Column: Megan Thee Stallion was right about Tory Lanez and misogyny

Girls are ready — particularly Black ladies.

For an apology. For regret. For some humility. Hell, for even a modicum of self-awareness.

However I’m not holding my breath for any of that.

On Friday, a jury convicted Tory Lanez, a Canadian rapper whose actual identify is Daystar Peterson, of assault and gun fees within the Hollywood Hills capturing of fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion, whose actual identify is Megan Pete.

The decision comes greater than two years after Stallion instructed police that Lanez attacked her throughout an argument that began whereas using in an SUV alongside Nichols Canyon Highway. When she requested to get out, he shot at her toes — apparently shouting, “Dance, b—!”

The accidents had been so unhealthy that she wanted surgery to remove bullet fragments from her left heel.

The sufferer on this case has at all times been clear. And but, you wouldn’t know that from the misogynistic mess that dominated headlines and social media earlier than and through the trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court docket.

“This entire story has not been concerning the capturing,” Stallion testified earlier this month. “It’s solely been about who I been having intercourse with.”

Certainly, in hopes of clearing Lanez’s identify, protection attorneys tried to pin the capturing on one other Black lady, trotting out a lame, male-ego-affirming argument concerning the two ladies getting right into a battle as a result of they had been drawn to the identical man — their shopper.

Much more terrible was Lanez himself, who released a whole album — which wasn’t his hottest, however wasn’t a flop both — about how he was being framed for capturing Stallion and insinuating that she had lied about the entire ordeal.

“How the f— you get shot in your foot,” he rapped, “don’t hit no bones or tendons?”

And reasonably than push again, the response from the broader hip-hop neighborhood ranged from conspicuous silence to outright settlement. Simply final month, Drake rapped on his new tune with 21 Savage: “This b— lie about getting shot however she nonetheless a stallion.”

Supporters rally in assist of Megan Thee Stallion outdoors the courthouse the place Stallion, whose authorized identify is Megan Pete, testified within the trial of rapper Tory Lanez on Dec. 13 in Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Occasions)

That is precisely why #BelieveBlackWomen and #ProtectBlackWomen had been trending on Twitter after the decision. Stallion way back identified how neither tends to occur.

“I used to be just lately the sufferer of an act of violence by a person. After a celebration, I used to be shot twice as I walked away from him. We weren’t in a relationship. Honestly, I used to be shocked that I ended up in that place,” she wrote in an op-ed for the New York Occasions in late 2020.

“My preliminary silence about what occurred was out of worry for myself and my buddies. Whilst a sufferer, I’ve been met with skepticism and judgment. The way in which individuals have publicly questioned and debated whether or not I performed a task in my very own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what occurred had been, sadly, warranted.”

On Friday, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón praised Stallion’s “unbelievable braveness” for testifying, regardless of “repeated and grotesque assaults” on her character.

“Girls, particularly Black ladies, are afraid to report crimes like assault and sexual violence as a result of they’re too typically not believed,” he stated in an announcement, which alluded to the ladies who testified in opposition to rapist Harvey Weinstein. “This trial, for the second time this month highlighted the quite a few ways in which our society should do higher for ladies.”

Even in California, ladies, notably Black and queer ladies, are among the many most weak. In accordance with the Public Coverage Institute of California, the feminine jail inhabitants has elevated six-fold since 1970 — twice as a lot because the male inhabitants.

And there’s a brief line between ladies who’re incarcerated and girls who’re victims.

Typically, Black ladies find yourself behind bars due to some mixture of poverty, habit and being within the incorrect place on the incorrect time with the incorrect man.

So, I’ll remind you once more about Lanez’s attorneys’ craven technique to persuade the jury that Stallion’s former greatest buddy, Kelsey Harris, was actually the shooter.

That didn’t work, clearly. Lanez now faces greater than 20 years in jail.

However a conviction doesn’t essentially imply that Stallion will obtain the apologies she is due, a lot much less see a few of that regret, humility and self-awareness I discussed. The legion of influencers who have made endless excuses for Tory Lanez had been mighty quiet on Friday.

Apart from Lanez’s father. Within the minutes after the decision was learn and Superior Court docket Decide David Herriford set a sentencing listening to for late January, he jumped up from his seat within the courtroom and began yelling at prosecutors.

“This depraved system!” he stated, my colleagues James Queally and Jonah Valdez reported. “You’re depraved! precisely what you probably did!”

Outdoors, after sheriff’s deputies had escorted him and different family members from the courtroom, Lanez’s father continued ranting, cursing the document label Roc Nation for supposedly rigging the trial and promising a comeuppance from on excessive.

“It’s not over! It’s NOT over,” he shouted. “God doesn’t lose!”

Or perhaps this isn’t about God.

Perhaps Lanez is simply responsible. And perhaps it’s time, as soon as and for all, that we imagine and shield Black ladies.