As you have undoubtedly already heard, reports are surging in that Chris Brown and Rihanna are back together. (One supposes these reports could be untrue but no one seems to be out there denying them.) Which is at once infuriating and unsurprising to people who have lived with and/or known of domestic violence, or advocated for its victims.
First, anger. Here is what the idiot PR intern employed by Chris Brown’s flack (who you gotta figure, has other clients who have not recently hurt other people that he ought to be focussed on) leaked to the press (I’m speculating it was an intern but who the fuck talks like this and/or defends this kind of behaviour gratis?):
While Chris is reflective and saddened about what happened, he is really happy to be with the woman he loves.
Source: People
Well, so long as he’s happy. Fucktwit.
Now on to total lack of surprise and immense frustration. I had sort of figured this would happen, not because I think Rihanna’s weak or silly or deluded. (Although, since when did we all accept that “victim” is a slur rather than a statement of actual, living fact?) But because the overwhelming tide of public opinion probably matched her own need to forgive him. We’d all like to sweep these incidents under the rug, forget about them, talk about how they were the product of individual circumstances. How life is complicated. How no one should get involved in a private matter. How no one should speak for victims because that would be “appropriating their voices.” Maybe she didn’t mind it, maybe she hit first, they can work things out between them, on and on and on until we move on to the next shocking story some PR flack dishes out for our collective entertainment and titillation.
Meanwhile, I think Rihanna went back because she is just like me, and for me, it’s never as obvious or simple as “this is what I need to do to protect myself.” As we all probably know, it’s an incredibly hard thing to see in the moment and from your own eyes. She went back because everything was getting way too out of hand and it is always easier to do what that person you love beyond all measure of reason wants you to do. She went back for the same reasons my tiny, feisty, French Canadian grandmother never left my grandfather, that a cousin of mine stayed with the man who eventually killed her. Because the thing in this culture that women are supposed to value above all things is their attachment, by hook or by crook, to another person. Because your circumstances are particular to your relationship, and those particulars are the reason you do it.
But not yourself. Never yourself. No, you, and the bruises on your face are never the particulars that matter in these situations. Not to others, and certainly not to you, because you don’t want to hurt his reputation or your own, because he is a person, because he has faults like anyone else’s and there’s no reason to be so hard on him.
Just once, just once though, I’d like us to tell these women: this isn’t about him. This is about you.
Rail on in the comments.
I gotta disagree with “it’s an incredibly hard thing to see in the moment and from your own eyes.” Not for everyone. If a man beat me the way Chris Brown beat Rihanna, I would 100% want to get the fuck away from him for good. I realize not all women feel that way–which is exactly the reason thousands of women are seriously injured or killed by their husbands/boyfriends every year–but plenty of us don’t see any ambiguity here whatsoever. This is obviously not going to turn out well for Rihanna in the long run and I feel terrible for her that she’s making this decision.
Becky: Most women who go back to their abusers – and it seems, from news reports, that this had happened before, just not as “severe” or whatever – including my grandmother and others – suffer from battered women syndrome, in which it is consistently excused. I just can’t get behind a philosophy that says otherwise, that thinks these women are just stupid or whatever. They aren’t stupid – they’re abused.
I don’t see ambiguity here either in terms of whether he was wrong and she needs to get out. But, you know, trying to be empathetic instead of substituting for her.
@P.Soul: I feel terrible for her…the guy is clearly an abuser and this will happen again, no question. Maybe a judge will settle it by sending him to jail where he belongs. A court-ordered vacation for him might give her the time and space she needs to break out of the abuse cycle.
There’s been no press from her camp, then? Jeezus.
I have told myself that if anyone ever hit me, I would be Casper faster than you could spit, but if I had spent years building a life with someone? I know it wouldn’t be so easy.
I feel strange weighing in on this because to say Rihanna *should* do this or that makes this about her bad decisions, and takes the focus off Brown, who, lest we forget, is the dude who beat her up.
@PhDork: I can see where it would be tough and scary to leave when you have a home and kids and especially if you didn’t have income of your own. But in Rihanna’s case, she’s only 20, she has plenty of money and she could get out clean if she wanted to. I agree P. Soul’s assessment that she’s being swept up in the tide of public opinion and that’s making her more inclined to take him back.
