Everyone should stop talking about lube right now.
The arrest of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs isn’t about the 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant discovered during March raids at his Los Angeles and Miami properties; it’s about allegations of coordinated and documented physical and sexual abuse.
This is not about the elegantly named “Freak Off” parties; it is about alleged systematic coercion, threats and trafficking of multiple women over many years.
It's not even about Diddy, or at least not. fair Diddy; it's about the hundreds of people who enabled it, the thousands who turned a blind eye, and the culture that, once again, allowed the brutal treatment of women and men to remain an “open secret” for years as long as the perpetrator was rich, famous, and powerful enough.
But sure, let's make jokes about all that lube.
On Tuesday, a day after Combs’ arrest in New York City, federal prosecutors unsealed the 14-page indictment charging Combs with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation for prostitution. Much of the indictment centers on Combs’ “Freak Offs,” in which prosecutors say Combs and his associates lured female victims with promises of a romantic relationship and/or professional support, ensuring their participation “by, among other things, obtaining and distributing narcotics, controlling their careers, leveraging their financial support and threatening to cut off their financial support, and using intimidation and violence.” (Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges and will remain in custody pending trial.)
The indictment portrays the hip-hop superstar not only as a man with a pattern of abusive behavior toward women but also, with the racketeering charge, as the head of an organization that regularly carried out illegal acts.
It also details evidence obtained during the course of the federal investigation that led to his arrest and arraignment, which included narcotics, AR-15 rifles and ammunition, devices containing “Freak Offs” videos, and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant.
Not surprisingly, baby oil and lube — rather than narcotics, AR-15s or, you know, alleged horrific crimes — immediately caught the public’s attention, particularly on social media, where “Johnson & Johnson” immediately began trending.
“Here I am making good company with [Drew Barrymore]”rapper 50 Cent posted Tuesday, “and I don't have 1,000 bottles of lube in the house.” Even the hosts of “The View” mentioned lube in their discussion of the allegation, with Whoopi Goldberg and Alyssa Farah Griffin laughing as they reminded viewers that possession of lube is not a crime.
But as the show’s legal expert Sunny Hostin was quick to point out, it could be evidence of one — and not just the “Freak Offs,” which, as described in the indictment, involved Combs using “force, threats of force, and coercion to cause victims to engage in prolonged sexual acts with male commercial sex workers,” distributing “a variety of controlled substances to victims, in part to keep victims compliant and docile,” and recording sex acts without permission.
That the overabundance of lube is more apparent than multiple women’s accounts of Combs’ sexual and physical abuse only underscores the broader problem. Seven years after #MeToo, many women remain reluctant to speak out about abuse they’ve suffered at the hands of the rich and powerful — and those who do often find that the public, rather than becoming more sensitive, has become more desensitized and, in fact, more skeptical — especially those who don’t have “receipts,” including video. And the inability to leave an abusive situation or relationship is still too often equated with consent.
Last year, four women, including Combs’ longtime girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, filed lawsuits accusing Combs of sexually and physically abusing them; producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones also filed a similar suit. Combs denied all of the allegations, suggesting the plaintiffs were seeking payment (he and Ventura settled out of court) until earlier this year, when CNN published a 2016 video of him violently assaulting Ventura in a hotel hallway. Combs later apologized, claiming he had gone to therapy and rehab.
Following Combs’ arrest, social media and mainstream media were abuzz with people talking about how his alleged behavior was an “open secret,” and as the cases of Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and other #MeToo predators have shown, too often “open secret” is code for “if you’re rich and powerful enough, you can get away with anything.”
But reading the indictment against Combs, and then watching as people began listing all the “red flags” that had been raised about Combs over the years, it was hard not to think of Gisèle Pélicot. For weeks, the world has watched in horror and admiration as Pélicot attends the trial of her now ex-husband, Dominque, who on Tuesday confessed to drugging and raping her for years, and of dozens of men who are accused of raping her at his invitation.
How, we wonder, could so many seemingly ordinary men commit such a crime? How could others who may have seen but did not respond to Dominique Pélicot's chat room invitation remain silent? Why did no one call the police?
Like the alleged crimes in the Pélicot case, the charges against Combs relate to events that prosecutors say spanned decades and allegedly involved many people, including those employed by Combs — hence the racketeering charges. Combs is also alleged to have weaponized nondisclosure agreements (another familiar element of #MeToo cases), but did none of those involved in the considerable effort it took to organize the “Freak Offs” described in the indictment consider breaking their silence or making an anonymous call to police?
As a Times report detailed earlier this year, Combs has long been portrayed as a self-important criminal (his main company is called Bad Boy Entertainment, after all). He's an iconic figure who helped turn hip-hop into a cultural force, a rich and powerful man who, until the recent accumulation of sexual assault lawsuits, had always been able to steer clear of trouble.
As with Weinstein, his success (and aggression) outweighed the rumors; as with Epstein, there is speculation about whether Combs will name other participants in the alleged “Freak Offs” and whether those names will offer him any leverage as he fights the new charges.
As Weinstein, Epstein, and many others have shown, our culture often finds it difficult to accept the fact that people who are funny or generous or capable of creating great art can also be monsters of epic proportions. And pretending that such contradictions don’t exist, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary, makes the rest of us a little monstrous, too.
It's natural to joke about 1,000 containers of lube — that's a lot of lube — but it shouldn't replace or distract from what the charges actually allege: that a rich and powerful man used his business and many of its employees to systematically drug, assault, brutalize, threaten, kidnap and exploit people for years and call it a “party.” There's nothing funny about that.
