How Women Become Carceral Feminists

[Music] Yeah, R. Kelly didn't do that. Robert Kelly did. Legal age is 16 years old. I want to see a black man who came so far, almost to a billion dollars, fall down. That's our every other day. The public becomes aware of how a famous man abused a woman, and every other day, the public makes heroes out of those men and villains out of their victims. There is no greater example of this in recent history than Tory Lanez, who not only shot the rapper Megan Thee Stallion, but he launched a years-long smear campaign against her that gained him a fan base of black men all over the world, devoted to berating the woman who tried to protect him, and landed himself in prison for 10 years. I'm a criminal defense attorney who's represented hundreds of men accused of crimes, including violence against women, and never once did I struggle with this or secretly root against gangsta my clients. But when Tory Lanez was convicted, I was one of countless women happy to see it. Why? Because you gave us no other choice.

[Music] [Music] [Applause] My experience on the internet as someone who opposes the criminal system, policing, and prisons has been an interesting one. Because on one hand, I've amassed a following of thousands of people who, on places like Twitter, followed me specifically because they claimed to share my belief that we should dismantle the criminal system, that we have, that prisons are terrible places that do not prevent nor stop crime, that police lie routinely, and the media regularly takes police word as fact without any scrutiny, and that criminal prosecution and incarceration are rarely the answer to whatever harm has occurred. Yet, the same people who eat up those words in theory usually have visceral reactions whenever I apply those beliefs to real-life cases, especially if it concerns domestic violence or violence against women. And I understand that we've been taught to believe that prison is the answer to wrongdoing, that taking accountability means being criminally prosecuted and convicted. So it makes sense that people who rightly see men abusing women as wrong would believe those men should be thrown under the jail. And unfortunately, our collective lived experience is that most times, the only people who caution us against rushing to immediately condemn, discard, and prosecute men accused of abusing women are those who are trying to deny, dismiss, or diminish the abuse. It's usually those who do not have a problem with men abusing women. And in the case of women who do this, they're usually pick-mes for abusers. Which is why on any occasion where the internet was virtually stoning some man at the very first whiff of a headline suggesting he abused a woman, and I made the mistake of trying to introduce an abolitionist framework into the discourse, I've had my ass handed to me by those who we call carceral feminists. Who don't give a why it's problematic that people who claim to be abolitionists, that oppose punitive criminal systems, that condemn and discard people, are quick to adopt those same punitive attitudes and practices within their social circles and communities before knowing anything beyond a headline and a police account. If you've never heard of carceral feminism, the term was coined by Elizabeth Bernstein in her 2017 essay, "The Sexual Politics of New Abolitionism." The term is not a complimentary one, and it refers to feminists who not only want to rely on the criminal system for dealing with issues of gender-based violence, they want to throw the book at abusers who they believe cannot be reformed, who they believe are innately violent and need to be kept away from the rest of us. So carceral feminism is in tension with abolition for obvious reasons. But while I don't like carceral feminism, especially how it shows up on social media, because I don't think it will accomplish anything but expanding the prison industrial complex, I've come to realize that dismissing why carceral feminists feel the way they do is a mistake. Because the reason they feel the way they do is valid. And until we address the problem carceral feminists have, there is no path to abolition or redemption for men who commit harm. Because the truth is, I think most reasonable women, including myself, have a little carceral feminist in us. Because how, how could we not? Why would we not?

I chose to use Ground News when doing my research for productions like these because not only does their app and website let you compare how the media is framing any given story worldwide and get context on each source, in this particular climate where everyone's targeting you with click-baited misinformation, where it's hard to tell what's real, what's fake news, and what's just straight-up propaganda, and maybe even AI, a tool like Ground News is invaluable. Especially when I'm doing research on something as sensitive as Tory Lanez shooting Megan Thee Stallion and the additional restraining order she requested against him. We can see that over 100 articles were published on this story, with only 7% of them being right-leaning. This underreporting on the right side can indicate a disproportionate blind spot on that side. And I'm sure you can imagine what kind of blind spot might exist, seeing as this is a case involving violence against a black woman in music. Let's compare the difference in reporting between how some right-leaning outlets framed the assault versus how more left-leaning sources did. We can see that the left-leaning sources highlight the fact that Megan has requested a restraining order due to the harassment, while right-leaning sources highlight the possible media attention this may garner. One of my favorite features of Ground News is the blind spot report, which allows you to see stories like these, maybe disproportionately covered by the left or the right, allowing you a chance to step out of your echo chambers. Ground News just really can't be beat because it makes it easy for me to make sure that I'm not just spewing unsubstantiated mess or being biased. Which is why it was a no-brainer for me to go with them for today's sponsor. Go to ground.news/olay or scan the QR code on the screen. Ground News is giving my viewers 40% off their unlimited access, access Vantage plan. This is their best deal of the year and will only be available for a limited time, so you better jump on it. Ground News is subscriber-funded, so you won't see any ads on their website, which is what contributes to sensationalism and clickbait reporting. By subscribing, you're not only getting an amazing resource, but you're supporting their work directly and helping keep media reporting honest. Thank you for sponsoring this video, Ground News. Now back to the video.

