Vic Mensa defends Megan Thee Stallion, points to gap between how male and female rappers are judged

Vic Mensa is speaking out on behalf of Megan Thee Stallion, arguing she’s become a test case for how society treats Black women who are victims of violence.

Vic Mensa is pushing back on how Megan Thee Stallion has been treated in the years since she was shot, framing the ongoing scrutiny she faces as evidence of a much larger pattern.

Mensa’s comments come years after Megan was shot in the foot in July 2020 by Tory Lanez, who was later convicted on three felony charges tied to the incident.

In an Instagram reel posted Thursday, the Chicago rapper said Megan has become, in his words, “a good barometer for what you think about Black women.”

In the video, Mensa mocked the idea that Megan bears any blame for what happened to her, imitating the logic he says gets applied to victims like her: “How could you do this to me? You ran your body directly into my bullets.”

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He then laid out what he sees as a glaring gender gap in how violence and sexuality are received depending on who’s involved. According to Mensa, male rappers who commit or survive violent acts are often rewarded rather than punished, while women who survive being shot face suspicion instead of sympathy.

He extended the same critique to relationships, arguing men are celebrated for promiscuity while a woman’s past relationships get used against her, saying plainly, “for a woman, relationships you’ve had are used as justification for you to die.”

Mensa also brought up Yung Miami’s song “Spend Dat” during the clip, calling it “a very American record” despite its subject matter and joking that the founding fathers could have written something similar given the country’s own history of broken treaties.

He circled back to Janet Jackson’s career fallout after her 2004 Super Bowl incident as another example of the pattern he’s describing, summing it up bluntly: “Her titty get pulled out, she get canceled. Meg get shot, it’s her fault.”

Mensa expanded on these arguments further in a Substack essay titled “Megan Thee Stallion and the Anatomy of Misogynoir,” writing that even with clear evidence supporting Megan’s account of the shooting, people continue searching for reasons to doubt her.

For Mensa, though, the point of the video wasn’t really about litigating one case. It was about naming a pattern he believes repeats itself every time a woman in music becomes the story and asking why so few people seem willing to sit with that discomfort once the headlines move on.