The XX Factor: What women really think.

Has Rihanna's Privacy Been Violated?

Feministing writer Samhita Mukhopadhyay is up in arms because the Los Angeles Times published Rihanna's name as Chris Brown's accuser. For those of you who missed it, Brown, Rihanna's boyfriend, was arrested Sunday for felony domestic violence. Mukhopadhyay argues that Rihanna's privacy has been violated and also posits that Rihanna "is a model to young women and they are affected by how she responds to this problem. This is a tremendous amount of pressure for anyone, let alone a young woman who is a victim of domestic violence."

Let's start with the first point, which is that Rihanna's privacy has been violated. Most newspapers do not print the accuser's name in sexual and domestic assault cases without the victim's permission, though it's Slate media guru Jack Shafer's anecdotal sense that the press tide has been turning on the naming of accusers in recent years. In the American Journalism Review, Geneva Overholser, Missouri School of Journalism professor and the Pulitzer prize winner for a series on rape, argues that "in the long run, we'll never get rid of the stigma if we don't treat these like regular crimes. ... It's just not ethical to make a choice about guilt or innocence, which is effectively what we do. It makes us look like we are assuming innocence on one part, guilt on another. ... We should not be determining who deserves our protection." It's also worth reiterating that this is a domestic violence case, and not a sexual assault case, and from what I've seen it's much more common for newspapers to print the names of domestic assault accusers than rape accusers.

But more practically, Rihanna is globally known as Chris Brown's girlfriend. The second Brown's arrest for domestic violence was publicized, the world would know that Rihanna was the accuser. To gingerly dance around her name would be ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room to a nearly absurd degree.

As for the notion that Rihanna is going to be thrust into the position of unwilling poster child for domestic violence, I think that is a byproduct of the sort of squeaky-clean celebrity image she's so carefully constructed. And besides, as Jo-Ann Armao noted in the Washington Post two years ago, shame is for criminals. If Rihanna's the paid and willing poster child for CoverGirl, Totes umbrellas, Clinique, and Secret Deodorant, is it so terrible for her to be encouraged to speak out against domestic violence as well?