Apr 25
Cardi B's Comments on Male Rape, Being Gay Spark Controversy
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Rapper Cardi B took to social media after binging up a Netflix series that contains depictions of sexual assault against a male victim, and shared controversial theories about male rape and being gay.
The show in question is a seven-part series called "Baby Reindeer," which stars Richard Gadd and is reportedly "based on a true story." The series centers on an aspiring comic named Danny who is promised help with his career by a man who then drugs and rapes him. In the aftermath, Danny experiments with sex with both men and women.
Cardi B took to Instagram to suggest that while "some men... are born gay," others might only discover they are gay due to having been assaulted.
The Root reported that Cardi B mulled aloud on her thoughts in a video that is now expired on her own Instagram but can be viewed at Insta account livebitez.
"I believe there's some men that are born gay," the rapper said. "I have a cousin that I just knew since he was two years old he was gay."
However, she went on to add, "not everybody is born gay," citing the character of Danny as evidence that "there's men that get sexually assaulted then they find out they are gay."
"The guy introduced him to drugs and while he was drugged up, the guy was raping him," the recording artist recounts. "They started fucking him and sucking his dick and all this weird shit, and because of that, the guy started finding out that he was getting into that."
The rapper offered the thought that "people sometimes don't even know their story or how they got there. That's why sometimes you got to be more open about certain things because it's like you just don't know people's story and why they like their preference and how they even got there."
"Cardi B's comments about 'Baby Reindeer' are similar to widely-debunked 'cultural myths,'" Pink News noted, "namely, that boys abused by males must have attracted the abuse because they are gay, or they become gay as a result."
British support organization Blue Sky Centre, which supports survivors of sexual assault, points out the facts around male rape, Pink News noted.
"Being raped or sexually assaulted will not change your sexuality so that you now become gay or become straight," the center explains, before going on to add: "Men can be victims of sexual attack regardless of their sexual orientation. And while the attacker is more often male, men can be and are sexually assaulted by women."
"Furthermore," Pink News noted, "according to Male Survivors Partnership, Cardi B's comments fall into the realm of cultural myth, namely: 'The myth that boys abused by males must have attracted the abuse because they are gay or they become gay as a result.'"
Cardi B has publicly identified as bisexual in the past, reports recalled, and expressed her support for the LGBTQ+ community.
"In 2022, Cardi slammed a biphobic tweet stating that she was a celebrity who 'came out as bisexual but never dated someone of the same gender,'" Pink News went on to recount.
This was her epic slapdown:
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