Ask yourselves, how do women who otherwise do not even believe in prisons find themselves rooting to throw abusers under the jail? Well, it's because we haven't been given any other choice. And I think there is no greater proof of that than the vilification of Megan Thee Stallion. I'm a black woman and a criminal defense attorney, but I'm also a woman who has experienced domestic violence and an abolitionist. Those things do not conflict. But during the trial against Tory Lanez, as someone who was not rooting for him to beat the case, people assume that they must. But I maintain that, believe it or not, everything that unfolded since Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion makes it a case for abolition and illustrates how our criminal system serves as an impediment to truly taking accountability and addressing harm. Stay with me. Condemning crime is not the same as solving it. To solve crime, you must prevent it, and you can only do that by interrogating and understanding how and why the crime came about, the root cause, so that you can address it. Abolition is about preventing harm and the fundamental recognition that what we're doing now, mass incarceration, does not do that because it's not meant to. And instead, it makes matters worse because it's meant to. Yet, we are invested in treating criminal convictions and incarcerations as the answer to all of our problems, as being synonymous with justice. So we refuse to interrogate our issues without the legal system or to hold each other accountable without it. What's worse is we often can't hold each other accountable for harm we've caused in honest, non-punitive ways that help address and correct that behavior because the threat of our criminal system stands in tension with that. Let me explain what I mean. I was relieved and honestly happy, happy for Meg to Stallion when Tory Lanez was found guilty of all his charges. I did not feel that way because I was especially outraged by his crime, or because I think his conviction, or any conviction, constitutes justice, nor because I think he deserves prison, or that incarcerating him will benefit anyone, change what's been done, or prevent from happening in the future.

Over four years ago, Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion in her foot. Initially, we only knew she'd been shot, and everyone assumed Tori did it. But Meg said nothing. The internet responded with countless memes and jokes about Tori shooting her. That's important because the people who now hate Meg and champion Tory Lanez, and artists who wouldn't have crossed their minds if they'd been asked to name their top 50 rappers of today, would have you believe that that hatred does not come from misogyny, that it is solely the result of their unshakable conviction that she is lying on an innocent black man. They would have you believe that if they had a video of him shooting her, if they knew he shot her without a single shadow of a doubt, that they would sing a different tune. That's why it's important to remember that initially, before they cycle through these conspiracies, she had the goalposts shifted from "she was never shot" to "okay, she was shot, but she's lying about who shot her" to " [ __ ] shame on her" to challenge her credibility, while never addressing the credibility of the man actually on trial, or the litany of things that diminished his credibility. They assumed he shot her, and they thought it was hilarious. And Megan still said nothing. Then Tory Lanez apologized to Megan privately. But even though Meg had remained silent and nothing suggested that she wanted to press charges against Tory, Tory's team, who probably reasonably understood that it's the District Attorney's office who presses the charges, not the victim, and in wanting to protect Tory from negative press, they leaked stories to the blogs that would absolve him of wrongdoing, which reasonably antagonized and upset Meg. It was then, and only then, that Meg decided to tell the public how he'd shot her. But she protected him nonetheless because she was scared the police would brutalize them if she told them he had a gun or what he'd done. So she allowed the police to handcuff her and criminalize her to his benefit, all whilst the bullet was in her foot. And telling the truth prompted Tory Lanez to mercilessly attack her however he could, doing things like making a music video where he chopped off a horse's foot that was supposed to represent her, and thus fueling a massive hate train against the woman he liked because he foolishly thought his freedom depended on it, that beating this woman down in the court of public opinion would change his chances at trial. And the result was that for years, swaths of black men, artists, and athletes like LeBron James, who had never given him a second thought and even disliked him in some cases, like