The XX Factor: What women really think.

Will Chris Brown's Apology Stick?

Chris Brown has a thing or two to teach Mark Sanford and John Ensign about how to say you're sorry. In his taped apology to Rihanna, for punching her in February, the singer sounds forthright and sincere. He's straightforward and direct. He invokes his mother, more than once. He says he's getting help and he promises not to do it again. All the boxes checked, including remorse.

Chris Brown, Silly Boy

Tuxedos, Turbans, and Tulle on The Red Carpet

A Tux-Clad Rihanna Returns to the Red Carpet

At Least Tweens Have Rihanna's Back

After reading Dayo's disheartening post on Friday about teenagers' reactions to Rihanna and to domestic abuse in general, I was wondering why female adolescents were so quick to blame the victim. I haven't come up with a particularly good answer but did hear something positive that complicates the matter. I was talking to a social worker friend who works with urban fourth and fifth graders, and she said that Chris Brown and Rihanna came up in class. "They were unanimous in thinking that Rihanna should not have gone back to Chris Brown," my friend said. She asked them if they would think differently had Rihanna hit Brown first, and they said no, because you should never hit a girl. "They all think that men have an obligation not to hit women," she said.

My friend conceded that there might have been a bit of group think going on—that the loudest kids came out against Chris Brown and the quieter ones followed—and that it's possible that they were just parroting what their teachers and moms had told them. But still, being "very very dismayed" at the idea that Rihanna would get back with Brown after he hit her, as the middle schoolers were, is a huge difference from saying "I would have punched her around too," as some high schoolers have been. Do puberty-related hormones make your thinking that fuzzy? Does all self-esteem go out the window between the ages of 10 and 14? At the risk of sounding like an old codger, what is going on with teens today?!

Domestic Violence: Are Girls Just Asking for It?

Domestic violence being an atrocity, I have tried to ignore the rather disgusting “Crihanna” tit for tat that’s competing for shelf space beside Michelle Obama on newsstands across the country. But this new study out from Boston University spun my head:  

Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February.

Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence.

The results of the survey, conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission across the city and equally among boys and girls, are startling for local health workers who see a generation of youths who seem to have grown accustomed, even insensitive, to domestic violence.

"I think you'd have to be pretty jaded if you weren't startled by it," said Casey Corcoran, director of the health commission's new Start Strong program.

 Maybe. But I have to say I’m not that surprised: In college, I participated in a program called “Community Health Educators” (the founders have scaled up their model via a national nonprofit called “Peer Health Educators” that I strongly endorse). The idea is that, because many local school districts don’t have a budget for health education,  kids not too much older than high school students would travel to local schools—in my case, an urban setting with a mix of white, black and latino students—bearing lectures and props and index cards for awkward questions. And that this would fill the gap. I taught different individual subjects for two years, and in my senior year I had the chance to participate in a pilot program where I’d see the same kids every week, teaching the entire curriculum over the course of ten weeks.

 This preamble is by way of saying that I saw the way 17-19 year olds (in a “second chance” high school, where some of the kids had dropped out or been through the juvenile justice system) absorbed the range of topics we discussed, from contraception (the wooden penis was a hit), nutrition (“sugar is not a food group”) to drug and alcohol abuse (one kid asked us, in the throes of senior spring, if we had ever been drunk). They were on the whole receptive, if restless and often skeptical of our preachy tone. Learning about hallucinogens certainly livened up what could have been an afternoon of trigonometry.

But, far and away, the subject that penetrated the least was our unit on “relationships and abuse.” This dealt with date rape, molestation by adults, domestic violence and bullying. It never sunk in. Worse, while the guys were boorish in the extreme—one male student in one class said if a girl “snitched” on him for sexual assault, “I’d kill her”—the girls, I found, were even more likely to say that a male-on-female altercation involving kicking, punching and hitting was a girl’s fault. (“Why’d she make him mad?” etc.) Even kids who could rattle off the ins and outs of contraception without shame (one girl in my class had a toddler already) regressed mightily when it came to the issue of gender and violence. It was, honestly, chilling. What's that about?

Chris Brown Deserves a Break? Give Me a Break.

What's distressing is that so many young women have been voicing sympathetic accolades for Brown and disdain for Rhianna and saying that she probably did something to provoke (read deserve) Brown's anger. Check out any of the many blogs or entertainment news Web sites covering the "Chrianna" imbroglio and you'll see pages and pages of criticism directed at Rhianna from young women who are certain—even without any verifiable proof—that Brown's actions were little more than a momentary lapse in judgment. Anyone who saw the pictures of Rhinanna's bruised and battered face and lips could see that she was the victim of more than a simple errant slap.  

Brown has spoken openly about growing up in an abusive home where his stepfather regularly and brutally beat him and his mother. The violent pattern exhibited by men who grew up in violent homes is well documented, so why should we expect Chris Brown to be any different—or any more worthy of our sympathy?

