A Feminist’s perspective on Chris Brown

At this point, I'm sure a lot of you are sick of hearing about Rihanna and Chris Brown.

I'm not.

Let's remember, just for a second, that we're talking about a guy who, less than three years ago, drove home from a party with his girlfriend, got in a verbal argument with her and then beat her half to death. According to the recently leaked police report, he punched her in the face and smashed her head against the dashboard until her mouth was full of blood and she had contusions on both sides of her face. He punched her arms and legs, bit her and put her in a stranglehold until she lost consciousness. When she tried to call for help on her cell phone, he yelled that she had "done the stupidest thing ever" and that he was "really going to kill her."

I would say that Chris Brown should still be in jail, but that's tricky, since he never went to jail in the first place. After pleading guilty, he made a deal that got him five years of probation, 1400 community service hours, and a year of mandated anger management counseling. Rough life.

But look at him now. He is getting paper. Since the assault three years ago, he has been crowned artist of the year by Billboard, performed "Man in the Mirror" at the BET Awards, released his fourth studio album and, just last week, performed twice at the Grammys where he also won for best R&B album.

Certainly, Brown received some backlash; Brown's music was taken off of multiple radio stations, and he withdrew from certain musical performances. People got mad, called him harsh names like "woman-beater"; he did the whole "publicly apologizing on YouTube" thing (in which he was almost certainly reading from a script), and went on David Letterman with his mom to talk about his experiences of seeing his stepfather beat his mother as a child. He said he was shocked and confused at his own actions, and was ready to do the work on himself to make sure that this never happened again.

But recent occurrences—Brown smashing a window and storming out of his Good Morning America interview shirtless when they asked him about the "Rihanna incident," tweeting a picture of himself with his middle finger extended to the sky almost exactly three years after the assault, tweeting things like "HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY Now! That's the ultimate FUCK OFF!"—all suggest that anger management counseling may not have been all that effective. And yet his career continues.

Just as bizarre as Brown's continued success are the two different types of backlash that Rihanna received. The first type is what I'll call the "anti-feminist" backlash. After Rihanna went public about the assault, many on the Internet engaged in a heated debate about whether Rihanna deserved what she'd gotten­—whether she'd brought it on herself. Blogs and comments suggested that Rihanna had "given Chris Brown herpes," which, it was implied, would clearly justify a brutal attack. A website created by "people close to Chris Brown" says Rihanna was "outrageously jealous and insecure," was physically abusive and had started the physical fight that ended in him beating her unconscious.

This type of backlash was substantiated by centuries of stereotypes of black women as emotionally unstable, and of black women's sexuality as unclean and dangerous. As it is in most cases of sexual assault or other abuse, the media, the legal system and the public tended to focus more on the behavior and personality of the woman than on the actions of the offender. According to feminist theorist Kimberle Crenshaw, women are generally cast into one of several roles: "the whore, the tease, the vengeful liar, the mentally or emotionally unstable or, in a few instances, the Madonna figure." Only the Madonna—the pure, untouched woman (generally white)—is seen as a true victim who deserves justice. Deeply ingrained stereotypes about black women being sexually voracious and indiscriminate, and the reinforcement these stereotypes receive everyday from mainstream rap music and imagery, made it easier to suggest that Rihanna was not this Madonna. She was sexy. She was a little dangerous. She occasionally wore black and some chains. She was, as her album said, a good girl gone bad. Her critics suggested that if she sang about liking "S&M" or "Disturbia," perhaps she really had been "asking for it." Maybe Chris Brown had just gotten "confused."

To many Vassar students it all sounds absurd, and we assume that this kind of thinking isn't present here. It is. But it's phrased differently. That's the second type of backlash she received; the "feminist" backlash. When Rihanna didn't immediately end her relationship with Brown and initially refused to press charges, she was demonized for being a bad example for young women. The fact that Rihanna went back to work and put out two albums, collaborated with a number of artists and released four number one hits was seen as a sign of weakness, of missing the opportunity to speak up for victims of domestic abuse.

Her hit video "S&M" in particular drew heavy criticism. In the video, in which she dances around in revealing, brightly colored outfits, plays with whips, and writhes on the floor, tied up, she sings that "sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me." Interestingly, most critics ignored the fact that Rihanna is rarely being dominated or subjected to pain in the video. In fact, for most of it, she is acting as a dominatrix, tying up paparazzi who, in the beginning of the video, are seen labeling her with phrases like "princess," "slut" and "daddy issues." Despite this interesting and more complicated message, critics felt that the difference between consensual and safe S&M and assault would be ignored, and that Rihanna's revealing clothing and raunchy dancing would be used against her to trivialize the incident.

This is where it gets a little tricky. Yes, Rihanna probably should have ended her relationship immediately after she was brutally beaten. But the thought that a young woman could leave her first love and best friend easily is a fantasy. It takes most women much, much longer to get out of abusive relationships. Yes, Rihanna could have used her fame and influence to draw attention to domestic abuse everywhere. But that's not what she wanted. She didn't want to be the poster child for domestic abuse, or the "victim." She wanted to make music and get on with her life. And yes, releasing a song about how pain is your pleasure after you've been assaulted might not be the best idea. But it's still her choice.

All of these attacks on Rihanna are detrimental to the feminist cause because they support the deep cultural belief that the only victims of domestic abuse (or sexual abuse) that deserve our support are the victims that come forward as figureheads, that are pure and virginal and only ever have sex in the missionary position, and are willing to put their most intimate and terrible moments on display to help others.

The "neutral parties" on the issue say that this was a personal matter to be handled privately—that it was no one's business. That's bullshit. If it's our business to see Beyonce's newborn and Snookie's weight loss and Whitney Houston's corpse, then it's our business to know that in our culture, fame and image seem to excuse abuse.

Chris Brown teaches us that if you're talented enough, and if you can croon those high notes, you can beat someone up, continue to have a good career, win a Grammy and get a new girlfriend within three years. Women will still want you, as the recent collection of female tweeters saying they wouldn't mind if Chris Brown beat them shows. That abuse will be taken less seriously if the story can be told as: "a wild black singer forced the nice boy to defend himself in a fight." If the woman can be cast as a whore, a freak, or jealous bitch, then the man can move quickly from the status of monster to that of repentant sinner rising from the ashes to the victim? There's a deep, cultural problem in the way we view domestic abuse that is rife with racism, sexism, and the tricky place in between.

Getting to the root of the problem is the only way to begin to fix it.

—Nadja Leonhard-Hooper '15 is a member of the Feminist Alliance.