And yeah, we shouldn’t take the focus off Chris Brown. I really hope the DA throws the book at him regardless.
@ BeckySharper: I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a court-ordered vacation if this is true. DV cases are routinely dropped when the victim decides to “forgive” the abuser. I feel like this is him manipulating her (as abusers are wont to do) on so many levels, and just doing damage control for his court date / career / image / spokesperson gigs / etc. I am very very very upset by this. Surprised? No. But very upset.
@PhDork: To some degree I also feel strange weighing in. “Should” is always a word that is tricky for me. I’m having issues with real harassment at the moment and instead of taking action to stop it, I am feeling paralyzed. Have I been beaten as Rihanna has been? No. But do I understand why it can be so difficult to step away from the situation? Yes.
Pilgrim Soul, I agree 100% with your statement about questioning when “victim” became a slur. To use it as an insult is to impute fault to the person who was victimized. Both of my grandmothers were DV victims and that is a statement of fact, not a word that I use to stigmatize them. The ones who should be stigmatized are my grandfathers, but it is easier to just say, “oh, it happened behind closed doors, we don’t know what really happened, and people didn’t see it as a crime in those days anyway.”
I know, Becky, it’s not the same, but…if she’s abused (meaning repeatedly, this is merely the latest/most severe occurence), then the real damage is psychological, and it’s not as easy as “well, you can leave, just leave!”
I want her to leave, of course, for her, but also for all the battered women out there, who really don’t need this kind of example.
And yet, PhDork, until the revolution or whatever, men will continue to hit women, and we need to continue to talk about women’s choices in that event in order to make sure more of them protect themselves.
I know, P.Soul, we can’t stick our heads in the sand, either. The burden is (as always) on the less powerful person to liberate herself. IBTP.
When this happened to me, I was 20 and living with the guy. I didn’t have a private jet or a manager or even very many friends at that point – my boyfriend had been isolating me for months. But I also didn’t the media telling me what a “great guy” he was and how everyone gets angry sometimes and deserves a second chance. I didn’t give myself time to reconsider or rationalize or fall into the battered woman’s syndrome pattern of taking him back and believing he’d changed. He probably did change. He may not have done it again. I just knew I didn’t want to be there for the next “mistake”.
From (admittedly tabloid) reports, it seems Rihanna is in that pattern of abuse. I’m sad for that. But I won’t judge her choices, past or present.
I do, however, want to kick Chris Brown’s ass.
I can’t imagine what I would do if I was a victim of physical relationship violence, although I’d like to assume that I’d get out because that’s a relatively black-and-white problem (e.g., Did he hit me? Yes/no). I’ve been emotionally abused, and it was just so slow and systematic that it really snuck up on me. Even out of that (work-related) situation, it’s still odd to me that people like me on a professional level. It’s very much, “Oh wait, I’m not that bad, I’m not really bad at all and I didn’t deserve that.” (Mind you, it was really hard for me to type “I’m not really bad at all,” and that’s telling.)
Actually, given my father’s threat to “bitch slap” my old boss (followed by an apology for using the term bitch slap), I think I do know what would happen to any guy who hit me. I have a LOT of uncles and cousins….
The victim slur thing really kills me though. I believe there was some “culture of victimization” movement in the last 2 decades that led to accusations of people claiming undue victimhood. I henceforth arbitrarily blame compassionate conservatives because that’s what sounds the funniest.
Chris Brown is “reflective and saddened”… way to put everything in the third person, as though he had nothing to do with punching her in the face, and is just an innocent and objective bystander. Yuck.
Shoot, that poor girl. On the one hand, I really don’t want to say what she ought to do, because she’s lost enough agency in this whole debacle. But on the other hand – urgh.
Chris Brown really needs to stand up and do some major talking, if this is true. None of the sort-of apology bs.
I have to say I am largely grossed out by the reaction I’ve seen on Jezebel (the only gossip-related site I read). I am tired that because I think it’s something that should be worked out between the two of them, I’m told I want to excuse the situation or sweep it under the rug. I am tired of the assertion that she must be the new spokesperson for DV. I am tired of hearing “I would NEVER do that.” I am tired of the judgment, period.
I feel like I am in some kind of alternative Universe all of a sudden.
I also think it’s important to realize that abuse victims think they deserved it. I was hit, once, and I still think I deserved it, because I was cheating on him. It’s never cut and dry.
