I’ve avoided commenting on the Rihanna/Chris Brown drama for a host of reasons, not least among them that I haven’t had the time to follow the story. I knew, vaguely, who Rihanna was (thanks to the marvelously catchy “Umbrella” song), but had never heard of Brown until after his arrest. I learned a long time ago that my credibility with young people didn’t hinge on my being savvy about popular music as much as it hinged on my capacity for empathy and my willingness to listen. These days, when I look at the pop charts, I am usually unfamiliar with every artist; bluegrass and folk are the only genres with which I keep even a passing degree of currency.
As a feminist and as a gender studies professor, I’m saddened but hardly surprised by the way in which so many have responded both to the story of the original incident but also to news of the couple’s apparent reconciliation. The vile sort of people who think that Brown’s assault was somehow justified aren’t going to listen to anything someone like me has to say. But I am concerned by stories like this one, from the at-least-sometimes reliable Jane Velez-Mitchell of CNN: Brown-Rihanna case’s dangerous message. Velez-Mitchell, host of a program on Headline News, writes:
…less than a month after this ordeal, Rihanna has apparently forgiven him…
Rihanna’s apparent quick forgiveness for the alleged pummeling sends the worst possible signal – namely, that this sort of behavior is just par for the course when it comes to male-female relationships.
If she is going back to Chris Brown so soon, Rihanna is putting herself at risk and seems to be falling into the brutal cycle of powerlessness, fear and low self esteem that often accompanies abusive relationships. And it sends a message to Brown that he doesn’t have to change.
If the reconciliation is real, Rihanna is also setting a dangerous example for other abused women. Unfortunately, despite her incredible looks and talent, I think she is now the poster child for battered woman’s syndrome.
Our society must stop this cycle of helplessness that traps abused women. We must give them the help they need to escape the abusive spiral. But women must begin holding their loved ones to a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to violence.
Bold emphasis mine.
This is what passes for common sense these days, I realize, and I trust that Velez-Mitchell means well and is genuinely concerned both for Rihanna and for her legions of young fans. But her commentary falls woefully short of the mark by suggesting that it’s women’s job to send the right signals to men. Women “enable” bad male behavior, according to Velez-Mitchell; apparently, men are incapable of self-restraint unless guided and nurtured in the proper way by the women in their lives. This is the ugly, hoary old “myth of male weakness” in another guise.
Very few rational people defend Chris Brown’s violent attack on his girlfriend. But excuses are made for his age (he’s 19, a legal adult), for his celebrity — and, above all, for his maleness. Velez-Mitchell’s piece is more concerned with scolding Rihanna for sending the wrong message than it is with holding Brown accountable. Velez-Mitchell ends up reinforcing the old lie that men can only change when women force them to do so; her last line about the importance of a “zero-tolerance policy” sounds good, but it’s deeply troubling that she believes it is the job of the victim to hold the abuser accountable.
Nothing a woman does justifies hitting her. Nagging and needling and jealous tirades don’t justify hitting. Men — even nineteen year-old privileged pop stars — have the capacity to distinguish between an emotion and an action; they have the ability and the obligation to not react with violence no matter how exasperating the verbal provocation. No woman “asks to be hit”. No woman or man deserves to be hit. Words are not fists, and even a young man with the frail and pretentious masculine bravado of the “street” can be held accountable for responding to a verbal argument with physical brutality.
And while we might be right to question Rihanna’s judgment in returning to this callow young man, it’s vital that we don’t put the onus for his transformation on her. Women are not responsible for “making men change.” Despite what the myth of male weakness tells us, men do not need to be nurtured and guided by their wives and girlfriends into becoming competent adults with a reasonable degree of self-control. If anyone is responsible for holding the Chris Browns of the world accountable, it’s other men — particularly older men — who need to signal, in an unmistakable way, that this sort of violence is puerile and utterly unacceptable. Chris Brown must change even if Rihanna doesn’t; whatever “issues” she has that leads her to be willing to return to a man who has beaten her savagely do not mitigate his moral and legal responsibility to deal with his own violent nature. If he hits her again, he is entirely responsible and she is entirely innocent. The first person to escalate a domestic dispute from a verbal exchange to a physical one is always to blame; to say otherwise is to repeat the odious lie that we humans are so frail that words can override our capacity for self-restraint.
It is not my wife’s job to make me a better man. It is not the job of the woman I love to offer a series of blandishments and criticisms, rewards and punishments, in order to direct me towards responsibility. That is true for me at 41, and it is true for Chris Brown at 19. However arbitrary our definition of adulthood may seem, our culture has a right to demand the same degree of self-restraint from its younger adults as from their elders. And if my wife “co-signs” my bad behavior, her willingness to overlook my shortcomings doesn’t for a second vitiate my responsibility to grow and transform. The mother-son dynamic in heterosexual relationships is an execrable one, not least because it encourages us to see men as not fully responsible for their choices.