Drake, began trying to iconify him and ascend him to this unearned importance in the community, shouting him out, uplifting his music, and thoughtlessly criticizing Meg. "This getting shot, but she still a stallion." When they were chastised for it, they all responded, including Tory himself, with some variation of, "Wait until the trial. The truth will come out at trial. You'll all be so sorry when Tory's found innocent." I highlighted "they" to emphasize this point. It was Tory's supporters who chose the outcome of the trial as the benchmark here. They announced to us that they would treat the outcome of the trial as the arbiter of truth, as the final word. Not us. Abolitionists know. Women know. Domestic violence survivors know. Black people know that the criminal system is not about justice, that trials rarely provide clarity as to the facts, that judges and juries are just human beings with biases and blind spots and can get it wrong, that you could be guilty of a crime and still neither you, the victim, nor society are made whole or better by convicting and/or incarcerating you. We know that. But the people championing Tory drew that line in the sand anyway. That is why I was happy for Meg. That is why I was relieved Tory was convicted. Because if he hadn't been, the agents of misogyny had made it clear that they not only would have tortured Meg, but they would continue to torture every woman who's ever been in her position, and those who have yet to be, but may feel too afraid of being met with the same response to speak up when it happens to them. And while it's why I was relieved, it's also precisely why I believe in abolition. Because we live in a society that has taught us that the only metric for justice is a system that we know doesn't bring it about. So we still rely on it to be the deciding factor. And on top of that, just the existence of this system prevented the parties involved from pursuing another path. Think about it. It's quite possible that in a different world, Tory, who had already apologized to Meg and multiple parties involved in private, would have felt comfortable taking responsibility for his actions and atoning some other way. Had taken responsibility, not come at the cost of his freedom. It's just as likely that in a world where Tory's team wasn't worried the District Attorney's office could and would press charges regardless of the victim's wants in silence, they wouldn't have felt compelled to leak counternarratives to blogs that antagonized Meg into cooperating with their case against Tory. Imagine a world where Tory could have owned what he did, addressed what caused him to act that way, and corrected that behavior. Imagine a world where we, as a society, address those issues and the issues of the people that seek to excuse his behavior, rather than weaponize a criminal system against each other, knowing that system is itself a weapon formed against us all. But that's not what happened. Because not only is that not the world we live in, in addition to the limitations imposed by the criminal system, the reality is and has always been that whenever a black woman is the victim of abuse at the hands of a man, no matter what the circumstances, she will be made to answer for her own pain and turned into either the butt of the joke or a villain. People become contortionists to hold a trial against black women for the harm they suffered to determine the myriad of ways they were both to blame for it and deserving of it. And it's this fact standing in the way of abolition. Because the vilification of victims isn't a horrible thing that may happen if they speak up about their abuse. It's what will happen. It's guaranteed. This is what I call the abuser's second act. And on some level, it's even worse than the first act, the abuse itself. Because not only has the victim already had to suffer the original abuse, the public is not now only going to become accessories after the fact of the crime because they are going to help the abuser gaslight, disparage, and verbally beat their victim into silence. But because this is happening in the public sphere, the intended victim is not the only one made to experience the trauma of this second act. This public lashing is felt by all victims. And it's society's constant infliction of this second act on victims who not only have to experience their own first and second acts, but who know that they're going to have to experience that second act each and every time a woman's abuse is made public. It's that that births carceral feminism and the knee-jerk reaction to convict and condemn alleged abusers in the court of public opinion without a trial because they know, because we know, it's what will absolutely be done to any and every potential victim. That's where the primal urge to lean into punitive measures for men who put us all through this