Chris Brown's Return: Rape Culture at its Finest (Worst)

OK guys. Get ready for rape culture in action (and domestic violence culture in action; if that's not a term, it should be). Rape culture is a "term used to describe a culture in which rape and sexual violence are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone sexual violence. Examples of behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming,sexual objectification, and trivializing rape." (Yes, that's from Wikipedia)


Last night, Chris Brown made his return performance to the Grammys. What does Chris Brown at the Grammys have to do with rape culture? Well, about three years ago, he beat up his girlfriend, pop star Rihanna. He beat her up so violently that she had to go to the hospital. 


After this story was leaked to the press, there was a huge media storm about it. And a large portion of that storm was discussing how Rihanna caused this to happen. A large portion of that storm was making excuses for Chris Brown, the abuser. And ever since this happened, people have been complaining that people need to pipe down and stop reminding everyone what Chris Brown did. "Let him move on!" "Get over it already!" Even someone in my own college newspaper wrote last year about how reporters should stop bringing up his past (I wrote a response to this which was never published in the paper, and so I published it here and started this blog). 


What about Rihanna? Was anyone helping her move on? Even when someone spoke up in the press about Rihanna needing support, the backlash was so great that he had to apologize for possibly offending Chris Brown. 


Now, three years later, Chris Brown has been welcomed back as a performer at the Grammys. And everyone is talking about how great it is to have him back. And those same people are completely ignoring his abusive past, and staying eerily silent on the reason he was gone in the first place. Now, I'm not saying that no one deserves a second chance. But Chris Brown has not actually been punished. He was put on probation and given community service hours. He was not in attendance at the Grammys for two years. That's nothing. What are we telling women when the men who abuse them get nothing but a slap on the wrist?


And the most twisted part? All the tweets and status updates from women saying basically the same thing, "Chris Brown's so hot I would let him beat me up any day."

This. Is. Rape. Culture. In. Action. 

When we have normalized domestic violence so much that women can casually joke about it being an easy price to pay for the man you want, we have a big problem.


Folks, we have a big problem.

Chris Brown and Hester Prynne?

Today, I heard about Chris Brown's outburst at Good Morning America through an op-ed piece in my college newspaper. The female writer was defending Brown's outburst, saying that he had a right to be angry because the reporter shouldn't have asked him questions about Rihanna (and their tumultuous past) when he was there to promote his album. The writer also compared Brown to the Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, saying that the media needed to remove the scarlet A from Chris Brown, and forgive and forget.
This is a link to her original piece: http://www.thedmonline.com/article/scarlet-letter

I wrote a letter to the editor in response, but it was never published, so here it is!

Letter to the editor:

                  I take issue with Ms. Dunigan’s editorial “The Scarlet Letter” in Thursday’s paper. Her argument begins a bit all over the place. She mentions the pressures of media attention on celebrities and the disruptions it can have on their lives. Fine. She mentions the negative effect of media reminders of past crimes. Sure. But to say that Chris Brown’s violent outburst on the set of Good Morning America was justified is ridiculous.

                  She opens her piece with, “The mission of the journalism profession is to convey truth, initiate action and provide a voice [for] those not loud enough to be heard.” Is it not true that Chris Brown abused Rihanna? It is. Could legitimate conversations about his crime (and his remorse, if he has it) lead to actions taken to assist those affected by domestic violence? They could. And could such conversations also provide a voice for women afraid to stand up to their abusers? Yes.

                  Now I don’t know the tone of Robin Roberts’s questions about Rihanna during the interview; I haven’t seen it. But, as a celebrity, especially one with an often talked-about past, Brown should be always be prepared for uncomfortable or unpleasant questions, and be ready with an answer, or a deflection if he chooses. Journalists have a right to ask questions of their choosing; interviewees have a right to answer or not. Brown’s violent outburst was nothing short of childish and unprofessional. And it’s ridiculous for Ms. Dunigan to say that if Chris Brown were actually an abuser, he would have attacked Robin Roberts herself. Even abusers have the ability to choose time, place and victim.

                  She also mentions that Brown was angry “probably because he has not forgiven himself.” That may be true. But isn’t it also likely that his anger stemmed from having come off poorly in a televised interview? The truth is, we can’t know what was going on in his head, and we shouldn’t psychoanalyze him from the other side of the TV. At the end of day, his outburst was violent, unprofessional and unnecessary, and any defense of it is simply naïve and offensive.

                  And please, let’s not compare an abusive man in 2011 to a persecuted woman labeled an adulteress in a Puritanical community of the 17^th century. It’s a comparison that makes no sense when applied to Chris Brown, and is just insulting to Hawthorne’s novel.