Whatever choices Rihanna makes, Chris Brown’s transformation is his burden and his alone. Her willingness to forgive him for his brutality doesn’t reduce his burden or justify anything that might happen subsequently. And here’s hoping that when it comes time to sentence the young man, the courts don’t take into account Rihanna’s own heartbreaking willingness to return to him. It’s not Rihanna’s job to change Chris Brown, and it’s not Rihanna’s responsibility to determine his sentence. Domestic abusers should always be judged by the injuries they inflict, and not by the subsequent status of the relationship with their victims. Rihanna may forgive Chris Brown, but that has zero bearing on the court’s mission to ensure that he is held responsible.
We’ve heard from the famous women like Oprah and Jane Velez-Mitchell. They’ve made clear this week how worried they are about Rihanna. But where are the men, particularly the entertainers in Chris Brown’s line of work? Where are their public denunciations of his behavior? Where are their pledges to hold him accountable as he works (and he damned well better work) to become a responsible, restrained human being? Where are their statements that make clear to young men that no matter what a young woman may say, no words that slip from a lover’s lips ever justify a raised fist?
I’m waiting.
Loved this. Thank you.
Hugo,
Thank you for this. Sometimes it is easy for me to forget that I am NOT the one responsible for the abuse that occurs at the hands of a man I love. Thank you! Thank you! For so many things. You are a gift to the world.
Yes, wonderful.
Fantastic. I have forwarded this to quite a few people.
Thank you for this!
There have been a number of artists who have spoken out again Chris Brown and his actions but not in the way one would hope. Forgive me if this is not entirely accurate (I haven’t had the time to follow this story as closely as I would like to), but I believe Kanye West and Usher have made statements. Disappointingly, Usher retracted his statement acter Rihanna and Brown reconciled! The whole thing just makes me a little sick to my stomach.
Thank you Hugo for a well stated response to the Rihanna/Chris Brown situation. There was something really bothering me about the reporting on the whole thing but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Personal responsibility is becoming so overlooked in our culture it never seems to be the fault of the perpetrator of a crime but the parents etc. My mother always emphasized to me over and over again that I couldn’t change a man into what I wanted just find a good man. I hope and pray that my husband and I have a good influence on each other and encourage each other to grow but we are still responsible to God and society individually for our actions.
Hugo,
If you like “Umbrella”, then you should listen to Rihanna’s cover of Marcia Griffiths’ “No No No / You Don’t Love Me”. Fabulous.
As you say, Chris Rock is absolutely responsible for his own actions, and I too have been shocked by the warped or none existent responses to his crime, most of the shock I’ve felt is due to male responses - or the lack of.
However, I do think Rhianna has issues, and I really think there is something of that in her iimage - something masochistoc an incling of something disturbing, especially in such a young girl; and I hear what Velez - Mitchell is saying about role models for young girls. What has made elements of Rhiannna’s image hint at disturbance more for me is that it is, presumably, manufactured to a large degree, and she is a very young girl. She has, before the attack, struck me as something of a Britney Spears in the making, every last drop of her sexuality seems have been wrung out by her record company’s publicity machine. I do think Rhianna’s image and relationaship are sending out worrying messages too young men and women. But it is, as you say, much more of a shock and much more damaging that Chris Rock did this in the first place, and is prepared to reconcile just weeks after the attack - how on earth could he have worked through whatever let him do THAT in such a short time.
thanks for this post on Rhianna - for breaking the male silence!
Matey, it’s Chris Brown, not Chris Rock.
OHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so sorry to Chris Roack…. yes he’s the comedian isn’t he. I will wkae up soo, I to had no incling about Dhris BROWN before the attack!
Matey,
While Rihanna is clearly a beautiful young lady, I think her looks have been marketed in a quite a bit more tasteful, less vulgar and less exploitative way than the lamentable Ms. Spears. I don’t think she’s at risk of the kind of damage that Ms. Spears has gone through- her problems seem to be restricted to this particular abusive boyfriend.
I’m glad that a feminist gender studies professor and a traditionalist, Anglo-Catholic believer in male chivalry can find one thing to agree on: that men hitting their female domestic partners is never, ever, tolerable or defensible. It’s amazing in how much of the non-Western world this lesson has yet to be learned.
Some good points, but ever hear of the expression “never hit a girl”? A traditional expression that expresses the view of the traditional male — and which actually encourages men to condescend to and patronize women, when taken into other contexts.
I find it hard to believe that men are taking Chris Brown’s side in this.
At the same time, I don’t agree with this:
“Nothing a woman does justifies hitting her. Nagging and needling and jealous tirades don’t justify hitting.”
Rihanna’s bruises look pretty bad so I don’t think the following observation applies to her. But men have not been taught to fight with words as well as women have. If you have a couple, and she is constantly henpecking him, and once a month he takes a swing at her, I’d call it a draw. If you penalize his behvaior, but not hers, you are just sowing seeds of resentment, emotional withdrawal, and passive-aggression.
C’mon, captcrisis. Be logical.
Even in that case, the male partners’s response to nagging should be - nagging right back at her. You know, men are not brainless automatons, slaves to their emotions.