All these young women defending him are being swayed by silly infatuation with a teenage heartthrob. Brown's star power, his winning smile, his cute baby face, his silky voice, and playfully sexy music videos all make for a very appealing combination. However, those qualities do not negate his other less appealing, and possibly dangerous, side. If there is a silver lining in this overcovered story it is that more young people are talking about physical abuse in relationships, and that Chris Brown will be forced to examine his actions and hopefully get some help to break the pattern of violence that he grew up with and learn to speak from the heart instead of with his fists.   

Should We "Give Chris a Break"?

When I heard that Rihanna might be back together with Chris Brown, only a few weeks after he was arrested for allegedly assaulting her, I found myself hoping that she was right to forgive him, that he isn't like those domestic abusers who do lash out again and again. I'm not the only one who is feeling compassionate toward Brown: Elissa Jolene Budziszewski at College News writes that Reuters commenters have been largely sympathetic to him. So, apparently, is Kanye, who asked on VH1 Saturday "Can’t we give Chris a break?" I started looking for stats that might show that teenage boys who commit violent acts against their girlfriends are less likely to be repeat offenders than older abusers. I feel for the 19-year-old who hasn't learned to control his anger but wants to change—and for the 21-year-old who still loves him but worries the world will write her off as idiotic for giving him another shot.

But I didn't find any numbers supporting my imagined Brown defense. What I saw instead were numbers about how few teenagers whose boyfriends abuse them report what happened. Three percent of abused teenage students tell an authority figure; 80 percent of teenage girls continue to date the person who abused them.

This doesn't exactly mean that Brown won't change or that Rihanna has no reason to believe that he will. But the odds are against them. I'm curious, though, whether other XXers found themselves sympathizing with him in some way, and what you think that means.

Rihanna and Privacy Revisited

The current meta conversation burning up the net is the controversy over some media outlets' decision to publish a photo of a bruised Rihanna, post alleged battery by her boyfriend Chris Brown. The anti-publishing faction argues that it's an invasion of Rihanna's privacy, obviously an even more dire invasion than merely printing Rihanna's name in conjunction with the crime.

Gawker's Ryan Tate, in an entry discussing his site's decision to post the photo of Rihanna, says:

Critics say running the picture humiliates Rihanna at a time when she's already in emotional agony, that it pierces a zone of emotional and physical privacy already grossly violated in the apparent attack on her. Victims of domestic abuse and rape have long been accorded special rights in the criminal justice system; it is argued they should retain a similar degree of control if and when information escapes that system. Finally, it is lost on no one that sensational pictures like the Rihanna shot can bring profit-making publishers large amounts of traffic, opening publishers to charges of exploitation.

Those who support the publishing of the jarring photo of Rihanna make a similar argument to the one that I made when discussing the L.A. Times' decision to print Rihanna's name in the first place: By not printing the photo, which is clearly newsworthy, it's reinforcing the idea that she has something to be ashamed of.

It is also of note that photos of nonfamous women in domestic violence situations have been published without remark on sites like the Smoking Gun (example here). Is the outrage over Rihanna because that particular photo is so graphic? Is it because Rihanna had a pristine image, and it shatters the vaunted fantasy? If a less heralded celebrity, say, an Amy Winehouse, were in a similar domestic battery situation, would the publishing of her photos provoke such an outcry?

Finally, Newsweek has an interview with Leslie Morgan Steiner, the author of a forthcoming memoir about domestic abuse called Crazy Love. Steiner points out that Rihanna's well-publicized trauma may break down stereotypes of abused women. "I didn't understand that cycles of violence are passed from generation to generation, and I'd never known anyone who was abused," Steiner says. "I thought it only happened to poor women with children and without options."

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?

Celebrity Industrial Complex Holds On

Last night, the heretofore squeaky clean heartthrob Chris Brown turned himself in to the L.A. police for allegedly making criminal threats against his girlfriend, the hugely successful pop singer Rihanna. He's now out on bail and is also under investigation for felony domestic violence. In lieu of any verifiable, definitely accurate information about what went down between the two, I don't feel particularly comfortable opining on the dispute, but I will say this: The gossip industry (blogs, tabloids, TV news magazines) is positively gleeful, albeit in the most concerned way possible, to be covering such a high-profile incident (TMZ has seven posts up about it since 8 p.m. ET yesterday).

In the absence of the radically unhinged celebrity behavior that was commonplace during the Brit-Paris-Lindsay era (and, wow, look around, we're finally out on the other side of that mind-deadening national obsession. Maybe there's one good thing about mortgage-backed securities after all), the gossip biz hasn't had a chance to stretch its rumor-mongering, banal-detail-finding wings in some time. Now it's got a chance to do what it does best (forget this "covering" politics thing) and, judging from this morning's saturation coverage, it's not going to let up anytime soon. Not so long ago, there would have been another sordid story in the pipeline, ready to snatch the news cycle away from Brown and Rihanna—now there's just the stimulus package. I'm not sure the gossip media is equipped to cover domestic assault admirably/responsibly/interestingly, but we're definitely going to get to watch them try.