At the risk of blaming the victim, I have to voice a bit of collective anger about Rihanna's decision to go back to Chris Brown, or as I like to call him, "Rapper-Batterer Chris Brown." Yet, every time anger rises, sympathy follows, partially blocking the righteous rays of indignation.
Take one look at the fact/sympathy/anger matrix and you'll see what I mean:
Fact: Rihanna took him back even though she needs facial reconstruction surgery.
Anger: She's teaching a generation of women that the proper response to getting the crap beat out of you is to go back for more. All in the name of love.
How are we supposed to curb violence against women if the violated women endorse the violence? (btw, if you like a little absurdity to go with your anger, click here to see Rihanna's full page Cover Girl ad with the headline, "Lighten Your Eyes." Great. A Cover Girl who has to cover her face).
Sympathy: She's got trusted friends who are telling her the wrong thing. "It's no problem," said close family friend Sharon Bellamy-Thompson, a Barbados fish-market operator, to US magazine. "I have had boyfriends who beat me and then I took them back. I stayed with them because I was in love."
The Rapper-Batterer's mom Joyce Hawkins has been no help, lobbying for them to get back together. His mom! Shouldn't she be the first to tell Brown, "If I were her mom I wouldn't let you near her."
And worse, at a February 13, 2009 taping for VH1's Storytellers, Kanye West asked the audience, "Can't we give Chris a break?"
No, Kanye, we can't. Not until he publicly apologizes, says, "I was wrong and I'm getting help to make sure it never happens again."
. . .
Fact: She took him back in a matter of weeks.
Anger: Does the woman have no dignity? No self-respect?
Sympathy: The "Battered Wife Syndrome" is pretty clear about the self-respect and dignity thing -- the abuser took it away long before he hit her. First, he bleaches it out of her through 'abuse escalation' -- starting with passive-aggressive put-downs, moving to explicit insults, then to veiled threats and physical intimidation to the final (and usually frequent) beatings (see The Wheel of Violence to understand the sequence of domestic abuse). Batterers don't go from 0-60. They go from 59-60. When Rihanna writes her inevitable Tina Turner book, we'll find out how it went from 1-59.
. . .
Fact: Rihanna took him back before he got help.
Anger: To take somebody back because they couldn't stop calling or texting amounts to caving in to yet another form of intimidation. The message? He doesn't actually have to do something about his problem -- he just has to apologize for it. Earth to Rihanna: The organizing principle of batterers is to promise, swear, it'll never happen again. And it won't. For a few months. Thanks for the teachable moment. Now I can tell my 11-year-old niece what you're telling the world: Words matter more than deeds. Don't believe the black and blues you see in the mirror if you get sweet nothings in your ears.
Sympathy: She's confused and isolated. "The whole family is in a fog," said a close family member to US magazine. "We don't know what's going on. She's not telling us anything." If Rihanna's anything like the 80-90% of battered women, she's thinking the Five Thoughts That Keep Women Coming Back:
1) It's my fault. If I weren't such a bitch to him, this wouldn't have happened. I know what sets him off, but I do it anyway, so I'm to blame. It's my fault that he hit me and it's my fault that I'm being so unforgiving.
2) He'll change. I know he loves me. He's apologized a million times.
3) I'll ruin him if I leave. If I make him out to be a monster, he'll lose his career. Does busting my nose give me the right to bust his career?
4) I'll never find a man as good as he is. I know this because he's told me a thousand times.
5) But I love him. And isn't that what love's about -- sacrifice?
And so it goes, Sympathy asking Anger to dance while the Facts play their favorite song. But in the end, it's anger that does -- and should-- win out. Here's why: Rihanna has the one thing that most battered women don't have -- resources. Many if not most battered women have kids, no job, little savings and a valid fear for their lives if they dare to leave. Or some combination of the above.
Rihanna? She can jet off on Jay-Z's plane with her middle finger up against the window as the plane takes off. She has the money and power to walk out, but she won't. And that's why, when the Facts play their tortured music, Anger leads and Sympathy follows.
You are putting Chris is a box with every other man who has abused a woman and it is wrong. You have not mentioned Rihanna's abuse once.
Chris has not had a chance to defend himself so before you start talking about if Chris is this kind of abuser or that kind of abuser, let the boy come out and defend himself first.
Everyone is just throwing mud at this kid and it is out of control. Maybe it gets you more traffic to your blog but it does not help Chris or Rihanna for that matter.
In 2 weeks Chris will talk, then you can analyse what he said and understand a little more about who Chris Brown is.
Ike Turner was a big man who just wanted to control Tina Turner and own her.
Chris is a boy and he has not had a chance to explain to Rihanna's family, her fans and his fans why he did what he did.
You cannot automatically label him an abuser and assume that he is now going to go around beating up women.
I could introduce you to 3 men in my community who put up with their girlfriends beating them up for weeks and months.
2 hit back once and have never touched their girlfriends again, they are not abusers.
The other guy went to jail.
Please let Chris have his day in court and stop adding to this story, these are real people not just celebrities.
PEOPLE PLEASE THINK ABOUT THIS.
