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.

Word from his legal counsel was that he was originally thinking of pressing charges

You weren’t really expecting his lawyer to say “Yeah, he gave the bitch a good thumping,” were you?

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.

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.

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.