Wow, this is seriously fucked up. I don´t know any teenagers where I live but I would be interested if they think the same way. Sure hope they don´t.

Maybe it´s too much to ask for her to rise like a phoenix above her abuser, but recording a track charged with violent sexuality with him is a bit much. She has a considerable level of influence and therefore I think, even as a victim, a certain level of responsibility for the message she sends out. She has even acknowledged as much herself in interviews before, stating that she left Brown for the responsibility she herself feels she has to her impressionable fans. What she does is her choice of course but I don´t have to like it or respect it.

Anyway, thanks for some food for thought.

From childhood,  they’re told that the little boy on the playground who pinches them and pulls their ponytails ‘likes them’. As youths, they’re preyed upon at an early age by older men, and quickly learn that male attention, and a semblance of ‘respect’, is only allotted them if they maintain a neat balance between modesty and slut-dom.

They’re taught that attracting the male gaze is ‘empowering’, and in fact, it’s one of the few ways they can get much power at all. It doesn’t matter how clever they are or how capable of boys’ club skills they are; they have to be sexually relevant, too. They’re taught to accept casual sexual harassment, and not-so-casual sexual assault. Rape victims were asking for it, even if they’re pre-teens attacked by gangs of men.

In adolescence, the lessons have taken root, and “Twilight” is the most popular true love story. It’s no wonder that they’re willing to be abused for a “hottie”; it’s all they’ve ever been taught they deserve.  It’s all Rihanna thinks she deserves, evidently.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/03/14/more-chris-rihanna-this-time-with-extra-victim-blaming/

What your response, and your follow-up, tells me is this: That you are capable of compassion, that you worry about those young girls. It also tells me that you are victim-blaming. You are levelling the accusation at Rihanna for her behavior after her abuse, and expecting, like the majority of society, that she somehow respond like a phoenix. It would be nice if she did, of course. But the expectation that she should, and the belief that she is somehow falling short because she’s behaving in a way that is perfectly rational for an abuse victim, is unreasonable.

So yeah, we the public have a right to add our objections to the public record in the hopes that more than one side of the  message will be broadcast.

My response was written in an emotional state. I realize there are women (and sometimes men) in such relationships who don´t have the mental or even financial capacity to easily walk away, and to them it was unfair.

No, my response was not “tailored” to the actions of the abuser, as the abuser, like so often, is unrepentant and perfectly content with the way things turned out for him. Now what does that “tell” you about me?

For what it´s worth, I was almost ready to thank you for a well thought-out answer until the pretentious last paragraph.

You get the idea.  It’s easy to say you wouldn’t let that happen to you…  but hell, most of us think we wouldn’t shock someone just ’cause a guy in a lab coat said to, but Milgram showed us otherwise, you know?  

People with the resources, both internal and external, to leave abusive situations generally do so, often pretty early.  If they don’t leave early, leaving later is very very hard, and often dangerous; leaving an abuser sometimes means risking literal death.  

Sometimes the only way people survive is convincing themselves it’s the best they deserve.

Abuse is a many-faceted problem, not least because often those who are seriously abused in adult life were exposed to the cycle as a child. Further, most abusers’ treatment of a victim is designed to keep the victim as a victim, and never an escaped victim. Erosion of self-esteem, the calculated elimination of a support-system, it goes on and on. 

Furthermore, victims of domestic violence often end up being stalked and worse when they begin to escape. “Leaving” isn’t an instantaneous process, and is haunted every step of the way. For Rihanna, fame is probably a very, very small place. Chris Brown was probably never very far away. People reading these articles feel free to lambast her and disrespect her for being ‘weak’, for continuing to take it. But I highly doubt that she’s getting support like that, considering how Chris Brown is playing at the Grammys again and the organizers consider it a ‘loss’ for him to have not been there the last two years.

Much like shaming overweight people is more about the shamer, shaming an abuse victim does nothing for the abused and generally makes it worse. Low self-esteem- the kind of low self-esteem preyed upon and exacerbated by a bully- isn’t improved by people sneering about how Rihanna should set a better example, and isn’t she pathetic, and how could we respect that. 

http://www.theadvocacycenter.org/adv_violencewhy.html

I find it telling, that when the discussion is about a collaboration between an abuser and a victim, that you immediately tailor your response to the actions of the victim, rather than the abuser. I find it very hard to muster any respect at all for you.

Also would love to see Boing Boing start using “trigger warning” when posting about abuse, trauma, rape, etc.

The title includes the words “police report for 2009 beating.”

I mean, music isn’t dead, go listen to The Cranberries’ new album. These “artists” just use the name “music” for their, hmm, strange sounds anyone can make in GarageBand on an iPhone…

The cake is a lie.

Try to imagine my perplexity at encountering this whole Brown’s-fists-v-Rihanna’s-face business through this parody video. And there are defenders of the original “work of art” in this thread.

confused_german_shepherd.jpg