The truth is, the man may not know how to nag. It’s not as easy to express disappointment, irritation and frustration to the person you are about to go to bed with as you think.
If someone is nagging you so bad that you can’t do anything but hit them, be a grown up and fucking dump their ass and date someone who doesn’t nag. Seriously.
I mean, when I was 7 and my brother was 3 I could always out talk him and he’d get frustrated and hit me, so I know what you’re talking about, but the difference is that my brother was just 3. And he still got in trouble for hitting anyway, though my parents also told me to lay off.
I don’t agree that men in general are inept at verbal arguments because they are taught to be physical anyway, but some, sure, but that’s a personal problem that they need to deal with in a constructive way, not by punching their mouthy girlfriends. Also maybe if physical fighting was not tolerated at all in society *everybody* would just fight with words. (Except for verbally delayed little brothers who can be forgiven.)
We’re usually not talking about dating singles but couples (usually married) who often have children.
I know I’m proposing a radical idea but it’s one I came to gradually. I had pretty much the same attitude that Hugo has when I began working in the domestic violence field. Then, in working with battered women and getting to know their husbands I found that it was not always a power imbalance. But violence raises a red flag and so it’s the husband who gets the attention (a mild word for it — actually he gets *prosecuted*).
This is not to denigrate the many cases of health-damaging violence that go on (often abetted by the husband’s use of alcohol). And maybe sometimes the husband is falling on the “she made me do it” excuse or “I was drunk” excuse. But I think in America the great majority of batterers, for reasons I’ve given (”you don’t hit a girl”), feel ashamed of themselves more than anything else.
Gosh, most of the women in my family believe the “mother/son” dynamic is just the way it is in relationships. That is so frustrating.
I’m mentioning this thing of holding women responsible for the morality of their families in my discussion of the Victorian woman archetype in my thesis right now. This aspect of the narrative framing in Lolita is part of what allows so many people to excuse or justify Humbert. HH sets up the reader (with a history of understanding women in books this way) to view the whole thing as a sentimental novel, with the women responsible for providing a virtuous example. It provides a way for the reader to excuses his behavior. If you fall for it, that is, and a lot of people have. That’s a trick, though. That’s not what the novel outside the narration was saying.
I love when my work actually feels relevant to the real world.
I wasn’t aware that you were limiting the conversation to (usually married) couples who have children, captcrisis, especially when you said “Rihanna’s bruises look pretty bad so I don’t think the following observation applies to her,” and it sounded to me like if she had not been beaten so badly what you said might have applied to her.
I’m still confused as to what exactly you are talking about, but I’ll clarify what *I’m* talking about. If your wife/girlfriend/whatever is being a shitty person to you, yeah, that sucks. But it isn’t illegal. And yeah, that might breed “resentment, emotional withdrawal, and passive-aggression.” I mean, I’d think that you’d feel justified feeling that way! But you still don’t get to hit. Even if you are married and have kids, you still have other ways of dealing with the situation, including leaving. Why is that not good enough?
And I think “you don’t hit a girl” isn’t great either, because you shouldn’t hit *anybody*, regardless of gender. And the flip side of that is that no one should have to endure being hit by anyone, men included. Even if he is being an asshole, even if she is being a horrible bitch or whatever. I don’t feel like that should be such a difficult standard to expect from people.
Also, does constant nagging not seem like a pretty minor offense to punch someone for to you?? Nearly every nagging woman I’ve ever known was sick of being ignored and/or had really unrealistic expectations of other people and it’s totally annoying, but I can’t imagine cleaning someone’s clock over it, especially someone you are supposed to be in a relationship with!
“Henpecking”. Now there’s a nice, neutral, non-sexist term that’s meant to promote thoughtful discussion!
A lot of grandstanding going on here.
The line “NO ONE deserves to be hit!” is always a crowd-pleaser.
I’m just saying that hitting is part of a constellation of behaviors in a relationship and should not be looked at in isolation. The truth is, a *lot* of women who occasionally get hit (and don’t hit back) are actually the ones with the more control in the relationship.
Yes, I was going to say something about the term “henpecking” too, but I my reply was getting too long.
captcrisis, you are going to have to give some examples of what you are talking about, because it totally runs opposite of every abuse victim that I have ever interacted with. It doesn’t make sense on its face: if the battered woman (presumably battered to the extent that they would seek assistance for it and run into you doing work in the domestic violence field, leading you to come to these conclusions) has so much control in the relationship, why would she be battered to begin with? If she actually had control then she could presumably make it stop, so the fact that she can’t speaks to where the power is.
And what exactly is wrong with the expectation that people should not hit each other? Most people do not have a problem maintaining that as a standard of behavior at all. I don’t. Do you?
Re: The line “NO ONE deserves to be hit!” is always a crowd-pleaser.
