Janelle Monáe Speaks About Megan Thee Stallion Shooting: ‘I’m Sick to My Stomach’

 

Janelle Monáe has added her voice to the conversation about how black men treated Megan Thee Stallion unfairly following her shooting.

Monáe told Jemele Hill on her podcast that she felt “sick to her stomach” while watching Megan Thee Stallion defend herself online and painfully open up about Tory Lanez shooting her.

“I think what I try to do is come from a place of love, but love is not exempt of accountability,” the Antebellum actress said around the 14-minute mark.

She continued, “Just because you hold somebody accountable, don’t mean that you don’t love them. That that is the biggest form of love, because that’s saying, ‘Listen, we can be better than that. I want you to be better than that.’ And I, like you, I’m sick to my stomach around the victim-blaming that that was going on around Meg the Stallion, and she is strong. But she should not have to go through that. She should not have to prove to people who thought that she was lying, that she wasn’t lying.”

Monáe also unpacked how anyone benefiting from the patriarchal system in American society has an obligation to speak up and not just take up arms as allies but as “[accomplices] to Black women.”

“Violence under any kind should be condemned. It’s not a gender issue. It needs to be condemned. And I think that when you, when we’re talking about Black women, though, we are disproportionately affected by it,” the 34-year-old artist continued. “So my thing is to say in the same way that we ask white people to like to abolish systemic racism and oppression, I’m asking those, and this is Black men included, if you are doing this, then I’m not talking to you. But if you benefit from this white patriarchal system in a way that we don’t, I’m asking you to have conversations with more men about how you can be better supportive, how you can show up better for Black women and other folks who may not be as privileged as you are in this world.”

See the clip below: