A nation "divided" over the Rihanna/Chris Brown relationship really needs re-educating.

[alp227]

This New York Times article "Stormy Relationship, Forgiving Followers" is pretty infuriating because of this part:

Four years ago Mr. Brown’s career as a boy-next-door pop star seemed to come to a sudden end when he was charged in the brutal beating of Rihanna. Excoriated by every sector of the media, he pleaded guilty to felony assault and was given five years of probation.

But now Rihanna, 25, has publicly embraced the boyfriend who once abused her, creating perhaps the most polarizing spectacle in pop culture. To their fans, the couple represent a story of forgiveness and happy endings. To a ravenous celebrity news media, their every affectionate tweet or late-night indiscretion is reliable hot copy. And to many others, Rihanna’s decision has inspired fear and worry about the example she is setting in what has become the signal domestic abuse case of the social media age.

Among such criticisms:

Laurel Eisner, the executive director of Sanctuary for Families, a group in New York that serves domestic violence victims, criticized Rihanna’s decision to return to Mr. Brown — and gossip outlets that cheer it on — as a “fantasy message to young girls” that conflicts with reality.

“A magazine that sends out the message that it is O.K. is taking a risk with girls’ lives,” she said. “There is almost nothing to support the notion that a man who is as impulsive and as close to anger as he is, and who continues to repeat misogynist messages — there isn’t any evidence that men like that will change.”

I don't get the US, where people are so clueless they can't take the position that domestic violence or rape is WRONG and bend over backwards for sympathy to Chris Brown, Ben Roethlisberger, or men in general known for committing such acts, or defend the Daniel Tosh rape joke, prison rape jokes, etc.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

1. My wife's an MD, she gets these cases from time to time

...and always advises the woman that it's only going to get worse. None have ever chosen to leave their relationships though. Sad but true.

[msongs]

2. she is getting her needs met, and when she isn't she will move on nt

[Knightraven]

3. I can not understand being that close to a person.

I know that it has to do with emotional ties, but to go back and take that chance to be seriously hurt or killed is unfathomable to me. I have seen the same with some guys that have left due to being abused by their partner. They do the same thing, go back. Why?

[Squinch]

5. Respectfully, I don't think it has anything to do with emotional ties.

I think it has to do with emotional pathologies that jigsaw-fit together. One has a need to violently dominate, one feels she deserves to be violently dominated.

Her going back to him is simply a sign that she has not accepted the fact that she doesn't deserve this treatment and doesn't need to take it. Which is tragic.

[Lunacee_2013]

4. This story scared the hell out of me

when I first heard about it because around the same time a close female relative of mine was beaten by her b.f. He hit her so hard that it broke her nose and she had to go to the e.r. and get stitches. Thinking about that night still makes me shake with rage because even after all the damage he did to her, and even though she only bit him after he attacked her, the cops still arrested her right after she was released from the hospital. Thank God she did the exact opposite of what Rihanna did and never talked to him again. I was so afraid that she would go back to him because of this horrible incident, and because they had an apartment together, but (again) thankfully she discovered feminism at a young age, so she left that whole mess behind, and never looked back.


It saddens me that Rihanna thinks she not only has to forgive and forget soooo incredibly soon, but that she also has to be around him and be friendly to wards him at all. Of course I think we all know what would happen to her if she reacted the way my relative did. No one would be able to read a story about her online without seeing the phrase "man-hating b!tch" at least once. I saw how a bunch of teen-centered boards responded to this. On every single forum I read, someone, both male and female, would always ask what she did to deserve that beating. I read over 7 different boards, just to see if it was a pattern, and it was on Every. Single. One. After reading several pages worth of posts, I honestly believe that domestic violence prevention should be taught in school. The earlier the better. Just seeing some of those comments made feel almost hopeless. A lot of the boys posted that while they thought Brown hit her too hard, it was still ok, in their minds at least, to hit a girl, so long as you used an open palm, didn't leave a bruise and didn't do it too often. The girls' post may have been even worse. They too thought that Rihanna might have done something to deserve the beating, since it was so bad (their words, not mine), and to top it all off, several of them were also in abusive relationships, or they had one or more friends in one. And now that I think about it, a couple of the boys were also being abused. Some of these kids were just Prue-teens too, like 11-12 years old.


I shouldn't be so surprised though, since I also have friends who went through the same b.s. when we were teens. It just seems to be so much more pervasive now. I hope that's just because everyone's online now, and more kids are reporting it, and not because more abuse is happening. But those other message boards don't give me much hope.