harm that he caused Megan." Rather, she says, self-transformation and Lanez admitting "his culpability" would be a step in the right direction.
Even with Lanez's conviction, the cycle of misogynoir against Megan will likely persist, as it does on a minimized scale for the non-super-star Black woman.
"If these celebrity Black women who have a lot of social clout are still dealing with misogynoir in terms of how they're treated and how people are responding to harm that has been caused to them," Bailey added, "I think we should really consider what that means for Black women who aren't famous and just how they must be coping with misogynoir in their day-to-day lives."
Kenan Draughorne, Suzy Exposito
Fri, December 23, 2022
Megan Thee Stallion performs in August. (Scott Garfitt / Invision)
Megan Thee Stallion said Tory Lanez shot her in both feet on a July 2020 evening in the Hollywood Hills.
More than two years after the shooting, an L.A. jury said they believed her.
On Friday, Lanez, the Canadian rapper born Daystar Peterson, was convicted of all three charges connected to the shooting of hip-hop superstar Megan Thee Stallion: assault with a semi-automatic firearm, carrying an unregistered firearm and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Lanez faces more than 20 years in prison and possible deportation.
The verdict arrives after a trial rife with false starts, conflicting testimonies and bizarre plot twists. Megan Thee Stallion’s former friend and assistant, Kelsey Nicole, told detectives that Lanez, 30, was the shooter in a lengthy interview in September. She also texted Megan’s bodyguard the night of the incident, saying “Help, Tory shot Meg.”
But on the stand, she contradicted her previous statements, saying she didn’t even know if Megan Thee Stallion, born Megan Pete, had been shot that night, despite sitting next to her in an SUV. She admitted that Lanez had offered her $1 million in the wake of the shooting yet denied it was a bribe and claimed she did not accept it.
Beyond the courtroom, the trial brought out the cancerous misogynoir within hip-hop and its online community. Blogs, personalities and Twitter pages routinely slanted the conversation in favor of Lanez, culminating in several outlets claiming that he was found not guilty while the jury was still deliberating.
Tory Lanez leaves the courthouse with his son on Dec. 13. (AP)
Throughout the ordeal, Megan Thee Stallion, 27, has not only persevered but taken her career to new heights. She won three Grammys in 2021 on the strength of her song “Savage,” featuring an appearance by Beyoncé on the remix, delivered the sexually liberating No. 1 anthem "WAP" with Cardi B, hosted “Saturday Night Live” and landed lucrative partnerships with Nike, CashApp, Netflix and more.
But the shooting and resulting media circus took a toll. While appearing in court on the second day of the trial, Megan's voice cracked on the stand as she spoke of the turmoil she’d suffered since telling the world who shot her in 2020.
“I wish he would’ve just shot and killed me if I knew I was going to have to go through this torture,” she testified.
The Times' music reporters Kenan Draughorne and Suzy Exposito discuss the trial and fallout.
Draughorne: Guilty! After two and a half years of mess.
Exposito: I think it was basically over for the defense when they called their key witness, Sean Kelly, on Tuesday. Kelly, a neighbor who saw part of the altercation from his window, said he noticed two women fighting in the street, along with “flashes” that he initially believed were fireworks. He claimed he first saw the muzzle flashes coming from “the girl” but also saw a “short guy” get out of the car to join the fray, eventually taking the gun and firing “four or five” shots. He also brought up events that had not been mentioned in anyone else’s testimony: three people beating up a fourth woman, a girl shooting into the car and his own fear that they were going to throw one girl into a river.
It was a ghastly look for the defense — which then turned around and tried to label Kelly a “hostile” witness.
Draughorne: Calling your own witness “hostile” is wild beyond words. Let’s not forget how badly the defense fumbled Kelsey’s stammering appearance in court, where she denied everything she’d told prosecutors in September, claiming instead that she “couldn’t remember" even after being granted use immunity. Had Lanez’s lawyer, George Mgdesyan, not been so rapt to prove that prosecutors pressured her into her earlier statements, Judge Herriford wouldn’t have allowed the jury to hear Kelsey’s entire 80-minute testimony in court.
Also, Mgdesyan might be the only person more obsessed with the two rappers’ status than Lanez. Megan couldn’t be the victim because she’s won Grammys?
