Not secrets exactly, guilty opinions are the ones you don’t discuss with just anyone because they go against the common wisdom about something that everyone else talks about as though they are of one accord.

Here’s what I mean: I have a friend I confessed to, that despite being a feminist I didn’t identify with the MeToo movement. In 2017, no one who shared that view was hollering it too loudly; it was a sub-conversation to the national one which left little room for dissent. More recently, what happened with Megan Thee Stallion and Tory Lanez felt a like that as well, except unlike MeToo, it turned on its head the idea of women needing to be protected. In many circles—mostly among Us—the overwhelming opinion seemed to be that Megan should have been the protector.

But back to my quarrel with MeToo for a minute. It was never that I don’t think men should be held accountable for gender-based exploitation and violence, but in my opinion, the movement had a few too many fatal flaws. First of all, its symbols were mostly white women with privilege, which seemed myopic and not representative of the vast majority of women’s experiences. And second, the breadth of transgressions by men seemed ill-defined and almost limitless. Telling someone you loved how they styled their hair, or making a dirty joke became almost as objectionable as unwanted groping; a consensual affair with a subordinate was portrayed as being one small step away from sexual assault. 

Third, apart from reminders from the belatedly acknowledged founder of MeToo, Tarana Burke, there was very little discussion about the fact that sexual exploitation of women without consequences is, in America, as old as the nation itself and was for a long time experienced predominantly by women who were not white. These women suffered further from the silence and complicity of white women who had struck a tacit bargain to guard their own privilege by ignoring white male sexual aggression at the expense of the Black and brown women who were their victims.

In one highly publicized MeToo case (which did eventually receive some pushback), a one-night stand was recast as tantamount to rape when the woman in question felt used after realizing that her famous, non-white male sex partner had no intention of pursuing her beyond their sole, raunchy encounter. That case was triggering, I told my friend, because it was easy to imagine a different time and place, where that man would have wound up hanging from a tree.

And here’s the guiltiest part of my opinion—I didn’t feel particularly sorry for the white men whose conduct was called into question. The way I saw it, they were all being destroyed by a fiction of their creation—the unimpeachable sanctity of white womanhood.

Right about now, you may be thinking: hmm, interesting, but what does all this have to do with Megan and Tory?

Well, for starters, the case where Tory Lanez was tried for shooting Megan Thee Stallion prompted another series of conversations with my Guilty Opinion Buddy. She followed it much more closely than I did. Two or three times a day in the immediate lead up, and while the trial was underway, she sent me her impressions of testimony, comparing it to prior statements made in the press and bemoaning the messiness of it all. It’s never comfortable when high-profile Black men and women are at odds on the national stage.

On December 23rd, Tory Lanez was found guilty of all three counts he was charged with, including assault with a semiautomatic firearm. My friend called me, her voice breathless with surprise. ‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Her career is over. She shouldn’t have done it.’

If a facial expression could be likened to a record scratch, that’s what I had to have looked like in that moment. ‘What d’you mean?’ I asked.

‘She broke code,’ my friend said emphatically. ‘Nobody is going to want to work with her ever again. That was so stupid.’

I thought that was extreme about Megan’s career being over, and told her so, then asked the question I was beginning to suspect I didn’t want an answer to: ‘So you’re saying that even if he did it, she shouldn’t have let him go down?’

‘Yes,’ my friend said, without hesitation. ‘Exactly.’

After that, I tried many times to end the conversation because I was blazing hot and not feeling equipped to be for my friend what she had been so many times before for me—I didn’t want to hear this guilty opinion. Mostly because it was delivered with an absence of ... well, guilt. Her opinion was expressed with certainty and self-righteousness.

My friend’s soliloquy on what she saw as Megan’s folly made me go back and read with greater attention all the comments on social media timelines, and opinion pieces. I was sad, but not that shocked that the weight of opinion seemed to be that regardless of what happened, Megan might have been not just wiser but more admirable if she had chosen to go a different way. Some people outright called her a liar, but relatively few. Most were way cuter than that, insinuating that when you’re basically cool with someone and they ‘allegedly’ shoot you after a night of drinking, perhaps you ought to take some responsibility for being shot, and not ‘ruin that man’s life.’

Celebrating the resilience and strength, the “magic” of Black womanhood is now a staple in the culture. We talk about it all the time. We make memes about it. I myself use a memoji of a Black woman opening her blouse to reveal the iconic Superwoman ‘S’. But the darker side of that celebration is the self-destructive expectation that true Black womanhood be defined by our ability to withstand pain, even when meted out by our men. That expectation, rooted in white supremacy, denies Black men and women the space to be true partners, where the protection flows in both directions.

Which brings me full circle to the MeToo movement. Did Black women’s relative lack of participation really mean that white society didn’t see us as worthy of the same protections as white women? Or is the real problem that we—Black women and men—don’t see that worth in ourselves?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over mud puddles or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? —Sojourner Truth, 1851

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Nia Forrester is a womanist, a lawyer, and independent author of women’s fiction and contemporary romance. She lives in the Philadelphia suburbs.