It’s also, monumentally dumb. See Eric Hobsbawm’s “The Rules of Violence” for more on this. The only reason that (some) people in liberal societies take this seriously is because, as yet, those societies have been rich and comfortable enough to delude themselves into thinking something like ‘can’t we all get along’. As we look to be entering a poorer, harsher age, I’ll be interested to see how quickly the belief in nonviolence-at-all-times goes by the wayside. Men fight amongst each other for all sorts of reasons, some good and some bad. A society which doesn’t understand this doesn’t understand human nature and ultimately doesn’t understand itself, and will fall to those who do, as Hobsbawm points out.
I feel comfortable saying, however, that outside police, military, or quasi-military contexts no man should ever use physical violence on a woman, and I root that in my belief that the genders are essentially and innately different. I will let the feminists come up with their own rationale for opposing violence against women, as they probably won’t accept mine. But the line “No ONE deserves to be hit” was really so silly I had to comment on it.
Captcrisis, I’m sorry to come into this late — I’ve been out this afternoon with my daughter — but I must jump in to note that defending physical violence against women is unacceptable on this blog. This is a safe space for feminists and their allies, united in the basic understanding that physical abuse is never, ever acceptable.
You are welcome to comment here, but any further explication of the position that physical violence in response to verbal provocation is somehow acceptable will be deleted and you will be banned. Sorry to not have made that clearer earlier.
You come in trolling with the idea that women who ‘henpeck’ and ‘nag’ invite a good whop in the kisser, and you’re stomping your foot about people taking you at your word? The troll’s art requires more subtlety than that, my friend.
Hector, as I recall, Jesus had a few things to say about the subject of nonviolence and what to do when somebody hits you. Are you really suggesting that he lived in a richer, less harsh age than we do?
Captcrisis, yeah I saw that coming. If you want to discuss this further, you can write on my blog. http://www.patriabolivariana2008.blogspot.com
For the aforementioned Hobsbawm essay, see here:
mundoemguerra.blogspot.com/2007/06/as-regras-da-violncia-eric-hobsbawm.html
the page is in Portuguese but the article is in English.
Mythago,
Please see what Jesus had to say in St. John’s Apocalypse on ‘ruling the nations with a rod of iron.”
The worst abuse victim I dealt with was one who actually got shot and killed by her boyfriend after she left the shelter.
Another one got badly bruised all over her face and her youngest daughter (age 4 or so) was so traumatized that she stopped speaking for a few months. Before that she had gotten back with him despite previous violence. Fortunately the bruising incident was the last straw. I attended her separation hearing. This guy looked evil. At best, he was a drunk who barely was conscious of what he was doing. Maybe other things were going on but I don’t think there were really two sides to that story.
Once you get past the phrase “abuse victim” and start talking about “battered women”, i.e., women who come into crisis centers and go to shelters, then a more diverse set of people can be seen. It begins, I think, with how you approach them. We crisis counselors often see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. If you adopt a tone of voice like a funeral director and act like they’ve suffered a life-ruining trauma, they might even believe it. If you invite them to grab a piece of the pizza the staff has been eating and just let them talk, you get a better and more complete picture. The hardest thing is to ask questions where the answers might show that she might have done some wrong things too. It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in, and you shouldn’t do it right away, but all the necessary questions must be asked.
I’ve worked with two shelters mainly. One was in the northeast. The director and counseling staff was college-educated, feminist, mostly lesbian, and some just did not like men in general. The housekeeping staff tended to be from the same working class as the residents, and often were ex-residents. They had a less black-and-white view than the counseling staff. Most of them thought Donnie Osmond was hot (I’m dating myself here). A few of them were invited to the annual fundraiser, and were freaked out by all the wealthy lesbian couples slow-dancing.
The other shelter was in the south. Out of necessity, most of the counseling staff were high school graduates. The atmosphere there was less tense. There was no prohibition on the men visiting or knowing where the shelter was (impossible to hide it in that small town anyway). Even in that culture, I never encountered anyone who had anything but contempt for batterers. And to tell the truth most of them were pretty harmless. They’d smack their wives once, come back contrite, and maybe a few months later it would happen again. When dealing with different subcultures you have to have great elasticity of mind.
Oops! My daughter’s homework! more later. . .
Disagreeing with certain things does not make one a troll.
No name-calling, please. A little civility.
Hector, I am not a pacifist and acknowledge things like you have listed (military, police, quasi-military) and some that you didn’t (self defense and defense of others, there are probably more), but they are pretty clearly outside the context of what we are talking about here. As a rule for normal circumstances though, including domestic disputes, yeah, no violence. If men are going to get into fights, then I expect that they have to pay the consequences for it, just like every other law that people break. The fact that people are inevitably going to break those laws doesn’t matter. It seems to me that anyone advocating differently wants to be able to hit people (or sometimes just men) without fear of prosecution.
Hector, cite please? I’m not asking to be a pain, I’m genuinely curious what portion you’re referring to. I’m also curious how you square predictions about the Apocalypse with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
captcrisis, using deliberately inflammatory and sexist terms like ‘henpecking’ is hardly civil discourse. You’re smart enough to know better, so I give you credit for malice rather than ignorance.