second act comes from. Carceral feminism is born out of the truth that there is literally no path a woman can take, especially black women, but it's true of all women. There is no path a woman can take that society will not oppose, discredit, and vilify her for. Megan was proof of that. But we have countless examples. Take Robin Givens. In 1988, she filed for divorce from Mike Tyson because he violently beat her and had a volatile temper. And we know that Mike Tyson abused her. In his own 1989 biography, "Fire and Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson," Mike Tyson is quoted, "I like to hurt women when I make love to them. It gives me pleasure." He specifically called punching Robin Givens "the best punch I've ever thrown in my entire life." It was when I fought Robin in Steve Lott's apartment. She really offended me, and I went, bam! She flew backwards, hitting every wall in the apartment. That was the best punch I've ever thrown in my entire life." And yet, this is how the media framed Robin Givens. You know what people write about you, say about you. You know, this is the beautiful, glamorous actress with her beautiful, glamorous mother who are out to ruin this, basically. I don't know what tough guy, naive. Yes, she was called everything but a child of God, a gold digger, the most hated woman in America. To this day, on her Wikipedia page where it discusses her relationship with Tyson, the people who wrote it are still trying to frame her as the villain by saying she didn't have a prenup, that she made up her miscarriage, that she and her mom were spending his money. Even though Robin Givens sat next to Mike Tyson across from Barbara Walters and told the world he was violent and volatile, and he sat right there next to her and he did not deny it because he could not deny it. Robin, some of the things that we've read that he's hit you, that he's chased you and your mother around in in Russia, that Mike has a very volatile temper. True. Extremely volatile temper. I think people see that about every three months he's got a side to him that's scary. Michael is a manic depressive. He is. I mean, that's just a fact. And when he's in a manic state, he doesn't sleep. He has enormous amounts of energy. So you're sleeping agitates him. He gets you up. There's an argument. I mean, of course, you want to sleep. So you run out of the room, and he runs after you, right? And people see this, and it's in the paper. Right. What he did deny was the idea that Robin was spending lavishly, that she was a gold digger. You, you said all your millions, Robin could have anything she wanted. Does she ask for a lot? Does she spend a lot? No. I have to force her to buy things. I have to force her to dress a certain way. Like she wants to go out with jeans and boots. This is how the world responded to Robin Givens when she didn't even ask them for anything, not from them, nor from Mike Tyson. She didn't ask for him to be prosecuted. So you can't say she tried to send a black man to jail. She didn't sue him in civil court for money for abusing her. All she wanted was a divorce and a restraining order. And in order to do that, she cited spousal abuse. So she had to tell her story about her abuse. And for that, a world who had nothing to do with it decided that they hate her, that she must be a gold digger, and thus lying about the abuse, the abuser himself did not and could not deny.

People can know, know with certainty that a woman was abused and still refuse to lend her sympathy. Take Tina Turner. Not only did the 1993 movie "What's Love Got to Do With It," starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne, depict the real-life story of Ike and Tina Turner's life, where he beat her mercilessly for 16 years. In real life, Ike Turner could barely bring himself to deny the abuse because he wanted his abuse to be attributed as the reason for her success. If everything Tina says about you is true, then you're a bad man. Well, well, I would say this, uh, maybe so, if it was true. But if that's what it took to make her what she is today, then I have no regrets. There's no scars on Tina. You can take a real close look at her. What I did do to Tina, it's like, uh, uh, we've had, uh, I've snapped Tina. Uh, the only time I ever punched Tina in my life was the last fight that we had, and, and, and that was, uh, in Dallas, Texas. Uh, this is the last time we broke up. Uh, uh, uh, uh, I have snapped her. Any time, uh, when I said slap to her, it's like, uh, I think we lived a lie. He was allowed to just continue on. He wasn't banished to the shadows. He wasn't truly shamed. And what's wild is that we know about Ike's abuse because Tina decided to write a book about her life and tell her story in order to explain to her critics why she left Ike, only for her abuse to become a joke and a meme, even after she's passed on.