Also, I am really sorry to hear about your cousin, PS.
They often think that, I meant to say……
Pen – thanks. she was actually a second cousin I did not know well, but heard about from her justifications from her family members.
here is what I think. I want to live in a world where no one hits anyone ever, for any reason. I don’t think anyone “deserves” it. I don’t think you did, and I don’t think Rihanna did, and I don’t think kids do. I think the only reason we think of these things as not cut and dry is because we think violence is inevitable, and I just don’t think that, at least not from the perspective of someone who thinks people can and do change, that we are not stuck with what we’ve already got. That’s the best I can do. I think the Jezebel commentariat is somewhat… young about these difficult issues sometimes. But I think they are speaking their judgement from the place of never wanting anyone to get hit, and to the extent they are, I get that they’re going to phrase their anger poorly.
I am afraid of having a bounded private sphere ever, just because it is traditionally in private spaces where people suffer most directly at the hands of other people, and cutting society out of the conversation – when to me it was there anyway, influencing those people’s choices, allowing someone to think that when they are angry it is worth hitting someone else about – well, I just can’t do it, not entirely. My perspective may be limited from the outside, but the truth is, perspective on the inside gets limited too. It’s nihilism otherwise, because detail upon detail get piled up.
I don’t know what the answer is, sadly. Like this, as like most other bad things that happen to women just because they are women, I just feel profoundly sad. And I want to give them my cat to snuggle. She is very soft, and dislikes how human upset harshes her mellow, and so works to make people laugh.
In my early days as a journalist, I wrote a lot about domestic abuse issues, and the shelter and hotline workers I talked to told me it may take as many as six to seven times before the abused person finally leaves the abuser. And in many cases, the most dangerous time for the woman is after she leaves. Fear can be a big incentive for returning, as sad as it sounds.
I understand where a lot of the logic is coming from; what makes me mad is that those people are not understanding where positions like mine are rooted. When I say it’s none of my business, I don’t necessarily think it should be “private,” which people seem to equate with it being hidden. I guess I am just uncomfortable with the overall feeling of judgment and lack of empathy I am hearing in a lot of people’s comments. And, I think we see a lot of comments centering around what particular commenters would “never” do, in general, just not around this subject.
Basically, I am having a hard time articulating how I am feeling about this, because I’m just getting mad/frustrated. Which is why I should perhaps step away from the Internet…..
Oh, Penny, if I stepped away from the internet every time I got mad/frustrated this blog wouldn’t exist.
JetGirl: Yep. I’ve done work with abused women mostly in the context of immigration petitions, and some of them stayed through absolutely horrific abuse. And these were canny, resourceful women. Just… the internal issues are what they are.
PS, I am so glad you wrote this post.
Although I’ve never been the victim of abuse by a partner and I am reasonably certain I’d be out the door immediately should it happen, I was abused as a child. Your sense of reality gets very warped when you are a battered child (or victim of any sort, I presume), I recognizing how wrong the other person is and that nothing you did deserved such treatment simply doesn’t register. It’s taken me over a decade if therapy to untangle my feelings of guilt and responsibilty for my own abuse.
I feel so sad for Rihanna. I wish we could all give her the self esteem to see what we see so she could escape before things get worse.
At the risk of sounding evil, what ever happened to the fact that adults (as compared to abused children) have choices available to them, and one of those choices it to LEAVE. They may be difficult choices, but they’re still choices. I’m really not blaming the victim here, I’m really just trying to make sense of this…I was abused as a child and wasn’t able to leave; I watched my dad (yes, it happens to men, too) be abused by mother and he chose not to leave (despite their many separations) so I guess I somewhat resent adults who claim victim of abuse status. Also, at what point are people choosing to be victims? And before I get flamed for this, I really do understand the cycle of violence, and how truly difficult it can be to leave. I just have mixed feelings about domestic violence (not that I’m pro-dv or anything) including calling it domestic violence – it’s assault, and I feel like calling it domestic violence minimizes it in someway. I really struggle with the role of choices and personal responsibility (again, not that I believe anybody deserves to be assaulted, beheaded, set on fire) in these situations. And, I somewhat cringe at the way women are portrayed as weak victims at the hands of big, bad, strong, scary men. I hope this post makes some sense…