This conversation is scary. Women shouldn’t be made to see what they did to deserve getting beaten. I’d like to think that no healthy intimate relationship should involve physical violence as part of the accepted reality. That is the conception of reality that keeps women thinking they should stay in abusive relationships and “tough it out” because that’s just how relationships are going to be. I’ve been involved with a few abusive men in my life (I’m only 21) and have had a hell of a time convincing myself to GET OUT because I thought if I’m going to have to deal with this in any relationship (the view I got from my mom) at least this one “loves me” and I will enjoy the times when he’s not hurting me. My T has been helping me convince myself that you don’t trade being treated abusively sometimes for being treated nicely sometimes. That’s not a relationship.
I remember a sexual assault crisis center worker where I went for group asking me why I “let” my ex treat me the way I did while I was still with him. That made me not want to come back to that center. I just felt ashamed and more isolated.
I really cannot believe this is a subject of debate. And, at the same time, I can completely believe it. It’s all too familiar at this point. jennyfields is right - this conversation is SCARY.
It’s really unsurprising, though. We justify battering by pretending that grown men are like two-year-olds; aw, he can’t use his words, so he gets frustrated and takes a swing. And anyway she probably goaded him into it. In a previous era entire sitcoms were built around jokes about this.
I cannot think of a sitcom where the husband hit the woman.
Ralph Kramden said, “To the moon, Alice!” But it was funny because we knew he would never do it.
I’m horrified that this conversation is ongoing on a “feminist” blog. I thought captcrisis was going to be banned if he kept on. I’m also horrified that he’s a crisis counsellor - his position is completely unacceptable. I would expect this kind of dialogue on other sites. NOT here. I’ve been lurking for a long time but can’t let this go by and won’t be lurking much longer. It was a great post and frankly has been ruined by these outrageous comments.
Captcrisis, please understand that your suggestion that words and fists were equivalent was deeply unacceptable. If you are willing to retract that statement, you are welcome to continue to comment here; if not, please do not comment here on any subject again.
You are welcome to take it up with me further via email (hbschwyzer@gmail.com). But please honor my community of readers and my commitments.
I like what you had to say, Hugo. Physical violence is never justified and ought to always be condemned.
There’s an element of the story though, that, if confirmed, complicates things a bit.
Some reports say that she hit him first (for example, see http://www.tmz.com/2009/03/10/chris-brown-rihanna-mystery-woman-text-message/).
While that ought not to *in whatever way* mean that Brown had the right to hit her–no one ever has that right–her hitting of him, too, needs to be recognized as inappropriate violence. In fact, I see this recognition as a feminist task.
Too many movies portray women hitting men as a lighthearted thing–without attaching the same kind of stigma when men hit women. I remember seeing these kinds of movies growing up and thinking that women are allowed to hit men whereas men are not allowed to hit women. That is still the tacit understanding. It can stem from a sort of misguided feminist affirmative action (making up for the evils done to women). Or maybe the opposite: a reinforcement of women as weak. (What the hell; let her hit. It’s amusing!)
Now, I understand that men and women tend to have different physical strength on average. But difference in strength alone does not excuse anyone–even women–from hitting the other.
Again, to acknowledge this is not to endorse any violence or excuse anything. I oppose violence with every cell of my body. But it is important to realize the complexity of this situation and the deep embedding of violence in both genders in general. Otherwise, we privilege women over men, and that’s no good feminism.
Did we? I never knew that. And I never found that line funny. I found it threatening and horrifying.
Hugo, I’ll communicate by e-mail. I’m not able to do that now but I will later today.
Agnieszka,
Citing the sensationalist, jumping-to-conclusions and frequently misogynistic TMZ as a source of authority in order to discuss women, physical strength and violence does not do credit to a feminist blog. I’m sure you mean well, but using them as an example to say that feminism is wrongly ‘privileg[ing] women’ undermines the discussion.
Mythago,
This isn’t the time nor place for that discussion, since it’s tangential at best and would derail the discussion even more than I already have….suffice it to say that I’m very opposd to pacifism. Please write my blog if you want to discuss it.
Re: Now, I understand that men and women tend to have different physical strength on average. But difference in strength alone does not excuse anyone–even women–from hitting the other.
Um, actually sometimes it does, it’s called the privilege of weakness. Not for mild or trivial provocation, but in case of extreme provocation, I can certainly see grounds for a woman hitting a man. A good example is the Venezuelan congreswoman, Iris Varela, and her response last year to a vile little opposition talk show host who jeered at the memory of her dead infant son. Those kind of insults are unacceptable, they do a lot of emotional damage, and if a few slaps on the face and a pair of broken eyeglasses are needed to teach Mr. Azocar that lesson, then it seems like a fair price. It would have been totally unacceptable the other way around, that’s because men and women are essentially different.
This is, again, tangential at best and I don’t want to further derail the discussion of violence against domestic partners, so if Hugo thinks I am taking this too far afield, then I won’t comment further.
Captcrisis, I don’t know what world you’re living in where you think a man smacking his wife every few months is no big deal, but it’s not the world I want to live in.