Take D. Barnes. In 1990, D. Barnes had a hip-hop show called "Pump It Up." And on that show, Ice Cube, not D. Barnes, dissed and wa. And because Dr. Dre did not like what Ice Cube had to say, when he ran into a 22-year-old D. Barnes in a Hollywood nightclub on January 27th, 1991, D.N. said he picked her up by her hair unprovoked and began slamming her head on the right side of her body repeatedly against a brick wall near the stairway as his bodyguard held off the crowd with a gun. And after he tried to throw her down the stairs and failed, he began kicking her in the ribs and hands. She escaped and ran into the women's restroom, and he followed her. He followed her into the women's restroom and grabbed her from behind by the hair again and proceeded to punch her in the back of the head before he and his bodyguard ran from the building. And there is absolutely no disputing that this is what Dr. Dre did to her in a crowded club in front of witnesses. He pleaded no contest to it. Yet people spread rumors that she was only suing Dr. Dre because he hadn't promoted a project of hers. And this is what Dr. Dre's group members in N.W.A. had to say. "She got beat down. The person, the host of that show, did something, and she knows what she did and got beat down. And I hope it happens again. See you around, buddy boy." "What was that, Ren?" "Huh?" "What she do that would that? What did she do that created the situation and made it that bad?" "Tried to make us look stupid. Tried to play us on National TV. Tried to play us on national TV. Tried to play us in front of millions of people." "It's not over yet." D. Barnes' lawyers say they're obtaining a restraining order against Dre, who they claim has continued to threaten Barnes. And the larger community's response were very similar to that. And that's not even the only woman that we know for a fact Dr. Dre has brutally abused. Think about Michelle. And the community has excused Dr. Dre's abuse against women for decades, continuing to celebrate him.

Take Keke Palmer. Who, despite being allegedly loved and cherished by the black community that has watched her grow up since Aaliyah and The Beat, saw firsthand how the community that loves you will discredit you if you try to speak up against a man. Today, Trey Songz has repeatedly been accused of rape and sexual assault. He's been accused of so much abuse of women that I cannot keep up, and he's been arrested numerous times for violence, LWD behavior, and more. But before Trey Songz being an abuser became common knowledge, Keke Palmer tried to tell us what he was in 2017, and people didn't want to believe it. Something Keke would later point out in The Breakfast Club after other people started speaking up against him. "Did you and other Trey Songz ever get cool again, man?" "You know, I have not talked to that guy." "Was it a misunderstanding?" "You know, it wasn't a misunderstanding. I told her story. I tell my truth. And you know, I just thought it was real interesting that after all those things went down, someone else has something to say. First of all, I love people. I love my people. I'm not going to try to ever tear nobody down, try to tear no black man down. That's not who I am. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not what I stand for. That's not what I'm about. So if I say something, I'm saying something for a reason. And I feel like so many times black women say stuff and nobody gives a [ __ ], but somebody of another complexion, somebody of another color, they say something, and then it's like, we're taking it to court. It's time to get serious. #MeToo." And she's right. Because in 2017, when she spoke up, when it happened, Wendy Williams' response to Keke's story was very representative of the vocal majority. "Keke, Keke Palmer, you're going to sit down right next to Madonna. And Keke, I like you. You're a friend to my radio show. You're a friend to my TV show. But I'm a straight shooter, and I got a pap out. So Keke Palmer is fighting with Trey Songz, the singer. Apparently, Keke is accusing Trey Songz of secretly filming her and putting her in his new video. There was a party at Trey Songz' house, and Keke was there. There's a song that Trey Songz does, and in the song, it's not like he says the best things about her. He says something about, you know, 'I want to palm her.' Our president's favorite P word." "Uh-huh." "Uh-huh." "So, so that's what he says about Keke Palmer." And I guess she felt like, and Wendy was so comfortable with this popular opinion that she said it to Keke's face, giving Keke no choice but to check her in person and make light of a serious situation. "You know what, Keke? Honestly, when I told the story about Trey Songz, I thought you'd be like, 'Some people might be like, she talked about me on Hot Topics.' Now I don't want to go on her show." "Even though you were already booked." "You are a girl after my own heart." "No, she..." "You tell the rest." "And what all that happened?" "Well, you know, because you done told everybody, especially..." "Okay." "But I don't want to, I don't want to keep beating that one situation. But I will say, Wendy, I would have loved to turn on your show and saw you be a little bit more compassionate and less accusatory and ridiculous." "I couldn't. I could..." "Girl, the gag is, you wasn't there." "Well, and that wouldn't even be the last time Keke would have to grit her teeth and bear the community minimizing a man's abuse towards her. Because in 2023, it's been one year since Keke and ex-boyfriend Darius Jackson's relationship came crashing down and ended up in court with allegations of domestic violence and a custody battle over now 20-month-old son Leo. In November, Keke was granted a temporary restraining order after submitting screenshots of multiple alleged physical assaults captured by her security camera. Darius first publicized their relationship troubles in a social media post criticizing a dress she wore to an Usher concert. Quote, 'It's the outfit though. You a mom.' I randomly was on my phone and at saw a shav post of the comment, and I was just, I was honestly just shocked." The 31-year-old sat with People for their new cover story ahead of releasing her new memoir, "Master of Me." In it, she writes, "I wish I could say he was terrible the entire time, or that I was, but it wasn't that black and white. We saw with our own eyes Keke's child's father, Darius, a man none of us know from Adam, abuse Keke, someone we've loved for decades. And all the public, who she asked nothing of, seemed to care about was joining him in [ __ ] shaming her over a dress she wore to an Usher concert.