Exposito: Mgdesyan approached this trial like a late-night talk show host. He kept trying to yuk it up with the jury — I believe he even cracked a “my wife” joke — which would fly in a scripted series but not in a court of law.
Worse, he relied on misogyny throughout the trial. The defense’s whole strategy had been to shift the focus from Lanez’ behavior to his alleged dalliances with both Megan and Kelsey, her former assistant.
To quote a headline written by Buzzfeed writer Shamira Ibrahim: “Tory Lanez is on trial, not Megan Thee Stallion.” When Mgdesyan tried to diminish the shooting as a quarrel between paramours or said things like, "This case is about sexual relationships,” he was not just insulting the jury’s intelligence — he was trying to move the burden of proof away from Lanez and onto Megan, both in court and for those following online. Misogyny is a cheap trick. And misogynoir, the acute misogyny aimed at Black women, is all too abundant.
Draughorne: It’s a very cheap trick, and it’s embarrassing how many “outlets” and commenters fell into it. From the beginning, bloggers and personalities have cherry-picked statements and misrepresented facts: Podcaster and YouTube host DJ Akademiks said in February that Lanez’s DNA “was not found” on the gun, when the actual results were inconclusive; rapper-turned-podcaster Joe Budden made light of Megan's mental health struggles despite the fact that she was the victim of a shooting (he later apologized); and media personality Jason Lee of Hollywood Unlocked said Megan had been acting “aggressive” toward Lanez when the incident took place.
On the stand, Megan talked about the burden she’s had to carry since publicly naming her shooter. The whole trial, people flooded her comments section to mock her, asking “why you lied” and claiming her career would be over once “the truth came out.” The misogynoir (and ego) is so strong that those same parties have already turned to the “Roc Nation paid the jury” line instead of accepting the evidence. Milagro Gramz, a Houston-based hip-hop news personality who showed no remorse for pushing the “Megan might have stepped on glass” theory long after a surgeon had found bullet fragments in her foot, just called the verdict “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice.”
Megan Thee Stallion outside the courthouse on Dec. 13. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Exposito: The online chatter surrounding this trial evoked memories of the social-media clout-chasing surrounding the trial of Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Amber Heard. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, both trials became vehicles for anti-woman opportunists to boost their audience (and revenue).
Many journalists, namely NBC News reporters Kat Tenbarge and Char Adams, have addressed the roles of bloggers and other online voices in the Lanez trial in proliferating disinformation and bad-faith readings on domestic violence or assault survivors. Going back to my point about misogyny, it’s become a quick and lucrative scheme for content farming: Earlier this year, Vice reported that the Daily Wire, a conservative website, spent tens of thousands of dollars to circulate dubious claims about Amber Heard and generated 4 million impressions. Disinfo pays.
Draughorne: I’m glad to hear Megan and her team are exploring legal action against the disinfo spreaders. Yesterday, “NOT GUILTY” was trending for a brief minute because of a false report that said Lanez had been acquitted, despite the fact that the jury was still very much in deliberations. It seemed to stem from a blank verdict form that went around the courthouse, of which the first option read “not guilty” as a choice for the jury. And people online were celebrating like they’d beat the case themselves!
Kat Tenbarge had a very poignant tweet about how these media personalities don’t face the same accountability you and I would when they send inaccurate information. I’d probably be fired if I falsely tweeted that Lanez was not guilty, especially if The Times ran with the story and blasted the wrong verdict far and wide. Rap sites like No Jumper and Say Cheese get to delete the tweet and move on to the next hip-hop drama. I doubt their core audience even cares about the mistake.
Also, I remember the long delay before Megan publicly accused Lanez of shooting her. The incident took place on July 12, 2020, but she didn’t ID him as the shooter until Aug. 20 of that year — and she spoke out only because Lanez’s team had been pushing false narratives through blogs and Instagram pages. Her first instinct after being shot was to protect her shooter, telling police she’d stepped on glass when they first arrived on scene.
While he should have been preparing for the trial of his life, Lanez was accused of assaulting singer August Alsina because he didn’t shake his hand. In court, he was caught smirking and shaking his head when Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathy Ta correctly said that Megan was more famous and successful than him.
The whole debacle started because of his drunken temper and worsened because of his fragile ego. I’m just glad it’s finally over.
No comments:
Post a Comment