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Sean Combs is a monster.
Sean Combs is a monster, and his victims deserve justice — in whatever form it may come in.
I said what I said.
I am not a Sean Combs defender, and I never will be, but a lot of y’all are, and I just want to know: Why?
There is an entire legion of Sean Combs defenders who have used everything from “this being a plot to take a Black man down” to “these groupies knew what they were getting into” in defense of him.
They want so badly for none of this to be true even though there have been whispers and rumors and talk about the kind of life he was leading for years.
We have all heard them.
The charges against Sean Combs are damning.
Sean Combs is sitting in jail right now, awaiting trial for racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Even as he sits in jail awaiting trial, another woman has come forward accusing him of sexual assault and violence.
The indictment against him outlined a pattern of sexual predation, abuse, witness and victim tampering and intimidation that prosecutors say has gone on for more than a decade, beginning in at least 2009.
He was indicted on the evening of Sept. 16 and charged the following day. His attempt to stay out on bond was denied by a judge during his arraignment, and the following day, he lost his appeal in front of another judge who saw what any person can see based on the evidence.
He continued to abuse his victims even after lawsuits were filed against him.
At his arraignment, prosecutors alleged Combs had offered financial support to one woman if she “continues to be on his side.” He was accused of trying to convince another victim that the sex had actually been consensual, then asking her for her “support and friendship.”
When Dawn Richard of Danity Kane and later, Dirty Money, filed her lawsuit against Combs on Sept. 10, she accused him of abuse and claimed to have seen him abuse Cassie, the first of his victims to come forward with a lawsuit in November.
That lawsuit was settled within 24 hours of being filed.
Prosecutors told the judge that after Richard filed her lawsuit, Combs called or texted her 58 times in four days.
He called a woman who had just filed a lawsuit against him for abuse 58 times in four days.
That’s…abusive?
Combs is a monster who still poses a threat to his victims.
How are you defending that?
Sean Combs isn’t in jail for “freaky sex”
Please understand that this isn’t about people having “freaky sex.” We all like a little freaky sex – some of us more than others.
There’s nothing wrong with freaky sex; it just needs to be consensual, and the overwhelming message coming from his victims is that the things they did were not consensual.
His victims are saying he coerced him. His victims are saying he drugged them. His victims are saying he used physical violence. His victims are saying he leveraged his standing in the music industry. His victims are saying he used threats. His victims are saying he used his money to cover up the abuse. His victims are saying he made them do things they didn’t want to do, and he went about it by any means necessary.
Sean Combs’ kink isn’t freaky sex. Sean Combs’ kink is power.
Rape and sexual assault are not about sexual desire; they are about power. Forcing people into sexual situations they do not want to be in isn’t so much about having a good time as it is exerting and displaying power by way of taking something away from someone else and humiliating them in the process.
That is Sean Combs’ kink.
That’s not kinky sex. That’s depravity.
Sean Combs had the power to control situations and outcomes.
Sean Combs’ kink is power, and it’s not just the power that comes from being the head of one of the most legendary labels in hip-hop history. It’s not the power that comes from being one of the richest men in the world — although that is surely a part of it.
It’s absolute power.
It’s the type of power that allowed his abuse to go on for decades unchecked.
It’s the type of power that allowed him to be able to successfully keep it “hidden” as one of entertainment’s — and specifically hip-hop’s — best-kept “secrets.”
It’s the type of power that he was so drunk on, he watched R. Kelly go down for the exact same thing, and it didn’t occur to him to stop.
He was high on his own supply (among other things, allegedly).
His power had him thinking he was untouchable.
It is the type of power that makes other men want to be him. Other men want that type of power for themselves. Other men desire that type of control over people. Other men want to be Sean Combs.
It is the type of power that made him desirable to many women, despite the things they may have heard about him, and a lot of those same women are currently defending Sean Combs just as vocally as the men who idolize him.
Sympathy vs empathy.
In any other instance, we would be having an entirely different discussion about the levels of abuse of power in this situation, but because this is “Diddy,” and people idolize celebrity, and the parasocial nature of the internet and social media has everyone thinking these rich people give a damn about what you think about them or how you defend them, y’all show yourselves in the comments of post every single day.
Combs represents something aspirational to a lot of people. We watched him come from nothing. He started out as a backup dancer and ascended to the top right before our very eyes. We watched him amass fame and fortune. We have been given a front-row seat to the lavish life he leads. We’ve watched him have pretty much any beautiful woman he wanted.
He is a hood dream that is more often than not deferred for many, so in him, people find a hero they can relate to.
People want to see him do well, and they don’t want to see anything happen to him, so even something like this current situation — a situation which has sirens blaring, flashing lights, women screaming for help, men yelling, and the entire cacophony is louder than those flashy suits he used to wear in the ’90s — is something they want to see him get out of because, in the end, they just want him to win.
Sean Combs is not an empathetic character.
If this were a movie, we would all be rooting against Sean Combs.
We know what he has done; it has been repeated so much over the last 10 months, it’s as if we spent an entire school year memorizing it, and the way the U.S. education system is built on repetition, I’m sure y’all can recite his charges and some of the more salacious allegations more than members of the federal prosecution.
The people defending Sean Combs don’t care about what he is charged with any more than they care about the victims who have come forward — especially the women, many of whom have been dismissed as groupies with a grudge.
These defenses of Combs are rooted in the type of empathy that makes me question what you see reflected back at you when you look at him.
Why are you defending him?
Is it because you love his music? Is it because you see something in him that reminds you of yourself (in whatever way you want to take that, take that)?
Is it because you aspire to be where he is? Is it because you want to have the power he has? Would you abuse it in the same way?
The things Sean Combs is accused of are horrific. The decadeslong pattern of abuse and sexual assault speaks to something deep, unhealed, and untamed inside of him that makes him unsafe for any person who comes in contact with him.
There’s no defending that. I’m not even sure there is any rehabilitating that.
Why are you defending Sean Combs? Is it because you see something of yourself in him?
What unhealed, unhinged, untamed, and wholly unsafe monster are you hiding inside? How many unheard victims are you hoping won’t come forward?
We’ve been here before.
In 2015, Kirsten West Savali wrote about “how quickly some of us are able to cast Black girls aside and justify or dismiss the actions of predators that we prefer.”
At the time, she was referencing R. Kelly, but her words apply here as well:
Beyond those lights, though, beyond those lights are little Black girls who are being told what boundaries are and what they are not. There are little Black girls being given a perverse and dangerous lesson in forgiveness.
Beyond those lights, there were little Black girls being molested by their uncle or cousin or pastor or father or coach, and they learned that even if they screamed, they’d be heard only for a moment, if at all, before they were silenced by the loudness of accolades and adoration thrown at their assailants.
We are watching history repeat itself. R. Kelly got his reckoning five years ago, and Sean Combs is getting his, and just like with R. Kelly, there are people falling on their swords to defend a man who is being revealed to be a monster.
The little Black girls in your life can hear you. The Black women in your life can see you defending the indefensible. They know they are not safe around you. Their stories may never get told. Their screams will go unheard.
I wrote this as my definitive response to people defending Sean Combs for the things he has been accused of.
This is a horror movie. Sean Combs is the monster.
Since when do we empathize with the monster?
Monique Judge is a storyteller, content creator and writer living in Los Angeles. She is a word nerd who is a fan of the Oxford comma, spends way too much time on Twitter, and has more graphic t-shirts than you. Follow her on Twitter @thejournalista or check her out at thejournalista.com.
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