Take Cassie Ventura. Cassie filed a jaw-dropping lawsuit against Diddy for years of physical and sexual abuse, and Diddy settled the lawsuit in less than 24 hours. Yet the public discourse accused her of only wanting money, of trying to bring this black man down, only for footage to leak of Cassie trying to escape Diddy, only to be punted like a football and dragged like an animal. And I can tell you countless other women's stories to illustrate to you how the world responds to black women's abuse. But I would rather tell you my own. Abolition isn't just about abolishing prisons and leaving the world as it is. I know that's what people think, but that's not what it means. In order to have a world without prisons, we must first rid ourselves of the harm we pretend to use prisons to address. And to do that, we must not only address the root causes of that harm, but also the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors preventing us from employing alternatives to incarceration and reimagining what justice is. Meaning, it is insufficient to imagine a world without prisons where women do not have to feel relieved that Tory Lanez was convicted because men won't be awaiting an acquittal to weaponize against us, without also acknowledging why that's not the world we live in. Imagining an abolitionist future requires us to contend with the present reality that our world not only refuses to protect black women, but it also violently lashes out on women who try to protect ourselves. I've never referred to myself as either a victim or a survivor of domestic violence because once you do, it becomes central to people's assumptions about you and what you must believe or be triggered by. Those assumptions don't usually line up with my reality, as I'm a woman who became a defense attorney after it happened to me, and I have no special hatred, hang-up, or qualms with people accused of domestic violence or with representing them. So on the few occasions I have mentioned my experience, it's been just that, a mention, offered up in a usually heavily watered-down manner that admittedly usually centers and humanizes the man who abused me, only to rebut the assumption that as an abolitionist, I've never experienced crime and would feel differently if I had to, and to assert that I wholeheartedly believe the involvement of the criminal system could not make me or him whole, nor could it prevent another woman from experiencing what I did. For many years, I hadn't actually ever told the story, especially not for the purposes of sharing what happened to me, because I didn't really see how such a deeply personal pain could matter to anyone but me. But when people couldn't understand why so, so many black women were relieved when Tory Lanez was convicted, when they couldn't understand why we felt so strongly about how Meg was being treated, and the certainty in which we knew she and other women would be mistreated in the aftermath of an acquittal, I realized that what they were missing was reality. The reality that what happened to Meg is not an anomaly. That every day, regular degular black women and girls experience a microcosm of what the world did to Meg. And that there's no reimagining a world without prisons without reckoning with that. This is how I, like so many other black women, know what it's like to protect a man who attacked you, risked your life, and somehow still be made the villain in one of the most traumatic experiences of your life.