* Mike Tyson still has a career (he's in a new comedy film)
* R Kelly, his album sales increased after his trial
* Michael Jackson, his concerts in London have sold out in hours
* Tommy Lee
* Josh Brolin
* Christian Slater
* Terence Howard, received an Oscar nomination but was charged with attacking his wife
* Bebe Winans
* Jay Z (as someone else mentioned) I watched the video on Youtube and it's appalling how no one held him back when he was attacking that woman.
Why is no one boycotting Jay Z or writing to the NAACP about his behaviour, he is a 30 something year old man. He should be setting an example to young guys like Chris Brown.
Another thing, if anyone wants to boycott Chris Brown's music then you better throw away or demand that your radio station throw away a few other artists cd's because he has written songs for other artists and he makes more money as a songwriter.
If you want to cut off his livelihood then you better get Rihanna's 'Disturbia' single off the charts because he wrote that song and he's probably made a good $3 million or more of it.
Boycotting his music is not the answer.
I am one of thousands of people who are defending Chris because Chris has no voice at the moment.
I am a woman in my 30's and just because I am in support of Chris that does not mean that I have had my a** kicked about by a man.
Why are you so impatient and angry, why can't you wait for Chris to go to court and stand in front of the judge and let the world know why he did what he did and then let the judge give him the sentence he deserves.
There are thousands of teenage girls who have loved Chris Brown for 4 years now and they are not going to turn against him and start shouting abuse at him because you want them to.
Willie407 you need therapy yourself.
If you wish to continue to support his product you are perfectly free to do so. No one expects rational behavior from teenagers. Most just pray that they will grow up one day.
It's also none of our business. I wish every one of the judgmental finger wavers were as angry with Chris Brown as they are with Rihanna. THAT might be productive.
Imagine if the "how can she" crowd were saying, "how dare he ever show his face in public again?" "How can such a fraction of a man stand himself?"
Instead, the bottom line is that Mike Alvear and others of his ilk prefer to blame Rihanna. That's what this is really all about.
The reason this article was even written was because Rihanna has shut the world out and has not uttered a word about how SHE feels about this article. All we have left to see are images of the two snuggling in Miami and reports from unnamed sources of her state of mind. The sheer fact that she can take him back after he maliciously BEAT her shows that something is mentally not connecting. If you reread this article, I'm sure you will see that no one blamed Rihanna for anything. They simply criticize and condemn her assinine choice to take her abuser back.
why are you so angry and up in Rihanna's business?
Rihanna is a grown a** woman who can do what ever she wants to do.
That is the problem, there are too many people writing articles, going on tv and commenting on websites telling Rihanna what they think of her decision and telling her what to do.
Worry about your own life and relationships.
everywhere you go on this site you seem to sound very bitter.
I see Chris Brown as a kid, a kid who has yet to explain himself and be found guilty in the court of law.
You sound very vindictive, vicious, self-righteous and judgemental. And I am not trying to be offensive when I say that but what do you want us to do about Chris Brown.
Should we just crucify him, cast him out and hope he rots in jail?
OR pray that he gets the therapy he needs, maybe jail time and gets out and becomes a better person?
Torturing a kid is not going to change the rate of domestic violence, while we are on here there are thousands of women in abusive relationships who cannot leave because of financial reasons or they have no where to go.
Rihanna is rich, she has family and a successful career so she can leave at any time.
There are also men out there being abused by their wives and girlfriends too.
Lets get out there and put a stop to this disease instead of torturing a boy.
See the stats, this starts with words, then on to fists, then death. Do you want to wait for the People top dead celeb issue? I know I don't.
You are talking utter nonsense, he did not break her face and most of this article is fabricated.
It's all about proportional response. There are pictures of Chris Brown the DAY AFTER this incident. Not a mark on him. Can't say the same for Rihana. There is no way you can argue that this is simply a case of self defense and proportional response.
I'd be afraid to be your kid. When I was a kid, I hit my sister sometimes. My parents disciplined me, because this was very wrong. They didn't throw me down a flight of stairs and call that the apropriate response and say I deserved it.
There are no photos of Chris Brown the day after the incident. We did not see Chris again for another 2-3 weeks.
People need to stop reading TMZ.
Enough is enough.
Who said she needs surgery? Did her doctor say that? Did she come out and say that?
People need to get a life and fill their spare time with some volunteer work or something because all people have done for the past 5 weeks is make up stories about Chris, add their own spice to the pot and repeat what they have read on gossip websites.
Rihanna has not come out on TV and said a word to us. The first sighting we had of her was in Mexico where she was in a bikini and had NO marks on her, that was 3 weeks after the fight.
I think too many people have too many hidden agendas and everyone wants to cruicify this boy to feel better about the evil things they have done.
I am hoping and praying for Chris to get the help, support and love he needs.
Many people commenting blame the "moral decay" of youth culture, many blame hip-hop and rap lyrics as priming this kind of abuse, some come straight out and say it's an issue of black culture, many take offense that female-on-male abuse is rarely mentioned and lampoon the domestic violence statistics as feminist propaganda. As a part of that youth culture, I take great exception with the idea that only now does abuse occur. I knew women as a child who were battered, as did my mother and grandmother before me. I have had my sister beaten (while pregnant with the abuser's child) so badly that she hung out of a second story window and spent two weeks in the hospital. This is not a generational, racial or gender specific issue. The statistics show the socio-economic factors play most heavily in abuse situations, and with the deterioration of our economy, I could only wish that we treat this as the present and looming issue that it is.