Apologies if this is off-topic, but given the gender-essentialism that’s crept into this thread, I want to point out that same-sex domestic violence is also very real and something I’ve seen firsthand (woman-on-woman). IMHO, the whole thing about “poor men, they only know how to talk with their fists” is making this issue too much about gender differences. Domestic violence is domestic violence and it should always be unacceptable.
farnorth:
Yes, TMZ is misogynist, etc. As is a lot of mainstream media anchors. Still, they all do sometimes uncover the facts.
I hoped I covered any legitimate doubts by preceding my comment with the qualification, “if confirmed.”
Hector:
I guess I’d worry that “the privilege of weakness,” as you call it, would further stigmatize women as precisely the weaker sex–a gender so weak it can resort to violence.
But I am keeping an open mind about this. I’ll mull this over.
Hugo, no offense, but no other feminist website I visit would take such hesitant and quiet steps around people advocating a man smacking his wife around every few months in retaliation for nagging. Your site is rather like a playground for non-feminists to get into arguments about the essentials of feminism rather than for any meaningful discussion about what you actually write about. As much as you go on about this being a safe space, it is not.
Agnieszka, I kind of know what you’re saying, although I’m not sure I’m co-signing your entire comment because I haven’t witnessed feminists specifically saying that this sort of violence is okay. There was a Christmas movie a couple of years ago where a wife whipped her cheating husband with a belt after tripping him in the bathroom, and the movie theater crowd, filled with both men and women, was roaring with laughter. I was more uncomfortable than anything else and wondered why there seemed to be societal approval for that sort of violence. I completely disagree with Hector’s example of emotional damage to a woman making her physical assault acceptable. That seems to just be the flipside of okaying a man hitting his wife because she nagged him, and I don’t see any reason why domestic violence needs to be qualified by who’s hitting who. You don’t hit your partner. Period. (And bringing up the military and police to try to prove violence is sometimes acceptable is just so outside the context of this conversation - why bother?)
As for the reports that Rihanna hit him first, A) it is not okay that Rihanna hit him either, although this story has taken on so many rumors that I don’t know what she did or didn’t do, and B) the law generally sanctions violence in response to violence to the extent that you need it to protect yourself. I do not see a proportional response, and I do not see how Chris Brown would have needed to beat her instead of simply getting out of the car in order to protect himself. Trading jab for jab simply because you’re pissed someone hit you isn’t okay.
I don’t even know if I said everything I meant to since I keep editing, I’m just really disturbed by some ideas being floated here.
B, I’ve temporarily banned captcrisis and made it clear that I do not tolerate suggestions of equivalency on this blog (meaning that words and fists somehow cancel each other out.) I’ve got a little baby and six classes to teach and cannot always track my threads; most of the big feminist blogs have multiple admins, but it’s just me here and I cottoned on to this too late. Deleting the original comment would have made all the feminist responses incoherent.
And since Chris Brown has been charged with a crime and Rihanna not, I think it’s safe for us to focus exclusively on what has been formally alleged in the court system and not on rumors running wild in the media.
I agree that it’s not all right for people to hit each other aside from (physical) self-defense or necessary actions by law enforcement, etc.
At the same time, I do see women hitting men as less immediately problematic. That’s because hitting someone has two effects - the actual pain or injury, and the fear and deference induced by knowing your partner will hit you when they’re angry. And I think for many (not all) hetero couples, the woman hitting the man does not make him afraid; he doesn’t see her as a physical threat.
It’s still a problem. She still shouldn’t do it. But in those cases it’s not having the same types of problematic effects that a man hitting a woman would (commonly) have.
The comment by captcris was horrifying and I am glad you banned him. (And if you want help moderating, you could, you know, just ask. I know one person who would be willing to help, Huges!)
I also appreciate Jendi’s pointing out that violence happens in lesbian relationships too. Not with my girifriend and I, thank god, but with friends of ours. Getting so filled with rage that you can’t communicate with words and can only do so by hitting is a problem anyone can have, queer or straight, male or female.
I also think that talking about women hitting men distracts from the main point of the post. Sure, it happens, but not in the same way or with the same frequncy. And since as you say Rihanna was not arrested, there is no reason to spread the rumnor that she might have hit first.
As someone who also has a lot of contact with couples who come through the court system for allegations of violence, I have to chime in to say that mutual violence is REAL and I have never seen it much discussed in feminist spaces.
What do we do about situations where the woman initiates physical violence, but then “gets the worst of it” in the end? To what extent is the man allowed to defend himself from scratching, slapping, grabbing, tugging, hitting, when he usually has more physical strength and can cause more damage? Does the fact that a woman hitting a man often causes no lasting or significant injury mean that he cannot use physical force to defend himself?
I think these are real tough issues, and I think that this discussion hasn’t addressed it because captcrisis initially suggested that physical violence can be an acceptable respons to verbal assault/violence (which is not the law in any jurisdiction that I’m aware of, though as Hector has exemplified, there are lots of people who believe that upon certain types of verbal provocation physical response is understandable/moral/justified).