On April 25th, 2014, I was a 20-year-old junior at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, living off campus with my then-boyfriend, whom I'd been with a year and who had recently joined a historically black fraternity solely because I had introduced him to the members and paid his dues when his white mother refused. That night, my sorority was throwing a joint party with his fraternity. At the party, a fight broke out between his and another fraternity. The fight was quickly resolved for all of the other participants, but not for my then-boyfriend. He ran down the street and returned with a paddle he had apparently gotten from the trunk of his car, and he tried to further escalate the fight despite being sorely outnumbered. And I was friends with all the men he was trying to fight, so I begged them to spare him, and they agreed. My friend Leon and I then dragged him down the street where he continued to argue with us because he wanted to return to the fight. But to the police driving by, it looked like he was fighting with my friends, so they stopped to ask her if she was okay. She said she was, but he started arguing with them about why they were stopping him and questioning him. So they handcuffed him and put him in their back seat. I spent at least 30 minutes pleading with the police to let him go, and surprisingly, they eventually agreed on the condition that he apologized. So I then spent another 20 minutes pleading with him to apologize to the police and assuring him that I knew he should not have to apologize, but I promised that we could unpack it together once they let you go and we get home safe. Eventually, he begrudgingly apologized to them. The moment the police uncuffed him, he darted down the street to his parked car. But the police had given me his car keys because he was too drunk to drive, so I just followed slowly behind him to the car, accompanied by my friend at the police had assumed he was fighting with, and one of his fraternity brothers. I vividly remember pulling up to our apartment building because it was raining, and he jumped out of the car before I even brought the car to a complete stop. And I had on this pair of Reebok Kamikazes I'd gotten for Christmas that I remember watching get muddied as I followed behind him because he was running through the wet grass. And I kept those shoes, and I still have those shoes. Once we were inside the apartment, he did not go to either of our two bedrooms. He instead threw himself onto the couch in the living room and began to yell at me for wanting him to go to jail. And I remember being flabbergasted. Like, I literally just got done talking this man out of handcuffs, out of the police car, and out of the criminal charges they've been ready to slap him with, and there he was, telling me I want him to go to jail. Which, by the way, looking back on now as a criminal defense attorney, I wasn't half as outraged as I deserved to be because I would never encourage anyone to talk to the police or to believe that they could talk the police out of making an arrest. They had already made that rare exception to the rule, and he didn't appreciate it. So I decided I'd had enough. I'd spent a year being tortured by his episodes and his undiagnosed issues, and this was my limit. So I said to him, "You know what? I'm done." And I left him on the couch and I went to our bedroom, which was down the hall at the back of the apartment. I changed into a large navy blue Tweety Bird t-shirt and I got in bed. And I kept that shirt, and I still have that shirt. Shortly after closing my eyes, I heard him running full speed down the hall. But it was so fast, I'm telling y'all, before I could even fully open my eyes, his hands were around my neck. And that was the first time I truly ever experienced a man's strength. I was scratching at him. I was trying so hard to get his hands from around my neck. And I remember the exact moment the panic set in when I realized that no matter how hard I was trying, I could not loosen his grip around my neck. And he only stopped choking me just long enough to be able to grab me by my braids and fling me across the room. And I'm telling you, when he did that, he ripped multiple braids from the front of my scalp. And when I landed, I tried to run, and he grabbed me, tearing my shirt. He pulled me back down to the ground and he started kicking me in my head. And I don't remember exactly how many times he kicked me, but I remember telling the doctor who told me I had a concussion that I lost count after the 36th kick. And I do remember that while he was kicking me, he was calling me by other people's names and he was screaming messages that seemed meant for whomever he seemed to be seeing instead of me. And at some point, the neighbors must have heard me screaming and crying for him to stop and called the police. And the knock at the door startled him, literally just long enough to give me an opportunity to run towards the door. And when I opened it, I was expecting to see my friends because they told me they planned to drop by because they were concerned about how he'd been acting all night. But instead of it being my friends, it was the same officers that I had convinced literally not even an hour earlier to release him. Like, probably not even 30 minutes. But my friend I initially expected to see did arrive moments later, and they were with me as I sat on the floor in nothing but that torn-up Tweety Bird shirt with braids visibly missing from my head, crying and pleading with the police not to arrest him again. I even told them to arrest me in his place, which is so [ __ ] crazy. And all while this is happening, I can hear him in our bedroom screaming at the officers, " [ __ ] that [ __ ]!" in reference to me, the woman protecting him to her detriment. So I called his mother to help me convince the police not to arrest him. He was black, biracial, but black. But his mother was white. So I put the phone on speaker so that she could talk to the police and convince them not to arrest him. But she told them to arrest him, and they did. And as they were dragging him out of the apartment, I literally could hear him screaming, begging them to please let me talk to my girl. And when he called me from jail, he cried