Cardi B spoke on Instagram Live about the show. (Getty/Netflix)
Cardi B has spoken out about the homophobia accusations after sharing her controversial thoughts on the new Netflix series, Baby Reindeer.
Warning: the following story contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Spoilers ahead.
Richard Gadd’s seven-part series, which has been critically praised, sees Donny (Gadd) dealing with a serial stalker. The show also includes graphic depictions of sexual assault and rape.
On Instagram Live, 31-year-old rapper Cardi B decided to weigh in on the hype around the series, sharing a debunked belief that she thinks that some men only realise they are gay after experiencing male sexual assault.
Cardi B’s comments about Baby Reindeer are similar to widely-debunked “cultural myths” – namely, that boys abused by males must have attracted the abuse because they are gay, or they become gay as a result.
However, the “I Like It” hitmaker has responded to the accusations that she’s homophobic, responding to a headline which read: “Cardi B claims homosexuality can be caused by sexual assault: ‘Not everybody can be born gay’.”
The rapper said that her comments were taken out of context, writing on X (formerly Twitter): “Wow.. this headline is so misleading for something that is so serious. I was talking about the show BABY REINDEER!! Here’s the live for CONTEXT.
“@ElliottWilson let me take over cuz ya writers gotta do better!!”
At the time of her Instagram live, Cardi said: “I watched this show, the Baby Reindeer and I haven’t been able to finish watching it because I think around the fourth or fifth episode it traumatised me a little bit.”
She went on to explain the plot of the episodes she’d seen: “The guy wants to be a comedian, he meets this guy, he told him he was going to put him on. The guy introduced him to drugs and while he was drugged up, the guy was raping him. They started f***ing him and sucking his d**k and all this weird s**t and because of that, the guy started finding out that he was getting into that.
“Women go through a lot of sexual assault but we don’t hear or see what men experience when they experience sexual assault. It shocked me.
“I have a cousin I just knew since he was like 2 years old, like ‘yo he’s gay.’ And he is gay, I love him. Then there [are] men who get sexually assaulted and then they find out that they are gay and some people are always going to be judgemental.
“If you see that episode, the guy was straight, he got raped, then he started going through these emotions.
“He wanted to identify what he likes, all because he got sexually assaulted,” Cardi B concluded.