Even Hugo, in his original post, was careful to say that the first person, of whatever sex/gender, to use physical force in an intimate argument is always wrong. Though I have not followed the Chris and Rihanna story closely, I have not heard any description of exactly who did what to whom. A woman having used “first force” still does not justify the use of disproportionate force in return, but that is different than simply stating that the first person to use physical force is always and solely in the wrong.
I have no idea what happened between Chris and Rhianna. Given what I’ve heard of the severity of her injuries and the lack of any suggestion that he had any injuries or was in any way attacked, that suggests that he’s in the wrong in this situation, irrespective of whether he was the first to use physical force. However, given that we’re all speculating on unknowns of a relationship, we should at least acknowledge the existence of mutually violent relationships.
I agree with Hugo’s main point, which is that Chris Brown’s resort to violence is his responsibility. If he doesn’t think that he can be in a relationship, with Rihanna or anyone else, without resorting to physical force, then he should leave, and be unattached for a while. But every relationship is a dynamic between two people. And when staying together, rather than separating, analyzing and changing a dynamic is almost impossible for only one partner to do.
I like Hugo’s ethic of personal responsibility as described in this post. But I think it leads to the conclusion that certain people must separate in order to be responsible moral agents. And it’s real hard to tell people who don’t want to separate that they have to. (I guess it’s not hard to do on a blog, or as a spiritual advisor, mentor, or friend; but it’s a role that the law really can’t take on).
Tam,
Sorry I can’t go along with your statement that a woman hitting a man is somehow less serious. Somehow “less immediately problematic.” I see little value and much danger in grading the seriousness of violence by the gender of the recipient.
I have been hen pecked, I have been verbally abused - moderately to visciously - I have been emotionally abused ie disowned, frozen out, and I have been physically assaulted all by both men and women. In my experience physical assault, by either a man or a woman, is by far the most traumatic experience, there is absoulutely no comparisson between physical violence and verbal abuse. All trust disappears and the power balance in the relationship takes an irreversable nose dive in favour of the violent person.
A comparison of assault with nagging would be laughable if it hadn’t come from someone who works in a women’s refuge.
It seems logical to me to focus less on the gender of the attacker and more on the severity (this includes things like how painful, disfiguring, threatening, degrading the assault is). It’s still wrong to be violent, but the degree of wrongness varies a lot.
I have a much easier time imagining a woman weakly smacking a man in anger (non-severe) than a man doing it. (I got kind of slap happy in middle school, but that’s because I was being sexually harassed by boys, so I consider that self defense.)
But now that I’m thinking about it, I would be very, very upset if my fiance weakly smacked me the same way, even though it didn’t really hurt. I would be devastated. I don’t know, I still have some thinking to do about this.
Agnieszka: If the stories in the news were about a woman assaulting a man and re-entering a relationship so quickly, together with a lack of response from women, I woud be just as outraged. especially so because I am a femisnist, and I do talk to my students about the levels of violence men are expected to tollerate as a feminist issue.
Hugo, I really appreciate you starting this thread, but some of the posts above are very worrying and don’t feel at all safe - some topics should not be allowed to be hi jacked by anti - feminists.
“Henpecking” is an extremely gendered term, like “pussywhipped”.
Verbal abuse is verbal abuse, period; it’s not nagging or “henpecking”. The handy thing about using those latter terms is that it is, again, highly gendered (only women “henpeck”) and there’s no real definition of what it is, other than being confronted about something in a way you don’t like. If I come home late from work and drunk five nights in a row, is it “nagging” for my husband to tell me he’s upset and wondering what’s going on? Well, sure, if I want to shift blame off myself and make the conversation about how he delivers his complaints, rather than about my behavior.
To clarify - to me henpecking is akin to nagging - someone of either gender repeatedly going on about the same topic, usually something which seems trivial to me, but is important to them. I have known plenty of men who henpeck. I don’t see it as a serious thing at all and has nothing to do with verbal abuse: that is why I listed it as a seperate behaviour. Sorry to disapoint.
“I have a much easier time imagining a woman weakly smacking a man in anger (non-severe) than a man doing it.”
My brother-in-law (my wife’s youngest brother) was in an abusive marriage for years. His ex-wife would even verbally abuse him in front of their children, extended family members, and friends of the family. When she would physically attack him with whatever item was handy (coffee cup, kid’s baseball bat, etc.), he had to defend himself by basically tackling her and holding her in a bear hug until she stopped fighting.
When neighbors would call the police due to her screaming at him, if there were adult witnesses to the attack, she would be arrested. If it was only their children as witnesses, he would always be the one arrested, no matter what the children said about who attacked whom. Finally after she had seriously stabbed him in view of the children, he got a restraining order against her. He then divorced her and she is not allowed visitation rights with the children. However, on a good note, the ex-wife’s mother and sister are still very involved with the kids.
The reason I bring up this ugly family history is to make the point to not to trivialize female-on-male domestic violence.
Fred, I may not have been clear, but my inability to easily imagine a man “weakly smacking” (I’m not sure how to phrase this, so please be charitable) a woman is my problem and says nothing about its prevalence in real life.