about hurting me and how disappointed he was because as a black man, he had always promised himself he would never go to jail. That was a place he really never wanted to see himself in. And I understood that. And I told him how that understanding was precisely why I begged them not to arrest him in the first place, and why I wasn't going to proceed with a case against them. Then I met with some of his fraternity brothers and his only friend who had come to our apartment to check on me and offer their condemnations of him because everyone knew what he did. They knew exactly who he was. Two of them had literally witnessed many of the night's events. But I still begged them. I begged them not to ostracize him. Then his mom drove over two hours down to our apartment and told me I had "brought this out of her son" and it was my fault he'd attacked me because it was childish of me to tell him I was done with the relationship when he accused me of wanting him to go to jail. Mind you, this was a woman who I had watched physically run from him in a mall in Dayton, Ohio, months earlier and had warned me that I needed to decide if I could be with him because he was "looking at her like he wants to beat her ass." She then looked me dead in my eye, told me that my name was not on the lease, and that the order of protection the court would impose regardless of what I wanted meant that we could not be together. Despite living together and having no other place to go, she put all my [ __ ] things in garbage bags and threw them outside. This was the week before my finals, so I went into my finals week homeless, traumatized, and exhausted on my friend's couch. And exhausted because I wasn't allowed to go to sleep with a [ __ ] concussion. Despite that, upon the advice of his attorney, I wrote a leniency letter to the court explaining that he was an amazing person who was troubled but needed therapy and mental health treatment, not criminal prosecution. I took the bus with money I did not have to get the letter notarized and submitted to the court. His mother and fraternity brother called to criticize me for acknowledging any fault on his part and for saying in the letter that he needed mental health treatment. But I did not know how else to write a letter supporting him without totally invalidating that he had [ __ ] attacked me, and I refused to cooperate with the prosecutor and I ignored every call until they were forced to dismiss his case and the order of protection. It was about a month or so between his arrest and the case's dismissal. I know because I couldn't see him. But I spent that time doing everything I could to protect him. And I remember the weight of the depression I sank into when his fraternity brothers and my sorority sisters, the same people I had begged not to ostracize him, had instead decided to ostracize me. When he was released from jail after arraignments, one of his fraternity brothers, who barely knew him, did not like him, who I had personally known for years, saying to him, "I bet you can't wait to cut that [ __ ] off," and they all laughed about how it wouldn't have happened if he'd been with my light-skinned sorority sisters he'd apparently tried getting with earlier in the night. He attacked me. They provided him physical shelter, her to cheat on me at their homes. People I had been friends with for years, who had taken me to the hospital and sat with me when the doctor told me I had a concussion, shrugged their shoulders and told me that they did not believe he attacked me because despite the fact that he never denied what he'd done to me and always appeared profoundly hurt, ashamed, and traumatized by the whole experience when he spoke to me while his case was open, he either denied, minimized, or allowed his friends' conspiracy theories to fly because he was afraid of going back to jail. They painted him as this, this light-skinned, small, and non-threatening man versus a big, dark black woman who must be secretly violent and adversarial. I was a 5'2" woman who was asleep when he, a 5'9" man, began choking me with all his strength. Instead of being a victim of domestic violence, they called it a toxic relationship and painted this picture about mutual violence where we must simply have a violent relationship, where I must have attacked him and he just defended himself. I have never put my hands on him or any other man, and I was asleep. But didn't stop them from constantly implying that I must have been the aggressor and raising all these new hypotheticals about my complicity and all these justifications for what he'd done. One of the worst lows I had ever felt was hearing someone say he attacked me and hearing someone who stood in my house as my friend respond, "Well, you know, she's big," and then erupt into laughter at the implication that my weight meant I couldn't be a victim. And mind you, I'm a regular-sized [ __ ] and this man is much larger than me. I never imagined that I would feel gratitude to still have the shirt and shoes I wore the night he attacked me. I'd never have fathomed that for my sanity, I would need to look at that ripped Tweety Bird shirt and the muddied shoes just to be sure that something I lived through happened to me because people would gaslight me so violently to make me wonder, "Did I attack this man first?" When I know what happened. I know that many people roll their eyes when they hear "protect black women" because they perceive it as a self-indulgent rallying cry from a whiny interest group, rather than a cry for help from whom Malcolm X described as "the most unprotected, disrespected, and neglected group of women on the planet." I'm not trying to convince anyone that they should protect black women. I'm illustrating how I know that we are not, even when we're the first people to protect our abusers. We cannot live in a world without prisons where black women do not breathe a sigh of relief when a black man is convicted for abusing a black woman, where Meg isn't forced to rely on the criminal system, if we refuse to offer black women protection anywhere else within our communities. If we want a world where there's redemption for abusers, we must first stop celebrating and protecting abusers.

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