Megan Thee Stallion Does Not Deserve This

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In the two and a half years since Megan Thee Stallion was shot in Los Angeles, the court of public opinion has taken the incident and refracted it into endless conspiracy theories, unfounded conclusions, and, frankly, gross smears and harassment. On Friday, a jury found Tory Lanez (born Daystar Peterson) guilty on all three felony assault charges for the 2020 shooting after a highly-contentious trial and alongside the Internet's venomous commentary. During her official testimony this month, Megan alleged that after leaving a pool party, she and Tory got into an argument in his SUV, and as she tried to walk away from the vehicle, Tory shot her. The matter of *if* the incident took place was never up for debate. But despite that, Megan Thee Stallion was branded everything from a liar who fabricated the entire thing to a whore by Twitter jurors and angry Instagram mobs.

The gravity of gun violence is undeniable, particularly in the hip-hop community. In the past few months alone, the fatal shootings of popular rappers like Takeoff and PnB Rock pushed the seriousness of this issue back to the forefront. Yet the public response to Megan’s shooting almost immediately descended into mockery, even in the days following the incident—and it has only increased now that Lanez’s trial is on the internet’s proverbial front page.

On top of the memes and viral tweets calling Megan’s credibility and sexual history with Lanez into question, megastars in the music industry have added fuel to the fire, joining in on the ridicule and platforming hateful rhetoric. It’s nearly impossible to imagine a young, white artist facing the same treatment after being assaulted.

Online, many have identified this vile public reaction as a direct consequence of misogynoir, or “misogyny directed toward Black women where race and gender both play roles in bias.” Feminist scholar Moya Bailey, PhD, an associate professor at Northwestern University, originally coined the term in 2008, and has since gone on to author Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance. In the nearly 15 years since its coining, misogynoir has taken on a new life in the digital age, and nothing exemplifies this more than the overwhelmingly toxic social media discourse surrounding Lanez’s trial. So where do we go from here? Bailey, thankfully, has a few ideas...

When I first heard the term “misogynoir,” it felt like something that I had been searching for my whole life. I was wondering if you’ve received a similar response from other Black women and if there are any interactions that really stuck with you?

A lot of people have said that the term has named something that they felt and couldn’t articulate before. One of the people who was really instrumental in the term taking off was Trudy, a blogger who ran the site Gradient Lair. She was one of the first people who said she found the term helpful in analyzing the unique experiences that we have as Black women and how we’re treated in that space that is specifically defined by anti-Black racist misogyny.

I’m sure you've faced pushback on what distinguishes misogynoir from misogyny. How would you break down the major differences?

Anti-Black racist misogyny is an amalgamation—it cannot be separated. It’s not simple misogyny because it has everything to do with stereotypes people have about Black women and Black girls.

I would say that because we still live in a country that very much imagines race as a binary between white and Black, Black women are sometimes presented as the foil to our country’s imagined ideal of white men. That dynamic is very much at play with how misogynoir is perpetuated, why it’s so visible, why it’s so forceful, and why it remains such an integral part of the United States.

On sites like Twitter, you’ll often see other Black women also hold up the harmful narratives about Megan Thee Stallion’s sexual history and credibility. I’d love to hear your thoughts about internalized misogynoir and its potential root causes?

We live in a world where Black women are already denigrated. So there’s no reason to think that just because we are Black women we will somehow escape those narratives and not be touched by them. Internalized misogynoir, to me, is an unfortunate natural reaction to a world that is so misogynoiristic. We’re seeing some of the Hotties [Megan’s fan base] actually doing a lot of work online to combat internalized misogynoir by pointing out how differently we talk about Black women’s sexual activity versus men’s. Even social media’s shift in focus to Megan’s sexual history is really this classic victim-blaming tactic that’s used in lots of different instances where someone is harmed.

It becomes about “What was she doing? What was she wearing? What’s her sexual history?” as opposed to actually looking at the person who was responsible for the violence.

What other common misogynoirist tropes have you seen used that people can work to identify in their daily lives or in public cases like this?

Take notice of how Black women are being discussed and treated. If it isn’t indicative of how other women, particularly other women of color, are being treated, then that’s a clear indication that misogynoir is part of the conversation.

It’s easy for me to identify the unique way that people are talking about Megan. There is this idea that she should be resilient. As a Black woman, you’re not supposed to experience problems, you’re not supposed to ever be victimized, so there’s that level of disregard.

There’s also this idea that Black men need to be protected, and part of that is something that Megan herself was trying to do, not wanting to get the police involved originally, but ultimately it doesn’t end up serving us very well. I do think that there’s a way that Black women and other women of color try to protect their communities and that can be a moment where we don’t actually get our own needs met.

What can we learn from watching these debates play out so loudly on social media?

Misogynoir is having a very big public moment. I’m thinking about Megan, but I’m also thinking about Meghan Markle and Brittney Griner as well. All three of these women are in the public sphere and very much have to grapple with how they’re perceived as Black women.

Unfortunately, in all three of these cases, celebrity, fame, and money did not protect them. I hope that that gives people a sense of what the reality must be like for Black women who don’t have the same sort of resources in social capital that all three of these people do.

We’re in very precarious situations. All three of them contemplated ending their life or were very much depressed by the situations that they were put in as a result of the larger machinations of misogynoir in our world. My hope is that this gives people pause—that if celebrity Black women who have social and political capital are going through this, then we can start to think about what the reality is for everyday Black women who are negotiating our world.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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