For some reason I have less trouble imagining a broad spectrum of violence from a woman, but for some reason man-hitting is always severe in my mind (I would count your brother-in-law’s actions count as self defense). Again, it’s a personal problem.
Thank you for sharing though and I’m so sorry your family had to go through all of that.
I know first hand that violence from women can be equal to that from men, and can be used for the same purposes; but it seems fantastical to think the kind of pummeling Chris Brown gave Rihanna could be motivated by self defence.
Without blaming anyone in particular, this is a classic example of what feminists call the “What About the Menz” phenomenon in blogging. There must be some sort of algorithm that determines how many comments into a thread on domestic violence one must go before someone raises the notion that we really ought to be talking about men’s suffering at the hands of women too.
Without denying that women abuse men, in a thread beneath a post that was focused on an incident where a woman was badly beaten to direct our concern elsewhere is problematic. It’s a bit like derailing a discussion of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust to point out that many innocent Germans suffered at the hands of the Russians at the end of the war.
This is not about denying that women can be strong, or about repeating a myth that men cannot be victims. Men’s suffering is real, and women’s capacity to wound is also real. But that doesn’t create equivalence, and I’d really like to make sure we keep the focus on the original subject: the ways in which we hold women (like Rihanna) responsible for men (like Crhis Brown)’s bad behavior.
Hugo,
I really think the story you posted is exceptional. The most common conception of wife beaters in popular culture isn’t ‘if women don’t leave them, they won’t change’, it’s ‘men who hit women don’t change, if they have hit once they will hit again’. The ‘one strike and you’re out’ policy is advocated based on the idea that they don’t change. Women stay in abusive relationships in the hope that their partner will change, they leave them with the realisation that they won’t.
I usually admire your feelings about people’s capacity for personal change. But I don’t really think it’s appropriate in this context.
Re Captcrisis: I recommend that you all view a blog called Khadija’s blog (www.muslimbushido.blogspot.com). Khadija is a muslim feminist. In her most recent post, Khadija lays out how to recognize a troll and his/her arguments. Captcrisis fits almost every one of the elements of a troll’s arguments as laid out by Khadija. Khadija also gives recommendations on how to handle the troll and his/her arguments. Readers of this blog might want to follow some or all of Khadija’s recommendations. Thanks.
1. Agnieszka had it exactly right the first time. And the female victims/male victims topic came up because of the alleged point that Rihanna was the one to begin the abuse in the case in question. (Word from his legal counsel was that he was originally thinking of pressing charges, and now we hear that the reason she isn’t pressing charges is because of her striking the first blows.) This is not to say that Brown’s response was purely self-defense or proportionate to her attack, but Agnieszka’s points are 100% on the mark. (And if this is not the time to mention those men, well, when will that time come, exactly?)
2. Yes, no one deserves to be hit. That should be a simple enough lesson for all of us to follow. The only acceptable situation for physical force is in defense, either or self or another innocent party, from a physical attack. “Nagging” certainly doesn’t qualify. (I disagree with Hector’s double standard in his half-real/half-hypothetical Venezuelan example.)
3. Yes, I consider it an insult to men and boys to read that men only understand violence, or that men don’t know how to nag back. If you’re being nagged, well, THAT’S HOW. Do what she’s doing.
4. Play-fighting can be acceptable, but only if both parties are consenting. It’s a bad sign when one person feels it is okay to hit the other person but expresses shock when being hit back. If that’s how (s)he feels during play, what will (s)he do during a fit of anger?
5. For anyone to use the phrase “What About the Menz” is to be condescending and to attempt to invalidate someone else’s concerns. The topic here is why an abused person is considered somehow responsible for the actions of an abuser. To mention anecdotes of female assailants and male victims is not to “direct concern elsewhere;” it is to stay on topic with the names changed. I respectfully add that I found the comparison to the Holocaust discussion most inappropriate.
You weren’t really expecting his lawyer to say “Yeah, he gave the bitch a good thumping,” were you?
I just don’t understand in what sense this is a feminist blog. This is exactly the kind of conversation I would expect to hear anywhere else. I don’t even think it would be tolerated at Feminism 101.
BTW, I have my own blog with no administrators. No comment gets published untl I approve it. That’s especially important re: these topics. And if that slows the conversation down a bit, so be it. Better than disseminating trashtalk.
hysperia, Hugo for a long time had the egocentric idea that he could “evangelize” to certain MRAs and that if he let them have their say here, he could persuade them to become feminists.
Goodness. I was really hoping it was abundantly clear the first and second time I wrote, but since it appears not to have been:
Without reservation, any violence that Chris Brown took from Rihanna pales in comparison to what she suffered. I am not so much as suggesting EQUATING the two. That would be REPREHENSIBLE to me. Of course, the focus on Brown’s fault is deserved because of the extent of his brutality.
It was only after agreeing with Hugo’s post, as a P.S., that I added my admittedly secondary tangent about making sure that we as feminists not privilege anyone’s right to violence, no matter its extent.
It’s been a fascinating conversation, and I appreciate the comments.